Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

The philosophy of dialogue proposed, among others, by Buber and Marcel, is an indispensablepoint of reference for understanding Emmanuel Levinas’ philosophy of otherness. Indeed,if it is accepted that dialogue and love are such if they are intersubjective, then both realities aretwo ways to approach the complete otherness of the Other. On the one hand, Levinas recognizesin Buber his approach to the I-Thou relation, not as ‘experience’ with the world of objects, butas ‘encounter’; but he distances from Buber for whom encounter implies symmetry and reciprocity.On the other hand, Levinas admires Marcel’s approach to intersubjective love, where thesubject is not autarchic or self-sufficient, but called to exist for-the-Other; and, at the same time,Levinas points out the limits of the ontological basis in which Marcel rooted love and encounter.

Fantastic literature derives in manifestations that do not always conform to its classical features, so it is necessary to broaden its approaches. For this reason, it is proposed to analyze “La noche de los cincuenta libros”, short story by Francisco Tario, and the way in which it possesses and surpasses the properties of the fantastic. For this purpose, a succinct review of the genre’s corresponding features (such as nominal transgression and indeterminacy, based on the theories of Oviedo Pérez de Tudela, Jackson, and Ordiz Alonso-Collada, to access its excess features (where adaptation of the narrative microcosm and breaking of the horizon of expectation are included, based on the contributions of Barrenechea, Roas, and Iser). The foregoing exhibits the partial belonging of the story to the fantastic, as well as its peripheral condition. In addition, it allows its integration into the literary repertoire that we have called “fantastic peripheral” whose main characteristic is the effective transgression, which we also propose as an excess feature.

Currently, the rise of fantastic literature cannot be understood without the fundamental presence of writers such as Mariana Enriquez, Samanta Schweblin, Mónica Ojeda, Liliana Colanzi, Giovanna Rivero, María Fernanda Ampuero, among others. One of the common features among the writers who have taken on the task of rethinking non-mimetic or unreal literature with new vigor is that many of them were born in the 1970s, turbulent decades in social and political terms for Latin America. This aspect is very significant, because despite the singularity of their writings, the treatment and renovation that they carry out of the unreality literature turns, mainly, in the conformation of a critique on the social and political history of their countries mediated, on everything, for the body, marginality, and violence. The literary production of these writers has prompted not only a questioning of classical theories on the specificity of fantastic literature and its singularity with respect to other forms of non-mimetic writing, but also the need to rethink a theoretical scaffolding for Latin American literatures of unreality. Nowadays, the works of these writers fully respond to the demands of a theoretical reconsideration on the specificity of the fantastic, since they make the integration of different discourses of unreality a nodal part of their generational and aesthetic proposal, an aspect that places them in a new frontier of the fantastic.

As part of the spectrum of non-mimetic literature, we find a diversity of texts influenced by the presence of divinity, different religious traditions or sacred books. In order to distinguish them from the fantastic, terms such as the miraculous and the Christian marvelous have been used; however, I consider it necessary to specify and extend this terminology so that it would be functional for all narratives in which the divine intervenes, starting from the paradigm of intratextual reality and regardless of the belief system in which they are anchored. This paper proposes a nomenclature that distinguishes the miraculous from the marvelous and the fantastic when the supernatural event involves the mediation of a divinity or a being proceeding from any religious tradition: the marvelous divine and the fantastic divine.

“De tu misma especie”, a short story belonging to the book Para comerte mejor (2015) by the Bolivian writer Giovanna Rivero, implies the rewriting of one of the most prolific mythical heroes: Orpheus, who descends to the world of the dead, returns with the loss on his back and the upset look, which is combined with the figure of the symbolist-type melancholic poet, sunk in the mysteries of the anguish of the spirit. These symbolic and poetic structures are embodied by the suicidal character of the story, who is a rewriting of the failure that marks the “Orpheus’s gaze”, to which Maurice Blanchot refers, transporting the symbolic level of the mythical hero to the carnality of the revenant.

“Una de Bollywood” and “Línea” are two short stories written by Peruvian author Claudia Ulloa Donoso, part of the collection Pajarito (2018). Both stories present a sudden encounter between a woman and a strange man, key event that opens doors to change and also to otherness. This article analyses the humorous aspects, such as parody, irony and caricaturing, as well as the narrative elements of space and focalization which, on the one hand, trivialize the irruption by a foreign agent, but, on the other hand, criticize postmodern culture. To this end, these short stories by Ulloa Donoso will be analyzed in the light of Zygmunt Bauman’s interpretation of the liquid culture, and Gilles Lipovetsky’s view of the postmodern era. Additionally, some definitions by Linda Hutchon and Mieke Bal will be deployed as analytical tools. In this manner, this work proposes that both short stories make use of humor and trivialization as a means to ridicule the liquid and globalized culture where the narrative voice is mired.

Review of Ana Calvo Revilla y Eva Álvarez Ramos (eds.): Microrrelato hipermedial: aproximaciones teóricas y didácticas. Berlín: Peter Lang, 2020.

Following the guidelines of the elements of the writing of the strange (Tzvetan Todorov), this analysis focuses on Samanta Schweblin’s volume of short stories, Siete casas vacías (2015), to establish the way in which terror is configured in the intimate and familiar space, as an articulation of different displacements of the notions of the normal and the abnormal. This study is based on the proposal of the weird and the eerie (Mark Fisher) with the intention of explaining the dynamics of narrative compositions, the omissions and the operating mechanisms of terror. In Siete casas vacías, terror is no longer far away, it lurks in the intimate relationships with those closest to us, in the mind, in everyday life. Everything is destabilized in a reality without logical order, in a fissured world.  

Review of Gerardo Cruz-Grunerth: Eugenia 2218. La visión poshumana de Eduardo Urzaiz. Mérida: Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, 2022

Animal representations have always been part of the fantastic tradition. In the case of Mariana Enriquez, the path becomes tense: her stories include specimens that can be seen as more than extensions of the human: evil animals, mutants, degradations, and beings transformed by violence and the crisis of capital. This paper examines the role and representations of fantastic creatures in the stories “Bajo el agua negra”, “La virgen de la tosquera”, and “La casa de Adela”. Through the devices of fantasy and horror, these figures weave unprecedented alliances between human and animal, subverting anthropocentric hierarchies and transmutations that unearth the repressed animality of the human being. By rethinking the term “Bestiary” in her narrative, it is also possible to see lines of escape from a new type of humanity.