“Honor Moderno”: The Significance of Honor in Fin-de-Siècle Argentina Available to Purchase

Recent years have produced a steady stream of conference papers, congresses, books, and academic reviews on the subject of honor. This outpouring indicates a rebirth of interest in the topic and, at the same time, bears witness to the reconsideration of certain theoretical precepts.¹ In Argentine historiography, however, honor has rarely been the direct object of systematic consideration; rather, it emerges as an unexpected by-product in studies dealing with the family, especially those focused on the late colonial period.² This “invisibility” of honor, and the silence of postcolonial historiography on the subject, derives from the association of honor with colonial criollo culture (honor de los criollos).³ Since the nineteenth century, massive immigration, demographic growth, family transformations, and urbanization (all distinctive of “modern” Argentina) have allegedly delivered “the coup de grace to the tyranny of honor” in the Río de la Plata.⁴ Most Argentine historians...