Creativity and Science in Contemporary Argentine Literature: Between Romanticism and Formalism (Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 10) (Volume 10)

With a burgeoning academic interest in Latin American science fiction and cyberfiction and in representations of science and technology in Latin American literature and cinema, this book adds new understanding to the growing body of interdisciplinary work on the relationship between literature and science in postmodern culture.Joanna Page examines how contemporary fiction and literary theory in Argentina consistently employ theories and models from mathematics and science to probe the nature of innovation and evolution in literature. Theories of incompleteness, uncertainty, and chaos are often mobilized in European and North American literary and philosophical texts as metaphors for the inadequacy of our epistemological tools to probe the world's complexity. However, in recent Argentine fiction, these generalizations are put to very different uses: to map out the potential for artistic creativity and regeneration in times of crisis. Page focuses on texts by contemporary Argentine writers Ricardo Piglia, Guillermo Marti ́nez and Marcelo Cohen, which draw on theories of formal systems, chaos, emergence, and complexity to counter proclamations of the end of philosophy or the exhaustion of literature in the postmodern era.This book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of how newness and creativity have been theorized, tracing often unexpected relationships between thinkers such as Nietzsche, Deleuze, and the Russian Formalists. It is also the first time that a major study in English has been published on the work of Martínez, Piglia, or Cohen. Creativity and Science joins the ongoing discussion about how literature engages with theories and practices of science and their impact on the wider cultural imaginary. English-language audiences know this engagement through works by authors ranging from C. P. Snow and Aldous Huxley to J. G. Ballard and Thomas Pynchon: works that have often fed a dystopian or apocalyptic vision of the world, in which rational enterprise and artistic innovation have come to an end, and society is set on a path of inexorable decline. In Creativity and Science, Joanna Page brings to us an exploration of Argentine fiction that challenge such visions. Examining the works of Marcelo Cohen, Guillermo Martínez and Ricardo Piglia, Page argues that these writers draw on models and theories from mathematics and science and put them to a very different use than their English-language counterparts: to defend intellectual activity and to testify to the endless capacity of literature to thrive through self-renewal, reinvention and the creation of new forms. The syntheses these writers imagine between literature and science - and that they allow us to imagine in turn, suggests Page - are more productive and nuanced than many of those that have shaped recent debates on literature, science, and ethnology within the European and North American academies. This is the first book-length study in English of three key authors in contemporary Argentine literature. It also makes an important contribution to theories of newness and creativity, tracing unexpected relationships between thinkers such as Nietzsche, Deleuze, and the Russian Formalists. Book jacket With a burgeoning academic interest in Latin American science fiction and cyberfiction and in representations of science and technology in Latin American literature and cinema, this book adds new understanding to the growing body of interdisciplinary work on the relationship between literature and science in postmodern culture. Joanna Page examines how contemporary fiction and literary theory in Argentina consistently employ theories and models from mathematics and science to probe the nature of innovation and evolution in literature. Theories of incompleteness, uncertainty, and chaos are often mobilized in European and North American literary and philosophical texts as metaphors for the inadequacy of our epistemological tools to probe the world's complexity. However, in recent Argentine fiction, these generalizations are put to very different uses: to map out the potential for artistic creativity and regeneration in times of crisis. Page focuses on texts by contemporary Argentine writers Ricardo Piglia, Guillermo Marti ́nez and Marcelo Cohen, which draw on theories of formal systems, chaos, emergence, and complexity to counter proclamations of the end of philosophy or the exhaustion of literature in the postmodern era. This book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of how newness and creativity have been theorized, tracing often unexpected relationships between thinkers such as Nietzsche, Deleuze, and the Russian Formalists. It is also the first time that a major study in English has been published on the work of Martínez, Piglia, or Cohen. With a burgeoning academic interest in Latin American science fiction and cyberfiction and in representations of science and technology in Latin American literature and cinema, this book adds new understanding to the growing body of interdisciplinary work on the relationship between literature and science in postmodern culture.Joanna Page examines how contemporary fiction and literary theory in Argentina consistently employ theories and models from mathematics and science to probe the nature of innovation and evolution in literature. Theories of incompleteness, uncertainty, and chaos are often mobilized in European and North American literary and philosophical texts as metaphors for the inadequacy of our epistemological tools to probe the world's complexity. However, in recent Argentine fiction, these generalizations are put to very different uses: to map out the potential for artistic creativity and regeneration in times of crisis. Page focuses on texts by contemporary Argentine writers Ricardo Piglia, Guillermo Martínez and Marcelo Cohen, which draw on theories of formal systems, chaos, emergence, and complexity to counter proclamations of the end of philosophy or the exhaustion of literature in the postmodern era.This book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of how newness and creativity have been theorized, tracing often unexpected relationships between thinkers such as Nietzsche, Deleuze, and the Russian Formalists. It is also the first time that a major study in English has been published on the work of Martínez, Piglia, or Cohen Joanna Page. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Issued Also In Electronic Format.