In the years following the military dictatorship in Argentina many novels were published that spoke about the violence, terror, and traumas experienced during the Junta's rule. These texts deal with the theme of memory and retell the traumas of the past as a form of mourning. Such novels look back to the past in an effort to redeem it. In this essay I explore the use of the confessional mode in postdictatorial literature as a vehicle for the task of mourning. In two of his novels, Qué solos se quedan los muertos (1985) and Cuestiones interiores (2003), Argentine author Mempo Giardinelli employs the confessional mode to tell the stories of two guilt-ridden protagonists who resort to writing in search of redemption. Giardinelli's use of the confessional mode highlights two aspects of confession that in actuality deny its completion. While confession aims to alleviate the guilt felt by the confessant and to provide him with a sense of self-understanding in light of his sins, the confessional act subverts these very purposes. The confession requires one to speak of guilt in order to arrive at a state of innocence, which only engenders more guilt and perpetuates the confession. Moreover, in confession the subject that speaks is also the object that it creates in speech. Confession as an attempt to present oneself as a coherent object to be understood and in turn to validate ones notion of identity involves a doubling effect of the self-inherent in language that reveals the impossibility of attaining an unmediated access to the self. These two aspects of the confessional act constitute the failure of confession to allow the confessant to attain the redemption and absolution they seek. I argue that the confessional mode serves as an ideal vehicle for the task of mourning and that the inherent failure of confession is comparable to what Idelvar Avelar calls the “interminability of mourning” (5). These two processes constitute a tool of memory needed in post dictatorial Argentina as a way to conserve the past and redeem it from oblivion.

Ce travail est une analyse exhaustive des romans publiés par l’écrivain chilien Alejandro Zambra entre 2006 et 2011. Compte tenu de son appartenance à la génération postdictatoriale, on va se concentrer sur la reconstruction autofictionnelle de l’enfance, et sur la façon dont elle reproduit, questionne et renverse le récit dictatorial dominant qui relègue les enfants sur le plan des personnages secondaires. Pour identifier le développement du discours, on va s’appuyer sur des outils critiques de la génétique littéraire dont le concept central « d’avant-texte » nous permet de faire une lecture rétrospective de Bonsái et de La vida privada de los árboles comme des précurseurs idéologiques de Formas de volver a casa. En raison de la centralité jouée par l’espace dans ces romans, on va consacrer une grande partie du travail à la représentation spatiale et la manière dont l’espace configure la position des personnages à l’intérieur du schème narratif. C’est dans cette relation que l’on identifie la dichotomie spatiale élaborée dans les œuvres, car l’espace et la vie privée sont reliés à l’inertie et la résignation dans l’univers textuel, tandis que l’action et le questionnement appartiennent au domaine de l’espace et la vie publics. Lus l’un après l’autre, les romans témoignent du parcours suivi de l’écrivain, qui assimile le récit dictatorial en évitant la confrontation narrative au début, pour, par la suite, approcher le passé, l’histoire familiale et la dictature, dans un processus autofictionnel qui projette les différentes voies du retour chez soi. / This work is a detailed analysis of the novels published by the Chilean writer Alejandro Zambra between 2006 and 2011. Considering his belonging to the so-called postdictatorial generation, which the author willingly embraces, this thesis focuses on his autofictional reconstruction of childhood, and on the way in which it reproduces, questions and subverts the dominant dictatorial narrative that condemns the children to the role of secondary characters. To follow the development of his discourse, we resort to genetic criticism’s central concept of the “pre-text” (or the “foretext”), with the help of which; we can reread Bonsái and La vida privada de los árboles retrospectively in order to identify them as ideological precursors of Formas de volver a casa. A substantial part of the work deals with the representation of space and with the way in which it configures the narrative positions of the characters in the texts. In this relationship we can identify the spatial dichotomy articulated by the novels, which associates the private life and spaces with inactivity and resignation, as well as the public life and spaces with action and questioning. The sequence of novels analyzed bear witness to the autofictional trajectory traversed by the author, who initially assimilates the dictatorial narrative, by avoiding a direct confrontation with the past and with his family’s history in a narrative elusion, before approaching these subjects through a self-confrontation that prefigures the different ways of going home. / El siguiente trabajo es un análisis detallado de las novelas publicadas entre el 2006 y el 2011 por el escritor chileno Alejandro Zambra. Tomando en cuenta su membresía a la llamada generación posdictatorial, que el autor acoge voluntariamente, nos enfocaremos en la reconstrucción autoficcional de la infancia, y la manera en que esta reproduce, cuestiona y subvierte la narrativa dictatorial dominante que relega a los niños de aquel entonces al papel de personajes secundarios. Para identificar este desarrollo discursivo, recurrimos a las herramientas críticas de la genética literaria, pues su central concepto de “pre-textos” (o “avant-textes”) nos permite hacer una lectura retrospectiva de Bonsái y La vida privada de los árboles no solo como textos previos a Formas de volver a casa, sino que como sus precursores ideológicos. Debido a la centralidad que juega el espacio en estas novelas, gran parte de nuestro trabajo se concentra sobre la representación espacial y la manera en que esta configura la posición de los personajes dentro del esquema narrativo. En dicha relación podemos identificamos la dicotomía espacial articulada por las obras, la cual vincula el espacio y la vida privada con la inacción y la resignación, así como el espacio y la vida privada con la acción y el cuestionamiento. Leídas en secuencia, las novelas testifican el trayecto recorrido por el autor, quien inicialmente asimila la narrativa de la dictadura al evitar la confrontación narrativa, para luego acercarse al pasado, la historia familiar y la dictadura, en un proceso de autoficcionalización que plantea las diferentes formas de volver a casa.