La Identidad Imaginada en Seis Novelas Colombianas 2000--2010.

摘要

This study examines how individual identity (from a psychoanalytic perspective) and national identity (from a sociological perspective) are constructed in the Colombian context, from the analysis of six contemporary novels: Memoria de mis putas tristes (2004) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez; Angosta (2003) by Hector Abad Faciolince; Cobro de sangre (2004) by Mario Mendoza; El Eskimal y la mariposa (2004) by Nahum Montt; Delirio (2004) by Laura Restrepo; and Melodrama (2006) by Jorge Franco. A dual reality that is characterized by a lack of narrative unity is studied as it is reflected in literature. This study seeks to understand how this duality is resolved in literary work, with the expectation that this resolution can serve as a model for the unification of national identity in Colombia. To focus the analysis, three dimensions are examined in the novels: the incorporation of the political history of the country as part of a narrative strategy, the representation of the protagonist of the novel as a hero, and the identity of protagonists in the works. Our analyses suggest that the incorporation of the country's political history as a backdrop where action happens, but that favors the individual perspective of the protagonist shows tension between reality and fiction (notion reinforced through writer-protagonists and importance in the narrative of the intimate and individual space from which narration occurs); that main characters have some heroic characteristics, but also manage a malleable ethics that makes it difficult for the reader to identify with them constituting them neither as heroes or antiheroes; and, although with differences in magnitude, both in novels and in reality, a permanent manifestation of a dual identity as a way to adapt to the political and personal history (strategy in which the facade becomes prevalent). We conclude with a discussion of the applicability of a narrative suture to Colombian political reality.