Dystopias in Nineteenth-Century Latin American Literature
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- ISBN 9781684486182
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 10 Nov 2026
- Publisher: Bucknell University Press,U.S.
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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How did nineteenth-century Latin American novelists respond to moments when history itself seemed to come undone? Rather than treating dystopia as a futuristic genre, Palti traces its emergence from concrete political crises in Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil, as writers confronted national defeat, dictatorship, and revolutionary uncertainty. Reading Mexican fiction written after the U.S. occupation; Argentine texts produced under Juan Manuel de Rosas, including works by Esteban Echeverría, Domingo F. Sarmiento, and José Mármol; and Brazilian novels from the transition from Empire to Republic, with particular attention to Machado de Assis, the book shows how narrative form begins to falter. Plots stall, identities fragment, and stories resist closure. These breakdowns constitute early dystopian modes—atopia-atropia, heterotopia, and transtopia—through which literature registers the collapse of historical intelligibility. By locating dystopia in narrative form rather than theme, Palti offers a rich new account of literature under political catastrophe.
Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.
Elías J. Palti is a consulting professor at the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina, and formerly a full professor there and at the National University of Quilmes in Buenos Aires. He is the author of more than 200 publications, including An Archaeology of the Political: Regimes of Power from the Seventeenth Century to the Present, Misplaced Ideas? Political-Intellectual History in Latin America, and Intellectual History and the Problem of Conceptual Change.
