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Intersecting Tanger, cultural geographies of Buenos Aires, 1900-1930. Adriana Bergero. Pittsburgh: The University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008. ? and 476 pages, photos, notes, index. $27.95 paperback, f 60.00 hardback (ISBN 0-8229-5985-2).
Intersecting Tango is an ambitious attempt to convey the toil and turmoil of fin-de-siecle Buenos Aires through a textual analysis of newspapers, popular literature, theatre productions, and tango lyrics. Bergero, a Spanish and Portuguese linguist, resolves to "map Buenos Aires, attempting to decipher the city's dramatic changes at the dawn of die 20* century." She tells us that, "this study is about maps - both urban maps and the cognitive and affective maps that diasporas, exiles and cities confuse and reassemble" (2). Bergero's geographic analysis falls flat, as she never engages geographic theory dealing with gender, class, territoriality, the production of space, or patterns of Latin American urbanism. While one cannot reasonably expect Bergero to be conversant in all of these sub-disciplines, the sub-title of the book and her stated goal imply a general familiarity. Geographers will need to bring thek own theoretical frameworks to make sense of her tome. Those not familiar with the relative locations (which Bergero calls "proxemic distances") of the neighborhoods, streets,...