Latin America and Eastern Europe share often overlooked structural similarities and entanglements, their histories are shaped by colonialism, imperial domination, global capitalism, Cold War legacies, and fragile democratization processes. Consequently, from both inside and outside the regions, hegemonic metanarratives, such as Christianism, Marxism, Freudianism, Modernism, etc. are regularly employed to make sense of Latin American and Eastern European local societies and histories.
Metanarratives shape social and cultural theory and fiction alike, drawing on imaginaries that reflect the deep structures of the social. Imaginaries coalesce, for instance, in the form of myths, legends, or popular culture. They create social cohesion and provide interpretative frames for the world (Castoriadis 1975, Anderson 1983). Embedded in power relations, in particular Western European interpretative frames, they have turned into hegemonic metanarratives, such as the (patriarchal) natural family, the noble savage, or the sovereign and creative individual.
While postmodernist thinker Jean-François Lyotard dismisses metanarratives (grands recits) as generally obsolete, they also prove problematic when seen through a post- and decolonial lens, which emphasizes the situatedness of (historiographical) knowledge. We therefore should not take metanarratives (including post- and decolonialism) as given entities or as universal tools for interpretation, but scrutinize them as a result of intricately related processes of cultural negotiation. With that in mind, we take the following observations as a point of departure:
- Metanarratives are embedded in and conditioned by power relations.
- Metanarratives aren’t monolithic. They have multiple origins/sources with their own local contexts.
- Metanarratives aren’t stable. They change when adopted in local settings with differing outcomes.
- Metanarratives are not quite as Western as they may seem. Some of the most established ones arose in non-hegemonic contexts that were made invisible in their global circulation. This also prompts the question of what “European” or “Western” may at all mean (see Chakrabarty).
In our workshop, we want to discuss these dynamics on the example of theory and fiction in and between Latin America and Eastern Europe. We aim to identify metanarratives which frequently recur both in theory and fiction and to map their trajectories. Possible examples are decolonization, cultural contact, capitalism/economic development/dependency theory, Marxism, Freudianism, Modernism (or single currents, e.g. Surrealism, Primitivism), Liberation Theology, Human Rights discourses, Feminism, Nationalism, Neoliberalism, etc.
Questions that contributors may address:
- How have metanarratives circulated, traveling between Western Europe, Latin America and Eastern Europe (Said, Mieke Bal)? Which are the main historical trajectories? Which time regimes condition the circulation of metanarratives (“belatedness”)?
- Which metanarratives are particularly recurrent in literary texts? Which topics and associated imaginaries do they engage with (family narratives, civilization and barbarism, etc.)? In which genres: the (historical) novel or autobiography as hegemonic metanarrative? Which genres give room for alternatives?
- How do metanarratives translate into institutions (museums, cultural heritage protection, canons)?
- How do power dynamics between multiple centers influence the functioning of metanarratives? Does the configuration of metanarratives show Latin America and Eastern Europe’s in-betweenness?
- How have local designs gone global, how have supposedly global hegemonic designs been adapted to local settings?
For inquiries, please contact Anne Brüske (DIMAS University of Regensburg, anne.brueske@ur.de) or Mirja Lecke (external link, opens in a new window) (Institute for Slavic Studies, University of Regensburg, mirja.lecke@ur.de).
Please see attached PDF files for the detailed program!
Please note: To participate in the conference via Zoom, please follow this link! (external link, opens in a new window)
