Ambivalent wishes: Representations of Modernity and personal lifestyles in Colombia (1890s-1950s) is a literary and cultural examine of the reception of modernity in Colombia. in contrast to earlier reports of Latin American modernization, that have frequently all in favour of the general public element of the method, this publication discusses the intersection among modernity and the personal sphere. It analyzes canonical and non-canonical works that replicate the prevailing ambivalence towards the modernizing undertaking being carried out within the kingdom on the time, and it discusses how the texts in query reinterpret, adapt, or even reject the ideology of modernity. the point of interest of the research is how the certainty of the connection among modernity and personal lifestyles pertains to the undertaking of creating a latest country, and the discontinuities and contradictions that seem within the procedure. The query of what modernity is, its implications for way of life, and its desirability or undesirability as a brand new cultural paradigm have been primary concerns in Colombian texts from the tip of the 19th century in the course of the first 1/2 the 20th. At stake used to be the definition of the nation's id and the undertaking of breaking clear of the cultural styles of the colonial prior. for the reason that the it seems that peaceable means of modernization in Colombia was once interrupted within the Fifties by way of the eruption of political violence around the nation, this research situates itself at the eve of a quandary and asks how representations of modernity in texts from the interval facts the social fragmentation which could have ended in it. The publication starts with an research of the subject matter of the non-public assortment within the paintings of JosZ Asunci-n Silva, and the way it truly is used to suggest a selected idea of non-public and cultural id. It keeps with an research of the modernizing ideology of the preferred journal El GrOfico in the course of the interval of monetary prosperity of the Twenties referred to as the 'Dance of the Millions,' targeting the publication's ads and the part dedicated to ladies and the house. as a consequence, the canonical writings of TomOs Rueda Vargas are analyzed within the context of the relation among autobiographical writing and public existence, emphasizing the contradiction among the author's public liberalism and his deepest conservatism, and highlighting his critique of recent existence. The works of formerly missed ladies writers Manuela Mallarino Isaacs, Juana SOnchez Lafaurie, and Fabiola Aguirre are studied within the context of women's dating to modernity and their clash among conventional roles that relegated them to the personal sphere, and their wish to settle for smooth criteria. The ebook concludes with an research of the novels of Ignacio G-mez DOvila, that have obtained scant recognition to this date, because it discusses his critique of the higher periods' flight into the personal and what the writer sees as their alienation from a society at the verge of a crisis.