CHAPTER SIXTEEN DIFFRACTION AND PROFANATION: NEW FORMS OF PUBLISHING IN ARGENTINIAN LITERATURE SOLEDAD PEREYRA In Los libros de la guerra, an anthology of his journalism published in 2008, the controversial Argentine writer Rodolfo Fogwill describes how it was commonplace in the 70s to read work by other Argentine authors in Xerox format using copies which reached him in various and complex ways. In that dark and undemocratic period in Argentina’s history, Fogwill was a young writer and publicist who shared with many writers and readers the desire to stay abreast of new and original developments in their contemporary literary environment. However, during the dictatorship of 1976-1983 the parameters which determined what could be written and published in Argentina were strictly controlled by the government. Censorship and other more violent forms of repression meant that many literary works remained unpublished including those which were judged later on to be the best endeavours from those years. Government control over literature in the dictatorship years lead to the pursuit of unofficial strategies developed in order to ensure the publication, circulation, and distribution of literature and books during those troublesome times. Parallels can be drawn between these strategies and the ones which evolved in literary and publishing circles in the years immediately preceding and following the 2001 Argentine economic crisis. The emergence of these innovative and creative ways of publishing and disseminating literature in the shadow of challenging political and economic circumstances reveals a striking symbiosis between the material aspect of literature—the book itself with its concrete visual appearance— and the historical conditions in which it is created, one which calls into question the conceptual boundaries which define literary production today. From a sociological perspective, Pierre Bourdieu has pointed out the structural parallels between literature and publishing, as well as the displacement of literary texts so that they have become symbolic goods within a highly commercialised publishing environment (1999: 242-245). Although autonomy of the literary and publishing spheres may be a thing