Finanziamento dell’UE NextGenerationEU PRIN PNRR 2022 – Plotting for Democracy: A Transnational Approach to Literatures of Transition in Latin America (1960s – Present) - M4C2 investimento 1.1 Avviso 1409/2022

Democracy is in crisis, with 70% of the world’s population under some form of authoritarian rule. In Latin America, transitions to democracy since the 1980s have proven fragile and, in spite of the promises of liberal democracy and the market economy, countries have seen deepening inequalities, rising social exclusion, and rising human rights violations. In this context, writers, literary movements and publishing collectives have played a key part in narrating, questioning and constructing diverse democratic forms at local, national and transnational levels. Yet while the “dictatorship novel” entered the Latin American literary canon in the 1970s, no such place has been afforded to the “democracy novel”, no doubt because the category would be too vast and complex. “Plotting for Democracy” investigates the plural ways literary expression has been used to foster agency, inclusion and justice in times of political transition, where transition is understood to pertain both to specific post-dictatorship periods and, more broadly, to key moments of intensified civic participation in partial, flawed or failed democracies. The project operates on two methodological axes. We take a transnational approach, mapping “literatures of democracy” across six countries spanning South, Central and North America, drawing on country-specific knowledge of ten experts across three units: unit 1 focuses on Mexico, Cuba and Brazil; unit 2 on Argentina; unit 3 on Guatemala and El Salvador. This survey is deepened through case studies which explore the roles of literary production in transitional moments from the aftermath of Mexico’s 1968 massacre through transitions to democracy in Argentina and Brazil (1980s), Guatemala and El Salvador (1990s), to diverse forms of present day cultural activism: women-led searches for Mexico’s 100,000 disappeared; online youth activism and citizenship-building in Cuba; the production of alternative female/queer subjectivities in Argentina; and Indigenous struggles for truth and justice in Guatemala and El Salvador. The case studies are interpreted through key Latin American theoretical and activist frameworks – principally decoloniality and feminism(s) – which will illuminate how the region’s societies, still plagued by colonial legacies of racism, classism and sexism, are being transformed through cultural activism. The project culminates in three cutting-edge volumes: an open-access edited collection offering the first joined-up, transnational study of the relationship between literary and democratic forms in Latin America (1960s–2020s); and two anthologies that fill a significant gap in the Italian publishing market, approaching the question of democracy through feminist, decolonial and Indigenous thought from Latin America. In addition to these academic outputs, an online platform will be created to provide Italian school teachers with a user-friendly, interactive map of “literatures for democracy” from Latin America.