Writing beyond Reason: Literature, Counterinsurgency and Sovereignty in Contemporary Latin America.

Contemporary Latin American Literature (Central America;Mexico;Peru);Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Latin America of the Past Fifty Years;Sovereignty and Emergency Powers;Guatemalan Guerrillas;Zapatista Army of National Liberation;Shining Path;Latin American and Caribbean Studies;Romance Languages and Literature;Humanities;Romance Language and Literature Spanish

Kroll, ChristianNoemi, Daniel ;

University of Michigan

关键词: Contemporary Latin American Literature (Central America;    Mexico;    Peru);    Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Latin America of the Past Fifty Years;    Sovereignty and Emergency Powers;    Guatemalan Guerrillas;    Zapatista Army of National Liberation;    Shining Path;    Latin American and Caribbean Studies;    Romance Languages and Literature;    Humanities;    Romance Language and Literature Spanish;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/96086/chkroll_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

In this dissertation, I examine the recent armed conflicts between three Latin American states and three insurgent movements: the Guatemalan guerrilla, the Peruvian Shining Path and the Mexican Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). Drawing on close readings of literary texts (Castellanos Moya, Ortega, Payeras, Marcos, Taibo) and official documents (Ríos Montt, Belaúnde, Salinas), coupled with the exploration of the conceptual, historical and cultural relations between state formation and state violence, I analyze the languages of insurgency and coutnerinsurgency in contemporary Latin America. I suggest that the emergence in certain contemporary literary works of new insurgent subjectivities such as the mad, the ghost, the animal and the old both reveal and point to a shift in the locus of sovereignty, enabling thereby the possibility of thinking a space beyond sovereign reason. I first provide in Chapter 1 a critical, historical account of counterinsurgency measures in Peru, Guatemala and Mexico. Drawing from theoretical conceptualizations of sovereignty (Hobbes, Schmitt), friendship (Derrida) and emergency powers (Agamben), I then offer a critique of two main discourses the State relies upon to justify counterinsurgency, namely, the friend-enemy distinction (Chapter 1) and the discourse of sovereignty and emergency powers (Chapter 2). In the remaining chapters, I discuss literary works that explore ethical and political possibilities beyond sovereign reason. In Chapter 3, I read Julio Ortega’s novella Adios Ayacucho (1986) as a call to re-found the sovereign relation. In Chapter 4, I do a close reading of Horacio Castellanos Moya’s novel Senselessness (2005) and develop (via Foucault, de Certeau, Attali and Derrida) the conceptual categories of ;;noise’ and ;;reasonable senselessness’ as critiques of sovereign reason. Lastly, in Chapter 5, I examine Marcos’ and Taibo’s novel The Uncomfortable Dead (2005), as well as the former’s short stories about Don Durito de la Lacandona and El Viejo Antonio. I suggest that the EZLN recuperates certain practices and attitudes of ancient Cynicism and advances (via Badiou) the Idea of dignity as a possible path for producing a space beyond sovereignty.