The following is an imperfect translation of a commentary by Luis Othoniel Rosa, writer, poet, anarchist and scholar who, among other things, teaches Latin American literary studies at the University of Nebraska. Luis’s original text in Spanish follows my translation.

What Does It Mean Today to Be Disruptive in Literature?

It means to affirm and to stop making ourselves of interest. Being disruptive in literature today would be to put an end to the era of questions and paradoxes, of undecipherable allegories and of the “writing of the self,” where the children of the white middle class write novels and poems about the silly traumas of their insipid lives. Being disruptive would be imagining possible worlds and manufacturing bold, new mythologies without fear of getting it wrong because it is no longer the writing self that matters, but the collective mind that thinks by means of our writing. We should write without signing our names in order to take seriously the idea that anything anyone writes is really the product of everyone. Being disruptive would be daring to write utopian literature with all the sophistication of the avant-garde and with all the dystopic urgency that threatens us in this world-devouring reality of ours. Being disruptive would be to not fear the words capitalism, patriarchy, racism, imperialism, decolonization, revolution, indigenism, cimarron-ness, Abya Yala, or anarchy, and to discover that these are all enormously literary words, as beautiful as any other and even a bit more so, sometimes much more.

Those geezers who told us that these are not literary words said so because they were lazy, conformist or outright ignorant, who blubbered because with these words you forced them out of their provincial little ghettos of knowledge. To be disruptive today, still, incredibly, means to use inclusive language in our literature, because there are legitimized writers who tell us that only over their dead bodies will they do violence to the Castilian that colonized them. They don’t realize that literature always from the beginning has been violence against language, against dictionaries, against the monolingualism of knowledge. We seem to have forgotten that literature was born at the same time as slavery; that when we began to codify the world in signs, we also converted the world into property; the first writings are lists of possessions; writing is the cruel algorithm that administers death and has always been so. The only sense to literature, since forever, has been to hack this algorithm, to defamiliarize it, to infiltrate it with viruses, spells, witchcraft and collective desires. Ours is an underground, ant-colony art. The enemy is language, writing, the algorithm. Numerous shall be our devouring jaws and succulent will be the enemy’s flesh.

¿Qué significa hoy ser un disruptivo en la literatura?

Pues significa afirmar y dejarnos de hacernos los interesantes. Ser disruptivo en la literatura hoy sería acabar con la era de las preguntas y de las paradojas, de las alegorías indescifrables y de las “escrituras del yo” en donde les niñes de la clase media blanquita nos escriben novelas y poemas sobre los traumas bobos de sus vidas insípidas. Ser disruptivo sería imaginar mundos posibles y manufacturar nuevas mitologías arrebatadas sin temor a equivocarnos porque ya no nos importará tanto el yo que escribe sino la mente colectiva que piensa a través de nuestra escritura. Escribamos sin firmar nuestros nombres para tomarnos en serio eso de que todo lo que escribe cualquiera es realmente producto de todes. Ser disruptivo sería atrevernos a escribir literatura utópica con toda la sofisticación de las vanguardias y con toda la urgencia distópica que nos amenaza en esta realidad devoradora de mundos. Ser disruptivo sería no tenerle miedo a las palabras capitalismo, patriarcado, racismo, imperialismo, descolonización, revolución, indigenismo, cimarronaje, Abya Yala, o anarquía, y redescubrir que son todas palabras tremendamente literarias, tan hermosas como cualquier otra palabra y hasta un poquito más, a veces mucho más. Aquellos viejos que nos decían que esas no son palabras literarias, lo decían porque eran perezosos, o conformistas, o ya de plano unos ignorantes, que balbuceaban porque con esas palabras los sacabas de sus ranchitos provincianos del saber. Ser disruptivo hoy, increíblemente todavía, es usar el lenguaje inclusivo en nuestra literatura, porque hay escritorxs legitimades que nos dicen que ni muertoas van a violentar el Castellano que l@s colonizó. No saben que la literatura siempre desde ya ha sido una violencia contra el lenguaje, contra los diccionarios, contra el monolingüismo de la inteligencia. Es que parece que se nos olvidó que la escritura nació a la misma vez que la esclavitud; que cuando comenzamos a codificar el mundo en signos, también convertimos la vida en propiedad; las primeras escrituras son listas de posesiones; la escritura es el algoritmo cruel que administra la muerte, y siempre lo ha sido. El único sentido de la literatura, desde siempre, ha sido hackear ese algoritmo, desfamiliarizarlo, infiltrarlo con virus, conjuros, brujerías, y deseos colectivos. Arte de hormiguero y subterráneo es el nuestro. El enemigo es el lenguaje, la escritura, el algoritmo. Numerosas tendrán que ser nuestras mandíbulas y suculenta será la carne del enemigo.