A Working-Class Hero Is Something to Be Decolonized: The Representation of the Working Class in 21st-Century Spanish-American Fiction

This research analyzes the representation of the working class in 21st-century Hispanic American narrative. From a decolonial perspective, it examines the applicability of the category of working-class literature to a context where labor intersects with coloniality, racialization, gender, extractivism, and territorial inequalities.By studying the corpus, it explores the narrative strategies used to portray exploitation and precariousness while developing situated subjectivities and forms of resistance, focusing on four areas: Chilean neo-avant-garde (evolution of Diamela Eltit), domestic labor narrative (e.g., Alia Trabucco), speculative and non-mimetic approaches to precarity (dystopias and eco-weird, e.g., Simón López Trujillo), and literatura villera or favela literature (e.g., Washington Cucurto).The project aims to provide critical tools to describe a plural and mobile class and its transformative aspirations within the framework of neoliberalism in Latin America.