Natalia Castro Picón
François Chevalier
Princeton University
Prohibido hablar de política: la poesía española contemporánea contra el malestar neoliberal
Natalia Castro Picón is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Princeton University. She earned her Ph.D. from The Graduate Center, City University of New York, and her B.A. in Hispanic Philology from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She specializes in modern and contemporary Iberian literature and culture, integrating Cultural Studies with a glottopolitical perspective, which considers the political dimension of language and discourse. Her first book, La fiesta del fin del mundo. Apocalipsis cultural en el periodo entre crisis (España 2008–2020), examines apocalyptic imaginaries in the cultural sphere—from cinema and literature to advertising and political communication—showing how they shaped sociopolitical narratives during the “inter-crisis” period. She is also a member of the coordination team of ALCESXXI and participates in other international research groups, such as Transnational Elites, Inequalities and Values (Princeton–Humboldt).
Research project
The project explores the potential of poetry as a political-cultural tool to intervene in the reconstruction of social majorities, which are central to democracy. Currently, the neoliberal technocapitalist drift has commodified and standardized discourse, polarizing ideologies and fragmenting movements. Poetry, through its constant revision and redefinition of meanings, resists standardization and creates shared spaces for negotiating meaning and strengthening intersubjective bonds. In this work, Natalia maps and analyzes works, initiatives, and communities of poetic practice from the late 20th century to the present, combining analysis of books, zines, magazines, audiovisual material, and interviews. The aim is to examine the effects of neoliberal co-optation of language, as well as the cultural and countercultural mechanisms deployed to resist it and foster democratic participation.
Selected Publications
La fiesta del fin del mundo. Apocalipsis cultural en el periodo entre crisis (España 2008–2020) (forthcoming).
“Apocalyptic Visions of the Crisis: The Imaginary of the Flood in Contemporary Spanish Culture”. The Routledge Hispanic Studies Companion, 2025)
“The Sleep of Neoliberal Reason: Denialism, Conspiracies and Storytelling on Crises through Ventajas de viajar en tren”.Humanities, 2022.
“I have a scream: enunciaciones disidentes en torno al 15M en España” (with José del Valle). Heterotopías, 2019.
“Crisis, guerra e identidad. Modelos de representación en disputa en La 31 (Una novela precaria) de Ariel Magnus”. 1616: Anuario de Literatura Comparada, 2017.
