Description
Book SynopsisWinner, William M. LeoGrande Prize, Center for Latin American andLatino Studies at American University, 2022
For half a century, cultural production in Colombia has labored under the weight of magical realism—above all, the works of Gabriel García Márquez—where ghosts told stories about the country’s violent past and warned against a similarly gruesome future.
Decades later, the story of violence in Colombia is no less horrific, but the critical resources of magical realism are depleted. In their wake comes 'spectral realism.' Juliana Martínez argues that recent Colombian novelists, filmmakers, and artists—from Evelio Rosero and William Vega to Beatriz González and Erika Diettes—share a formal and thematic concern with the spectral but shift the focus from what the ghost is toward what the specter does. These works do not speak of ghosts. Instead, they use the specter to destabilize reality by
Trade Review
[Haunting without Ghosts] is a book written with critical patience to regard the disturbing presence of the specters of enforced disappearance, the violently and intentionally silenced or erased from Colombian history...Haunting without Ghosts not only can teach scholars, but also cultural practitioners who wish to deal with the ethical issues of the representation of historical and structural violence...It is a book to take to heart the harrowing muted cries of the voiceless. * KULT Journal *
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. Evelio Rosero’s Spectral Landscapes of Disappearance
Chapter 2. Beyond Vision: Haptic Perception and Contested Spaces in the Films of William Vega, Jorge Forero, and Felipe Guerrero
Chapter 3. The Revenants: Deferred Burials and Suspended Mourning in the Works of Juan Manuel Echavarría, Beatriz González, and Erika Diettes
Epilogue
Notes
Works Cited
Index
