Narratives of Abandonment: Colombia's Cultural Production from 1990 to 2007.

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the by-products of the violence implicit in a culture permeated by the trafficking of narcotics. Specifically, I study the identities that derive from this context in Colombia’s contemporary literature, films and sculpture. These are what I call residual bodies, remnants of the (now ubiquitous) social, political, and economic violence inherent to consumer-based societies. My work is an attempt to show how visual and literary representations of residual bodies provide a space to understand the effects of a longstanding undeclared civil war. These representations frequently achieve this, not only by pointing to an obsolete State, a severed judicial system, a lack of inclusive sociopolitical bodies, and the pervasive impact of the fluctuating (black) market economy, but also to a series of parallel practices and para-institutions that substitute the official failing ones. My analysis draws specifically from the novels La virgen de los sicarios by Fernando Vallejo, Rosario Tijeras by Jorge Franco, and their film adaptations, Satanás and Scorpio City by Mario Mendoza, Perder es cuestión de método and Vida feliz de un joven llamado Esteban by Santiago Gamboa, El olvido que seremos by Héctor Abad Faciolince and Todo pasa pronto by Juan David Correa. I also bring into the discussion the installations by Colombian-born artist Doris Salcedo. Drawing on Salcedo’s artistic work, I address how residual bodies become present as absence in contemporary sculpture which, ultimately, points to their marginal condition. In addition, I address recent urban and historical transformations of Bogotá, particularly in architectural structures such as the Palace of Justice and Parque Tercer Milenio. In this diverse corpus, I analyze the political and historical context in order to understand how residual bodies become part of the generalized recycling process of waste. Narratives of Abandonment are texts that disrupt traditional normative national discourses, and in so doing they represent new ways of conceptualizing and articulating the Colombian nation. This project discloses the alternative history that these cultural productions depict, the residual subjectivities that have emerged, and the sense of abandonment experienced from the wounds of war.