Diffraction and Profanation: New Forms of Publishing in Argentinian Literature

SOLEDAD PEREYRA

Seeing in Spanish: From Don Quixote to Daddy Yankee, 22 Essays on Hispanic Visual Cultures

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Lugar: Newcastle upon Tyne; Año: 2010; p. 220 - 230

The political-economic crisis that took place in Argentina towards 2001 is usually marked as a point of general inflection, which it has its inevitable result in different socio-cultural aspects and, in a restricted sense, in cultural products and the literature of this country. This temporal fracture implies a change of voices and contents, along with a transformation in the form in which literature circulates in the Argentinian society. Nevertheless, in the specific scope of literature, we can state that there is a movement of change in Argentinian literature and its forms of diffusion already in the nineties. The crisis will intensify a conscious movement that is conceived by itself like an alternative way to the traditional publishing market. In this sense, we found in the last 15 years a proliferation of publishing projects and literary spreading. The use and intensification during the past years of these alternative ways to the most classic publishing forms are not only an artistic mark, but also a refreshed conception of publishing that demands through its formal presentation a critical reframing of the different social aspects of this industry and literature itself. This work sets out to show a brief retrospective of the new forms of publishing and spreading in the present Argentinian literature, putting on relief the meaning this movement entails: as way of diffraction (Haraway 1992) and profanation (Agamben 2005).