El escritor y la ciudad en el nuevo fin de siglo Representación del espacio y autorrepresentación en la escritura autoficcional de Fernando Vallejo

Abstract

In this dissertation I explore how the representation of space and self is articulated in the autofictional writing of the Colombian author Fernando Vallejo (Medellín, 1942), focusing on four texts: Los días azules (1985), El fuego secreto (1987), La Virgen de los sicarios (1994) and El desbarrancadero (2001). I particularly examine what textual strategies are used to convey this articulation, and what perceptions of space and self, as well as what conceptions of the city and the intellectual, inform these texts. Drawing on theory and criticism on autobiography and autofiction, I propose to read in Fernando Vallejo's writing a return of the author-subject -a return of the ‘real’- though that return is taken as an opportunity to explore, in a playful and ironic mode, the fictionality of the notions of subject and identity in the autobiographical text, and to examine the privileged role played by space in that exploration. On one hand, based on theoretical studies of the poetics of space, I seek to demonstrate that, since space is always relative to a point of view, to a certain position -physical, biographical and ideological-, its representation conveys more than just spatial meanings. I argue that as a product of the gaze of this fragmented subject, of this author who returns, -though not as a guarantor of the truth of what he writes-, space is not only signified, represented, but also functions as a signifying element, condensing cultural, aesthetic and ideological meanings; in sum, a world vision. On the other hand, I show that it is mainly in reference to past and present spaces that images of self, both ambiguous and multiple, are created in the texts. And these images, these self-figurations, which constitute individual creations as much as cultural and social products, reveal in Vallejo’s writing, not just a fictionalizing reconstruction of his personal past, but a critical reading of Colombia’s history, and what Vallejo sees as its disastrous present. In this sense, my contention is that, beyond referring to existing places outside the texts, through the use of proper names and with diverse degrees of mimetism, and thus creating the illusion of reality, or beyond acting as mere background, narrative space functions as a key element in the production of meaning in the texts by Fernando Vallejo examined here.

More information

Identifiers

ORCID for Christina Garcia Hermoso: orcid.org/0000-0002-6693-6958

Catalogue record

Export record