There is an “Other” Story: "Misterios del Plata" and the Case of Female Novels in XIX Century Latin America

Until three decades or so, in the context of the Brazilian literary studies, a context that bears similarities with other academic contexts in Latin American countries, it would be unthinkable or, at least, it would not be regarded as a serious academic endeavor, to raise discussions on non-canonical literary production, particularly if these were grounded on a critique that sought to address the question of female authorship, that is, the unauthorized status of women as discursive subjects and their invisibility in literary historiography as a problem of patriarchal cultures. This was something that simply could not be done from within the existing disciplinary framework because non-canonical works were categorized as works that could not stand up to the referential values set by the parameters and conventions of the discipline. The mechanisms by which the discipline secured its epistemological domain, including here assumptions or claims of truth on the “literary” nature of certain objects whose aesthetic value were attested by way of their so-called representativeness, permanence and universality, integrated what we understand today as the literary institutional apparatus. From the point of view of its regulatory function within national cultures, this apparatus operated as a discursive power system through the agency of literary historians and literary critics, the guardians of canons and of literary traditions, in that they produced interpretations and critical validation to those works that deserved to belong to the literary system. The field of knowledge about woman and literature and approaches to include women in literary history did not exist within the framework of traditional disciplinary paradigms. One may say that both discipline and the literary institution functioned, not surprisingly, in compliance with all the other ideological apparatus of a patriarchal society.[…]