From Globalizing Logic to Contemporary Fragmentation: Latin American Crime Novels

From my point of view, the ways of understanding the genre discussed in this paper, derived from Classical ratio and that associated with formal frag-mentation, are related to the cultural differences between the West (mainly understood based on the English-language and Spanish models) and, particu-larly, with the dominant ideologies in its sphere. The first perspective is linked with the discourses of globalization, and the second with cultural localization. Both models can be understood within the dynamic of modulation of anomie which allows us to discuss contemporary crime novels that assimilate to differ-ent degrees a supposed democratic and, above all, legal model. The novel is understood, then, as a genre that responds to the homogenizing dynamic of a culture forged around intellect or, rather, to its discursive atomization in differ-ent spheres of expression. This can be appreciated in the three paradigmatic novels analyzed in which the investigator no longer "personifies" Classical logic: the investigation is combined with a form of therapy or a literary quest, the narration is developed along numerous channels of meaning, and punishment is conspicuous by its absence. This interpretation can be the key for analyzing what literature means in Western culture today, particularly the novel.

Taller de letras. Nº 56 27-48, 2015

Artículo completo disponible aquí: https://ojs.uc.cl/index.php/TL/article/view/17673/14633