Non-literary Fiction : Art of the Americas Under Neoliberalism

**Explores a new form of fiction that emerged in late-twentieth-century visual art across the Americas.** With __Non-Literary Fiction__, Esther Gabara examines how contemporary art produced across the Americas has reacted to the rising tide of neoliberal regimes, focusing on the crucial role of fiction in daily politics. Gabara argues that these particular fictions depart from familiar literary narrative structures and emerge in the new mediums and practices that have revolutionized contemporary art. Each chapter details how fiction is created through visual art forms—in performance and body art, posters, mail art, found objects, and installations. For Gabara, these fictions comprise a type of art that asks viewers to collaborate in the creation of the work and helps them to withstand the brutal restrictions imposed by dominant neoliberal regimes. From repressive regimes of the 1960s and 1970s to free trade agreements of the 1990s, artists and critics consistently said no to economic privatization, political deregulation, and reactionary social logic as they rejected inherited notions of visual, literary, and political representation. Through close analyses of artworks and writings by leading figures of these two generations, including Indigenous thinkers, Gabara shows how negation allows for the creation of fiction outside textual forms of literature. "Non-literary Fiction examines contemporary art produced in Latin America in reaction to the growing tide of neoliberalism with its purging of specific social, ethnic, and racial meanings. Over decades, military juntas throughout South and Central America (often supported by the US) have brutally restricted freedom of movement and speech and caused whole segments of their populations to "disappear." Gabara shows how many Latin American artists since the late 1950s have strategically positioned their art as "fictions" in response to the social death and unspeakable violence that undergirds their experience. By "fictions," Gabara means a kind of art that encourages a beholder or participant to create the work's meaning for herself, out of her own experience, thus engaging in fabulation. She brings together artists working across Latin America, in diaspora, and in the US to offer a pathway out of the nationalistic frameworks that generally attend Latin American studies ("Mexican art," "Brazilian art," etc.) She builds a case regarding nonliterary fictions through nuanced readings of works by many artists, from famous ones such as Lygia Clark, Hélio Oiticica, and Francis Alÿs to emerging artists Abraham Cruzvillegas, Amalia Pica, and Chemi Rosado-Seijo, to Latinx artists such as Asco, Raphael Montañez Ortiz, and Ruben Ortiz Torres, engaging work within the political frameworks of Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the US"-- Provided by publisher. Explores a new form of fiction that emerged in late-twentieth-century visual art across the Americas. With Non-literary Fiction , Esther Gabara examines how contemporary art produced across the Americas has reacted to the rising tide of neoliberal regimes, focusing on the crucial role of fiction in daily politics. Gabara argues that these fictions depart from familiar literary narrative structures and emerge in the new mediums and practices that have revolutionized contemporary art. Each chapter details how fiction is created through visual art forms—in performance and body art, posters, mail art, found objects, and installations. For Gabara, these fictions comprise a type of art that asks viewers to collaborate in the creation of the work and helps them to withstand the brutal restrictions imposed by dominant neoliberal regimes. During repressive regimes of the 1960s and 1970s and free trade agreements of the 1990s, artists and critics consistently said no to economic privatization, political deregulation, and reactionary social logic as they rejected inherited notions of visual, literary, and political representation. Through close analyses of artworks and writings by leading figures of these two generations, including Indigenous thinkers, Gabara shows how negation allows for the creation of fiction outside textual forms of literature.