How we Read Argentine literature as Part of the Latin-American One? Debates, Characteristics and Dialogues

LUCIA CAMINADA ROSSETTI

Tartu

Congreso; 13T INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE ESTONIAN ASSOCIATION OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE; 2019

Within the field of Latin American literature, we can find many approaches to read theory and literature all over the world. Once in the local area, in this case in Argentina, I suggest that the texts and ways of reaching some material and perspectives, remains at a national level. Regarding to this, it is important to notice that in order to read criticism and theory, our native language (argentine Spanish from Río de la Plata) separates at some point the fields, centering as the main way to research about Latin America, the one related with a small area of south America (Uruguay and Argentina). In that regard, one of the strongest assets and achievement of argentine literary research points out the relationship between politics and fiction. Connected to this aspect, it might be questioned: how do we think argentine literature without linking it to the social discourse? How do we think the comparative field of Latin-American and Argentina as one academic area of studies? In our view, comparatism seems to be one of the loneliest areas of studies in terms of thinking the fields of theory, fiction and criticism. We thus suggest that in Argentina, I propose that literary research and criticism in general are strictly directed in one main and only option: the national culture. That´s why I insist in the fact that comparative literary research is not represented institutionally at all. The main trends of national literary theory and academic-critical treatment of literature nowadays point towards the fields of the archives, memory and unknown documents related with Argentine writers. In the same order, there is a tendency to explore the field of the regional literatures. In this paper, we are offering a possible itinerary of the activities in argentine culture related with literature and to study how national literature takes distance from Latin-American theories (García Canclini, Rama, Zea, Cornejo Polar, etc.) in order to privilege the European approaches and, at the same time, dismissing the comparatist literature.