MADE IN BUENOS AIRES: ELOÍSA CARTONERA AND LITERARY PRODUCTION IN THE POST-2011 CRISIS IN ARGENTINA Djurdja Trajkovic Under the supervision of Professor Ksenija Bilbija At the University of Wisconsin-Madison This dissertation traces the transgressions in the field of literary production proposed by cultural interventions of young artists and fiction writing of emerging writers in Argentina. As a response to Argentina's 2001 economic collapse, young artists and writers, Javier Barilaro, Fernanda Laguna and Washington Cucurto created an independent publishing house, Eloísa Cartonera, in 2003. The small press proposed a radical solution to degradation and decay in a post crisis society; working in part with cartoneros, garbage pickers, they began to publish low-cost books made out of recycled cardboard as a way to restore dignity and cultural authority to working people. Eloísa also made visible a new wave of emerging writers, including Cucurto, Laguna, Dani Umpi and Cecilia Pavón. These writers advocate for the breach of formal boundaries in fiction writing and in the literary field. The novelty of such an attitude is often times contradictory. As they claim to be alternative to the mainstream canon and field, I argue that their texts inevitably long for visibility within the same canon. Emerging writers are producing self-proclaimed light and fun literature. Even so, their texts are deeply concerned with political and social reality of contemporary Argentina and writer's authority in the post 2001 crisis. This duality "light yet serious" has afforded them with an opportunity to fluidly move within and outside of the literary field while proposing collective social actions and emancipatory promise of artistic practices granted by the Eloísa Cartonera project. As a whole, the dissertation suggests that the concept of cartonera publishing sparked novel social and artistic practices as a way of bypassing norms imposed by the Western and national hegemonic centers of power, mainly big transnational publishing conglomerates. The community of artists, writers and former cartoneros created a new network as a way to defy poverty, achieve social justice, and maintain self-sustainability while producing non commercial literature accessible to low income citizens. This dissertation engages with the interdisciplinary effort to illuminate the potential of literature to provide social, economic, aesthetic and artistic alternatives to increasing inequalities in the global world.