| My thesis, Tortura y Literatura en el Cono Sur: Los limites de la representacion literaria, is a study on the representation of torture in literary texts from Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina. Over the course of four chapters, I explore the following question: is it possible to represent torture in literature without recreating the victim's suffering? I am primarily concerned with determining how this violence should be represented. I argue that writers (and artists in general) have an ethical responsibility towards the victims when representing torture or extreme violence.;Each of the chapters approaches one literary work. There are chapters devoted to Luisa Valenzuela's Cambio de armas (1982), Isabel Allende's La casa de los espiritus (1982), Marta Traba's Conversacion al sur (1981) y Alicia Partnoy's The Little School (1986). These narratives were published in the eighties and share the concern with the human rights abuses perpetrated by the military dictatorships in Chile, Argentina or Uruguay. They all address the infliction of torture to political prisoners, and approach the reality of the victim of torture through the eyes of a female protagonist.;Although these are fictional works, they have been read by a vast majority of readers as truthful accounts of the historical events their authors intend to denounce. Therefore, my reading is based on the influence these texts have had in making people aware of the practice of torture. I look at these texts as different aesthetic responses to the violence perpetrated by the Southern Cone dictatorships. But the political aspect in these narratives is much more prevalent than I had initially thought. The political understanding each author has of the historical events determines to a large extent how torture is represented and how the victim is portrayed.;This thesis is a contribution to the ongoing discussion of torture, the ethical implications this practice involves, and the role of literature in addressing this terrible reality. |
