Shellhorse, Adam Joseph. Anti-Literature: The Politics and Limits of Representation in Modern Brazil and Argentina. U of Pittsburgh P, 2017 (original) (raw)

The more and less than literary: A Review of Adam Shellhorse’s Anti-Literature: The Politics and Limits of Representation in Modern Brazil and Argentina

Middle Atlantic Review of Latin American Studies

This book inherits an old question for Latin American studies: "What is literature?" Yet, the places from which Adam Shellhorse seeks an answer leads him to open a new field or, at least, to add an important folio in the developing field of works that have taken on the task of rectifying "the Boom's well-documented exclusions-concerning women's writings, Brazil, and minoritarian works" (11). Anti-Literature manifests a certain urgency for finding a way to speak about these gaps without reproducing the hegemonic logic of representation that has dominated canonical readings of the subaltern in Latin American literature and ignored issues of social justice with respect to the subaltern, the minoritarian, and the feminine.

Reseña. Regina Dalcastagnè, Representación y resistencia en la literatura brasileña contemporánea. Trad. Lucía Tennina y Adrián Dubinsky. Buenos Aires: Editorial Bilbos, 2015

Catedral Tomada: Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana, 2016

What is literature? In her latest work, Representación y resistencia en la literatura brasileña contemporánea, Regina Dalcastagnè responds to this question by interrogating literature as a social construct that acts as both producer and product of systems of social inequality. Critiquing the portrayal of literature as a perfect art form exempt from ideological contamination, Representación y resistencia argues that literature is neither better nor worse than society, but rather part of society, and as such, is shaped by many of the same hierarchies, exclusions and inequalities, which define our world. Yet, it is this same existence as a societal construction that imbues literature with the potential to operate as a democratizing force. This duality guides this book's investigation of literature as a contested territory where questions of literary representation intersect with struggles over political and cultural representation, and where resistance to one's own literary erasure requires an equally impressive variety of tactics and strategies as those employed by social movements.

Politics of Writing: Latin American Testimonio, Brazil's Literatura Marginal and the Question of Neoliberalism

2014

In the light of Latin American testimonio theoretical approach, which includes questions such as the cultural production under the intensification of neoliberal policies and the inquiry of the complicity between literary practices and the state as formulated by Rama in The Lettered City, this study examines the novel Capão Pecado, representative work of the writer and cultural activist Ferréz, and the potential relation to the formal elements of the former criticism. By thinking alongside John Beverley’s case study on I, Rigoberta Menchú’s testimonial narrative and Ferréz, prominent author of the contemporary production of literatura marginal and representative of the expression of the individual residents of the urban peripheries of the metropolises of Brazil, this study finds not only thematic continuities between the two discursive modes, showing that testimonio not only taught us important lessons and continue to provide a pathway to understanding the growing literary branch in ...

"Notes Toward an Aesthetics of Marginality in Contemporary Latin American Literature"

Lasa Forum. Latin American Studies Association. , 2009

2 From the President | by ERIC HERSHBERG ON THE PROFESSION 5 ¿De qué cine hablamos? Las tareas de los Estudios del Cine Latinoamericano por CLAUDIA FERMAN 7 Estudos de Cinema na Universidade Brasileira | por FERNÃO PESSOA RAMOS 9 Películas de papel: Cartografía del estudio del cine de América Latina por GUSTAVO A. REMEDI

Contemporary Brazilian literature

Romance Quarterly, 2016

This special issue of Romance Quarterly offers its readers a glimpse of the literary production by contemporary Brazilian writers in the last thirty years, with a special focus on narrative fiction. Additionally, readers will find here insightful discussions of questions regarding (self-) representation in literature and of issues affecting the publication and distribution of Brazilian authors and their works. The delimitation of what constitutes contemporary literature is somewhat arbitrary, and some scholars may understand the term to describe all literature written since the end of the Second World War, while others may opt for narrower defining parameters. For others still, contemporary literature may simply mean "the literature of our time, of the present" (Gupta 2)-notwithstanding the permanence and contemporary outlook we find in the works of timeless writers such as our own Machado de Assis, among others. In determining the focus of this issue, I have considered some key political, social, and cultural developments as markers to delimit the body of works to be discussed in these essays. The opening political event is the 1964 military coup d'état that inaugurated twenty-one years of a dictatorship in Brazil, a period that has drastically impacted all aspects of Brazilian society and continues to have repercussions in the country. The fact that those events are still addressed in our literature today attests to their impact in the life stories of so many Brazilians and in the history of our nation. On the other hand, considering the cultural and historical developments of the past thirty years in Brazil, we have witnessed the country's return to a democratic state and have seen it suffer through years of hyperinflation and drastic economic measures in the late 1980s and early 1990s-leading a considerable number of Brazilians to emigrate from the country in search of better living conditions-and later its emergence as a leader in hemispheric politics and a strong player in the world economy, only to see it face new political and economic crises in the last several years. These developments have been formally and thematically reflected in literature and other arts, specifically in the literary production of the late 1960s through the current decade of the twenty-first century. 1 Another development, this one of global dimensions, has been the dissemination and availability of new information and communication technologies, a process that began some thirty years ago and that has profoundly changed our perception of reality. Furthermore, these new technologies have altered how we access, produce, and share information and cultural production. It has also led to a relative democratization of knowledge and the circulation of literature and other artistic endeavors, allowing writers and artists to disseminate their works without the need of an intermediary-that is, an editor, a publisher, or a bookstore. In other words, the new information and communication technologies have intervened in an exchange between producers and consumers of culture that many Brazilian writers and intellectuals believe favors a small, select group of names, and commercial profit over literary quality and cultural diversity. 2 This is certainly not a new phenomenon, but one that has particularly affected writers and artists from minority groups, from Lima Barreto (1881-1922) at the beginning of the twentieth century to the Afro-Brazilian writers who in the late 1970s initiated the publication of Cadernos negros as an alternative to the mainstream publishing venues. What has changed, however, is that today the Internet, blogs, and various social media more easily allow for self-publication and for the expression of more diverse voices and perspectives.

Against (In)equality: Bad Latin American Literature

Latin American Studies Association

2 From the President | by ERIC HERSHBERG ON THE PROFESSION 5 ¿De qué cine hablamos? Las tareas de los Estudios del Cine Latinoamericano por CLAUDIA FERMAN 7 Estudos de Cinema na Universidade Brasileira | por FERNÃO PESSOA RAMOS 9 Películas de papel: Cartografía del estudio del cine de América Latina por GUSTAVO A. REMEDI