Literature for social change: new perspectives and debates
Summary
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Contents
- Prologue (Vicente Cervera Salinas)
- Acknowledgements
- An Introduction: Social Change, Critical Pedagogy, and Displaced Narratives in Literary Research (Maravillas Moreno Amor and Mario Aznar)
- Aims and Scope
- Structure of the Volume
- I. Literature and Critical Pedagogy
- II. Bodies, Dissidence, and Queer Subjectivities
- III. Narratives of Otherness, Migration and Displacement
- A Poetics of Deviance
- Towards an Expanded Canon
- Final Reflections: Literary Research as a Tool for Social Change in Times of Polarisation and Culture Wars
- PART I Literature and Critical Pedagogy
- “Subasta” by María Fernanda Ampuero: Gender, Social Exclusion, and Literary Canon in the University Classroom for Primary Education (Mario Aznar)
- Introduction
- Narrative Analysis of “Subasta”
- The Subjective Voice and the Perspective of the Story
- Representation of Marginality Through Characters
- Temporality, Memory, and Trauma
- “Subasta” and the Representation of Social Exclusion
- Violence and Inequality in Ampuero’s Literature
- Gender and Power in “Subasta”
- Proposal for an Alternative Canon in Literary Education
- Challenges to the Traditional Literary Canon in University Education
- Inclusion of “Subasta” in Teaching Education
- Towards a More Inclusive Literary Education
- Conclusion
- Democratic Education Through Literary Education: The 23-F Military Coup and Trans Lives in Una Mala Noche La Tiene Cualquiera by Eduardo Mendicutti (Amal Conesa Erragbaoui)
- Introduction
- The 23-F Failed Military Coup: Historical Context
- Memory, Post-Memory and Literature of the 23-F
- Una mala noche la tiene cualquiera by Eduardo Mendicutti
- Literature, Trans Lives and the Spanish Transition
- Didactics of Peace and Democratic Education Through Literature and Historical Competences
- Educational Reading Guide: Trans Lives and Democracy
- Before reading
- During the reading
- After reading
- Conclusions
- PART II Bodies, Dissidence, and Queer Subjectivities
- Transgender and Other Non-Heteronormative Identities in Contemporary Galician Children’s and Youth Literature (2012–2024) (Carmen Ferreira-Boo, Marta Neira-Rodriguez, and Rocío García-Pedreira)
- Introduction
- Theoretical Framework
- Methodology
- Results
- Conclusions
- The New Drift of the Camp in Pedro Lemebel (César Carrasco García)
- Introduction
- The Croaky Voice of an Unstable Homeland
- The Short-Lived Camp
- Time for a New Detour
- Conclusion
- Towards a Poststructuralist Literary Criticism of Queerness Through the Poetry of Claudia Rodríguez (Maravillas Moreno Amor)
- Introduction: Poststructuralism and Queer Literature
- Towards a Manifiesto Horrorista: The Deconstructive Poetic Action of Claudia Rodríguez
- Authorial Strategies for the Subversion of Structures
- Conclusions: From Poststructuralist Queer Reading to Literature as a Vehicle for Social Change
- PART III Narratives of Migration and Displacement
- Literature in Deconstruction: A Philosophical Reading of Sophocles and the Xénos (Delmiro Rocha Álvarez)
- First Act: Expelling the Other
- Second Act: Sophocles and the Role of the Stranger
- Third Act: Derrida and the Revolutionary Hypothesis
- Popular Genre Fiction, Migration, and the Potential for Change (Amy Burge)
- Introduction
- Bullies and Bombs: Illustrating Trauma in The Boy at the Back of the Class
- Poetry and Procedure: Modes of Storytelling in No Sex in the City
- Marketing Migration
- Reading Decolonial Queerness in Black British and Latin American Literature (Sarah Busch and Bieke Willem)
- Introduction
- Black Queer Ancestry and the Violence of Heteronormativity in Travis Alabanza’s Burgerz and Temi Wilkey’s The High Table
- Burgerz by Travis Alabanza
- The High Table by Temi Wilkey
- Transcending Boundaries in Time, Space and Gender in Latin American Science Fiction
- Conclusion
- African Migrants in Children’s Literature: A Potential Way of Social Changing (Sara Reis da Silva, Marta Neira-Rodríguez, and Rocío García-Pedreira)
- Introduction
- An Analysis of A Viagem de Djuku [Djuku’s Journey]
- Final Remarks
- From Prejudice to Parody: Juan Goytisolo and the Construction and Deconstruction of the Oriental Other in Western Literature (Rosalía Ortiz Jiménez)
- Introduction: The West or the Modern Pygmalion
- The Western Construction of the Islamic Other: Phobias and Philias in Spain and Europe
- Myth as Reality: Travel Literature and the Homogenisation of Ethnic Groups in the East
- Deconstructing and Decentralising the Gaze: Parody in Makbara (1980) by Juan Goytisolo
- Conclusion
- Dialectic of Slave Men and Slave Women in Plautus (Josefa Fernández Zambudio and Irene Martínez Forte)
- Introduction
- Plautus and his Time
- Status of the Slave
- Physical Punishment
- The “Good Slave”
- Slave Women in Plautus
- Conclusions
- The Literary and Artistic Representation of Migration in Picturebooks (Rocío García-Pedreira, Carmen Ferreira-Boo, and Marta Neira-Rodriguez)
- Introduction
- Theoretical Framework
- Methodology
- Results
- The Journey (2016) by Francesca Sanna
- Leaf (2017) by Sandra Dieckmann
- The Suitcase (2019) by Chris Naylor-Ballesteros
- Migrants (2020) by Issa Watanabe
- Islandborn (2018) by Junot Díaz & Leo Espinosa
- Conclusion
- Notes on Contributors
Prologue
It was during the last years of my studies in Hispanic Philology when I first read a comprehensive work on the sociology of literature. It was a brief yet substantial treatise by Dr Robert Escarpit (1918–2000), Professor of Humanities and Letters at the University of Bordeaux, where he analysed the multiple angles of approach to literature characteristic of that literary school of thought. In his summaries, he concluded that the classical concept of literature, established from the eighteenth century onward, had become obsolete, and that, for a conscious and meaningful application to the “present”, it was necessary to focus on the literary phenomenon within the framework of an operational system of socio-cultural reality in which the work is embedded. The task was not only to analyse the work (the artefact) from this integral context, but also to do so with the added and fundamental purpose of understanding how social parameters are also affected and engaged by the artistic objects that human beings create under that aesthetic notion we call “literature”. It was a two-way consideration, an integrative perspective, a prism of understanding committed to the dimension of the subject as a zoon politikon and to its constructs as realities interdependent with the processes that shape societies, in perpetual change, in constant transformation.
If literary sociology introduces nuances into the analysis of texts that had previously been overlooked by critical tradition, the theories of deconstruction xiiand poststructuralism initiate perspectives that no longer allow us to separate what is created from the political and cultural fabric that undoubtedly permeates the work and defines it from a problematised and, so often, divergent and subversive referentiality in relation to any coercive force. The fact that aesthetics borders on the political dimension that individuals and collectives embody and exercise does not diminish the intrinsic value of its materiality as a work of art, since its essentially artistic condition in this respect can never be obscured. This does not, however, prevent the text from also participating in a network that conditions its expressiveness and is, in turn, conditioned by the formal force of signifiers which, even as they safeguard its irrevocable configuration, continually build bridges with the most diverse facets of that society in movement, in becoming.
Cultural studies, in short, may have diluted the autonomous character, the fetishistic quality, or the mythical aura that the artistic object – in this case, the book as a literary objectification – once possessed or seemed to possess. In exchange for what? Perhaps for offering us a much broader panorama within which to situate it, at the cost of diluting its technical and formal concentration and “handling” it for purposes of various kinds. However, as Bernard Shaw insightfully suggested, The thing happens, and this instrumentalisation of a socio-literary nature does not ultimately manage to dissolve its uniqueness or overshadow its brilliance. But it does, in return, establish new synapses of understanding of the world which the literary work elicits in order to provide the thinking being with other possible worlds; and in that exchange, in such fluidity and through this assemblage, society is once again nourished by aesthetic objects, which in turn participate in the dynamic rhythm that governs the structure of reality. This participation is the object of study of literary sociology. The imaginary is articulated from within the real, and the real is illuminated – and, in the best of cases, stirred and questioned – by the force of creative imagination.
Understanding that socio-cultural coordinates play a role in the construction of artistic elements – such as spatial, structural, formal, and thematic dimensions, and even style – no longer seems either a novel or a controversial claim. For this reason, the current demands placed upon literary researchers cannot be disconnected from contemporary issues or from concerns affecting society as a whole, whether these involve migratory population movements, political events – both exceptional and recurring – social exclusion, xiiiever-evolving recoveries of the ancient world, or gender categories in flux, with more specific challenges such as those faced by the transgender community. This volume demonstrates precisely such a concern: the political-aesthetic perception of reality. The works selected here thus stake a rightful claim within the academic field as well as their transference to the social sphere: they become urgent, inexcusable, and necessary. It is in this spirit that the book is organised into three sections each addressing a major challenge for sociologically informed literary research. The first examines the links between literature and critical pedagogy, situating literary study within an educational project oriented towards democracy and social transformation. The second explores literature as a site for making dissident subjectivities present, foregrounding voices from queer margins that have long been silenced or rendered invisible. The third focuses on representations of the migrant other, still one of the most salient outgroups in Western societies, and considers how literary narratives both reproduce and contest the stereotypes, hierarchies, and everyday forms of discrimination that migrants continue to face.
Be that as it may, the drive towards unreality will not cease to pulse; yet even if the world, as Borges posited, were Tlön, we would only be able to recognise its machinery by opening its windows and realising that it was configured by a subject, by a mind and sensations, but also by a plural body, by a complex network, by the nervous disposition of our collective tissues.
That imperious “matrix” which activates and orders our perceptions may perhaps crack its solid, and perhaps invisible, dimensions when we understand that the aesthetic function is not confined to a hedonistic or self-indulgent act. Or at least, that it is not limited to such a function, but rather crosses and transcends every boundary in order to recognise – and perhaps thus unmask – the stage, the director, and the actors and actresses who represent – who ultimately we represent – this great, even immense, theatre of the world.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the project “Literature and Social Change: Building a Reading Laboratory to Combat Transphobia and Xenophobia (LIT-LAB)” under the sixth Seed Funding Call by the European University for Well-Being (EUniWell). We also wish to thank our partner institutions and contributors for their invaluable input throughout the project.
An Introduction: Social Change, Critical Pedagogy, and Displaced Narratives in Literary Research
In an age defined by the erosion of hegemonic narratives, literature emerges with renewed urgency as a site of resistance, critical inquiry, and symbolic reconfiguration. The present volume, Literature for Social Change, is grounded in the conviction that literary texts are not passive mirrors of reality but dynamic agents in its ongoing transformation. From the classroom to the outer edges of the literary canon, from the formative experience of childhood reading to the disruptive voices of dissent, the chapters assembled here trace a diverse cartography of writing that denounces, reimagines, and contests the ways in which power and exclusion are encoded in language.
Rejecting homogeneous or narrowly disciplinary approaches, this volume embraces hybridity as a critical virtue. The contributions span a wide geographical and cultural spectrum – Latin America, Europe, and the Arab world – and engage with a diverse range of genres and media. These include not only contemporary and underrepresented literatures, but also classical texts from the Greco-Roman tradition, encompassing forms as varied as popular fiction, illustrated children’s literature, autofictional chronicles, queer narratives, and diasporic texts. Through this heterogeneity runs a central, urgent question: in what ways can literature serve as a vehicle for social justice, the inclusion of marginalised voices, and the recuperation of silenced histories? At the same time, the volume foregrounds the imaginative potential of the literary field to envision alternative futures and to construct plausible imaginaries capable of legitimising social transformation and forging new relational horizons.
Details
- Pages
- 228
- Publication Year
- 2026
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9783631936917
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9783631936924
- ISBN (Softcover)
- 9783631936900
- DOI
- 10.3726/b22846
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2026 (July)
- Keywords
- Literature social change critical pedagogy queer migration children’s literature canon literary education popular genre fiction democratic education otherness Latin American literature picturebooks
- Published
- Berlin, Bruxelles, Chennai, Lausanne, New York, Oxford, 2026. 228 pp.
- Product Safety
- Peter Lang Group AG
