Due to the cultural and political influences of the Cuban Revolution, the Boom literary movement, and poststructuralism, autobiography has received little attention in Latin American literature. This dissertation argues that self-writing has followed a distinct trajectory in Latin America, evolving away from traditional understandings of the genre towards a more complicated relationship between the self and the state. Furthermore, the discursive practices of surveyance, surveillance, and torture that characterize authoritarian governments have impacted the autobiographical form as we know it, resulting in metafictional, hypersexual, and linguistically chaotic texts. Stating the Self takes as case studies self-writings by Reinaldo Arenas (Cuba, 1943-1990), Clarice Lispector (Brazil, 1920-1977), and Diamela Eltit (Chile, 1949-), redefining, with the help of poststructuralist and postmodern theories, self-writing in the Latin American context. In the face of authoritarianism, these authors exhibit a struggle over subjectivity and linguistic sovereignty, as well as crisis of representation stemming from trauma, repression, and censorship. These theoretically innovative approaches to self-writing can ultimately be read as speech acts, that is, verbal assertions of the self in the wake of state repression.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-12012013-225252 |
| Date | 03 December 2013 |
| Creators | Brown, Laura Cade |
| Contributors | William Luis, Ph.D., Earl E. Fitz, Ph.D., Benigno Trigo, Ph.D., José M. Medina, Ph.D. |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-12012013-225252/ |
| Rights | restricted, 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 Vanderbilt University 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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