PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2018, Arts and Sciences: Romance Languages and Literatures

This dissertation discusses the cardboard publishing phenomenon at the beginning of the 21st century in Latin America, focusing on the book Conjuros y ebriedades. Cantos de mujeres mayas (2010), published by Taller Lenateros in Chiapas, Mexico; using theoretical and methodological concepts of Cultural Studies (Garcia Canclini, Baudrillard, Bourdieu, Benjamin, Deleuze and Guattari, among others) and Latin American indigenous literary studies (Arias, Carcamo-Huechante and del Valle Escalante, among others). The privatization of the Latin American publishing field during the infamous decade at the end of the 20th Century engendered an explosion of alternative projects from the margins of the publishing industry that sought a more direct relationship between authors, publishers and readers; This is how cardboard publishers emerge, whose books are usually made with reused cardboard. To understand the development of the cardboard publishing phenomenon, four stages were identified: precursory (1930-2002), oral (2003-2007), mediatic (2008-2009) and institutional (2010 onward); as well as three axes: literary, communitary and plastic. The cultural hybridizations of the phenomenon have allowed the pluricanonic publication of consecrated, rescued, emerging and/or novel authors; as well as diverse community experiences in Latin America. Taller Lenateros was integrated into the phenomenon through Cuxtitali Kartonera, rescuing ancestral techniques for the community elaboration of books and disseminating indigenous oral literature (Mayan-Tsotsil). Like the oral stage cartoneras books, they generated an important symbolic capital inherited from the authors that they themselves rescued. From that literary heritage they not only obtained cultural capital as editors, but as writers, such as the case of Ambar Past in the Taller Lenateros or Douglas Diegues with Yiyi Jambo Cartonera in Paraguay. Today, more than an alternative editorial proposal they are an identity phenomenon thr (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Nicasio Urbina Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Jorge Espinoza (Committee Member); Carlos Gutiérrez Ph.D. (Committee Member); Andrés Pérez-Simón Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Latin American Literature