"Gabara argues that contemporary Latin American art confronts the interventions of neoliberal regimes in the daily lives of citizens through its deployment of fiction as a means of challenging the political order and subverting the status quo. The concept of negation is central to the book’s thesis, rooted in interdisciplinary research in anthropology, literature, and philosophy. . . . Garbara's methodology is grounded in theories about the nonobjectivity of art and art-making. In particular, the author highlights how the art forms of installation and performance support community building and social engagement. . . . Summing Up: Recommended."

Choice

"Gabara’s thoughtful intervention will be of interest to scholars in the visual arts, cultural, literary and media studies. It demonstrates the contemporaneity and contributions of Amerindian thought to canonical artistic practices, shedding light on how the latter may or may not allegorically negate neoliberal transformations, by way of collaborative inventions or non-literary fictions that blur the distinction between the literary and the visual."

Visual Studies

"Gabara takes us into an erudite exploration to answer what seems to be a simple, straightforward question: what is fiction in art? How are works of art fictions? The answer unfolds in five chapters, an introduction, and an epilogue in which the author composes a theory of visual fiction, devoid of the narrative conventions that typically dominate discussions on the matter from both literary and art historical perspectives."

Hispanic Review

“Gabara’s powerful critical lens is as broad as the Americas and as precise as a single performance or found object. Non-literary Fiction is a major contribution to our understanding of how art refutes the neoliberal Thatcherism ‘There is no alternative.’ Gabara’s extraordinary study shows there is always an alternative.”

Diana Taylor, New York University

“Gabara presents a compellingly hemispheric case for non-literary fiction, negation, and Amerindian thought as central to a distinctive turn in artistic practice since the late 1950s. This tour de force is a must-read for anyone interested in new critical terms for studying how artistic form and thought have engaged the violence of a prevailing social order.”

Chon Noriega, Distinguished Professor, UCLA