Modern Languages and Literatures, Department of
Date of this Version
January 2005
Abstract
I am interested in examining how globalization is having an impact in narrative representation and especially in verifying whether writers embrace or reject global forces and how they do so. Specifically, this article examines both the dilution and the rescuing of "the own" within the parameters of the contemporary Latin America capital city by focusing its attention on very recent literary and theoretical discourses produced in the continent. The incessant influx of novels, short-stories, urban chronicles and other texts into the market occasioned by multinational publishing houses makes it impossible to provide a comprehensive view of literary representation of the Latin American metropolis in this article. I begin by discussing briefly the ideas of Néstor Carcía Canclini, Beatriz Sarlo and Renato Ortiz regarding identity and globalization, and I move to the analysis of the works of Alberto Fuguet (1964) and Pedro Lemebel (circa 1955). Before the analysis per se, however, I provide some short notes on the Latin American city in general and Santiago in particular.
Comments
Published in AmeriQuests Vol. 2, No. 1 (2005): 1-19. Copyright 2005 J. Agustín Pastén B.