Encuentros críticos: una reflexión sobre las literaturas desde el Ecuador (a propósito del XII Encuentro sobre Literatura Ecuatoriana Alfonso Carrasco Vintimilla)

Abstract

At the closing of the twelfth Alfonso Carrasco Vintimilla Literary Encounter in Cuenca, Rut Román proposes a reflection on the false problems and real challenges of contemporary literary criticism. The false problems are those derived from the extreme reactions between the optimistic glare and apocalyptic panic for technology. The changes that mass culture and Cybernetics bring to the field of literature and literary criticism revolve around the place of reading-writing and not in their substantial background. The real challenge of literary criticism in Ecuador, according to the author, is not only to include writers and critics of the ancient cultures of the country, but to develop a critical ad hoc apparatus able to review and enhance the literariness in these texts. The Latin Americanist critic who lives and works in Latin America can see the literary phenomenon, exempt from certain paternalistic and exoticizing looks of cultural analysis from other latitudes.