Fringing Visibility: Otherness, Marginality and the Question of Subaltern Truth in Antes Que ...

272 Pages·2005·0.52 MB·English

FRINGING VISIBILITY: OTHERNESS, MARGINALITY AND THE
QUESTION OF SUBALTERN TRUTH IN ANTES QUE ANOCHEZCA, LA
VIRGEN DE LOS SICARIOS AND CIDADE DE DEUS
DISSERTATION
Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for
the degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of
the University of Cincinnati
By
Sandro Rodrigo de Barros, M.A.
*****
The University of Cincinnati
2005
ii
ABSTRACT
This dissertation examines how otherness and
marginality are articulated in three literary works:
Reinaldo Arenas' Antes que anochezca (1992), Fernando
Vallejo's La virgen de los sicarios (1994) and Paulo Lins'
Cidade de Deus (1997). Furthermore, this study investigates
whether the representation of subjects historically viewed
as peripheral, both inside and outside the borders of the
nation, perpetuates or undermines the conceptualization of
the Latin American continental identity as "Other" in
relation to dominant Eurocentric and North American
perspectives.
The choice of the texts of Arenas, Vallejo and Lins as
paradigms of representation of otherness and marginality in
the Latin American context is not fortuitous. Antes, La
virgen and Cidade de Deus are works that underscore renewed
perspectives on the significance of the nation inasmuch as
they challenge the conventionality of historical discourses
through the articulation of marginal subjectivities as
prevailing accounts of reality. Arenas' autobiography
constitutes a narrative in which the exilic Self subverts
the hegemony of the Cuban socialist state by contesting
history and its truth through the account of a homosexual
and political dissident who witnesses and personally
iii
contributes to one of the most defining moments of the
nation's past; Vallejo's representation of the formerly
exiled intellectual in La virgen, in complicity with the
sicariato class with which he associates himself, inscribes
the marginal elements of Colombian society onto the present
narrative of the nation; and Lins' re-imagination of the
favelado space in Cidade de Deus dismantles the
conventional perception of Brazil as a racial paradise by
denouncing the poverty found in the slums of Rio de Janeiro
as a social condition intrinsically tied to the country’s
racial "invisibility."
iv
Para a Alexis e Antonia.
v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
On this glorious occasion, of the
splendid defeat
(Anthony Newly)
Gostaria de agradecer ao comitê do departamento de
literatura da Universidade de Cincinnati: ao Dr. Luciano
Picanço (meu diretor), pelo estímulo e confiança ao largo
deste projeto, e à Dra. Connie Scarborough e Dra. María Paz
Moreno pela participação. Aos meus pais, Sonia e Francisco,
meu muito obrigado pela fé e paciência no decorrer dos
anos. Extendo meu agradecimento também à professora Susan
Bacon, Wayne Bacon, minha esposa Alexis Bacon e à Camille
Bacon e sua família pelo apôio durante as fases deste
projeto. E finalmente, agradeço aos amigos, Natalia Peláz,
Lynne and Dan Keller, e aos colegas do departamento do
Residential College na Universidade de Michigan pela força
durante a elaboração desta dissertação.
vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract iii
Dedication v
Acknowledgements vi
Introduction 1
Chapter 1: Antes que anochezca 23
Chapter 2: La virgen de los sicarios 96
Chapter 3: Cidade de Deus 170
Conclusion 237
Bibliography 248
vii
INTRODUCTION
To write is to disclose the world and to
offer it as a task to the generosity of the
reader. It is to have a recourse to the
consciousness of others in order to make
one’s self be recognized as essential to
the totality of being.
(Jean Paul Sartre, “What is Literature”)
So here it came: the collapse of harmony,
the demolition of the spheres…
(Salman Rushdie, East, West)
The Text, The Self and the Other
This dissertation examines how otherness and
marginality are articulated in three contemporary literary
works: Reinaldo Arenas' Antes que anochezca (1992),
Fernando Vallejo's La virgen de los sicarios (1994) and
Paulo Lins' Cidade de Deus (1997). This study also
investigates whether the representation of subjects
historically viewed as peripheral, both inside and outside
the borders of the nation, perpetuates or undermines the
1
conceptualization of the Latin American continental
identity as "Other" in relation to dominant Eurocentric and
North American perspectives.
The choice of the texts of Arenas, Vallejo and Lins as
paradigms of representation of otherness and marginality in
the Latin American context is not fortuitous. Antes, La
virgen and Cidade de Deus are works that underscore renewed
perspectives on the significance of the nation inasmuch as
they challenge the conventionality of historical discourses
through the articulation of marginal subjectivities as
prevailing accounts of reality. Arenas' autobiography
constitutes a narrative in which the exilic Self subverts
the hegemony of the Cuban socialist state by contesting
history and its truth through the account of a homosexual
and political dissident who witnesses and personally
contributes to one of the most defining moments of the
nation's past; Vallejo's representation of the formerly
exiled intellectual in La virgen, in complicity with the
sicariato class with which he associates himself, inscribes
the marginal elements of Colombian society onto the present
narrative of the nation; and Lins' re-imagination of the
favelado space in Cidade de Deus dismantles the
conventional perception of Brazil as a racial paradise by
denouncing the poverty found in the slums of Rio de Janeiro
2
as a social condition intrinsically tied to the country’s
racial "invisibility."
As shall be seen in the chapters that follow, the
presence of the authorial signature within the borders of
the text is a common feature in the works selected for this
study. The literary articulation of Arenas’, Vallejo’s and
Lins’ Selves and the subaltern Others for whom they openly
speak is intrinsically tied to the quest of contesting the
meaning of periphery while indirectly asserting the
authorial figure as a powerful symbolist, someone who is
capable of advancing a particular representation of reality
as the truth by authenticating its value on the premises of
empiricism and testimony.
In this sense, it could be argued that the works to be
studied in this dissertation reach beyond the frontiers of
entertainment literature; they correspond to a type of
post-colonial perspective that does not merely refute
tradition but rather attempts to “rewrite a dominant
ideology from within”(Fee 244). 1 Such a perspective
generates a version of reality that marginally imposes

1 It is well to note here that the term “post-colonial” is utilized to
amply characterize all cultural production that presents particular
strategies of representation derived from the advent of colonialism. As
Fernando de Toro remarks, “the concrete space which opens Post-
Modernism and deconstruction is one which makes it possible for Post-
Colonial counter-discourses to locate themselves inside rather than
outside the theory machine that placed them in the margins. This is
exactly the change that differentiates the Post-Colonial discourse that
preceded Post-Modernity from contemporary debates” (26).
3