“The heat of a multitudinous assembly”: Striking short fiction and the rise of feminist potencia

Abstract

This article considers how a recent wave of Latin American short fiction captures with immediate topicality new forms of transversal political subjectivity engendered by the international feminist reinvention of the strike in the 21st century. Drawing on Verónica Gago's theorization of the political cartography of feminist potencia (power), alongside the work of Silvia Federici, Rita Segato and Sayak Valencia, it considers how the short story form facilitates a strategic recognition of interconnected violences perpetrated against women and feminized bodies, “mapping forms of violence based on their organic connection, without losing sight of the singularity of the production of the nexus between them” (Gago, 2020, p. 58). In particular, the article examines two exemplary short story collections, Cars on Fire (2020) by Mónica Ramón Ríos and Things We Lost in the Fire (2017) by Mariana Enríquez, considering how these writers repurpose the potential for socio‐criticism embedded in the fantastical short story by offering a multi‐focal critique of how patriarchy and gender violence interact with the structural inequalities unleashed by neoliberal capitalism. The article also considers how these riotous collections mediate the transversal fabric of communitarian struggle in feminist imaginaries, drawing narrative energy from the localised proliferation of neighbourhood assemblies and solidarity networks, while speaking to transnational feminist movements more broadly.

Roundtable discussion: World-culture and social reproduction feminism

“…KH: This question of the utility and significance of shorter fiction seems to have been cropping up more of late – I know Treasa De Loughry, one of the contributors to this special issue, shares this interest, as did a number of the speakers at the Warwick conference that prompted this conversation, including Madeleine Sinclair (2023) at Warwick University. Certainly, I would argue for a reconsideration of the importance of the short story and its significance to the analysis of feminised work.…”