Traumatic Postmodernity: violent introspection, repression and transgression in recent Latin American narratives
The stigma of violence in Latin American foundational fictions is well understood. From the Crónicas de la conquista to the representation of excess in national politics, be it the banana strikers’ massacre in One Hundred Years of Solitude or the cycle of vengeance in La Fiesta del Chivo, violence underscores fiction’s capacity to “protest against the insufficiencies of life”, as Vargas Llosa proposed in his Nobel lecture. In recent decades however, a subjective sensibility towards violence has taken hold.