Trafficking and Violence on Bodies in Latin American Literature

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE Trafficking and Violence on Bodies in Latin American Literature DISSERTATION submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Spanish by Ann Billiaert Rosen Dissertation Committee: Professor Santiago Morales-Rivera, Chair Professor Lucía Guerra Cunningham, Professor Emeritus Professor Jacobo Sefamí 2018 © 2018 Ann Billiaert Rosen DEDICATION To my family and in particular to my husband Jim and in loving memory of my brother Karl Billiaert, my mother Françoise Wijns Joubert, my father Roland Billiaert, and Joyce Rosen #ii TABLE OF CONTENTS $$$$$$$$$$$$Page! LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS$$$$$$$$$iv! ACKNOWLEDGMENTS$$$$$$$$$v! CURRICULUM VITAE$$$$$$$$$vi! ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION$$$$$$$$vii-viii! INTRODUCTION$$$$$$$$$$ 1! CHAPTER 1: Migrating Bodies$$$$$$$$18$ $$$$$$$$! CHAPTER 2: Public Bodies$$$$$$$$67$ $$! CHAPTER 3: Tortured Bodies$$$$$$$ 115$ ! BIBLIOGRAPHY:$$$$$$$$$ 175! #iii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Page Illustration 1: Burned Victim$$$$$$$$ 18! Illustration 2: Cover Page Image of Muñeca brava por Ceibo$$ $ $ 67! Illustration 3: Illustration by Raquel Partnoy$$$$$$115% ! #iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to extend my deepest appreciation to Professor Santiago Morales-Rivera, my Committee Chair. Thank you for your guidance, encouragement and wise counsel. Without your insightful advice on many aspects of my work, this dissertation might never have come to fruition. ! I would like to acknowledge my Committee Member and mentor, Professor Lucía Guerra Cunningham. Although I was never able to attend one of your courses, words cannot express how fortunate I feel for having made your acquaintance after your retirement and for the invaluable help you have provided me. You took me “under your wing” and have been instrumental in helping me to develop the writing skills that have enabled me to complete this dissertation. ! I would like to thank my Committee Member Professor Jacobo Sefamí. During the course of my studies at UC Irvine, I have many fond memories of the literature courses that I was fortunate enough to follow with you and for the help you provided me. ! Finally, I would like to thank you, Jim, for the many hours you spent spell checking my writing. Thank you for believing in me, and for your support even during di"cult times.! #v CURRICULUM VITAE 2010$$ B.A. in Spanish, University of California, Irvine! $$B.A. in History, University of California, Irvine ! 2011 $$ French Teaching Assistant, University of California, Irvine ! 2012$$ M.A. in Spanish, University of California, Irvine! 2012$$ French Teaching Assistant, University of California, Irvine! 2013 $$ French Teaching Assistant, University of California, Irvine! $$! $$German Teaching Assistant (Fall 2013), University of California, Irvine! 2014-16$Spanish Teaching Assistant, University of California, Irvine! 2018$$ Ph.D. of Philosophy in Spanish, University of California, Irvine! FIELD OF STUDY! Twentieth and Twenty-first Century Latin American Literature$$ $ $ $ ! #vi ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Tra"cking and Violence on Bodies in Latin American Literature! By! Ann Billiaert Rosen! Doctor of Philosophy in Spanish ! University of California, Irvine, 2018! Professor Santiago Morales-Rivera, Chair! $This dissertation studies the re-presentation of the body subjected to violence in Latin American literature of the twentieth and twenty-first century. The three instances that I examine are immigration, prostitution, and torture under fascist repression. In order to comprehend the importance of the body in the development, or loss, of a person’s subjectivity and identity, I use Phenomenology that at the beginning of the twentieth century distanced itself from the dualism of body versus mind, to focus on the body/subject as a lived experience in the world. ! $The first chapter focuses on the re-presentation of personal and gang violence directed towards Central American citizens migrating north, through Mexico, fleeing poverty, social inequality, and political instability. I analyze the process of dehumanization that these bodies/subjects undergo in the borderlands after having paid a coyote to help them cross the border. In the second chapter, I concentrate on the evolution of the literary re-presentation of the prostitute who sells her body to a #vii customer to use as a sexual object. The third chapter of this dissertation examines the literary re-presentation of torture in exchange for a confession, during the Chilean and Argentinian dictatorships in the “Cono Sur” during the 1970s and 1980s.$ ! $Since transactions are central to all of the events that I look into, the three chapters can be seen from an economic perspective, a market driven perspective of supply and demand. But the market is dirty and the profit driven transactions often result in extreme physical violence perpetrated on objectified victims. That is what makes it particularly abject and “horroristic". ! #viii INTRODUCTION $As in other areas of the world, in Latin America violence and aggression have prevailed. Apart from warfare and criminal delinquency, other modalities of violence have occurred throughout its history. The main objective of this dissertation is to study the literary re-presentation of bodies subjected to violence tangential to the most obvious expressions such as battles or murders.! $In the three instances I will examine, there occurs a transaction: the immigrants who pay a coyote to help them cross the border and enter the United States illegally; the prostitute who sells her body to a customer to use as a sexual object; and the bodies tortured by a repressive system that promises to stop torture in exchange for a confession in which the political prisoner will o&er information about leftists still free. These experiences diverge from the “normal” embodied everyday life encounters that, according to the phenomenologists, “form” the subject. Helplessness is generated when ethical societal norms are no longer adhered to and some bodies/subjects turn out to be less valuable than others and become the objects of others’ authority, violence, and/or cruelty.! $Since transactions are central to all of the events that I examine, the three chapters can be viewed from an economic perspective, a market driven perspective of supply and demand. But this is a dirty, nasty market where the transactions are seldom what they appear to be. These particular profit driven transactions often result in extreme physical violence perpetrated on objectified victims, which makes it particularly abject and this is why I look into horrorism.$ ! #1 $Focusing on the body requires a brief theoretical discussion to comprehend the relation between body and mind, and the essential role the body plays regarding Subjectivity and Identity. It is also important to establish to what extent space, immediate environment, and contact with others is engendered in the Embodied self. ! A Brief Theoretical View of the Body! $Understanding the body, a word that suggests materiality, necessitates the study of di&erent discourses about the body in a specific geographic context and time. It requires understanding the value and the meaning given to that body, taking into account the significance of race, gender and class, and the perspective from which the notion of the body is produced. My research focuses on the re-presentation of the body in twentieth and twenty-first century Latin American literature and covers the topics of migration, prostitution, and torture. Both in Christian theology and in philosophy, for centuries a dualism predominated between the materiality of the body and the immateriality of the soul and the mind. At the beginning of the 20th century, Husserl and other phenomenologists did away with this dualism to replace it by an interaction where the body and perception or lived experience intertwine, giving rise to a new notion: the body/subject.! $A brief analysis of phenomenology will enable us to better comprehend how the body can be considered as a “lived experience”. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “(the) discipline of phenomenology may be defined initially as the study of structures of experience, or consciousness. Literally, phenomenology is the study of “phenomena”: appearances of things, or things as they appear in our #2 experience (…)” (Phenomenology, 1) Phenomenology is the way we experience our contact with other people, a specific space or ourselves in a certain situation. “Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced from the subjective or first person point of view (…) Basically, phenomenology studies the structure of various types of experiences ranging from perception, thought, memory, imagination, emotion, desire, and volition to bodily awareness, embodied action, and social activity, including linguistic activity.” (Phenomenology, 1) Phenomenology is thus distinct from ontology, in the way that it studies what appears and how it appears to the subject instead of what is. Even though other philosophers had already used the term Phenomenology, Husserl really created it as the theory or discipline that we know today. Here, I will focus on the concepts of the Body and Embodiment in the theories developed by Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty. Although the field of phenomenology is immensely diverse, my present research concentrates on the phenomenological perception of the body. ! For Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), the body was at the center of his lifelong research. It was not a material substance

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