Estudios de Teoría Literaria (Nov 2020)
Clandestine plots from the margins. A microphysics of narco-power in Si me querés, quereme transa by Cristian Alarcón
Abstract
This article offers an analysis of Si me querés, quereme transa (2010) by Cristian Alarcón, which explores the ways of making visible a socially shared precariousness through which this chronicle challenges the stereotypical figure of the narco-criminal. In a work that combines hardboiled novels, journalistic research, autobiographical and testimonial record, a critical perspective on the language of drug violence finds its bearings through the introduction of narratives from a vast community of networks in which each subjectivity leaves a differentiating mark in a common fabric woven out of despair, frustration and pain. Thus, if, on the one hand, the “choreography of violence” allows us to examine the significant particles of a communicative performativity around which necro-empowerment is inscribed as a matrix of social interaction, on the other hand, the ethnic and maternal aspect of Alcira, the head of a small narco clan with whom the main character forms a bond of friendship and mutual learning, enables a minority space of utterance through which hegemonic frameworks of recognition and integration are questioned. In this regard, the social, cultural, and political significance of marginal violence is dimensioned to the extent that family plots, generational situations, and communal dynamics marked by processes of segregation and forced displacement are made visible.
