The "new spirit of capitalism" has a woman's face: the feminization of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in Mario Vargas Llosa's The Feast of the Goat and Jorge Volpi's It Shall Not Be the Earth

Abstract

I analyze how and why neo-liberalism is gendered in two recent Spanish American novels: Mario Vargas Llosa's La fiesta del Chivo (2000) and Jorge Volpi's No será la Tierra (2006). In these novels, female characters work for the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund respectively while male characters represent the traditional nation-state. Both novelists make sure to gender the transition between a masculine, state-organized capitalism, and a feminine, transnational capitalism. The comparison draws on Boltanski's and Chiapello's Le nouvel esprit du capitalisme, which argues that capitalism renews itself by assimilating elements of its critique.