Bolivian Studies Journal

Call for Papers

Bolivian Studies Editor — 2023-11-30

Introduction: Geopoetics of variegation in current Bolivian narratives

Magdalena González Almada — 2023-11-30

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Violeta Parra and Matilde Casazola: Muchedumbre, Bastardism and Journey to the Seed

Magela Baudoin — 2023-11-30

There are writings that are “multitude,” “muchedumbre,” like those of Violeta Parra (Chile, 1917-1967) and Matilde Casazola (Bolivia, 1943). They unify in their autobiographical texts a multitude of previous voices and knowledges. Part of its enormous importance and uniqueness is given precisely by the display of these creations or “inhabited” creatures. Both eccentric artists move between lyricism and popular music, periphery and cosmopolitanism, between the museum and the “peña”, between different genres and in the border areas that characterize “bastardism” (María Galindo). In this work I will show how, practicing bastardism, these writings in multitude propose a new aesthetic form, anticanonical, which is born to be shared, plagiarized, multiplied, re-elaborated.

The edges of a mandate: caring in the 21st century

Mónica Velásquez Guzmán — 2023-11-30

In the current context, it seems an unavoidable requirement to take care of the planet, of the economies challenged by the post-COVID panorama, of health in systems evidenced as precarious, of ours beloved ones. On the other hand, both from an existential and community perspective, the tasks of caring for the other have always been constant, but, in accordance with generic patriarchal roles, have fallen more on women. In this framework, three writers (Giovanna Rivero, Magela Baudoin and Fernanda Trías) represent in their works the edges of this mandate by evidencing cultural frameworks adverse to its realization.

Geopoetic Formation and Ontological Transcendence in 98 Seconds Without a Shadow by Giovanna Rivero and The Sound of the H by Magela Baudoin

Alexander Torres — 2023-11-30

This article will examine two Bolivian Bildungsromane: 98 segundos sin sombra (2014) by Giovanna Rivero and El sonido de la H (2015) by Magela Baudoin, which demonstrate the use of experiential possibilities opened up by capitalist modernity to achieve individuation and the desire to achieve an ontological status outside of the lifeworld configurations of global capitalism that pervade not only the “center” but also the “periphery.” It will be demonstrated how in the novel of formation there is not only the fundamentally geopoetic dialectic between the self and the world and its synthesis, but also the monomyth that aspires to a superior level of being-in-the-world. In short, the Bildungsroman reflects a drive inherently incompatible with the ontological demands of capitalist modernity.

Form and Historicity of the Fantastic: Realistic Discontent and Spatial Depth in Liliana Colanzi

Roberto Cruz Arzabal — 2023-11-30

In this paper I propose a double reading of Liliana Colanzi’s Nuestro mundo muerto (Almadía, 2016). First, through the study of the formal specificity of the short stories. For that pourpose, I draw from the characterization of her work from two different but complementary concepts: the global Latin-American fantastic fiction as part of the global new weird (Sanchiz y Bizzarri) and the literatures of the realistic discontent (Amatto). Then, after considering the literary form as the space of conflict between the work of art and its historicity (Eyers), I study how the short stories of Colanzi have a form that I suggest to call “interference”. In the second reading, I study the spatial dimension of Colanzi’s work from two axis: the territorial extension previously analyzed by González Almada as “textualization of territory” (“Territorialidades”) and the spatial stratification as the smooth and the striated, according to Deleuze and Guattari (Mil Mesetas). After underscore the richness of both axis, territoriality, and deepness, I analyze the short story “Nuestro mundo muerto” to read it as a speculation on temporality of the human and the non-human in the Late Capitalism crisis. In the intersection between form and space it will be possible to see the conflicting historicity.

I Will Return and I Will be Millions: Deliberations on Migration and Myths of Return in Two Bolivian Novels

Lorena Cuya Gavilano — 2023-11-30

Historically, the notion of return has been linked to a variety of Andean figures. The Pachakuti refers to a cyclical destruction and regeneration. The Inkarri represents the corporeal regrowth and recuperation of a messianic figure. Tupac Katari’s prophecy “volveré y seré millones” is a promise of redemption for indigenous peoples. Through the analysis of Juan Pablo Piñeiro’s Cuando Sara Chura despierte (2003) and Antoine Rodríguez-Carmona’s El blus del minibus (2015), this article discusses how Bolivian narratives about migration evoke notions of a mythical return by depicting the arrival of thousands of indigenous migrants to the city. Both novels translate the political and cultural theme of the return into images of migrants reclaiming the cityscape.

Ch'enko. A Photo Essay

Jorge Peñaranda Alvarez — 2023-11-30

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Between the Intimate and the Common. Landscape and Memory in Narratives of Return

Estefanía Bournot — 2023-11-30

This article reads the work of Maximiliano Barrientos in dialogue with a corpus of novels published since 2000, which are structured around the thematic of return and the memorial dimension of landscape. Drawing on the concept of “autobiographical space” proposed by Leonor Arfuch, this paper observes the narrative composition of landscapes as affective interfaces that mediate between the public and the intimate.

On the one hand, it analyses the strategies of “demarcation”, which seek to dissociate the narrative from its duty to represent a collective “we”; and on the other hand, it focuses on a shift towards intimate perspectives that re-appropriate the landscape as a surface of self-projection and introspection. The central argument of the essay is that: the narratives of return, among which Barrientos’ work is included with great prominence, invite us to think about the ways in which literature expands, transforms and interrogates the spatial imaginaries through affects, enabling with this gesture new imagined communities and new articulations of the common.

Between Claudinas and migrants: Seúl, São Paulo by Gabriel Mamani

Sebastián Antezana Quiroga — 2023-11-30

This article analyzes the ways in which the novel Seúl, São Paulo, written by Bolivian writer Gabriel Mamani, follows and reimages the literary trail of "Las Claudinas", urbanized indigenous women who appear in Bolivian narratives of the mid-twentieth century, and thus proposes a new look at the old conflict of ethnic identities at the national level. At the same time, the article focuses on the way in which Mamani's novel questions the limitations of representation under the national model and focuses on the current Bolivian migration to Brazil as a transnational manifestation that more fully embodies the country’s reality on the XXI century.

Cosmopolitan textualities. Migration and geopoetic configurations in Los afectos by Rodrigo Hasbún

Magdalena González Almada — 2023-11-30

Los afectos (2015) by Rodrigo Hasbún narrates the complex plot of motivations that causes the transit of a German family to Bolivia and their permanence in this country. The hypothesis that guides this paper proposes that, in the textuality created by the author from Cochabamba, the fibers of migration, exile, adventure and nostalgia are woven to create a geopoetics (White; Aínsa) that interweaves fiction and historical events. Likewise, this study presents a look at a novel that, within the framework of contemporary Bolivian literary production, textualizes the migrant path from Europe to Bolivia driven by the search for the mythical Paitití that metaphorizes the hope of a new beginning. In this sense, migration is analyzed not from Bolivia to abroad but from Germany to Bolivia in an original approach proposed by Hasbún's novel. To develop this research, categories such as "uprooting" (Weil), "foreignness" (Seifert), "mobility" (Morley), "transnational gaze" (Robins and Aksoy) will be put into play in dialogue with notions that contribute to the study of the ways in which family ties are represented in Hasbún's novel such as "inheritance" and "family memory" (Saraceni).

Editing as Power: Interviewing the Creators of Mantis and Dum Dum

Mariana Lardone — 2023-11-30

In this interview, we wanted to deal with literary editing as another way that writers choose to intervene in the Bolivian literary field. Especially since 2017, when Liliana Colanzi founded Dum Dum and Magela Baudoin and Giovanna Rivero inaugurated the Mantis collection within the Plural publishing house. In similar ways, both projects opted for the edition of poetics that did not find their place in the Bolivian literary panorama.

Announcements

Bolivian Studies Editors — 2023-11-30

Preliminary Pages

Bolivian Studies Editors — 2023-11-30

Lorena Cuya Gavilano. Fictions of migration. Narratives of displacement in Peru and Bolivia

Sabrina Rezzónico — 2023-11-30

María Aimaretti. Video Boliviano de los ‘80. Experiencias y memorias de una década pendiente en la ciudad de La Paz

Isabel Seguí — 2023-11-30

Alba María Paz Soldán. Sed que no para. Ensayos reunidos (1982-2020)

Magdalena González Almada — 2023-11-30