Argentine Science Fiction

This article explores some fundamental political and ideological questions posed by Argentinian sf. Despite its volume, Argentine critics still consider sf a minor, popular, and sometimes not especially serious form. This article discusses how sf contests these assumptions and proposes a new understanding of Argentinian culture, using as examples three recent Argentinian sf novels: Pola Oloixarac's Las constelaciones oscuras [The Dark Constellations], Juan Diego Incardona's Las estrellas federales [Red Poinsettias], and Pablo Plotkin's Un futuro radiante [A Glowing Future]. Read by mainstream and sf readers alike, these dystopian novels occupy an uneasy space in Argentinian culture. They ask fundamental questions about the role of the individual subject who cannot always sustain his or her political and ideological commitments vis-à-vis the community. They express fear about worsening social and economic conditions of an ever-changing present. Written after one of the worst economic crises in Argentinian history, these novels propose not only new forms for approaching the real but also new ways of reading the national ideological landscape

Aesthetics · Art · Dystopia · Ideology · Literature · Mainstream · Political science · Politics · Reading (process) · Sociology · Subject (documents) · Computer Science · History · Latin American Literature Analysis · Latin American Literature Studies · Law · Philosophy · Utopian, Dystopian, and Speculative Fiction