Anna Castillo
Vanderbilt University, Spanish and Portuguese, Faculty Member
- Scholar of contemporary Latin American literature with a focus on contemporary Southern Cone narrative.edit
Scholars of Latin American literature have long studied the topic of motherhood, but the paucity of literary representations of pregnancy itself has resulted in a tradition of what we might call postpartum criticism. Moreover, in most of... more
Scholars of Latin American literature have long studied the topic of motherhood, but the paucity of literary representations of pregnancy itself has resulted in a tradition of what we might call postpartum criticism. Moreover, in most of this critical work, pronatalism (a hegemonic belief that human reproduction is always desirable) remains largely unquestioned. In this study of the antinatalist views in two works by award- winning Chilean author Lina Meruane—Contra los hijos (2014) and Fruta podrida (2007)—I show how Meruane joins a growing cohort of writers who object to “choice feminism,” a popular feminist philosophy that validates all women’s choices on the basis of liberated individualism. Meruane’s provocative representations of women who choose to procreate displace the sentimentality of childrearing and foreground the economic stakes of childbearing. This shift requires readers to consider the praxis of gestation, its value, and the corporal cost of production borne, always, by mothers.
Research Interests:
In 2009, a full three years before Tinder would popularize the "swipe," Grindr debuted as the world's first geosocial dating app for men. Since then, mobile dating has become immensely popular, particularly for so-called "thin markets"... more
In 2009, a full three years before Tinder would popularize the "swipe," Grindr debuted as the world's first geosocial dating app for men. Since then, mobile dating has become immensely popular, particularly for so-called "thin markets" such as the LGBTIQ population. A novel like Alberto Fuguet's Sudor (2016), with its frequent WhatsApp conversations, emails, and Grindr exchanges, invites critical reflection on how these new communications technologies might change the stories we tell about modern intimacy, and how a novel itself can be a technology of connection. The gay characters who populate Sudor take their cues from the narrator's cell phone, by far the most frequently caressed entity in this 600-page novel about mediated connections and the decadence of the publishing industry in the Internet age.1 While it may be true that, as the narrator asserts, "Grindr no es para seducir con conversaciones eternas y complicidades literarias," this article sets out to argue that Grindr provides the necessary means for Sudor to create complicit readers (224). That is, this Grindr narrative precipitates readers who are both attendant to and participative in heretofore unmentionable intimacy.