Latin American Narrative in the Late Twentieth and Early Twenty-First Centuries

Abstract

Abstract The Latin American narrative of the twenty-first century has its roots in the 1990s, when globalization, new technologies, and the processes of expansion and consolidation of the Spanish publishing conglomerates impacted on the book market. After 2001, there was a proliferation of many aesthetics and new turns (subjective, documentary, post-memory, neorealism, neofantasy, feminist, queer, nomadic, digital, neoruralism) that appealed to both national and global identities. Of all of them, those that have become the most relevant are feminist and queer literature, since writing by women, feminized bodies, and dissident subjectivities has taken an unprecedented center stage in the Latin American literary field during the last decade. Lastly, the most significant changes that have taken place in the modes of production, circulation, and reception of Latin American narrative concern material culture, including the growth of independent publishing, fairs, and festivals. The chapter also examines the remarkable “spectacularization” of the writer, the increasing precarity of the literary profession, and the professionalization of mediators, and the “Randomization” of Latin American literature.