The Literary and the Public: Criticism and Theory before the State and Property

In an answer to Marcelo Topuzian's call to rethink the relationship of State and culture in order to understand the work of criticism and theory, this paper sets itself to explore the link between some literary scholars and the reawakening of anarchist and autonomist traditions in the last few decades in Latin America. Through the lenses of those political traditions, literary studies such as those of Irina Garbatzky, Florencia Garramuno, Reinaldo Laddaga, Josefina Ludmer, Mariano Mosquera, Fermin Rodriguez and Cecilia Sanchez Idiart -along the lines of post-autonomy and biopolitics- are to be cast as a public (non state) practice which addresses the literary and aesthetic as a common social wealth. The work of scholars may thus be defined as that of socializing such wealth as a collective tool, against any form of private or state appropriation.