This chapter explores several Gothic novels and short stories published in Argentina during the p... more This chapter explores several Gothic novels and short stories published in Argentina during the past thirty years. Through an examination of a modest selection of these
Las primeras publicaciones críticas sobre literatura gótica empiezan a adquirir atención editoria... more Las primeras publicaciones críticas sobre literatura gótica empiezan a adquirir atención editorial y académica solo a partir de finales del siglo pasado, con volúmenes como The Literature of Terror de David Punter (1980). Ya desde estos primeros trabajos inaugurales se insiste en la capacidad de transformación de este tipo de ficción, que le permitió superar los límites concebidos en su nacimiento y desarrollo inicial para viajar a otros países y continentes en el tiempo, adaptándose a diferentes contextos históricos y culturales. Mediante la construcción de amenazadores seres sobrenaturales, reflejo de las pasiones ocultas y los miedos de sus culturas de creación, estas narraciones reproducen siniestramente las realidades que las conciben. No obstante, a pesar de su adaptabilidad y aparente universalidad, la inmensa mayoría de la crítica literaria sobre el gótico, y de las obras analizadas al respecto, son de origen anglosajón. Sin embargo, los motivos, personajes y ambientaciones ...
Latin American Gothic in Literature and Culture, 2017
This chapter explores several Gothic novels and short stories published in Argentina during the p... more This chapter explores several Gothic novels and short stories published in Argentina during the past thirty years. Through an examination of a modest selection of these
First paragraph: In the prologue to her book Galería fantástica [Fantastic Gallery] (2009), the A... more First paragraph: In the prologue to her book Galería fantástica [Fantastic Gallery] (2009), the Argentine critic and writer María Negroni states that what has thus far been defined as fantastic literature in Latin America is, in fact, Gothic literature: a literary corpus that she describes as "nocturnal and feverish" (9). It is Gothic’s unruly and chaotic nature—contrary to the "Enlightenment's geometry of knowledge" (9)—that allows her to read Latin American writers and poets such as Carlos Fuentes, Felisberto Hernández, Rosario Ferré, Alejandra Pizarnik, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Julio Cortázar, Octavio Paz, Horacio Quiroga, Silvina Ocampo, and Vicente Huidobro as Gothic authors whose oeuvre reshapes Latin American fantastic fiction and creates a new form that defies the "prisons of reason and of common sense" (9). This, however, has not been the dominant stance among critics
The reality of the production of literature that follows a non-mimetic code in Latin America is d... more The reality of the production of literature that follows a non-mimetic code in Latin America is definitely a complex one. With the exception of Magical Realism, a mode of writing considered native to the territory and, therefore, respected and reinforced because of its necessary connection to (and acceptance of) the magic dimension of Latin American reality, the critics generally show a consistent lack of interest in narratives belonging to other forms of "the unusual". However, ignoring the great complexity of the several shapes that the "literary extraordinary" can take in the diverse fictions of Latin America, implies disregarding a great deal of hybrid fictions containing essential (yet distorted) reflections of the multifaceted reality of the territory. There are indeed several fictions that conform to a Magical Realist code; however, the narratives belonging to the fantastic genre, the Gothic, and science fiction should not be overlooked. We can think of these modes of representation as establishing an essential relationship towards a higher concept of non-mimetic literature that encompasses all of them, in a theory similar to the one presented by Rosemary Jackson: It could be suggested that fantasy is a literary mode from which a number of related genres emerge. Fantasy provides a range of possibilities out of which various combinations produce different kinds of fiction in different historical situations. Borrowing linguistic terms, the basic model of fantasy could be seen as a language, or langue, from which its various forms, or paroles, derive. Out of this model develops romance literature or 'the marvellous' (including fairy tales and science fiction), Ordiz Alonso-Collada 2 'fantastic' literature (including stories by Poe, Isak Dinesen, Maupassant, Gautier, Kafka, H. P. Lovecraft) and related tales of abnormal psychic states, delusion, hallucination, etc. (7) The modes of writing included in this higher conception of the fantastic are, especially in postmodern times, necessarily hybrid. In Lucie Armitt's words, fantasy is "constantly overspilling the very forms it adopts, always looking, not so much for escapism but certainly to escape the constraints that critics … always and inevitably impose upon it" (3). The hybridization of the different discourses of fantasy is directly connected with what Gary Wolfe has labelled "post-genre fantastic," or the essential mélange of horror, Gothic fiction and the recent "dark fantasy", that so well represents a confused (and confusing) contemporary reality marked by "globalized flows, strange interpretations and simultaneities" (Luckhurst 33). "Fantasy", "post-genre fantastic", "the literature of the unusual"; whatever the term we use to describe this postmodern crossbreed monster, it is already a reality of western literature in general, and of Latin American fictions in particular. It is not my intention to offer a detailed examination of all the different modes of the literary extraordinary in the Latin American territory, but rather to narrow down the scope of my analysis to the Gothic resources used in Mexican contemporary science fiction. I will mainly be focusing on the way in which this combination reproduces a mixed reality which, as the country's fictions, navigates between the preservation of a native identity, the recollection of a pre-Hispanic past and the acknowledgement of the overwhelming power of globalization. Miguel Ángel Fernández Delgado, in his anthology of Mexican science fiction, asserts that the study of this mode in Mexico necessarily brings along a "double marginality" (Ordiz 1045; Fernández Delgado 17) generated by the unconventionality of the genre in a country not traditionally associated with it. Adding the Gothic to the equation might be, then, exploring a path three times marginalized, but also deeply rooted in the popular cultural imagination of the Ordiz Alonso-Collada 3 country. The fictions I will be taking into account are, not surprisingly, intrinsically hybrid. As Rachel Haywood Ferreira points out, not only is SF a genre with "nebulous borders", but Latin American SF shows a "strong propensity to form hybrids with neighbouring genres" (8). A Gothic perspective implies a study of the points of intersection between both genres, which are defined by Fred Botting as "dark and disturbing, obscure regions, populated by terrors and horrors that knowledge has failed to penetrate or control" (131). As if these types of fictions were not enough of a muddle, we also need to take into account that the Gothic fictions of the 20 th and 21 st century commonly set off in two directions, conveying both a globalized reality and a specific set of cultural fears. As Glennis Byron suggests in her article "Global Gothic", the reality of contemporary forms of terror necessarily depends upon this universalization of culture: "the literature and film of different countries are feeding off each other to produce new forms of Gothic that reveal the increasing cross-cultural dynamics of the globalized world" (373). Also, "[a]s the global thrives on producing the local, commodifying it, and marketing it, so contemporary global Gothic increasingly appropriates and commodifies local or regional folklores" (374). The result of this dependent relationship between the specifically cultural and the global results in a type of narrative addressed both to local and universal audiences. This dual feature of the global Gothic acquires a special interest in a territory which has such a love-hate relationship with the United States, the ultimate "giant" of globalization. Addressing this type of cultural colonization, the younger generations of Latin American writers seem to propose an acceptance of the new power of globalization and its necessary connection to the contemporary reality of the continent. In the prologue of the 1996 book McOndo, 1 Alberto Fuguet and Sergio Gómez state the following: 1 By the use of the word "McOndo," the authors introduce a wordplay referencing both Macondo (the fictional town described by Gabriel García Márquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude) as something distinctly Latin American, and McDonald's as a product of globalization. Ordiz Alonso-Collada 4 Our McOndo country is bigger, polluted and overpopulated, with motorways, subways, cable TV and slum areas. In McOndo we have McDonald's, Mac computers and blocks of flats, as well as huge malls and 5-star hotels built with laundered money. 2 (15) The younger generation of Latin American authors breaks with the idea of Magical Realism as the quintessential reflection of the reality of the continent and starts proposing a number of fictions which, addressing specific cultural concerns, open themselves up to other traditions.
The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Gothic, 2020
This chapter offers an overview of Latin American and Caribbean gothic literature of the past thi... more This chapter offers an overview of Latin American and Caribbean gothic literature of the past thirty years, focusing particularly on the figures of the cannibal, the zombie, and the vampire. The chapter also discusses one of the directions that contemporary Gothic is taking in the region: the conscious appropriation of global tropes to denounce local issues pertaining to past and present histories of sociopolitical and gendered violence. Our approach aims to underline the complexity and transnationality of Latin American and Caribbean gothic forms, as well as claiming their relevance in contemporary literature written in Spanish.
Brumal. Revista de investigación sobre lo Fantástico, 2020
Unlike the undead monsters it investigates, gothic criticism is more alive than ever. A disciplin... more Unlike the undead monsters it investigates, gothic criticism is more alive than ever. A discipline which once focused mainly on the study of Anglo-American fictions, it has now adapted to global cultural movements to become a wide-ranging, inclusive, and international academic field. It is not surprising, therefore, that there is a growing body of published works that engage with global and transnational forms of gothic fiction. Some examples include the analyses of Global Gothic (Glennis Byron), Asian Gothic (Katarzyna Ancuta), South African Gothic (Rebecca Duncan), and Tropical Gothic (Gabriel Eljaiek-Rodríguez; Justin D. Edwards and Sandra Vasconcelos), among others. This development has also reached the field of Hispanic and Latin American Studies, with the
King: Homenaje al rey del terror (King: Homage to the King of Terror) (Cáceres, 2018) is an antho... more King: Homenaje al rey del terror (King: Homage to the King of Terror) (Cáceres, 2018) is an anthology of short stories written by Latin American and Spanish young authors in tribute to Stephen King and compiled by Ecuadorian writer Jorge Luis Cáceres. The anthology has been published in Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Argentina and Spain, and some of the texts in the collection have been translated into English by the online webzine Palabras Errantes. The stories illustrate some of the new directions that contemporary Latin American and Spanish cultural production are taking, such as the exploration of nonmimetic forms of fiction (other than magical realism), the embracing of international influences and the understanding of the local in relation to the global. As a tribute to 'the king of terror', the short narratives collected in the anthology use resources of the Gothic, horror, the fantastic and science fiction; I concentrate my analysis on the first two. My reading of the Gothic and horror devices in the stories is informed by recent criticism on the gothic mode, as well as contemporary theories of cultural globalization and glocalization. The aim is to recognize and analyse the processes of translation, circulation, deterritorialization and multiterritorialization exemplified in the narratives, and the different ways in which these processes define contemporary Hispanic Gothic.
This chapter explores several Gothic novels and short stories published in Argentina during the p... more This chapter explores several Gothic novels and short stories published in Argentina during the past thirty years. Through an examination of a modest selection of these
Las primeras publicaciones críticas sobre literatura gótica empiezan a adquirir atención editoria... more Las primeras publicaciones críticas sobre literatura gótica empiezan a adquirir atención editorial y académica solo a partir de finales del siglo pasado, con volúmenes como The Literature of Terror de David Punter (1980). Ya desde estos primeros trabajos inaugurales se insiste en la capacidad de transformación de este tipo de ficción, que le permitió superar los límites concebidos en su nacimiento y desarrollo inicial para viajar a otros países y continentes en el tiempo, adaptándose a diferentes contextos históricos y culturales. Mediante la construcción de amenazadores seres sobrenaturales, reflejo de las pasiones ocultas y los miedos de sus culturas de creación, estas narraciones reproducen siniestramente las realidades que las conciben. No obstante, a pesar de su adaptabilidad y aparente universalidad, la inmensa mayoría de la crítica literaria sobre el gótico, y de las obras analizadas al respecto, son de origen anglosajón. Sin embargo, los motivos, personajes y ambientaciones ...
Latin American Gothic in Literature and Culture, 2017
This chapter explores several Gothic novels and short stories published in Argentina during the p... more This chapter explores several Gothic novels and short stories published in Argentina during the past thirty years. Through an examination of a modest selection of these
First paragraph: In the prologue to her book Galería fantástica [Fantastic Gallery] (2009), the A... more First paragraph: In the prologue to her book Galería fantástica [Fantastic Gallery] (2009), the Argentine critic and writer María Negroni states that what has thus far been defined as fantastic literature in Latin America is, in fact, Gothic literature: a literary corpus that she describes as "nocturnal and feverish" (9). It is Gothic’s unruly and chaotic nature—contrary to the "Enlightenment's geometry of knowledge" (9)—that allows her to read Latin American writers and poets such as Carlos Fuentes, Felisberto Hernández, Rosario Ferré, Alejandra Pizarnik, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Julio Cortázar, Octavio Paz, Horacio Quiroga, Silvina Ocampo, and Vicente Huidobro as Gothic authors whose oeuvre reshapes Latin American fantastic fiction and creates a new form that defies the "prisons of reason and of common sense" (9). This, however, has not been the dominant stance among critics
The reality of the production of literature that follows a non-mimetic code in Latin America is d... more The reality of the production of literature that follows a non-mimetic code in Latin America is definitely a complex one. With the exception of Magical Realism, a mode of writing considered native to the territory and, therefore, respected and reinforced because of its necessary connection to (and acceptance of) the magic dimension of Latin American reality, the critics generally show a consistent lack of interest in narratives belonging to other forms of "the unusual". However, ignoring the great complexity of the several shapes that the "literary extraordinary" can take in the diverse fictions of Latin America, implies disregarding a great deal of hybrid fictions containing essential (yet distorted) reflections of the multifaceted reality of the territory. There are indeed several fictions that conform to a Magical Realist code; however, the narratives belonging to the fantastic genre, the Gothic, and science fiction should not be overlooked. We can think of these modes of representation as establishing an essential relationship towards a higher concept of non-mimetic literature that encompasses all of them, in a theory similar to the one presented by Rosemary Jackson: It could be suggested that fantasy is a literary mode from which a number of related genres emerge. Fantasy provides a range of possibilities out of which various combinations produce different kinds of fiction in different historical situations. Borrowing linguistic terms, the basic model of fantasy could be seen as a language, or langue, from which its various forms, or paroles, derive. Out of this model develops romance literature or 'the marvellous' (including fairy tales and science fiction), Ordiz Alonso-Collada 2 'fantastic' literature (including stories by Poe, Isak Dinesen, Maupassant, Gautier, Kafka, H. P. Lovecraft) and related tales of abnormal psychic states, delusion, hallucination, etc. (7) The modes of writing included in this higher conception of the fantastic are, especially in postmodern times, necessarily hybrid. In Lucie Armitt's words, fantasy is "constantly overspilling the very forms it adopts, always looking, not so much for escapism but certainly to escape the constraints that critics … always and inevitably impose upon it" (3). The hybridization of the different discourses of fantasy is directly connected with what Gary Wolfe has labelled "post-genre fantastic," or the essential mélange of horror, Gothic fiction and the recent "dark fantasy", that so well represents a confused (and confusing) contemporary reality marked by "globalized flows, strange interpretations and simultaneities" (Luckhurst 33). "Fantasy", "post-genre fantastic", "the literature of the unusual"; whatever the term we use to describe this postmodern crossbreed monster, it is already a reality of western literature in general, and of Latin American fictions in particular. It is not my intention to offer a detailed examination of all the different modes of the literary extraordinary in the Latin American territory, but rather to narrow down the scope of my analysis to the Gothic resources used in Mexican contemporary science fiction. I will mainly be focusing on the way in which this combination reproduces a mixed reality which, as the country's fictions, navigates between the preservation of a native identity, the recollection of a pre-Hispanic past and the acknowledgement of the overwhelming power of globalization. Miguel Ángel Fernández Delgado, in his anthology of Mexican science fiction, asserts that the study of this mode in Mexico necessarily brings along a "double marginality" (Ordiz 1045; Fernández Delgado 17) generated by the unconventionality of the genre in a country not traditionally associated with it. Adding the Gothic to the equation might be, then, exploring a path three times marginalized, but also deeply rooted in the popular cultural imagination of the Ordiz Alonso-Collada 3 country. The fictions I will be taking into account are, not surprisingly, intrinsically hybrid. As Rachel Haywood Ferreira points out, not only is SF a genre with "nebulous borders", but Latin American SF shows a "strong propensity to form hybrids with neighbouring genres" (8). A Gothic perspective implies a study of the points of intersection between both genres, which are defined by Fred Botting as "dark and disturbing, obscure regions, populated by terrors and horrors that knowledge has failed to penetrate or control" (131). As if these types of fictions were not enough of a muddle, we also need to take into account that the Gothic fictions of the 20 th and 21 st century commonly set off in two directions, conveying both a globalized reality and a specific set of cultural fears. As Glennis Byron suggests in her article "Global Gothic", the reality of contemporary forms of terror necessarily depends upon this universalization of culture: "the literature and film of different countries are feeding off each other to produce new forms of Gothic that reveal the increasing cross-cultural dynamics of the globalized world" (373). Also, "[a]s the global thrives on producing the local, commodifying it, and marketing it, so contemporary global Gothic increasingly appropriates and commodifies local or regional folklores" (374). The result of this dependent relationship between the specifically cultural and the global results in a type of narrative addressed both to local and universal audiences. This dual feature of the global Gothic acquires a special interest in a territory which has such a love-hate relationship with the United States, the ultimate "giant" of globalization. Addressing this type of cultural colonization, the younger generations of Latin American writers seem to propose an acceptance of the new power of globalization and its necessary connection to the contemporary reality of the continent. In the prologue of the 1996 book McOndo, 1 Alberto Fuguet and Sergio Gómez state the following: 1 By the use of the word "McOndo," the authors introduce a wordplay referencing both Macondo (the fictional town described by Gabriel García Márquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude) as something distinctly Latin American, and McDonald's as a product of globalization. Ordiz Alonso-Collada 4 Our McOndo country is bigger, polluted and overpopulated, with motorways, subways, cable TV and slum areas. In McOndo we have McDonald's, Mac computers and blocks of flats, as well as huge malls and 5-star hotels built with laundered money. 2 (15) The younger generation of Latin American authors breaks with the idea of Magical Realism as the quintessential reflection of the reality of the continent and starts proposing a number of fictions which, addressing specific cultural concerns, open themselves up to other traditions.
The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Gothic, 2020
This chapter offers an overview of Latin American and Caribbean gothic literature of the past thi... more This chapter offers an overview of Latin American and Caribbean gothic literature of the past thirty years, focusing particularly on the figures of the cannibal, the zombie, and the vampire. The chapter also discusses one of the directions that contemporary Gothic is taking in the region: the conscious appropriation of global tropes to denounce local issues pertaining to past and present histories of sociopolitical and gendered violence. Our approach aims to underline the complexity and transnationality of Latin American and Caribbean gothic forms, as well as claiming their relevance in contemporary literature written in Spanish.
Brumal. Revista de investigación sobre lo Fantástico, 2020
Unlike the undead monsters it investigates, gothic criticism is more alive than ever. A disciplin... more Unlike the undead monsters it investigates, gothic criticism is more alive than ever. A discipline which once focused mainly on the study of Anglo-American fictions, it has now adapted to global cultural movements to become a wide-ranging, inclusive, and international academic field. It is not surprising, therefore, that there is a growing body of published works that engage with global and transnational forms of gothic fiction. Some examples include the analyses of Global Gothic (Glennis Byron), Asian Gothic (Katarzyna Ancuta), South African Gothic (Rebecca Duncan), and Tropical Gothic (Gabriel Eljaiek-Rodríguez; Justin D. Edwards and Sandra Vasconcelos), among others. This development has also reached the field of Hispanic and Latin American Studies, with the
King: Homenaje al rey del terror (King: Homage to the King of Terror) (Cáceres, 2018) is an antho... more King: Homenaje al rey del terror (King: Homage to the King of Terror) (Cáceres, 2018) is an anthology of short stories written by Latin American and Spanish young authors in tribute to Stephen King and compiled by Ecuadorian writer Jorge Luis Cáceres. The anthology has been published in Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Argentina and Spain, and some of the texts in the collection have been translated into English by the online webzine Palabras Errantes. The stories illustrate some of the new directions that contemporary Latin American and Spanish cultural production are taking, such as the exploration of nonmimetic forms of fiction (other than magical realism), the embracing of international influences and the understanding of the local in relation to the global. As a tribute to 'the king of terror', the short narratives collected in the anthology use resources of the Gothic, horror, the fantastic and science fiction; I concentrate my analysis on the first two. My reading of the Gothic and horror devices in the stories is informed by recent criticism on the gothic mode, as well as contemporary theories of cultural globalization and glocalization. The aim is to recognize and analyse the processes of translation, circulation, deterritorialization and multiterritorialization exemplified in the narratives, and the different ways in which these processes define contemporary Hispanic Gothic.
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