WLP Scholar Series: Violence and Pleasure in Latinx Speculations

Join author and Boston University professor Maia Gil’Adí’s presentation, “Doom Patterns: Violence and Pleasure in Latinx Speculations,” as part of the WLP Scholar Series.

Drawing on her current book project, Gil’Adí examines representations of violence—from the sweeping scale of global imperialism to the close intimacy of domestic violence—in Latinx literature. Putting portrayals of destruction and pain in prose fiction into conversation with aesthetic pleasure, she argues that these two figurations collaborate in the cultural production of Latinx literature and latinidad. To bring these two ostensibly incongruous fields of narrative production into rapprochement, she advances a Latinx speculative reading practice that illuminates elements in the texts that seemingly lay hidden, reveals the excessive in what passes as mundane, and underscores the ongoing nature of imperial, racial, and ethno-national violence. Turning to works by Junot Díaz, Carmen Maria Machado, and Hernan Díaz, Gil’Adí shows how formal elements in the text consistently return readers to moments of destruction and ultimately reveal the speculative nature of latinidad itself.

Free and open to the public. Registration on Eventbrite required by Tuesday, January 24, at 5:00 pm.