Conclusion “Something That Might Resemble a Call”: Testimonial Theory and Practice in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

In theory as well as in practice, testimonio’s centrifugal force is undeniable. That outward trajectory is not only geographic; testimonio’s generic variety has grown apace. As a Latin Americanist and literary scholar brought up on the old new narrative and the magical variety of realism, I cannot help but experience a flash of déjà vu at this veritable boom. It is not just that once again a genre has emerged from Latin America to go global. There is also something familiar about the sequence of scholarship. First come claims that a movement is not only grounded in the region but is somehow generically defined by one particular moment and milieu. Then, in the midst of the celebration of its authentically Latin American character, a movement slips that early critical yoke, spreading beyond the region even as it continues to develop within. Critics are faced with a choice: either declare that whatever overruns those early geographic and generic bounds cannot be the real thing or else revise their definitions in light of new developments. Like the scholars who elected to study the magical realism of Toni Morrison and Salman Rushdie alongside that of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Isabel Allende, essayists in this collection have opted to follow testimonio from its canonical beginnings in Latin America through new forms and into new places.