Fabricating the Thanatopolitical Body in Rodrigo Rey Rosa's Cárcel de Árboles

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2170296
AutoresLucy Bollington (0000-0002-8911-130X, autor de correspondencia)
Año2018
Volumen27
Número1
Páginas115-133
Fecha de publicación2018-01-02
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Latin American Cultural Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1356-9325 • E-ISSN: 1469-9575
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13569325.2017.1414039
OpenAlexW2782221360
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas21

Guatemalan author Rodrigo Rey Rosa’s first novella, Cárcel de árboles (1991), tells the story of a secret politico-medical experiment conducted on prisoners who have been condemned to death by the State. The experiment takes place in a prison camp located in the tropical forest. In this article, I examine the portrayal of power and embodiment in Rey Rosa’s novella, placing the text in dialogue with thanatopolitical theory and outlining the ways it evokes the historical context of violence and economic transition in Guatemala. I commence by discussing the forms of power at work in the novella’s prison camp, before examining the significance of medical science to Rey Rosa’s depiction of embodiment. I then explore the complex aesthetic and ethical questions embedded in the relationship between language, textuality and the body in the novella. Finally, I discuss the post-human dimensions of the text that emerge in the relationship between the human bodies of the prisoners and the non-human terrain. Over the course of this analysis, I contend that Rey Rosa marshals the body to invoke the ways in which the category of the ‘human’ is formed, deconstructed and reconfigured in the face of the destructive power that operates in the modern techno-scientific epoch

Art · Context (archaeology · Criminology · Depiction · Humanities · Literature · Novella · Power (physics · Prison · Sociology · Textuality · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · History · Latin American Literature Studies · Literature, Magical Realism, García Márquez