Actuality of the critical thinking of difference in and from latin america

Abstract

The article suggests that the actuality of thinking about literature —theory, history, criticism— may be addressed on the basis of the recognition of a cultural, historical, and social difference characteristic of Latin America: the singularity of difference. It emphasizes two aspects already present in the title: difference and actuality, the actuality of difference. First, we assert Latin America’s difference in a globalized age that seems to neglect the local, and, second, the concept of actuality, taken from Theodor Adorno’s 1935 defense of the “actuality” of philosophy. We discuss several positions that consider this defense of difference an anachronism, on the basis of a critique of the literature of identity, and we argue in favor of this differential thought. Finally, we suggest a form of thought linked to the territory as the locus to construct an epistemology of the local with respect to literature.