Desperate attempts to speak silence: fiction as an instrument for mourning
ANTHONY NUCKOLS UNIVERSITAT DE VALÈNCIA
Resumen: Proponemos un análisis de El comprador de aniversarios (2002) de AdolfoGarcía Ortega, publicado a comienzos del boom de la memoria en España, como una narrativa postraumática de duelo. Destacamos la novela entre otras contemporáneas que tratan la guerra civil española por su modo de acercarse al pasado, su uso de la ficción y por su temática. Trazamos los paralelismos que existen entre esta y Dora Bruder (1997) de Patrick Modiano, que pudo tener influencia en la de García Ortega. El resultado de esta narrativa de duelo es otro modo de entender nuestra relación en el presente con otro(s) pasado(s) violento(s).Palabras clave: duelo, Holocausto, novela, memoria histórica, ficción
Abstract: We propose an analysis of El comprador de aniversarios (2002) by AdolfoGarcía Ortega, published at the beginning of the memory boom in Spain, as a posttraumatic narrative of mourning. We single out the novel from among other contemporary novel son the Spanish Civil War for its way of approaching the past, its use of fiction and for its subject. We draw parallels that exist between the novel and Dora Bruder (1997) by Patrick Modiano, which could have influenced García Ortega's. The result of this mourning narrative is another way of understanding our relation in the present with (an)other violent past(s).
the title of the present article had been selected, it was brought toour attention that Jordana Blejmar had chosen the same phrase from Perez's novel for her article entitled: "'Ficción o muerte'. Autofiguración y testimonio en Diario de una princesa montonera -110% Verdad-".
We analyze what we call the novel of mourning in opposition to the novel of historical memory. While both assume a critical position with respect to the violence of the 20th century in Spain, they differ in how they deal with the losses of the past. The novel of historical memory, influenced by the internationalization of memory discourses and movements, seeks to combat the imposed forgetting through a literary recovery of forgotten cases from the past. The novel of mourning, however, seeks to break this dichotomy between forgetting/memory, understanding that the losses of the past are unrecoverable and that a more just future is only achievable by recognizing the past’s tragic nature: more than a (re)opening or closing of wounds, it means living with them, also permitting a way of relating to other tragedies that would otherwise be foreign to us. As an example we analyze Ernesto Pérez Zúñiga’s Santo Diablo (2004).
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