FRINGING VISIBILITY: OTHERNESS, MARGINALITY AND THE QUESTION OF SUBALTERN TRUTH IN ANTES QUE ANOCHEZCA, LA VIRGEN DE LOS SICARIOS AND CIDADE DE DEUS DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the University of Cincinnati By Sandro Rodrigo de Barros, M.A. ***** The University of Cincinnati 2005 ii ABSTRACT This dissertation examines how otherness and marginality are articulated in three literary works: Reinaldo Arenas' Antes que anochezca (1992), Fernando Vallejo's La virgen de los sicarios (1994) and Paulo Lins' Cidade de Deus (1997). Furthermore, this study investigates whether the representation of subjects historically viewed as peripheral, both inside and outside the borders of the nation, perpetuates or undermines the conceptualization of the Latin American continental identity as "Other" in relation to dominant Eurocentric and North American perspectives. The choice of the texts of Arenas, Vallejo and Lins as paradigms of representation of otherness and marginality in the Latin American context is not fortuitous. Antes, La virgen and Cidade de Deus are works that underscore renewed perspectives on the significance of the nation inasmuch as they challenge the conventionality of historical discourses through the articulation of marginal subjectivities as prevailing accounts of reality. Arenas' autobiography constitutes a narrative in which the exilic Self subverts the hegemony of the Cuban socialist state by contesting history and its truth through the account of a homosexual and political dissident who witnesses and personally iii contributes to one of the most defining moments of the nation's past; Vallejo's representation of the formerly exiled intellectual in La virgen, in complicity with the sicariato class with which he associates himself, inscribes the marginal elements of Colombian society onto the present narrative of the nation; and Lins' re-imagination of the favelado space in Cidade de Deus dismantles the conventional perception of Brazil as a racial paradise by denouncing the poverty found in the slums of Rio de Janeiro as a social condition intrinsically tied to the country’s racial "invisibility." iv Para a Alexis e Antonia. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS On this glorious occasion, of the splendid defeat (Anthony Newly) Gostaria de agradecer ao comitê do departamento de literatura da Universidade de Cincinnati: ao Dr. Luciano Picanço (meu diretor), pelo estímulo e confiança ao largo deste projeto, e à Dra. Connie Scarborough e Dra. María Paz Moreno pela participação. Aos meus pais, Sonia e Francisco, meu muito obrigado pela fé e paciência no decorrer dos anos. Extendo meu agradecimento também à professora Susan Bacon, Wayne Bacon, minha esposa Alexis Bacon e à Camille Bacon e sua família pelo apôio durante as fases deste projeto. E finalmente, agradeço aos amigos, Natalia Peláz, Lynne and Dan Keller, e aos colegas do departamento do Residential College na Universidade de Michigan pela força durante a elaboração desta dissertação. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract iii Dedication v Acknowledgements vi Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Antes que anochezca 23 Chapter 2: La virgen de los sicarios 96 Chapter 3: Cidade de Deus 170 Conclusion 237 Bibliography 248 vii INTRODUCTION To write is to disclose the world and to offer it as a task to the generosity of the reader. It is to have a recourse to the consciousness of others in order to make one’s self be recognized as essential to the totality of being. (Jean Paul Sartre, “What is Literature”) So here it came: the collapse of harmony, the demolition of the spheres… (Salman Rushdie, East, West) The Text, The Self and the Other This dissertation examines how otherness and marginality are articulated in three contemporary literary works: Reinaldo Arenas' Antes que anochezca (1992), Fernando Vallejo's La virgen de los sicarios (1994) and Paulo Lins' Cidade de Deus (1997). This study also investigates whether the representation of subjects historically viewed as peripheral, both inside and outside the borders of the nation, perpetuates or undermines the 1 conceptualization of the Latin American continental identity as "Other" in relation to dominant Eurocentric and North American perspectives. The choice of the texts of Arenas, Vallejo and Lins as paradigms of representation of otherness and marginality in the Latin American context is not fortuitous. Antes, La virgen and Cidade de Deus are works that underscore renewed perspectives on the significance of the nation inasmuch as they challenge the conventionality of historical discourses through the articulation of marginal subjectivities as prevailing accounts of reality. Arenas' autobiography constitutes a narrative in which the exilic Self subverts the hegemony of the Cuban socialist state by contesting history and its truth through the account of a homosexual and political dissident who witnesses and personally contributes to one of the most defining moments of the nation's past; Vallejo's representation of the formerly exiled intellectual in La virgen, in complicity with the sicariato class with which he associates himself, inscribes the marginal elements of Colombian society onto the present narrative of the nation; and Lins' re-imagination of the favelado space in Cidade de Deus dismantles the conventional perception of Brazil as a racial paradise by denouncing the poverty found in the slums of Rio de Janeiro 2 as a social condition intrinsically tied to the country’s racial "invisibility." As shall be seen in the chapters that follow, the presence of the authorial signature within the borders of the text is a common feature in the works selected for this study. The literary articulation of Arenas’, Vallejo’s and Lins’ Selves and the subaltern Others for whom they openly speak is intrinsically tied to the quest of contesting the meaning of periphery while indirectly asserting the authorial figure as a powerful symbolist, someone who is capable of advancing a particular representation of reality as the truth by authenticating its value on the premises of empiricism and testimony. In this sense, it could be argued that the works to be studied in this dissertation reach beyond the frontiers of entertainment literature; they correspond to a type of post-colonial perspective that does not merely refute tradition but rather attempts to “rewrite a dominant ideology from within”(Fee 244). 1 Such a perspective generates a version of reality that marginally imposes 1 It is well to note here that the term “post-colonial” is utilized to amply characterize all cultural production that presents particular strategies of representation derived from the advent of colonialism. As Fernando de Toro remarks, “the concrete space which opens Post- Modernism and deconstruction is one which makes it possible for Post- Colonial counter-discourses to locate themselves inside rather than outside the theory machine that placed them in the margins. This is exactly the change that differentiates the Post-Colonial discourse that preceded Post-Modernity from contemporary debates” (26). 3 itself in a contest for the very meaning of the “postmodern truth”. In the works of Arenas, Vallejo and Lins, the “periphery,” the globalized ex-colony, is observed writing back to its former Center by presenting to a pluralist/global audience that which has been conventionally expected from the Third World space in terms of representation. Poverty, chaos and authoritarian corruption are but a few of the themes coinciding in the writings of the aforementioned authors that reaffirm the imagery of the Latin American territory as economically and socially marginalized. Nevertheless, the process of allegorically or literally reclaiming the negative signs of the nation as that which is undeniably part of its constitution ultimately corresponds to a subversive act of re-appropriation, for the question of national representation becomes tied to the authorial struggle to expose tradition as a form of subjugation and difference as a necessary move towards self-determinacy. The representation of otherness in Antes, La virgen and Cidade de Deus does not signify an attempt to introduce and inscribe difference for the sake of difference. To the contrary, as the chapters of this study will demonstrate, the dissident homosexual, the marginal intellectual and the 4 black favelado correspond to representations that promote the reassessment of entities traditionally deemed subaltern as “Subjects in their own right,” displaced from the marginal to the centric narrative of the post-modern nation (de Toro, New Intersections 25). Pos-Modernism, Post-Colonialism and Beyond Although it is not the objective of this introduction to open a debate on postmodernist and post-colonial cultural ideologies, a brief discussion of these designations in terms of aesthetics is in order to contextually situate the works analyzed in this dissertation as well as to underscore the nature of the politicized messages they articulate. Critics have often employed the terms post-modern and post-colonial in contemporary history and literary criticism with the assumption of a plethora of referential meanings that have contributed significantly to the obfuscation of their meanings and, for many, the repudiation of their theorizations.2 Terms such as bricolage, pastiche and fragmentation have been incorporated into the universal lexicon as expressions of a 2 See Dei 155-8. 5 post-modern ideology that undermines the centric position of “grand