The Department of Modern Languages and Literatures will host a lecture titled “Cannibals in Paris: The Selk’nam from Tierra del Fuego at the 1889 Universal Exhibition” by Argentine writer, scholar and translator Carlos Gamerro Oct. 8 at 4 p.m. in Clark Hall, Room 206.
Gamerro will talk about his research on the family of eleven Selk’nam from Tierra del Fuego, who were abducted and taken to Paris to be exhibited in a cage as “Patagonian cannibals” at the 1889 World Fair.
About the talk
In 1889, a family of Selk’nam individuals, who, until then, had had no contact with European culture, where abducted from their native Tierra del Fuego and taken to Paris, where they were kept in a cage and exhibited as “Patagonian cannibals” at the Universal Exhibition. They were subsequently taken to London, from where the Chilean authorities grudgingly agreed to repatriate them. But of the original 11, only four made it back to their homeland, where they were absorbed into the system of the Catholic missions. One of them stayed in Europe and made it back on his own, but nobody knows how.
The novel Carlos Gamerro is working on follows what is known of their story, resorting to fiction to fill in the gaps, and attempts to recreate the different discourses, institutions and practices that made this story possible. The talk will include the reading of excerpts from his novel, La jaula de los onas [The Selk’nam Cage], translated into English.
About the speaker
Carlos Gamerro’s novels include:
- Las Islas (1998) [The Islands, 2012];
- El secreto y las voces (2002) [An Open Secret, 2011];
- La aventura de los bustos de Eva (2004) [The Adventure of the Busts of Eva Perón, 2015]; and
- Cardenio (2016).
His book of essays on Argentine literature, Facundo o Martín Fierro, won the Best Book of 2015 Award at the Buenos Aires Book Fair.
He also has translated William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and The Merchant of Venice into Spanish. He has co-authored the script for the film Tres de corazones (Sergio Renán, 2007) and the Catalogue for the 11th Lyon Biennale.
From 2016 to 2018, he worked as programs curator for the National Theatre of Argentina.