Latin-American Comparatism and Popular and "Mass" Literature: from the Stereotype to New Identity Constructions in the Meeting of Ones with Others

Abstract

The encounter, sometimes unbalanced and stereotyped and others revealing and functional, between ones and others across cultural and artistic texts is a phenomenon that has been intensified in Latin America on the context of economic globalization and the mundialization of culture. Beyond the myth of continental unit that has been constructed along the modern history, and off the role that canonical literature has been playing in this phenomenon, for example across the Boom, a circulation of fictional "latin" products -tag of the cultural USA imperialism- immersed in popular culture, has become more and more intense between the different countries of Latin America. Inside this reality the intention is to determine what scope, sense and function have some recent methodologies of the universal comparative literature -like imagology- and those of the Latin-American comparatism, to answer
questions related to the images that the different societies construct on themselves and on others by their textual production of massive and popular range. This in a postcolonial, multicultural and `mestiza´ Latin America where criticism of its own has not displaced yet eurocentric and north-American perspectives. Finally, we carried out a reflection on the role that critical theory can play in intercultural relations that create new identities which are not always balanced or fair and sometimes help to feed negative stereotypes and transform traditions in to simplified elements of consumption.