Latin American E-literature and Location: The Nation Revisited in Electronic Literature Organization (ELO)

Abstract

In this paper, I focus on the relation between literature and location, as a political address (Derrida). In particular, I analyze how Latin American e-literature refers to the idea of Nation in five pieces of work hosted in the Electronic Literature Collection (ELC), Volume ì. The idea of Nation (Anderson; Gellner) has been largely studied in relation to print literature and national languages, but due to the global visual culture in which we are immersed, there is a deep transformation in the field of arts that gives place to the emergence of electronic literature (Hayles). Initially, the technopoetics (Kozak) hosted in cyberspace seem affiliated with the nomadism and the deterritorialization that dominate the digital world where they are produced and consumed (Beiguelman and La Ferla). But at the same time, there is a set of Latin American productions referred to local languages -legal texts, Spanish language, iconic images, folkloric tradition- into instruments for geopolitical territorialization (Chun). This means that these elements could be used to position Latin America in a global platform, as far as they keep the local characteristics linked to a specific Nation.The nationness (Anderson) is present in some of the Latin American pieces that are partof the Electronic Literature Collection ì: The 27th || El 27, Tatuaje, Anacrón, Bacterias Argentinas, and Grita. Consequently, I examine the ambivalence of location in these eliterature (e-lit) works, considering the following question: what is the function of this reference to the idea of Nation when these productions are hosted in the overflow of cyberspace? My objective is to identify the strategic use of national elements in the aforementioned Latin American corpus.