DOCSLIB.ORG

From Macondo to Mcondo and Beyond Spatial Imaginations of Transnationality in Two Anthologies of Young Latin American Writers

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
From Macondo to Mcondo and Beyond Spatial Imaginations of Transnationality in Two Anthologies of Young Latin American Writers Chapter 15 From Macondo to McOndo and Beyond Spatial Imaginations of Transnationality in Two Anthologies of Young Latin American Writers Liesbeth François The reformulation of the sense of Latin America and its nations as cultur- al, geographical and literary units in the present- day context of accelerat- ed globalization is an omnipresent topic in critical discourse. According to Francisca Noguerol (2008), the most appropriate concept to describe the contemporary narrative production in Latin America is its “extraterritori- ality”, its moving away from the framework of the nation- state ― although she also notes that there exists a large tradition of cultural hybridization in the literatures of the continent. As Nadia Lie, Silvana Mandolessi and Dag- mar Vandebosch note in their text “The Transnational in Hispanic Studies” (2011), various literary discourses are indeed characterized by this opening- up of their reflections on Hispanic identity through their inclusion of issues such as displacement and new forms of hybridity, but at the same time they often tend to ambiguously promote a more essentialist discourse on the uniqueness of this identity. (75) What these discussions have in common is, of course, the question as to how the transnational networks in which the continent is immersed influence Latin American nations and the notion of “Latin America” itself. I would like to address this problem through the dis- cussion of the spatial imaginaries proposed in two emblematic anthologies of young writers, one from 1996 and the other from 2008, that enter explicit- ly into discussion with each other as to the image of Latin America that they intend to create. In 1996, Chilean writers Alberto Fuguet and Sergio Gómez launched their polemical and much- debated anthology McOndo as a satirical reaction to what they perceived as a certain stereotype, based on demands of inter- national publishing houses, of the kind of fictional worlds Latin American literature should represent. This collection includes seventeen short stories written by young authors (born after 1959, the year of the triumph of the Cu- ban Revolution) from different Latin American countries and from Spain. The prologue of this collection ― the title of which is an obvious parody of the mythical, rural and exotic Macondo that appears in the stories of García © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/ 9789004370869_ 017 222 François Márquez1 ― functions as a kind of manifest, in which the editors explain their intention to distance themselves from the ever- popular magical realism to which Latin American literature tended to be reduced on the international market. Instead, the stories they selected emphasize the urban character of the contemporary metropolises and the influence of globalization: “We think that selling a rural continent when it, in reality, is urban […] is aberrant, too easy, and immoral.” [“Vender un continente rural cuando, la verdad de las cosas, [sic] es urbano […] nos parece aberrante, cómodo e inmoral.”2] (16) McOndo has been followed by several other publications edited by the same authors or along the same lines, such as Líneas aéreas (Airlines) or Se habla español (We Can Speak Spanish). The “McOndian” arguments are summarized and debated in the prologue of El futuro no es nuestro. Nueva narrativa latinoamericana (The Future Is Not Ours. New Latin American Prose Fiction), published in 2008 and edited by the Peruvi- an author Diego Trelles Paz. El Futuro no es nuestro presents twenty short sto- ries written by young authors (born, in this case, between 1970 and 1980) from different countries of the continent. Trelles Paz recognizes the merits of the McOndo proposal in that it granted visibility to a generation of authors who “managed to write down and to describe a literary world that had already dis- tanced itself from the limiting frontiers of the national” (19) [“una generación de escritores latinoamericanos (y españoles) que, con una mirada propia aun- que con distinta fortuna, consiguió escribir y describir un mundo literario ya alejado de las fronteras limitantes de lo nacional”], but he critiques its lack of theoretical solidity and its own tendency towards a stereotypical vision of Latin America, now reduced to urban spaces that are defined in terms of their function as centers of consumption for the middle classes. With respect to the McOndians, El futuro no es nuestro “announces itself, here and now, with a scal- pel between its fingers and the happy certainty that in literature, like in every art, there are no changes without ruptures.” (19) [“se anuncia, aquí y ahora, con el bisturí entre los dedos y la alegre certeza de que en la literatura, como en todo arte, sin rupturas no hay relevos.”] The editor observes that the short stories share the McOndian rejection of the total novel and Boom aesthetics, but that their authors wish to shake off both the burden of this tradition and the limitations of the literary market alike. 1 As Trelles Paz notes (16), it should be clarified, however, that Fuguet and Gómez did not target García Márquez and his work in the first place, but that they primarily reacted against writers they considered as his epigones, who continued reproducing, according to them, the same stereotypes of magical realism. 2 All translations in this article are mine..
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Introduction
    Introduction Frederick Luis Aldama Scholar, playwright, spoken-word performer, award-winning poet, and avant-garde fiction author, since the 1980s Giannina Braschi has been creating up a storm in and around a panoply of Latinx hemispheric spaces. Her creative corpus reaches across different genres, regions, and historical epochs. Her critical works cover a wide range of subjects and authors, including Miguel de Cervantes, Garcilaso de la Vega, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Antonio Machado, César Vallejo, and García Lorca. Her dramatic poetry titles in Spanish include Asalto al tiempo (1981) and La comedia profana (1985). Her radically ex- perimental genre-bending titles include El imperio de los sueños (1988), the bilingual Yo-Yo Boing! (1998), and the English-penned United States of Banana (2011). With national and international awards and works ap- pearing in Swedish, Slovenian, Russian, and Italian, she is recognized as one of today’s foremost experimental Latinx authors. Her vibrant bilingually shaped creative expressions and innovation spring from her Latinidad, her Puerto Rican-ness that weaves in and through a planetary aesthetic sensibility. We discover as much in her work about US/Puerto Rico sociopolitical histories as we encounter the metaphysical and existential explorations of a Cervantes, Rabelais, Did- erot, Artaud, Joyce, Beckett, Stein, Borges, Cortázar, and Rosario Castel- lanos, for instance. With every flourish of her pen Braschi reminds us that in the distillation and reconstruction of the building blocks of the uni- verse there are no limits to what fiction can do. And, here too, the black scratches that form words and carefully composed blank spaces shape an absent world; her strict selection out of words and syntax is as important as the precise insertion of words and syntax to put us into the shoes of the “complicit reader” (Julio Cortázar’s term) to most productively interface, invest, and fill in the gaps of her storyworlds.
    [Show full text]
  • Desplazamientos Lingüísticos Y Literarios En La Obra De Giannina Braschi YO-YO BOING!
    Facultad de Humanidades Sección de Filología Desplazamientos lingüísticos y literarios en la obra de Giannina Braschi YO-YO BOING! Trabajo de Fin de Grado Grado en español: lengua y literatura Estudiante: Anastasia Gameza Tutores: Dr. Juan Manuel García Ramos, Dra. Juana L. Herrera Santana La Laguna 2015 Índice SUMMARY -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3 RESUMEN --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4 1. INTRODUCCIÓN ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5 2. MARCO TEÓRICO------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 8 2.1. Puerto Rico y los Estados Unidos --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8 2.2. Code-switching ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 10 2.3. Spanglish ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11 3. DESPLAZAMIENTOS ENTRE LOS “YOS” ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 12 3.1. El título y la composición de la obra --------------------------------------------------------------------- 12 3.2. Construcción del sujeto ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 13 4. MONOLINGÜISMO FRENTE AL BILINGÜISMO DENTRO
    [Show full text]
  • Cyborgs in Latin America
    CYBORGS IN LATIN AMERICA 9780230103900_01_prexii.indd i 5/7/2010 12:14:52 PM This page intentionally left blank Cyborgs in Latin America J. Andrew Brown 9780230103900_01_prexii.indd iii 5/7/2010 12:14:52 PM CYBORGS IN LATIN AMERICA Copyright © J. Andrew Brown, 2010. All rights reserved. First published in 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–0–230–10390–0 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Brown, J. Andrew, 1970– Cyborgs in Latin America / J. Andrew Brown. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978–0–230–10390–0 (alk. paper) 1. Spanish American fiction—20th century—History and criticism. 2. Science fiction, Spanish American—History and criticism. 3. Cyborgs in literature. 4. Cyborgs in mass media. 5. Cyborgs in motion pictures. 6. Literature and technology—Latin America— History—20th century. 7. Mass media and technology—Latin America—History—20th century. 8. Human beings—Philosophy. I. Title. PQ7082.S34B76 2010 863Ј.087620998—dc22 2009047964 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
    [Show full text]
  • Lettered City"
    CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture ISSN 1481-4374 Purdue University Press ©Purdue University Volume 14 (2013) Issue 5 Article 23 Metropolitan (Im)migrants in the "Lettered City" Stacey Balkan Bergen Community College Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb Part of the American Studies Commons, Comparative Literature Commons, Education Commons, European Languages and Societies Commons, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Other Arts and Humanities Commons, Other Film and Media Studies Commons, Reading and Language Commons, Rhetoric and Composition Commons, Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons, Television Commons, and the Theatre and Performance Studies Commons Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press selects, develops, and distributes quality resources in several key subject areas for which its parent university is famous, including business, technology, health, veterinary medicine, and other selected disciplines in the humanities and sciences. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI),
    [Show full text]
  • Place, Mobility, and Memory in the Post-Dicatorial Southern Cone
    University of Kentucky UKnowledge Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies Hispanic Studies 2011 MEMORYSCAPES: PLACE, MOBILITY, AND MEMORY IN THE POST-DICATORIAL SOUTHERN CONE Rebbecca M. Pittenger University of Kentucky, [email protected] Right click to open a feedback form in a new tab to let us know how this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Pittenger, Rebbecca M., "MEMORYSCAPES: PLACE, MOBILITY, AND MEMORY IN THE POST-DICATORIAL SOUTHERN CONE" (2011). Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies. 1. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/hisp_etds/1 This Doctoral Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Hispanic Studies at UKnowledge. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies by an authorized administrator of UKnowledge. For more information, please contact [email protected]. STUDENT AGREEMENT: I represent that my thesis or dissertation and abstract are my original work. Proper attribution has been given to all outside sources. I understand that I am solely responsible for obtaining any needed copyright permissions. I have obtained and attached hereto needed written permission statements(s) from the owner(s) of each third-party copyrighted matter to be included in my work, allowing electronic distribution (if such use is not permitted by the fair use doctrine). I hereby grant to The University of Kentucky and its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible my work in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I agree that the document mentioned above may be made available immediately for worldwide access unless a preapproved embargo applies.
    [Show full text]
  • Dictators: Ethnic American Narrative and the Strongman Genre by David
    Dictators: Ethnic American Narrative and the Strongman Genre By David C. Liao B.A., State University of New York, Binghamton 2006 M.A., Brown University Thesis Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Program of English at Brown University Providence, Rhode Island May 2015 © 2015 by David C. Liao This dissertation is accepted in its present form by the Department of English as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Date _________ __________________________________________ Deak Nabers, Advisor Recommended to the Graduate Council Date _________ __________________________________________ Tamar Katz, Reader Date _________ __________________________________________ Olakunle George, Reader Approved by the Graduate Council Date _________ __________________________________________ Peter M. Weber, Dean of the Graduate School iii VITA David Chang Yi Liao was born on July 20, 1984 in Taipei, Taiwan. The child of a diplomat, he has also lived in Houston, Texas and Long Island, New York, as well as spending numerous holidays with his brothers in California. He graduated magna cum laude from the State University of New York at Binghamton in 2006, earning a B.A. in English, with a concentration in Creative Writing. He began pursuing a Master’s Degree in English at Brown University in September of 2006, and began his doctoral studies with the English Department at Brown in the fall of 2008. In the course of completing his Ph.D., he has taught courses in literature and composition at both Brown and Bryant University in Smithfield, R.I. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Firstly, I would like to thank the English Department at Brown University, who accepted me into their ranks on two separate occasions.
    [Show full text]
  • Lima New (Corrected)
    Vol. 10, No. 1, Fall 2012, 198-225 www.ncsu.edu/acontracorriente The King’s Toilet: Cruising Literary History in Reinaldo Arenas’ Before Night Falls Lázaro Lima University of Richmond “[W]hen I entered a public rest room I became painfully aware that my presence failed to arouse the old expectant feeling of complicity. Nobody paid any attention to me, and the erotic games going on proceeded undisturbed. I no longer existed. I was not young anymore. Right then and there I thought that the best thing for me was to die.” —Reinaldo Arenas, Before Night Falls I. Before Night Falls Twenty Years After Reinaldo Arenas (1943-1990) opens his last major work in search of sex in a cruisy toilet.1 In his posthumously published autobiography Antes que anochezca (1992; Before Night Falls, 1993),2 Arenas—known as “Rey” 1 I thank Rita Geada and the late Roberto Valero for introducing me to Arenas and his work. The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections at Princeton University, Firestone Library, provided timely access to Arenas’ papers, photographic archive, and correspondence for this article which forms part of a longer project on Arenas’ “afterlives.” 2 In what follows, all quotations from Reinaldo Arenas’ Antes que anochezca (1992) refer to Dolores Koch’s translation of his autobiography Before The King’s Toilet: Cruising Literary History 199 or “El Rey” to his friends (“the King” in Spanish)—writes that months before taking his life he had entered a public restroom in search of sex only to find that no one was interested in cruising him much less engaging in any sort of sex.3 Arenas simply finds himself unwanted by the cruisy queens in the loo who carry on as if he did not even exist.
    [Show full text]
  • The Magical Neoliberalism of Network Films
    International Journal of Communication 8 (2014), 2680–2704 1932–8036/20140005 The Magical Neoliberalism of Network Films AMANDA CIAFONE1 The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA Transnational network narrative films attempt a cognitive mapping of global systems through a narrative form interconnecting disparate or seemingly unrelated characters, plotlines, and geographies. These films demonstrate networks on three levels: a network narrative form, themes of networked social relations, and networked industrial production. While they emphasize realism in their aesthetics, these films rely on risk and randomness to map a fantastic network of interrelations, resulting in the magical meeting of multiple and divergent characters and storylines, spectacularizing the reality of social relations, and giving a negative valence to human connection. Over the last 20 years, the network narrative has become a prominent means of representing and containing social relations under neoliberalism. Keywords: globalization, neoliberalism, network theory, network narrative films, political economy, international film markets After seeing Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Amores Perros (2000) and Rodrigo García’s Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her (2000), Chilean writer Alberto Fuguet confirmed his excitement about being part of the new Latin American cultural boom he called “McOndo.” McOndo, he wrote, had achieved the global recognition of Latin America’s earlier boom time, “magical realism,” as represented in Macondo, the fictional town of Gabriel García Marquez’s Cien Años de Soledad. But now the “flying abuelitas and the obsessively constructed genealogies” (Fuguet, 2001, p. 71) (and the politics) had been replaced with the globalized, popular commercial world of McDonalds: Macondo was now McOndo.
    [Show full text]
  • Heterolanguage in Twenty-First-Century Cinema and Literature: Transnational Mediations
    Heterolanguage in Twenty-First-Century Cinema and Literature: Transnational Mediations By Mélissa Gélinas A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Comparative Literature) in the University of Michigan 2017 Doctoral Committee: Professor Frieda Ekotto, Chair Assistant Professor Nilo Couret Professor Jarrod L. Hayes Associate Professor Daniel Chilcote Herbert Associate Professor Christi Ann Merrill Language is at the same time a site for empowerment and a site for enslavement. And it is particularly enslaving when its workings remain invisible. ―Trinh T. Minh-ha, “Speaking Nearby” Mélissa Gélinas [email protected] ORCid 0000-0002-3978-5226 © Mélissa Gélinas 2017 Dedication À Renaud ii Acknowledgements The help and support of incredibly generous faculty, colleagues, friends, and family have thoroughly shaped this dissertation and my intellectual journey. I am very lucky to have worked with a remarkably empowering and dedicated committee. Frieda Ekotto has been a true mentor: she has always thought of me as a colleague, and this has meant a lot to me throughout this process. She has trusted me, my insights, and my ideas from the beginning. Frieda provided me with the most unwavering and comprehensive support, along with the motivation (and the cheese!) necessary to persevere. Jarrod Hayes offered such sharp and stimulating perspectives on Québécois and Franco-Canadian materials that I decided to look at them again, differently, eventually including in this dissertation elements that so deeply resonate with me. Throughout this journey, Jarrod has offered excellent advice and the most pleasant and joyful of conversations. Christi Merrill, in her “Translation After Orientalism” class and beyond, gave my thinking the guidance and space necessary for the conceptual core of this dissertation to start emerging.
    [Show full text]
  • Manuel Abreu Adorno
    Número 6, Año 2011 RESUMEN Mediante un análisis a fondo de Llegaron los hippies y No todas la suecas son rubias, el presente artículo busca caracterizar a Manuel Abreu Adorno, primero, como figura de transición en las letras puertorriqueñas entre los escritores de la década del 70 y los de las décadas más recientes, segundo, como precursor del Crack y de McOndo, y finalmente como escritor con una clara visión transatlántica. Palabras clave: Crack, McOndo, frontera, zona de contacto, transatlántico ABSTRACT By means of a close textual analyis of Llegaron los hippies and No todas la suecas son rubias the present article looks to characterize Manuel Abreu Adorno, firstly, as a transitional figure in Puerto Rican letter between the writers of the seventies and those of more recent decades, secondly, as a precursor of the Crack and McOndo, and finally as a writer with a clear transatlantic vision. Keywords: Crack, McOndo, borderland, contact zone, transatlántico Letral, Número 6, Año 2011 Manuel Abreu Adorno: puertorriqueñi- dad transatlántica Benjamín Torres Caballero (Western Michigan University) Me propongo colocar la obra publicada de Manuel Abreu Adorno, sobre todo su novela No todas las suecas son rubias, bajo la óptica transatlántica. Primero intentaré determinar el lugar de Manuel Abreu dentro de las letras puertorriqueñas, y evaluar su posición como precursor de la nueva onda literaria latinoamericana. Concluiré identificando aquellos elementos del discurso transatlántico presentes en la escritura de Abreu Adorno. La hora de la muerte le llega a Abreu Adorno de manera repentina en París, en 1984, a la edad de 29 años. Ya en ese momento había publicado la colección de relatos Llegaron los hippies (1978) y contaba a su haber tres manuscritos inéditos, a saber, dos novelas y un poemario.
    [Show full text]
  • Mass Culture As Domination Or Resistance in Latin American Narratives
    University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Theses, Dissertations, Student Research: Modern Languages and Literatures, Department Modern Languages and Literatures of 11-2011 Mass Culture as Domination or Resistance in Latin American Narratives Tim Robbins University of Nebraska-Lincoln, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/modlangdiss Part of the Latin American Literature Commons, and the Modern Languages Commons Robbins, Tim, "Mass Culture as Domination or Resistance in Latin American Narratives" (2011). Theses, Dissertations, Student Research: Modern Languages and Literatures. 10. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/modlangdiss/10 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Modern Languages and Literatures, Department of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses, Dissertations, Student Research: Modern Languages and Literatures by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. MASS CULTURE AS DOMINATION OR RESISTANCE IN LATIN AMERICAN NARRATIVES By Timothy R. Robbins A DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of The Graduate College at University of Nebraska In Partial Fulfillment of Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Major: Modern Languages and Literatures (Spanish) Under the Supervision of Professor José Eduardo González Lincoln, Nebraska November, 2011 Mass Culture as Domination or Resistance in Latin American Narratives Timothy R. Robbins, Ph.D. University of Nebraska, 2011 Advisor: José Eduardo González Since the introduction of radio to Latin America in the 1930’s and later television in the 1950’s, mass culture has become an important and even contentious part of Latin American identity, and as such has also become an important part of Latin American narratives.
    [Show full text]
  • Under the Spell of Magic: U.S. Latin Americanism and Its Others Emil
    37 4 Under the Spell of Magic: U.S. Latin Americanism and Its Others Emil Volek Arizona State University Le merveilleux n’est pas le même à toutes les époques… These musings, intended as food for thought, focus on the current malaise in Latin American studies in the U.S., questioning how dogmatic theoretical assumptions, specifically postmodern and postcolonial, may impair productive critical diagnosis of, and dialogue with, the contradictory and rapidly changing reality, such as that of Latin America today. As a result, two very different images of present-day Latin America are put forth. One, by a diverse group of emerging new leading Latin American thinkers and scholars, critical of those intellectual currents that, around the 1960s and 1970s, coalesced in macondismo, and the other, by U.S. Latin Americanism, still anchored politically in the 1960s, entangled methodologically in a hodge-podge of postmodern, poststructuralist and postcolonial theories, and enthralled by macondismo. This “Latin America,” concocted by the hegemonic U.S. academy for its own consumption, is then re-exported to Latin America which, paradoxically, is struggling to liberate itself from the secular plague of magic, miracles, exceptionalisms, utopias on demand, and other spells of macondismos. These notes, if fully developed, would argue for a retooling of theory and for a critical reexamination of postmodern epistemology and other post-tenets. © 2006 Hispanic Issues Series ISSN 1931-8006 38 Exordium The invitation to reflect on the state of the art of our discipline, Hispanic studies in U.S., could not have come at a better moment. Actually, this thought process has already begun (see, for example, Spain in America, ed.
    [Show full text]