The Orange Tree and Postcritique in Valeria Luiselli’s Los ingrávidos

Abstract

Abstract This essay proposes that Valeria Luiselli’s Los ingrávidos rethinks modes of critical reading in the twenty-first century, arguing that the writer trains her reader in a mode of reading which anticipates Rita Felski’s opposition to critique, relishing acceptance and deference over suspicion and interrogation. By focusing on Luiselli’s intervention into readerly practice in this way, the essay moves beyond stringent national and historicist frameworks which often risk obscuring that novelist’s experimental forms and avant-garde project.