Literature confronts algorithms, inequality and the new architecture of power.
BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA — June 2026. Chilean writer Diamela Eltit arrived in Buenos Aires with a warning about the political, cultural and economic transformation being driven by technology. The 2018 Chilean National Literature Prize winner argued that algorithms increasingly organize everyday life, influence social behavior and reinforce a vast digital form of capitalism. In her view, contemporary society has reached a point where technology is discussed almost as if it were a new god.
Eltit participated in the Frost Reading Series organized by the Master’s Program in Creative Writing at the National University of Tres de Febrero. Her visit offered an opportunity to examine the relationship between literature, authoritarianism, migration, artificial intelligence and inequality in Latin America. These themes have occupied a central place in a body of work that consistently explores people excluded from official narratives.
Born in Santiago in 1947, Eltit is considered one of the most radical voices in contemporary Latin American literature. Her career includes novels, essays, testimonies, performances and projects combining writing with photography and other artistic forms. From her involvement with the Collective of Art Actions during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, she developed an understanding of literature as a political intervention capable of questioning systems of representation.
For Eltit, political literature does not necessarily seek to replace one government with another. Its deeper purpose is to challenge syntax, cultural hierarchies and the ways dominant institutions decide which lives deserve to be represented. Her fiction has repeatedly focused on precarious workers, psychiatric patients, marginalized women and individuals subjected to state, economic and patriarchal violence.
That perspective informs her analysis of the current international climate. Eltit described a dramatic period defined by wars, colonization, forced displacement and increasingly aggressive political discourse. She argued that insecurity associated with organized crime has strengthened governments built around security policies and rejection of migration, while fear has provided fertile ground for the expansion of the far right.
The writer questioned why Latin American governments continue permitting illegal drug markets to generate enormous criminal networks instead of considering greater state regulation. She referred to Uruguay’s legalization of marijuana as an example of an alternative approach. In her assessment, international narcotics structures will continue producing violence as long as governments fail to reduce their economic and territorial power.
Eltit also defended migration as a fundamental historical force. She recalled that major cities and national cultures were constructed through continuous movements of people across borders. The current representation of migrants as threats ignores their role in economic development, cultural formation and the creation of modern societies.
Her concern is especially acute in Chile, where she believes a political current connected to Pinochet has returned after remaining largely outside the center of public life for approximately three decades. She pointed to the reappearance of symbols and gestures associated with the dictatorship as evidence that authoritarian memory has not disappeared. The phenomenon, in her view, reflects a broader regional deterioration in democratic culture.
Eltit linked that deterioration to the changing status of truth and falsehood in political communication. She warned that democracies are threatened when powerful leaders normalize insults, mistreatment and public humiliation. Conduct that would once have been considered incompatible with high office can spread through society when it is performed repeatedly by individuals possessing significant institutional authority.
Technology magnifies that process because digital platforms distribute political messages rapidly while separating users into increasingly fragmented communities. Algorithms determine which information people receive, what products they encounter and which emotions are most likely to maintain their attention. The result is a connection that appears universal but is actually segmented, commercially managed and shaped by corporate interests.
Eltit described the mobile phone as the primary container of contemporary life. Personal communication, photographs, banking services, work, identification and social relationships are concentrated within a single device. This dependence is so intense that many people may fear losing their phone more than losing physical possessions because the device stores access to nearly every essential function.
The writer believes this technological revolution has not yet been socially or politically understood. Artificial intelligence and automated systems are already changing employment, culture, economic organization and the production of knowledge. Whether societies can regulate these systems before they deepen inequality remains one of the most urgent unanswered questions.
Literature is already experiencing that transformation. Eltit noted that digital publishing platforms allow the submission of books produced with artificial intelligence, creating the possibility of thousands of machine-generated titles entering the market every year. She expects fully automated works and hybrid books combining human and artificial production to become increasingly common.
However, she does not believe these developments will eliminate literature written through the direct connection between thought and language. Eltit continues to defend what she calls an artisanal form of writing, created by authors who construct sentences, images and meanings through sustained intellectual labor. For her, this kind of literature remains essential because it can explore experiences that commercially optimized systems may overlook.
Her principal interest continues to be the cultural and linguistic complexity of the peripheries. She argues that much contemporary literature remains centered on bourgeois families and their personal dilemmas, while marginalized communities appear less frequently or are represented without sufficient depth. Restoring their complexity requires recognizing that every individual possesses an inner life that cannot be reduced to income, education or social position.
Language becomes a decisive part of that recovery. Eltit values expressions considered incorrect by formal institutions because they are created and sustained by communities. A grammatical deviation can contain history, identity and shared experience, transforming what official language classifies as an error into a legitimate poetic construction.
Her analysis of inequality also extends beyond economic class. Racial hierarchies continue operating across Latin America, where whiteness and European appearance often receive greater social value despite the region’s diverse populations. Eltit argues that these structures influence culture, politics and the literary canon, determining who receives recognition and whose experiences remain peripheral.
She proposes the construction of a new “hegemony from below,” inspired partly by the ideas of feminist philosopher Nancy Fraser. Such a project would require connecting groups that have been economically, racially and culturally segregated, including those divided within their own communities. Its objective would not simply be to replace one elite with another, but to reorganize representation and political participation.
Eltit’s reflections connect literature with the central conflicts of the digital age. Algorithms may promise efficiency and unlimited access, yet they also reinforce markets, classifications and new forms of control. Against that power, she defends writing capable of preserving complexity, challenging standardized language and making visible the lives excluded from dominant systems.
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