Microhistory of the Crime Fiction. Political Typologies of the Latin American Detective

Abstract

The literary detective adopts different political forms and variants throughout history. The political narrative of the 19th century is etched in a biopolitical mould, and it is the product of a theoretical and social reflection about the new dynamics of the modern man in the big city. The hard-boiled variety, as outlined by Hammet and Chandler, and the reformulations caused by it, responds to a reformist pattern, exhausted the assumptions of Orthodox Marxism and the possibility of a total break. Lastly, the anti-detective fiction is written along experimental lines and it is potentially depoliticized. I will try to explain it summarily in the lines that follow through some particular examples.