En construcción o en viaje: apuntes sobre la representación de la identidad latinoamericana en la narrativa contemporánea

Abstract

Travelling or in construction: notes about the representation of the identity in the contemporary Spanish‑American fiction

The paper explores the parodic and non parodic image of the collective identity in some exemples of 20th century and contemporary Spanish‑American fiction. From the middle of 19th century to the middle of 20th many essays and novels tended to reinforce the idea of a Latin American citizen rooted in the continental soil and ideologically independent both from the former metropolis and from United States. On the contrary, in the second half of 20th century, when the model of identity shifted from a set of idioscyncrastic and patriotic characteristics to a bunch of heterogeneous attributes, the Spanish American novelist began to include in their fictions an authocritic and ironic attitude towards Latin American cultural myths and stereotypes. The analysis takes into account authors such as Arturo Bryce Echenique, Roberto Bolaño, Edmundo Paz Soldán, Juan Villoro and Yuri Herrera.