the last great literary movement of the west, dixit levinson

From its inception as an institution in modernity,
literature has been thus the cultural agent of either revolution or
conservation, or of both. It comes to a close, however, when we can no longer
discriminate between the two. When we cannot distinguish ‘literature as
intervention’ from ‘literature as conservation,’ when aesthetic innovation,
revolt, disturbance, and difference represent entrances into the market, into
the Same itself, literature ceases both to sustain and disrupt the social
dichotomies upon which the globe banks and thus concludes its modern function.
I do not mean to suggest that literature now never plays these foundational
roles. Rather, it does not enjoy any privileged right to those functions, and
must compete for them with other forms. This is what we face today, the closure
of literature. And this is why the Latin American Boom should be understood as
the last great literary movement of the west and as the expression and
thematization of the end of that movement.

The Ends of Literature: The Latin American 'boom' in the Neoliberal Marketplace de Brett Levinson.