Critical Dystopias in Spanish : Memory as an Act of Resilience 1

This chapter focuses on a selection of recent critical dystopias (Tom Moylan) written in Spanish with the aim of highlighting the importance of memory in the recovery of individual and collective self-esteem. The selected works can be understood as ascribing to the "ethics of defeat" (Ana Maria Amar Sanchez) and "reflective nostalgia" (Svetlana Boym), as they are interested in the possibilities offered by "cultural agencies" (Doris Sommer). Further, we argue that these critical dystopias reject the consensus ethics characteristic of contemporary writing (Jacques Ranciere) and defend, instead, an ethics of conviction (Alain Badiou). The chapter defends that, generally, Spanish-speaking authors have adopted the "soft science fiction" of Borges, Ballard and Philip K. Dick, raising, like them, the big questions about the human condition. Moreover, the contemporary authors that are the object of our analysis adapt the terms applied to projective fictions in the Anglo-Saxon world to the Ibero-American realities. Among the authors studied in this chapter are also Ricardo Piglia, Edmundo Paz Soldan, Rosa Montero, Ricardo Menendez Salmon, Ray Loriga, Bernardo Fernandez BEF, Juan Abreu, Mauricio Molina, Carlos Gamerro, and Carmen Boullosa.