On mourning: Loss and imagination in contemporary Latin American literature

My dissertation examines how a number of contemporary Latin American texts represent loss and formulate a type of mourning appropriate to their historical situation. Since the contingencies of local, particular circumstances condition the lens through which mourning may be construed and experienced, this project studies each text in relation to the historical, cultural, and theoretical contexts in which it is embedded. I have chosen three different contexts and groups of texts that explore responses to and articulations of loss: two novels by Reinaldo Arenas set against the backdrop of the Cuban Revolution, two novels by Sergio Chejfec concerning Holocaust survivors who relocated to Argentina and Argentines who face the legacy of the 1976-1983 dictatorship respectively, and a novel by Luisa Valenzuela that focuses on the experience of exile in the United States. What they have in common is a recurring engagement of the potential role of imagination in the process of mourning. I contend that this insistence on imagination opens up as yet unexplored territory in the theoretical conception of mourning. Given the vexed issues of temporal, linguistic, and interpretive mediation in dealing with the past, I argue that fiction provides a fruitful sphere of inquiry in that it both represents and comments on its own representation. By underscoring the elements of imagination and interpretation, the novels explore the subject\u27s agency and the potential for change within that state of mourning. By validating interpretation as an act intrinsic to mourning and memory work, the texts also lend significance the affective, subjective aspects of our relationship to the past. In each instance, creative acts are depicted as potential alternatives to official and academic discourses about historical loss