The ignorant tallerista: toward a community of practice in the representation of the literary workshop in the Southern Cone

ABSTRACT

This study reflects on the idea of community of practice in a corpus of contemporary Latin American texts that address literary workshops as a learning space. Thus, it is intended to demonstrate how the idea of community of practice, such as that of pedagogical identity or repertoire, appears in contemporary texts as an established, recognisable practice and, in general, linked to the idea of an ignorant schoolmaster (Rancière). For this reason, the study reviews the classes of Hebe Uhart compiled by Liliana Villanueva; the chronicles of Villanueva on the workshops of renowned Latin American authors such as Abelardo Castillo and Liliana Heker; and essays by Tamara Kamenzsain, Fabián Casas, and Luis López-Aliaga. Lastly, the study highlights texts by prominent Latin American writers in which they reflect on the practice of writing as a community exercise of the creation of knowledge developed and reproduced by practitioners.

KEYWORDS:

• Creative writing
• communities of practice
• identity
• workshop
• the ignorant schoolmaster

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The use of the concept ‘Southern Cone’ is extensively used in the literature, and points primarily to Argentina Chile and Uruguay (Scocco 2010; Quilodrán-Salgado 2011; Grimson 2014).

2 We prefer to use the term tallerista because it reflects a certain identity that is difficult to translate. The term is widely used in the Southern Cone and refers to the tutor of a literary creation workshop, who is also a writer, and who makes this practice a stable part of his or her work and identity.

3 Chiques is the inclusive neologism that does not distinguish gender, because in normative Spanish, any plural that implies two genders always has a masculine form. Thus, the plural of boys (chicos) and girls (chicas) is chicos.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by FONDECYT [grand number 1210209]. Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico.

Notes on contributors

Magdalena Palacios Bianchi

Magdalena Palacios Bianchi is Doctoral Candidate in Education & Society at Universidad Andres Bello, Chile. In her doctoral thesis, she explores the identities and communities of practice around creative writing workshops in Chile & the Southern Cone.

Gonzalo Maier Cruz

Gonzalo Maier Cruz is an associate professor at Universidad Andrés Bello and holds a PhD from the Radboud Universiteit. He has written on irony, literature and affects in Latin American culture. His latest books are Piña (Random House, 2022) and Leer y dormir (Minúscula, 2021).