Dr Fabricio Tocco

I was born in 1985 in Argentina, but grew up between Buenos Aires and São Paulo (Brazil), within a plurilingual family and a diverse heritage —a mix of Southern and Northern Italian, Portuguese, Sub-Saharan African and Indigenous background from what is now Brazil. After a major economical and political crisis that affected South America in the early 2000s, I moved with my family to Catalonia, Spain, where I finished high-school in Tarragona and later earned two BAs at the Universitat de Barcelona (Comparative Literature and Spanish Language and Literature).

In 2010, I moved to Paris (France), as part of the Erasmus Program, to study at the Université Paris-Sorbonne, Paris IV. In 2013, I completed my MA in Littérature et Histoire at the Université Paris 7, where I wrote the thesis Le fantastique hispanique à la lumière de la théorie et la sociologie de la littérature, under the supervision of Prof Guiomar Hautcœur.

In 2019, I obtained my PhD in Hispanic Studies at the University of British Columbia (Canada), where I wrote the dissertation A Poetics of Failure: Individualism and the Post Dictatorial State in Southern Cone Detective Stories, under the supervision of Prof. Jon Beasley-Murray.

In January 2021, I joined ANU, where I have been convening the Portuguese program and teaching courses on different levels of Spanish language as well as Spanish and Latin American literature and film.

In 2022, I published an adapted version of my dissertation as my first book Latin American Detectives against Power. Individualism, the State and Failure in Crime Fiction, with Lexington books. Whereas detective stories have often been read as a modern translation of an old literary opposition (good and evil, order against chaos, the cop chasing the thief), my first book examines a second, underlying battle at stake: the rivalry between the detective who confronts not only the criminal but also the police. In turn, this antagonism stands for a deeper historical and political problem: the tensions between individidualism and the state.

The canon of North American and British detective stories has dramatised this tension, treating the detective as a personification of individualism and the police as an incarnation of the state. Traditionally, this has been regarded as a critique of the state: in Poe, Conan Doyle, Hammett or Chandler, either the armchair detective or the hard-boiled tough guy, they almost invariably outwit the incompetent police at the end of the plot, solving the case first. Latin American Detectives against Power explores detective stories by authors from Argentina, Brazil and Chile: Ricardo Piglia, Rubem Fonseca, and Roberto Bolaño. Most of them were published over the 1990s post-dictatorial period in the region, dealing, in one way or another, with 1970s state-sponsored violence. Examining the centrality of failure (understood both as "defeat" and "malfunction") in the work of these authors, the book exposes how the Anglo-American canon, with its masculine fantasies of individualism and power, functions more as an apology than as a genuine critique of the state.

Latin American Detectives against Power was awarded the International Crime Fiction Association 2022 Book Prize. In awarding the prize, ICFA noted that:“This is a brave ground-breaking book. Reading Latin American crime fiction through the lens of canonical Anglo-American texts, authors, and detective figures to begin with, it branches out into literature less seen and/or less often associated with detective fiction. Elucidating the creation of crime fiction within different political backdrops he shows how this type of literature can illuminate conceptions of place, politics, reading and resistance.”

Reviews:

• Journal of Latin American Geography.
• Periphērica.
• Crime Fiction Studies.

I am currently completing my second book, Precarious Secrets. A History of the Political Thriller in Latin America, which is under contract with University of Texas Press.

PhD Hispanic Studies (University of British Columbia); MA Littérature et Histoire (Université Paris 7); BA Comp. Lit. and BA Spanish (Universitat de Barcelona).

• Intersections between Fiction, History and Political Theory
• 20^th and 21^st centuries Latin American Literature and Film
• Trans-Indigenous Literature and Film across the Pacific: Global South Studies (Latin America and Australia)
• Latin American Studies and Critical Theory: Infrapolitics and Affect Theory
• Popular Genres: Crime Fiction, Political Thriller