Fernando Vallejo, the Colombian Urban Novel, and the Generation of ‘72
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A Poetics of Globalism: Fernando Vallejo, the Colombian Urban Novel, and the Generation of ‘72 by Brantley Nicholson Department of Romance Studies Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Ariel Dorfman, Co-Supervisor ___________________________ Walter Mignolo, Co-Supervisor ___________________________ José María Rodríguez-García ___________________________ Antonio Viego ___________________________ Patrick Dove Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the reQuirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Romance Studies in the Graduate School of Duke University 2011 i v A Poetics of Globalism: Fernando Vallejo, the Colombian Urban Novel, and the Generation of ‘72 by Brantley Nicholson Department of Romance Studies Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Ariel Dorfman, Co-Supervisor ___________________________ Walter Mignolo, Co-Supervisor ___________________________ José María Rodríguez-García ___________________________ Antonio Viego ___________________________ Patrick Dove Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the reQuirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Romance Studies in the Graduate School of Duke University Copyright by Brantley Nicholson 2011 Abstract This thesis explores the confluence and clashes between local and global cultural flows in Latin America through the multiple literary movements and tendencies for which the Colombian author, Fernando Vallejo, acts as a unifying agent. My analysis pulls from Decolonial, Aesthetic and World Literary theories, in order to analyze how cosmopolitanism and globalization resonate in contemporary Latin American letters through a survey of three geocultural categories: the Colombian local, the Latin American regional, and the literary global. My analysis of the local tracks the formal evolution of the Colombian Novela de la Violencia into the contemporary Novela Urbana and the parallel political challenge to the conventional Lettered City in Colombia after the Violencia. In terms of the regional, I critiQue the idea of a positive and universally stabilizing cosmopolitanism through a collective analysis of a generation of Latin American writers that were forced to travel to the cosmopolitan center through exile rather than as an act of freewill, a generation that I refer to in this project as the Generation of ’72. And my evaluation of the global considers how a singular World Literary aesthetics and political economy of prestige weighs negatively on contemporary Latin American authors. Through a survey of the roughly fifty novels and short stories that fall under the purview of both the Colombian Urban Novel and the Generation of ‘72, I conclude that aesthetic borders – the places where multiple forms of perception iv converge– open up spaces and forums of critique of rigid cultural models and century old aesthetic formulae, a tendency that I refer to as a poetics of globalism. v Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iv List of Figures ............................................................................................................................. viii Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................................... ix 1. Introduction: A Poetics of Globalism: Fernando Vallejo, the Colombian Urban Novel, and the Generation of ‘72 ............................................................................................................. 1 2. The Local: The Colombian Urban Novel and the Decolonization of the Lettered City 19 2.1 The Colombian Urban Novel and the Decolonization of the Lettered City .......... 19 2.2 From the Lettered to the Mediated City ...................................................................... 25 2.3 Urban and Violent Letters ............................................................................................. 38 2.4 The Contemporary Colombian Urban Novel ……………………………………….51 2.5 Fernando Vallejo's Urban Novel: La virgen de los sicarios…………………………...70 2.6 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………… ...90 3. The Regional: The Generation of ’72 and the Forced Latin American Cosmopolitan .. 94 3.1 The Regional: The Generation of ’72 and the Forced Latin American Cosmopolitan ........................................................................................................................ 94 3.2 Instability, Darkened National Iconography, and Resonances of Globalism in the work of Osvaldo Soriano and Cristina Peri Rossi ........................................................ 115 3.3 Unmoored Affect, Developmental Disjuncture, and Psychological Instability in the Works of Ariel Dorfman and Luisa Valenzuela…………………………………...130 3.4 Argentine Realism Turned on its Head: Tomás Eloy Martínez's El cantor de tango and Ricardo Piglia's La ciudad ausente…………………………………………………...142 vi 3.5 Errant Cosmopolitanism and the Unlettered Center in Fernando Vallejo's El río del tiempo…………………………………………………………………………………..157 3.6 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………….169 4. The Global: Fernando Vallejo, Aesthetic Citizenship, and the Closure of World Literature .................................................................................................................................... 172 4.1 Fernando Vallejo, Aesthetic Citizenship, and the Closure of World Literature . 172 4.2 The Aesthetic Border and the Closing of the Literary World…………………… 177 4.3 Fernando Vallejo, the Urban Novel, and Aesthetic Citizenship………………… 187 4.4 Colombian Urban Literature and the Political Economy of Prestige…………… 197 4.5 Finessing the World Literary System: Roberto Bolaño's 2666 and the Eloisa Cartonera Movement………………………………………………………………………204 4.6 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………..218 5. Conclusion: Lettering and Unlettering the Globalized Body ......................................... 220 References ................................................................................................................................... 226 Biography ................................................................................................................................... 240 vii List of Figures 1. Anibal Qijano’s Colonial Matrix of Power……………………………………………………………13 viii Acknowledgements According to Ricardo Piglia, literary criticism is a way of writing one’s own story: a means to the end of conveying how literature weighs on one’s own existence and experiences. This work, one that pulls largely from cosmopolitan and globalization theories, supports Piglia’s supposition. It is the product of the many conversations had in both cultural capitals, that until recently were considered part of the periphery, and old centers that now find their cultural schema in a precarious position in an increasingly and excitingly pluriversal world. The voices of so many friends and mentors present themselves in this dissertation, and the list of people I would like to thank is long enough to fill not one page but many. I owe the most profound gratitude, however, to my thesis supervisors and committee. I consider myself very fortunate to have been part of the Romance Studies Department at Duke for the past four years and to have had two exceptional supervisors, without whom my early, rough, and vague ideas would never have matured. I thank Ariel Dorfman for his great generosity, care, and willingness to bring a young graduate student into the fold of the contemporary Latin American literary world. The time he has dedicated to this project and his attention to detail have been both remarkable and flattering, and his understanding of the multiple layers of ix consciousness imbedded in both the Latin American and global literary archive has been an incredible asset, as has his unflagging enthusiasm. I, similarly, thank Walter Mignolo for his willingness to help me develop what began as early notions into complex ideas, starting as early my first day at Duke. It is a telling testament to his teaching and mentorship that I took four classes with him in four semesters of coursework at Duke. His insistence on exploring the side of global cultural projects that is typically pushed to the wayside has been inspiring. And his energy and spirit have lent themselves to the drive necessary to complete a project as long and taxing as a doctoral thesis. I thank José María Rodríguez-García, whose exceptional understanding of literary, political, and historical nuance in a wide range of material but especially Colombia has helped me come to grips with the breadth and precedent to the social problems that present themselves in the work of Fernando Vallejo and other Colombian urban novelists. I thank Antonio Viego, who, through a particularly inspiring seminar in 2008, helped me understand the relationship between the body and language and whose work encourages us, as scholars, to ask tough Questions of political discourses rather than settle for lip service and easy answers. And I thank Patrick Dove, whose seminar on the poetics of naming in 2006 at Indiana University planted Questions and interests that are clearly very much alive in this project. His acumen for asking the right question at the right time has been invaluable, as has his encouragement to explore exactly what we talk about when we talk about Latin America. x I owe a great deal of gratitude to