Vitalpoetics

I was thinking the other day about whether there is any point in demarcating the study of literature according to national borders – university departments and edited anthologies seem to suggest this may be the case – but I personally think more useful ways need to be developed.  A different approach is to examine literature within broader categories of language and/or “area” studies. I have in my own research delineated literary traditions within the markers of language and region (Spanish literature, “Latin American” literature, pan-American literature, etc) but this method, too, has boundless problems and limitations, not least which is how to define such terms as “Latin America”. Another problem that arises is the relationship inevitably established between so called “universal” literature (another word for the literary traditions of the West, or of the “centre”) and the literature produced in other parts of the world (the “periphery”). This seems to lead us towards a path where anything which isn’t produced in the centre  is “exotic” and “Other”.

When we think of Latin American literature what comes to mind, at least for most English-language-readers, is (yes, you guessed it) Magic Realism.  Most people think of the writers of the Boom led by none other than García Márquez (without a doubt one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century).  The problem, though, is that “Latin American literature” is much more than Magic Realism. I recently went back to and re-read Alberto Fuguet’s piece “I am not a magic realist” where he explains that his own reality as a Chilean writer, living in Santiago, has nothing to do with Macondo (the town of One Hundred Years of Solitude) and much more to do with McOndo. Fuguet says:

Unlike the ethereal world of García Márquez’s imaginary Macondo, my own world is something much closer to what I call “McOndo” — a world of McDonald’s, Macintoshes and condos. In a continent that was once ultra-politicized, young, apolitical writers like myself are now writing without an overt agenda, about their own experiences. Living in cities all over South America, hooked on cable TV (CNN en español), addicted to movies and connected to the Net, we are far away from the jalapeño-scented, siesta-happy atmosphere that permeates too much of the South American literary landscape.

Fuguet is only one of many “Latin American” writers who have distanced themselves from Magic Realism in the last forty odd years. What is interesting is that Fuguet does this by destabilising the notion of “Latin America” as created by García Márquez et al, and by appealing to some version of the ultra-modern-commodified and globalised popular culture of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.  The relevance of looking at this, of contemplating this, has tremendous consequences not only for how the “periphery” is conceptualised (in this case Latin America itself) but also for how the “centre” is.