Literature tout-monde ? Transnational y Trans Area challenges for LatinCentral American literary studies

Abstract

This essay establishes a dialogue between the concepts of transnationalism and TransArea and the studies of Latin American literatures and cultures. It asks if and how it could be possible to make the transnational studies and TransArea Studies, which have been developing, extending and diversifying through the past decades in the felds of social sciences and humanities, productive for the literary studies in and about Latin America, and particularly Central America. It points out the challenges and possibilities, but also the limitations and dangers of the transnational turn in literary studies, which has been addressed recently in a number of essays, especially in Europe, revitalizing and re-signifying the concept of Weltliteratur. Particularly, it questions if and how the concepts of transnationalism and TransArea can open new research paths and produce knowledge on the complex relationship between nation-culture/literature-world based on some theorizations, conceptual proposals and research projects about Latin and Central American literatures produced in recent decades.