This paper evaluates a trajectory in recent, popular Latin American narrative away from a focus on geopolitical violence to a focus on sexual violence. In so doing, these narratives respond to the libidinal investment in women as Other to foreground the way that the desire of global audiences for an exceptional, Latin American Other perpetuates violence in the region.
This paper will analyse Colombian author Evelio Rosero’s short story “Brides by Night” (1998) and novel The Armies (2007), as well as the titular story of Argentine author Mariana Enríquez’s short story collection Things We Lost in the Fire (2017). Rosero’s short story and novel challenge the tendency to look to his country for an exceptional Colombian violence as well as for the generic conventions of magical realism by drawing attention to gender violence and rape culture. This paper argues that violence against women is a universal concern, and that the way it is represented by Rosero contests narratives that confine violence to Colombia as a place of exception. Enríquez’s work is at the forefront of the often marginalised genre of Latin American Gothic, and her short story “Things We Lost in the Fire” empowers the victims of gender violence and rape culture. In it, women surrounded by a culture of discrimination aim to destroy the very reason for which they and their bodies are objectified by men. The result is a harrowing display of how difficult it is for the Other to affirm subjectivity within cultures of objectification and discrimination.
About the presenterMark Piccini
Mark Piccini completed his PhD at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, Australia in 2016. His research examined narrative strategies to critique historical and ongoing inequality and injustice in Latin America without exceptionalising Latin American violence. He is a Lecturer in Professional Communication at QUT working at the intersection of communication, cultural, and digital media studies.