Metáforas extremas del neoliberalismo en la literatura latinoamericana

This dissertation traces a set of specific metaphors that emerge to address the consequences of neoliberalism in literary works by the writers José Donoso, Diamela Eltit, Luisa Valenzuela and Roberto Bolaño. Focusing on these four metaphors --anthropophagi, sold human bodies, torture and mass graves-- this dissertation argues that literary texts uncover the “dark side” of neoliberal development since the 1970s in Chile, Argentina and Mexico. The representation through these metaphors of different neoliberal scenarios in these texts stands as a stark contrast with the visions of freedom, and economic prosperity promised with the entrance of the neoliberal economy in Latin America. The power of these metaphors, I argue, hails from their ability to grasp dramatic changes in the subjectivity and the extreme logic of objectification experienced by the subject under neoliberal regimes, through representation of bodies left exposed to be eaten, tortured, sold as commodities and finally thrown away as industrial garbage. The extraordinary visual impact of these images of bodily destruction, I argue, attest to the unique power of literary texts in conjuring the objectifying and dismembering tendencies of neoliberal capitalism and the consequences of its development