Countering Acts of Dispossession through Alberto Blest Gana’s Mariluán

Bibliographic Data

ID16964530
AuthorsAngela N DeLutis-Eichenberger (Dickinson College, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume5
Issue1
Pages107-122
Publication date2021-06-03
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueOpen Cultural Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2451-3474 • E-ISSN: 2451-3474
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/culture-2021-0010
OpenAlexW3165971593
LanguageEN
References cited18

In the scant scholarship relative to Alberto Blest Gana’s Mariluán , several critics have underscored the unfeasibility or superfluidity of the protagonist’s aspired project for restitution, indigenous assimilation, and fraternity in the Araucanía during the novel’s context of enunciation. Under the theoretical framework of Athena Athanasiou and Judith Butler on dispossession, and in dialogue with the concept of “sediments of time” by Reinhart Koselleck, this study argues that an analysis of the overlapping chronologies in “play” in Mariluán serves to revise the statements seemingly offered for advancement nearly 160 years ago. Mariluán’s pseudo-revival of a Lautaro and the manner in which he makes himself “present” or “becoming,” and remains “present” after his beheading, can be re-signified as a means to challenge the terms imposed from structures that inhibit, subjugate, and seek to fully exterminate or nullify the “other” – insomuch in the 1860s, as in future temporalities involving repetitions of historical events and their related, yet distinguishable, singularities. Through a reconsideration of the protagonist’s aims that refute his call for cultural assimilation as a necessary means of integration, today’s status quo on indigenous issues can be re-problematised, to contest the pervasive logic of dispossession and advocate for more practical and politically inclusive structures that celebrate Chile’s plurality

Aesthetics · Art · CONTEST · Fraternity · Indigenous · Political science · Scholarship · Sociology · Status quo · Temporalities · Cultural and Social Studies in Latin America · History · Latin American Literature Studies · Law · Political and Social Dynamics in Chile and Latin America

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access