The Language of the In-Between

Often, the process of modern state formation is founded on the marginalisation of certain groups, and Latin America is no exception. In The Language of the In-Between, Erika Almenara contends that literary production replicates this same process. Looking at marginalised communities in Chile and Peru, particularly writers who are travesti, trans, cuir/queer, and Indigenous, the author shows how these writers stake a claim for the liminal space that is neither one thing nor the other. This allows a freedom to expose oppression and to critique a national identity based on erasure. By employing a language of non-normative gender and sexuality to dispute the state projects of modernity and modernisation, the voice of the poor and racialised travesti evolves from powerlessness to become an agent of social transformation.