Urban Experience and Literature in Latin American Cities in the 21st Century (NeMLA)
Boston
Organization: NeMLA
Event: NeMLA
Neoliberalism has become the economic background Latin American authors have written and published in the last twenty years. At the same, 55% of the world population lives now in cities; in Latin America, 81% of the total population lives in urban areas and cities. This panel focuses on the literary production of poetry and fiction that deals with both topics: how neoliberalism has transformed the urban experience and how this change is depicted in 21st century in Latin America. Since liberalism tends to focus on the individual, the right to the city, as argued by David Harvey, is a community right: “The freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is, I want to argue, one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights”. This right also involves women’s rights, the minorities rights, LGBTQ+ rights to the urban experience and, of course, the lettered city. So, in the 21st century, who writes the city? What are their stories? How do the new authors experience the neoliberal cities of Lima, Buenos Aires, Bogota, CDMX, among others? Following Harvey’s ideas but also Walter Benjamin, Henri Lefebvre, Leslie Kern research’s on the city, this panel will present new ideas on depicting the neoliberal Latin American city from the poetry perspective and from different genres of fiction: realism, science fiction, horror, or experimental.
https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/20450?mibextid=Zxz2cZ
Carlos Villacorta
