A difficulty arises in defining New Historicism because it was only recently developed, along with the field of cultural studies in the 1960s. It incorporates many different other literary theories, such as Marxism and Feminism. Given that it stems from cultural studies, it is necessary to first define what that is. Cultural studies addresses all aspects related to a people’s culture, including beliefs, language, art, institutions, literature, etc. It acknowledges that people and their positions in society are socially constructed, and critics seek to change the power structures. New historicism also stands in contrast to traditional historicism, which focuses on identifying exactly what happened at a given point in history. New historicism, in contrast, challenges traditional historicism by saying that we can never know exactly what happened in history, and is instead concerned with all of the people involved and making sure their voices and perspectives are heard. They refer to textbooks and documents as “discourses,” asserting that they are simply ways of talking about events as opposed to being factual. In literature, a New Historicist aims to examine a text through its cultural context, and at the same time, to understand a culture through its literature. Michael Foucault heavily influenced this literary criticism, through his deconstruction of traditionally accepted concepts. Some important terms in this school are self-positioning, episteme, carnival and thick description.
Selección 1976 incluye siete cuentos del época de la guerra sucia en Argentina, que fue un periodo desde 1974 hasta 1983 aproximadamente, en que el gobierno militar de Argentina tenia poder y Triple A, del lado derecha, buscaba y mataba a personas asociadas con el lado izquierda. Era un tiempo horroroso para Argentina. Cada cuento es una experiencia de alguien que sufre a causa de la guerra, y el autor no los escribe hasta muchos años después. El primer, titulado Nuevas etapas, describe como el empieza de la guerra ocurre en la vida de el autor cuando era niño. En este cuento, nota mucho la presencia de generaciones diferentes, que es un tema muy importante. El tema de generaciones e edad da mucho profundidad y recalca la atrocidad de la guerra sucia. El tema de generaciones en Nuevas etapas se muestra en la descripción de los tres generaciones de familia, la inocencia del niño en la situación del autobús y la edad y perspectiva que tiene el autor cuando lo escribió.