Latin American Literature Chair: Katie Brown 1

Day 2: 30th March Morning Panels- 9 -11am. Latin American Literature Chair: Katie Brown 1. Victoria Carpenter (University of Bedfordshire) ‘Crossing Power Borders in a Tight Leather Suit: Loci of Power in A troche y moche by Gustavo Sainz’ This paper considers how the fluidity of power loci, in terms of text ownership, replaces the static nature of hegemonic relationships between the protagonist and the characters in Gustavo Sainz’s novel A troche y moche (2002). The key aspect of this study of power loci and power border crossing is the analysis of the complexity of the dominance/subordination dichotomy. Using the theories of hegemonic masculinity and posthegemony, I will examine the fluid nature of borders between the power loci of the writer-protagonist, his associates, and his kidnappers. 2. Friedrich Ahnert (University of Nottingham) ‘The Idea of Freedom - From socialist beginnings to maturity in the liberal world view in the Peruvian fiction of Mario Vargas Llosa’ This paper explores five decisive Peruvian novels by Mario Vargas Llosa and charts the movement in his world view from his socialist beginnings to his mature liberal and cosmopolitan vision. Starting with his critique of an authoritarian education system in the Lima-based La ciudad y los perros, Vargas Llosa moves, in subsequent novels, to criticise authoritarian behaviour on a society-wide scale. In Conversación en La Catedral and Historia de Mayta, unjust political government as well as the rebellion against the oligarchic and conservative status quo are portrayed. But whereas in Conversación political protest by students and the opposition leads to the toppling of the most important ministers of the Odría regime, in Mayta a revolutionary uprising by student-led labourers in Jauja is depicted. However, with socialism's ultimate failure at the end of Mayta - signalling a shift in Vargas Llosa's world view from socialist toward liberal convictions -, revolution is optimistically replaced by resistance and reform - as in Cinco esquinas - and by individual liberty as part of pluralist cosmopolitanism - as in Travesuras de la nina mala. 3. Axel Pérez Trujillo (Durham University) ‘Enslaved in the Yerbales: Rafael Barrett against the Extractivist Logic of Yerba Mate Plantations’ This paper will engage with the social and environmental critique by Paraguayan writer Rafael Barrett in his essay 'Lo que son los yerbales' (1908), a powerful text that denounces the exploitation of the Paraguayan forest and its inhabitants by the mate industry in its rapid expansion after the Triple Alliance War. The essay offers an exploration of the extractivist logic of companies such as Matte Larangeira (Brazil) and Industria Paraguaya (Paraguay), especially in regards to the practices of slavery on Guaraní labourers and practices of environmental degradation taking place in the plantations. Taking my cue from current research in Latin American ecocriticism, I will examine the themes of yerba mate monoculture and human exploitation as presented by Barrett, a writer that remains largely unknown outside of Paraguay, yet influenced later authors such as Augusto Roa Bastos and Jorge Luis Borges. This paper has as its aim to present a sample of Barrett’s work to a scholarly audience, whilst emphasising its relevance in leveraging an environmental critique of yerba mate monoculture and its capitalist logic in the borderlands between Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina. 4. María Lydia Polotto (University College Dublin) ‘On Judith Butler's notion of Interpellation in Manuel Puig's La traición de Rita Hayworth: A Posthuman Approach’ The aim of this paper is to analyze Manuel Puig’s novel La traición de Rita Hayworth under Judith Butler’s notion of interpellation and its relationship to a posthuman approach to the text. In this sense, the protagonist -Toto- is conditioned by the performative gender practises of the interpellation of his family, which wants him to become a boy according to the Father’s Law. Toto -however- challenges the interpellation of his family/Law by means of the appropriation of the symbolic capital of the Hollywood movies he sees at the cinema, performing a gender identity that goes against the expectations of heteronormativity. Moreover, the identity he performs -using as a vehicle the materials he borrows from cinema- goes also beyond the limits of humanity. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explain how Toto does an appropriation of Hollywood cinematographic materials to jeopardize the authoritarianism of “familiar interpellation” and he moves even forwards when performing an identity that goes beyond human/non-human binarism. .

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