NARRATIVES DURING AND AFTER DICTATORSHIP: EXPERIENCIE, COMMUNITY AND NARRATION.
This dissertation explores the relationship among literature, politics, the loss of community, and the representation of society in Chile during the transition from dictatorship to post-dictatorship. The first part explores narratives which deal with the constitution of social representation in a state of exception, marked by extreme experiences of pain, fear, terror, and uncertainty. Section A of Chapter One outlines the social thought of reactionary thinkers like Jaime Guzmán, who strongly influenced the dictatorship, arguing that these thinkers provided the language to produce a discursive division of Chilean society into two antagonistic camps: enemies and friends.
Section B describes the consequences of this Manichean division of society through a study of the representation of torture in testimonial narratives. The dictatorship, it argues, had the potential to change the conditions of representation, blocking the possibilities of public knowledge about torture and assassination that an important part of the population was undergoing. Testimonio contested that blockage, but in doing so also revealed its own limits.
Chapter Two deals with the practice of the Avanzada, the Chilean neo-avant garde, as a response to conditions of life under the dictatorship, analyzing in particular Diamela Eltits novel Lumpérica. The Avanzada presented itself as an alternative to testimonio, but it also embodied problems of representation that have to do with its avant-garde aesthetic ideology and its problematic relation to notions of community and identity.
Chapters Three and Four deal with narratives produced after the dictatorship. Chapter Three works with the urban chronicles of Pedro Lemebel, exploring the conditions of possibility of his proposal to traffic with rumors of mass culture between the worlds of the popular and the academic. The final chapter deals with the neo-noir novels of Ramón Díaz Eterovic, which, through the persona of their main protagonist, Heredia, produce a critique of the neo-liberal order that follows the dictatorship, and a represention the continuing conditions of violence and corruption in Chile today.
The dissertation ends by raising some questions about the role of contemporary literature in constructing an alternative vision of the society and the nation in countries emerging from dictatorship such as Chile.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-05172006-115145 |
| Date | 20 September 2006 |
| Creators | Donoso, jaime |
| Contributors | John Beverley, Gerald Martin, Herman Herlinghaus, Elizabeth Monasterios, Anibal Perez-Linan |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-05172006-115145/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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