Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

2-2019

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Program

Latin American, Iberian and Latino Cultures

Advisor

Magdalena Perkowska

Committee Members

Silvia Dapía

Fernando Degiovanni

Subject Categories

Latin American Literature

Keywords

relatos íntimos, Alejandra Costamagna, Nona Fernández, Andrea Jeftanovic, Andrea Maturana, Lina Meruane

Abstract

This work examines selective novels and short stories about Chile during and after Augusto Pinochet’s the military regime, written by five contemporary female writers that share generational traits: Alejandra Costamagna, Nona Fernández, Andrea Jeftanovic, Andrea Maturana and Lina Meruane. Their intimate stories on family relations that the common society brands as non-ideal and deviant, epitomize the aesthetics defined as symbolically huacho. This is a term that originally refers to the mestizo orphans or illegitimate children born during the European conquest and colonization, but appropriated by the author of this work to address the prevailing discontent and malaise that contradict with the promises of individual happiness as well as collective consensus forged under patriarchy and patriotism. The representation of this malaise that transcends the boundary between the private and public dimensions in the Chilean society is materialized by the five female writers through the cultivation of undesirable affects that defy the normative distribution of the sensible reinforced by the authoritarian ideology, the conservative family and moral values as well as the neoliberal rationality.Their aesthetics of symbolic huacharajeis embedded in the dissenting forms of their fiction whose languages are inspired by, among others, theatrical expressions and Neo-Baroque experimentations.

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