Estudios de Teoría Literaria (Jul 2024)
Writing with the remains of the real: brief genealogical route towards the literature of the concentration camp
Abstract
In addition to the problems related to its generic classification, Latin American testimony has had to face other conflicts such as the presence and use of aesthetic values in said stories, the complex conception of truth that these scriptural expressions assume and the language-trauma relationship manifested in the testimonies of the post-dictatorship. This article proposes a brief and limited genealogical route with the purpose of locating and reordering those foundations addressed by literary criticism that have attempted to design a typology of the genre without reaching a univocal criterion. This, in order to trace the elements that have outlined the testimonial production of the last century related to the stories of memory (post-dictatorial or concentrationary). The work assumes a theoretical-critical perspective and addresses, among others, the following items: process of “institutionalization” and re-institutionalization of testimony taking into account the variations that gender experiences during these periods; central problems associated with testimony and the memory paradigm; and the possibilities of literary creation in the construction of a concentrationary testimonial story (Su paso, by Carlos Bischoff) in the face of the problems associated with the strategies of representation of trauma in this type of narratives.
