A Publishing Field? Literary Culture, Markets and Publishing Practices Between Argentina and Spain

Abstract

Publishing industry has special features of which other kinds of productive and commercial activities lack. Book publishers occupy a significant position in a cultural field as the objet which they produce has got a symbolic significance that includes putting in objective terms identities and cultural traditions. According to that and to the fact that language is the main common factor in publishing activity, this paper puts forward the need to study the relations between publishing industries in Spanish language as a key to the development of literary history in these countries. This particular transatlantic link "”most often visible in terms of competitiveness"” would integrate the net of connections that explain why national literary histories cannot be understood isolated from a linguistic transnational community. In particular, this paper focuses on the directions of the publishing relations between the two main publishing industries in Spanish: Spain and Argentina. This premise leads us to distinguish, along the 20th century, four major paradigms according to representational patterns, publishing strategies and political and trade contexts which have objective consequences on literary processes of canonization.