This panel stems from the need to address the growing interrelation of technology and politics from a humanistic perspective. The Fourth Industrial Revolution, characterized by the integration of physical, digital, and biological systems and the emergence of new technologies such as artificial intelligence (Schwabb, “4IR”), is transforming notions of humanity and altering political processes and institutions—from influencing elections to steering governmental actions under allegedly technical principles such as rationality and efficiency. These developments have involved the global rise of powerful technological elites and experts who, despite being non-elected, present themselves and their corporations as best suited to devise and implement policies in the context of an increasingly complex, hyper-mechanized world (LaFrance, “The Rise of Techno-Authoritarianism”). The Hispanic World, where technocracy was since the 1960s and 1970s associated with authoritarian and semi-authoritarian regimes in countries such as Spain, Chile, Argentina, Peru, and Colombia (Camprubí, Engineers and the Making of Francoist Spain; Dargent, Technocracy and Democracy in Latin America), boosts a remarkable tradition of thought and cultural production that engages political models predicated on the chief role of technology in society. While considerations of this topic have come from fields such as history (Boccardo, “Tecnocracias en América Latina”) and political science (Lassalle, Ciberleviatán), contributions from literary studies have been less common. This panel examines literature as a productive site of comprehension and critique of technocracy—which often stresses its allegedly ‘technical’ orientation to dissuade ideological examination. The panelists will discuss the multiple ways in which works of literature across Spain and Latin America make visible and grant affective depth to the asymmetries advanced by techno-centric changes affecting the economy, labor conditions, human agency, and social relations.

To promote discussion, this panel includes three 15-minute presentations.

The first paper addresses the early twentieth century, when “belief in an open public sphere weakened” in the face of rapid social and technological changes, prompting some to deem the “delegation of political power to technocrats as essential” and others to call to “safeguard people’s rights to design and deliberate on their own futures” (Jasanoff, “Sience and Democracy” 263). In “Speculative Fiction and Anti-Utopian Technocractic Society in Spain,” Anna Torres-Cacoullos examines Camilo Millán Villanueva’s narrative “Una historia de amor en el siglo XXI” (1902), which envisions a future Spain dedicated to the intellectual and biological perfection of humanity. Beyond a mechanized system of courtship and marriage, this narrative presents a technological utopia: doctors, aerial engineers, rapid travel, global commerce, and efficient communication. But beneath lies an anti-utopian vision—one where work, productivity, and mechanization dominate, leaving no space for sentiment, familial ties, or personal subjectivity. Ultimately, Millán Villanueva’s story critiques any utopianism that might arise from a society obsessed with work and efficiency.

In the second paper, “Technofascism: On Madness and the Twilight of Neoliberal Reason,” José Luis Suárez Morales reads Benjamín Labatut’s novel Un verdor terrible (2020) along with Chile’s role in shaping global technocracy and its darker side: madness. Devised by a cohort of powerful technocrats, Augusto Pinochet’s economic reform (1973-1990) was a workshop for neoliberalism in which economic rationality replaced democracy by force. While centering on European, Japanese, and US-American scientists, Labatut’s novel shows that, much like in Chile, technics and reason become the grounds for legitimacy, madness, and irrationality—themselves products of a technocratic reason. Labatut’s meditation on madness as part and parcel of extreme rationalization affords a means to engage a contemporary world with outbursts of seemingly irrational and illiberal populist movements.

Lastly, in “Mobility, Space, and Sensory Experience,” Elizabeth Barrios shows how Ricardo Montiel’s “Estar montado” expands the scope of Venezuelan oil literature by shifting attention from extraction sites to the structures of urban life in Maracaibo. Drawing on Victor Seow’s concept of carbon technocracy, this paper examines how Montiel’s essayistic narrator maps the city’s bifurcation into la ciudad del sentado (drivers)—where fossil-fueled transport fosters isolation—and la ciudad del caminante (walkers)—where movement at a human pace exposes environmental degradation and sensory overload. As Seow argues, technocratic visions often misalign with lived realities, benefiting the few at the expense of the many. In Maracaibo, this logic privileges drivers while rendering walking not just difficult but nearly subversive. “Estar montado” unsettles the illusion of oil’s placelessness, prompting a reevaluation of how petroleum-driven development reshapes space, mobility, and social relations in contemporary Venezuela.

This panel showcases a diverse range of perspectives by including participants from different genders at different career stages, scholars of different national origin who focus on different areas within the Hispanic World and work at different types of institutions (R1, R2, and LAC).