Rural Turn and Memories of the Armed Conflict in the Colombian Novel of the XXI Century

Abstract

The conceptual development of memory shows the need of constructing stories that confront grief without deactivating its political power. For this, following Rancière and Agamben, it’s necessary to promote dissent by making visible the “parts with no part” of the social body and the fissures of the present, which can be seen in some narratives of the "rural turn", a growing trend in Latin American literature. In the case of Colombia, this displacement, closely linked to the construction of memories of the armed conflict, vindicates stories that have been ignored by the main discourses about violence, such as damage to ecosystems and the dispossession of peasant and ancestral territories. In order to determine the relationship between the memories of the armed conflict and the rural turn, I analyze two novels: Los derrotados, by Pablo Montoya, and Elástico de sombra, by Juan Cárdenas. Starting from the similarities and differences between the two, I will outline at the end some general lines about the rural turn and its importance in current literature.

Keywords

• giro rural
• memoria del conflicto armado
• novela colombiana del siglo xxi
• pablo montoya
• juan cárdenas