Argentine Science Fiction: Between Everyday Politics and Dystopia (original) (raw)

Tales from the Political Void: The Dystopian Turn in Chilean Science Fiction

Sci Phi Journal , 2019

Dystopia’s tight grasp on western civilization is undeniable. Not only in the realm of the symbolic, where it has prevailed for over a century, but also in the material, where more and more often we witness dystopian elements leaking into everyday life, as it was the case with the 2018 march of Argentinian women protesting abortion rights dressed as Atwood’s famous handmaids. In Latin America, it would seem, dystopia feels as, if not “real,” at least an ominous certainty; a kind of perpetual apocalyptic zeitgeist waiting to happen when you least expect it. It shouldn’t come as a surprise then that much of what we consider dystopian fiction in Latin America is, paradoxically, firmly grounded in reality.

Contemporary Argentine Fiction: Liberal (Pre-)Texts in a Reign of Terror

Latin American Research Review, 1981

Argentine cultural expression in the 1970s has been altered time and again by the prerogatives of military rule. In a country where murder and abductions are commonplace, both censorship, as deletion of information, and torture, as its extraction and recreation, circumscribe all artistic production, conditioning the writer to encode his messages in the denser layers of the text. The more transparent books, those whose ideological fibers too sharply rebuke the Argentine "way of life," are swiftly withdrawn from circulation; their authors frequently detained or forced into exile. Prohibited texts include everything from pulp fiction and comic strips to literary journals such as Crisis and Los Libras. Seventy-three publications were sanctioned during the second half of 1978 and, in December of that year, even the prestigious Sociedad Argentina de Escritores denounced the secret decisions of government authorities who control Argentina's cultural future. Clarin reported in March 1979 that book sales dropped 50 percent during the last four years. While fifty-five million volumes were sold in Argentina in 1974, barely twenty-two million were printed in that country by 1977. This drastic decline in production and sales responds not only to government intervention, but also to the material realities of everyday life in Argentina, identifiable in the fall of real salaries and the soaring costs of pub-218

The Political Dimension of Latin American Science Fiction

Peter Lang Companion to Latin American Science Fiction, 2021

Chapter of "Peter Lang Companion to Latin American Science Fiction", edited by Silvia G. Kurlat Ares and Ezequiel De Rosso. Ed.: Peter Lang. 187-199. ISBN 978-1-4331-5629-8 (paperback: alk. paper) | ISBN 978-1-4331-5906-0 (ebook pdf). ISBN 978-1-4331-5907-7 (epub) | ISBN 978-1-4331-5908-4 (mobi)

"Peter Lang Companion to Latin American Science Fiction", Edited By Silvia G. Kurlat Ares and Ezequiel De Rosso; Bern/ New York: Peter Lang, April 2021 (ISBN: 978-1-4331-5217-7)

2021

The Peter Lang Companion to Latin American Science Fiction provides a comprehensive overview of science fiction in Latin America by addressing the history and criticism of the genre in the region. It not only maps the cornerstones of the field (books, comics, magazines, movies) but also studies the specific political, social and cultural concerns that gave rise to its distinctive patterns and ideas. This volume organizes and systematizes the state of the field. In this sense, the aim of the Companion is to analyze Latin American science fiction hand in hand with the literature and culture produced in the rest of the region, providing a proper context for its historic, cultural and political themes. Taking into account the complexity of contemporary debates in the field, the editors have made a point of inviting contributors from a wide variety of countries to provide the most diverse possible set of perspectives on the development of science fiction in Latin America. The volume serves the needs of readers interested in science fiction at large, either in its original language or in translation; students trying to understand the genre; and teachers seeking to address the main issues in the development of the genre in the region by including current approaches to the material. The Companion is an indispensable teaching and learning tool, as well as reference book for critics and interested readers

Re)Collecting Argentina´s Recent Past: The Role of Literature

Linguistics and Literature Studies, 2014

(Re)collecting Argentina's recent conflictive past has been and continues to be an effort that involves the country's entire intellectual potential and energy. Writers of fiction, no less than the historians, politicians, sociologists, anthropologists and human rights activists, actively contributed to the demand to repeal the amnesty laws of the 1980s. That repeal and the setting up of formal procedures for the investigation and adjudication of the past's wrongdoing were finally achieved in 2003. Among the many intellectuals active in this political process is the Argentinean writer Cristina Feijóo. In her narrative, particularly her novel Memorias del río inmóvil (2001), she (re)presents Argentina's collective memory as it confronts the junta period and questions the availability of personal and social 'spaces' for those who survived torture, exile and persecution during the military dictatorship.

Book reviews: Science Fiction and Digital Technologies in Argentine and Brazilian Culture by Edward King

Transnational Literature, 2016

Edward King’s Science Fiction and Digital Technologies in Argentine and Brazilian Culture joins the ever-growing tide of English language Science Fiction Studies focusing on Latin American publications. (Within the Spanish speaking world and internationally Science Fiction Studies has for the past few decades established itself as a relevant field of academic inquiry through numerous symposiums, journals and publishing houses specialising in both Science Fiction proper and studies of the genre). Science Fiction and Digital Technologies in Argentine and Brazilian Culture is an ambitious book that engages with, theorises and makes visible the changing political and ideological landscapes of Brazil and Argentina under neoliberalism.

Latin American Science Fiction Studies: A New Era

This (state of the field) review covers three books for the inaugural issue of Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society. The books reviewed are: Cuando la ciencia despertaba fantasías by Soledad Quereilhac (2016) Science Fiction from Argentina by Joanna Page (2016) Posthumanism and the Graphic Novel in Latin America by Edward King and Joanna Page (2017)