Abstract
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
Highlights
Anti-literature is founded in opposition to literature, but an answer to the question of “What is literature?” is never offered here for several reasons that do not constitute a failure in Shellhorse’s project
Following Lispector’s own “anti-literary” statements that seem to reject all political interpretations of her work, Shellhorse proposes reading A hora da estrela (1977) through a more profound and radically political lens that demonstrates the extent to which traditional notions of political engagement—the very notions rejected by Lispector—tend to rely on predetermined ideas of literature and women’s writing
Shellhorse sees a similar effect modeled by the work of the Brazilian poets discussed in chapter three, “Subversions of the Sensible: The Poetics of Antropofagia in Brazilian Concrete Poetry.”
Summary
Anti-literature is founded in opposition to literature, but an answer to the question of “What is literature?” is never offered here for several reasons that do not constitute a failure in Shellhorse’s project. To understand Shellhorse’s project fully, we must consider his book’s inherent criticism of the academy’s canonical reading of Latin American literature.
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