Plotting for Democracy: Literary, Theoretical and Political Perspectives from Latin America (1800s to Present Day)

Colloquium
Mabel Moraña,  Stefano Tedeschi,  Luca Bacchini,  Ariadne Catarine dos Santos,  Lucy Amelia Jane Bell  

What does democracy mean in Latin America? How has that meaning been shaped by its complex histories of (de)colonization? This Colloquium addresses these questions as part of an interdisciplinary research project – “Plotting for Democracy: A Transnational Approach to Literatures of Transition in Latin America” – that analyzes and interrogates theories, narratives and practices of democracy in Latin America. The aim of the panel is to examine the sometimes surprising connections between the region’s socio-political formations and its literary-cultural forms. Taking a step back from the paradigm of (post-)dictatorship that has dominated in scholarly analyses, we focus on democracy and how it interfaces, often violently, with Latin America’s historical continuum of coloniality or “Conquistualidad”, as Argentine anthropologist Rita Segato puts it (2019). We are particularly interested in texts that, in transcending disciplinary boundaries between the Humanities and Social Sciences, between literature and politics, contribute to the construction of plural democratic worlds; texts that, considered together as a sprawling network of thought and praxis, point to the pluriverse. The five presentations take different historical, theoretical and textual angles on the above questions, from the problematic displacement of the concept of democracy to the new Latin American Republics in the nineteenth century to emerging forms of anti-racist literary practices in the present day. Our hope is that this Colloquium will generate fruitful dialogue and debate around the possible decolonization of a “democracy to come” (Derrida) in Latin America, and the role of specific forms of writing and thinking in this process.