In the Arab world, the literary canon is classified and studied under such monolithic labels as nation, genre and generation. Thus literary critics speak of the Egyptian Novel, the Syrian Theatre, the 60s generation etc. This categorization is, however, not unique to the region. Latin American literary canons are organized in a similar manner. As a product of the kinds of nationalist and anticolonial projects of the 19th and 20th centuries that characterize the Third World, such classifications helped highlight similarities and continuities within national and regional spheres and in the process aided in the construction of national and regional identities. However, as with much that pertains to the postcolonial project, such methods also continued to uphold and maintain the cultural hegemony of the North by focusing on creating historical master narratives and genealogies that rely on such notions as “influence” and “rupture”. Take for instance the case of the Arabic novel which continues to be understood vis-à-vis the Euro-American model. This paper thinks beyond such canonical categories and genealogical interpretations by offering a different theoretical and methodological reading of the archive. It will do so by analyzing a number of literary and artistic tropes that emerge around the notion of “the people” in the late 50s and early 60s in the Arab World and Latin America. These tropes, which cross genre and regional boundaries, helped mark the cultural production of the early national-socialist period in both parts of the world. In thinking beyond such categories, this comparative approach provides an analysis of the emergence and popularity of certain aesthetic modes at given historical moments as a horizontal and transregional process necessitated by specific socioeconomic and political contexts rather than as a process of imitation or adaptation.