Call for Papers Issue 9 (February 2024)—CLOSED

Crime Fiction and Its Contemporary Avatars

Guest editor: Dr. Ainhoa Vásquez Mejías (National Autonomous Univeristy of Mexico, UNAM)

 

Though associated with a set of conventions, crime narrative has not remained stable through time. Just as Tzvetan Todorov affirms in his essay on “The Origin of Genres,” each historical period, each society, chooses a given genre to give an account of its concerns, problems, and illusions. In this sense, crime fiction, for example, has variously responded to the sociopolitical situations of each different context that has engaged with the genre. The crimes of the “classic” detective novel, which peaked in Europe at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th, were related, mainly, to puzzles that a detective with an above-average intellectual ability managed to solve. This formula was crucially adapted in the United States, starting in the year 1922 when, in the Black Mask magazine, the works of writers such as Dashiell Hammett, author of the novel Red Harvest (1929)—the starting point of the hardboiled—began to appear. The stories of this period are characterized by the harshness of the text and the characters, particularly that of the detective figure, whose very personal ethical code many times differs from that which pervades its context. For Mempo Giardinelli (1984), this type of fiction carries out the representation of a world ruled by the clash of political and/or economical power, bottomless ambition, sexism, violence, and tooth-and-nail individualism, all of which are products of a society generally regarded by writers as corrupted and in decay.

 

In the decade of 1980, in the Latin-American context, the hardboiled subgenre arrived under the name of neopolicial, with a clear emphasis on one of its traits: the representations of crimes that cannot be solved or are tainted by impunity. These works constitute a harsh social critique of institutions, which are regarded as the source of criminality. From this tradition stem characters like detective Héctor Belascoarán Shayne, created by the Mexican writer Paco Ignacio Taibo II, or detective Heredia, by the Chilean writer Ramón Díaz Eterovic, amongst others. In turn, francophone countries have a rich tradition of the so-called neo-noir, even prior to that of the Belgian writer Georges Simenon, and they offer well regarded authors such as the French Fred Vargas and, in more recent years, Olivier Norek. The countries of the Scandinavian Peninsula have also produced important authors that can be classified among the exponents of the neo-noir: in the 1990s, the Swedish writer Henning Mankell began the novel series of inspector Wallander, and Jo Nesbo, the king of Norwegian crime fiction, the saga of detective Harry Hole. At the beginning of the 20th century, the also Swedish writer Stieg Larsson offered the famous Millenium trilogy. In the contemporary Irish context, the novels of Benjamin Black recreate the legacy of Simenon in stories set in the Dublin of the 1950s, while Tana French, in more recent years, subverts gender representations and, even, transposes the centrality of the urban scene to present natural spaces that are not usually a part of the subgenre in question. For this and other aspects, French’s prose, while recreating elements of noir fiction, also takes us to the territory of the thriller and other variants of crime fiction.

 

Well into the 21st century, we find other possibilities for works that have inherited the legacy of the hardboiled, particularly, and crime fiction, in general: fiction of feminicide, narcotraffic, organized crime, displacements, among others. While these variants can be grouped in the category of “crime novels,” some specialists have coined terms that aim to evince their particular elements: narco-literature (Ramón Olvera, Felipe Oliver) or anomia novels (Gustavo Forero), for example. In all cases, crime is at the core of the stories, although some of the conflicts are of very different sorts, which confirms that crime fiction is still an ideal genre to portray the complex contemporary social fabrics and their links with the individual and private realms. Moreover, the written tradition so far described has been a key starting point for the creation of cinematic and televisual works—original or adapted—and is enmeshed in a double-bind artistic dialogue between the literary and the audiovisual contemporary languages. Streaming platforms have facilitated the distribution of films and series from numerous countries while provoking an standardization of products, which is as well a rich object of study.

 

Thus, given the intricate evolution of this type of fiction, for the 9th issue of Nuevas Poligrafias. Revista de Teoría Literaria y Literatura Comparada, we invite specialists in the areas of literature, arts, and the humanities to submit original and unpublished articles that reflect the vitality of crime fiction (with special emphasis on the neo-noir) and its contemporary avatars. We will favor the contributions centered on artistic and critical works produced in the last 40 years associated with the legacy of noir fiction and its different manifestations in the contemporary sphere. Some of the themes suggested are the following:

 

~The appropriation of the convention of crime fiction in contemporary literature (from 1980) and in other artistic and cultural products such as cinema, TV series, etcetera

~The subgenre of neo-noir fiction and its contemporary appearances

~The relationship between the aesthetics of crime fiction and other genres (horror, science fiction, fantasy) or other modes of artistic articulation

~The aesthetics and conventions of crime fiction in Latin American contemporary literatures

~Crime and its variations in narcotraffic literature

~Crime and gender violence: challenges to the stereotypes and modes of representation of gender identities in contemporary crime fiction

~Crime and the authorial figure: pseudonyms, heteronyms, collective authorships

~Ethics and the representation of violence in the variations of crime: reading practices and target audiences

 

We will continue to receive contributions on our other familiar topics—that is, on studies of literary theory and literature in different languages, genre, gender, images, themes and historical settings, popular culture, and postcolonial studies. We will also receive book reviews related to comparative literature and literary theory.

 

The length of the articles proposed must be between 5000 and 7000 words, including notes and bibliographical references. The length of the reviews must be between 1000 and 1500 words. All contributions must adhere to the general requirements and editorial guidelines established by the journal, and they should be submitted through the editorial manager of this website. Although we receive contributions all year round, the deadline for papers to be included in the 9th issue is 15 August 2023. The publication of issue 9 of the journal is scheduled for February 2024.