Francophone and Hispanophone Fantastic Literature and the Politics of Power - The 123rd Annual PAMLA Conference
This panel explores how Francophone and Hispanophone fantastic literatures engage structures of power, hierarchy, and authority across diverse historical and cultural contexts.
From the nineteenth century to the present, Francophone and Hispanophone fantastic literatures have unsettled the boundaries between the real and the impossible. Emerging from interconnected histories shaped by imperial expansion, colonial violence, dictatorship, revolution, and migration, the fantastic operates not only as narrative hesitation, but as a subtle language of power. As theorists such as Tzvetan Todorov and David Roas have shown, ontological uncertainty is never merely aesthetic. It signals deeper crises of authority, perception, and legitimacy.
