Utopia and postmodernism in recent Latin American fiction

The concept of utopia has been a dominant force in the collective Latin American psyche since the era of colonization. Utopian desires have manifested themselves not only in the political and social realms in Latin America but also in its literature. This dissertation continues the discussion of utopia through a focus on Latin American literature written during the postmodern era. According to Jean-Francois Lyotard's famous definition of postmodernism---"incredulity toward metanarratives"---we can no longer trust grand narratives such as Marxism that promise to create utopian societies. The failure of socialist and revolutionary movements in Latin America and other regions of the world would seem to confirm this general pessimism.; The question I consider in this dissertation is how recent Latin American fiction has responded to this crisis. The following four novels written during the 1990's address this issue: La nada cotidiana by Zoe Valdes, Cielos de la tierra by Carmen Boullosa, Babel, el paraiso by Miguel Gutierrez, and Waslala by Gioconda Belli. Each of these novels echoes, to varying degrees, the pessimism of postmodernism with respect to the viability of utopian projects. The theoretical framework of my analysis is grounded in Lyotard's explanation of the "postmodern condition," derived from Ludwig Wittgenstein's notion of language games, and postmodern/poststructuralist theories of language, all of which suggest how language itself is often implicated in the crisis of utopia. The postmodern theories that inform my discussion indicate how language use in society is not always the simple affair that many modern structuralists assumed it was. In fact, conversation and communication often lead to conflict or misunderstanding, which can threaten the construction or maintenance of a utopian society. However, despite the current crisis in utopian thought, I show that the idea of utopia is still useful and necessary as a tool to promote progressive social change and as a "directional reference" that can help orient future political projects toward the goal of constructing a more just society. I also demonstrate that language is not necessarily an insuperable hindrance to the creation of such a society.