Global Violence and the Libidinal Economy in Latin American Literature

A NIGHTMARE OR BENEVOLENT DREAM: GLOBAL VIOLENCE AND THE LIBIDINAL ECONOMY IN LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE Mark Piccini Bachelor of Creative Industries (Honours) Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Media, Entertainment and Creative Arts Faculty of Creative Industries Queensland University of Technology 2016 Keywords Globalisation, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Latin American literature, new realism, Roberto Bolaño, violence. A Nightmare or Benevolent Dream: Global Violence and the Libidinal Economy in Latin American Literature i Abstract This thesis examines three novels by Latin American writers that were translated into English in 2008: 2666 by Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño, Senselessness by Honduran-Salvadoran writer Horacio Castellanos Moya, and The Armies by Colombian writer Evelio Rosero. These novels look at actual instances of violence in Mexico, Guatemala, and Colombia, contributing to a social critique of historical and ongoing inequality and injustice in Latin America and the global South. However, their approach differs from narratives that contextualise violence in Latin America and others that exceptionalise it. This thesis argues that it is possible and often preferable for readers in the North to be alienated by exaggerated images of Latin American violence, or to distance themselves from the economic, social, and political situations that exacerbate violence in the South. A close textual analysis of each novel reveals that they express the human potential in desire for and to create excess, which has the effect of universalising guilt against the tendency to contextualise or localise events of mass murder in Mexico, Central, and South America. Using the psychoanalytic theories of subjectivity developed by Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Žižek, and others, this thesis argues that it is impossible for anyone to extricate themselves from the libidinal economy that occupies 2666, Senselessness, and The Armies. A Nightmare or Benevolent Dream: Global Violence and the Libidinal Economy in Latin American Literature ii Table of Contents Keywords ..........................................................................................................................................i Abstract ............................................................................................................................................ii Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................... iii Statement of Original Authorship .................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................................... v Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 1 Literature Review ............................................................................................................................. 5 Methodology .................................................................................................................................. 25 Chapter One: The Part about Us The Excess of Life and Death in Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 ......................... 43 Chapter Two: “They’re ordinary faces” The Real of Desire in “The Part about the Crimes” ................................. 77 Chapter Three: “Everybody’s fucked. Be grateful you left” The Symptom in Horacio Castellanos Moya’s Senselessness ................. 118 Chapter Four: “The other essential game” Gender Violence in Evelio Rosero’s The Armies ................................... 156 Chapter Five: “Whoever they belong to, they’re the same hands” The Armies and Colombia as a Place of Exception ................................ 188 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 219 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................ 224 A Nightmare or Benevolent Dream: Global Violence and the Libidinal Economy in Latin American Literature iii Statement of Original Authorship The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted to meet requirements for an award at this or any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made. QUT Verified Signature Signature: Date: _________________________ A Nightmare or Benevolent Dream: Global Violence and the Libidinal Economy in Latin American Literature iv Acknowledgements It would be impossible to fully acknowledge the role that Dr Lesley Hawkes has played not only in the principal supervision of this project, but in the development of my academic career. Lesley’s knowledge of and enthusiasm for literature and literary studies have guided me since my undergraduate days. Similarly, this project would not have been possible without the strength and support that I continue to receive from my associate supervisor Professor Sharyn Pearce. I am equally grateful for and inspired by Lesley and Sharyn. To my fellow higher degree research students in the Creative Writing and Literary Studies discipline at Queensland University of Technology, thank you for your friendship and support. Every day I am overwhelmed by the generosity, good-humour, and intelligence of each and every one of you. This thesis is dedicated to my family: my parents Michael and Lisa, my brother Jon, and my partner Laurel. Their love, support, and wisdom have made this work possible. It is also dedicated to those who continue to find themselves on the wrong side of other people’s walls. Their courage has made this work meaningful. A Nightmare or Benevolent Dream: Global Violence and the Libidinal Economy in Latin American Literature v Introduction Whether the topic is Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar and his Medellín Cartel, sicarios or hitmen employed by Colombian and now Mexican cartels, military dictatorships, or revolutionary struggles, books, movies and television shows about Latin America tend to magnify life, death, and the violence that brings life and death into contact. The effect is that violence in Latin America appears exceptional, as if “Latin American violence” were its own, ontologically distinct category; that is, as if it were fundamentally different from everyday antagonism in what is known as the West, the First World, or the Global North. This thesis looks at the representation of concrete instances of violence in Mexico, the Central American isthmus, and South America in three novels by Latin American writers, all of which were translated into English in 2008. Rather than exceptionalise violence, these novels universalise it and they will be read in this thesis as breaking down stereotypes about Latin America and the South more generally. Though critical of certain representations of violence in Latin America, the aim of this study is not to dispute that there is—and has been for the past century—a disproportionate level of violence in the region. To suggest that there are not problems specific to Latin America would be a further injustice to those who have suffered and continue to suffer because of them. Take, for example, the forty three student protesters from the town of Ayotzinapa in the south-western Mexican state of Guerrero who were allegedly kidnapped by corrupt police officials in September 2014 and handed over to a local drug gang to be killed. Or take, as another example, the at least 6,640 people killed in El Salvador in 2015, a number which meant that the Central American country was the most violent nation in the Western Hemisphere that year (Daugherty 2016, n. pag.). The novels in this study offer an alternative to the overrepresentation of violence in other narratives set in Latin America. Other narratives A Nightmare or Benevolent Dream: Global Violence and the Libidinal Economy in Latin American Literature 1 focus, for example, on the gruesome tactics of the Mexican drug cartels, the extravagant lifestyles of their leaders, and on the miraculous escapes from custody of those same leaders. They repeat the story of Argentine revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara and the Cuban Revolution, or the now archetypal story of Escobar’s rise and fall. However well-rounded the character of the guerrilla leader or the drug lord is, they remain exceptional figures and arbiters of a distinctly Latin American violence. All of the novels in this study were chosen because they step back from these kinds of representations, even when they address the same regional issues and instances of violence. The principal aim of this study is to use examples of contemporary Latin American literature to traverse the fantasy of Latin American violence. The first novel to be discussed is 2666 by Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño, originally published in 2004. Although the novel is expansive in scope, the narrative returns repeatedly to an epidemic of gender violence in a town on Mexico’s northern border that closely resembles Ciudad Juárez, where hundreds of women have been killed since the early 1990s. The second novel is Senselessness by the Honduran-Salvadoran writer Horacio Castellanos Moya, which, like 2666, was originally published in 2004.

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