Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

2-2021

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Program

Latin American, Iberian and Latino Cultures

Advisor

Magdalena Perkowska

Committee Members

Magdalena Perkowska

Esther Allen

Carlos Riobo

Subject Categories

Aesthetics | Art Practice | Caribbean Languages and Societies | Cultural History | Ethnic Studies | Intellectual History | Interactive Arts | Interdisciplinary Arts and Media | Latin American Languages and Societies | Latin American Literature | Latin American Studies | Latina/o Studies | Modern Literature | Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures | Other Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature | Performance Studies | Photography | Spanish Literature | Visual Studies

Keywords

estética latinx de Nueva York, New York Latinx Aesthetics, book circulation, selfpublishing, autoficción, autorficción, autorial persona, persona studies, latino studies, literary criticism, literary theory, close reading, autorías encarnadas, ethnic studies, hibridez, intermedialidad, transmedialidad, alternative practices, branding yourself, autogestión, alternative selfpublishing, grupos culturales alternativos de Nueva York, cultural history of institutions (CUNY), redes, dominicanish, Josefina Báez, Sonia Rivera-Valdés, Lina Meruane, Paquita Suárez-Coalla, Francis Mateo, Angel Lozada

Abstract

This research on the intersection of Literary Criticism, Latino Studies, Persona Studies, and Performance Studies has led me to question the accepted definitions of autoficción (Doubrovsky, Gasparini, Alberca, Casas, Schlikers) and expand that definition into a more multifaceted and operational term. Hence, I created auto®ficción, a new term describing the hybrid creations of a group of underrepresented contemporary Latinx authors living/producing/circulating their work in New York City, during the first two decades of the 21st Century. For these authors, their life experiences and quotidian uses of this city’s spaces are the subjects of their work. Auto®ficción draws attention not only to the mixing of genres and hybrid nature of these works, but also highlights the agency of these Latinx authors in New York to create cultural spaces in which to generate their scenarios, activate their authorial Personas, and circulate their work.

New York is one of the world's leading cities for the creative industries. These industries, while developing, generate segregation and produce social polarity (George Yúdice 58). In New York City, the sociocultural structures and/or systems are kept in constant and complex negotiation with the politics of spaces and the redefinitions of their limits and geographies. Within these frameworks of segregation and social polarity, the city becomes the center where the hybridization of these artists’ productions, which I call auto®ficción, takes place. The authors’ multifaceted ways of making a living (informed by difficulties, or limited successes) and producing art in a neoliberal and imperial place like New York City, is reflected in their hybrid language, their creation of new genres and the overarching intermedial nature of their art.

My study makes visible and audible the stories, often denied criticism and recognition, of six original Latinx artists based in this city. These authors are difficult to categorize. Their hybrid works question and destabilize traditional notions of book circulation and markets based on the purity of languages, style, and literary genres. New York Latinx Auto®fiction (La auto®ficción Latinx neoyorquina) illustrates not only the recognized diversity of Latinx cultural groups and their aesthetics, but also insists on changes already realized, but often overlooked as a reality: literature is not a purely textual/verbal medium.

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