Epistemic Communities in Spanish Poetry of the 21st Century. An Alternative to the Concept of Generation

Abstract

The aim of this research is to propose an alternative conceptual model to that of the literary generation, with which the members of each poetic period are traditionally grouped. This desire for change is due to the fact that we have detected a tendency among recent poetry criticism, both anthological and monographic, to speak of the notions of openness, plurality and heterogeneity as the guiding categories of Spanish poetry in the 21st century. These terms, although at first glance they seem to underline the formal and enunciative freedoms of the latest voices, actually impose a clear restriction when it comes to speaking of a shared aesthetic horizon. In this quest for a theoretical alternative, we will start with Fernando Broncano's reading of Miranda Fricker's notion of “epistemic community”. Finally, we will analyse three current anthologies, whose compiler's criterion is based on the above-mentioned criteria. All in all, we do not intend to impose a univocal conceptual view, but rather to begin to open up a theoretical horizon in which poets can think of themselves as a community without having to renounce their singularities and differences.