The city as a narrative of violence and social exclusion in three textual fragments

Abstract

This paper begins from assuming human life, social life, as narration and self-narration. In that sense, observing the city as a space for social narrative is not an idle exercise, because it allows to resignify, on an interdisciplinary basis, its field and space by the defamiliarization of the regulatory approaches of institutional discourses. Through the analysis of narration as a way of “representation”, the city is addressed as a multistage with different forms of violence and social exclusion portrayed in a literary text such as Mapocho, written by Nona Fernández (2002), and fragments of two testimonial documents such as Elena Poniatowska’s Hasta no verte, Jesús mío (2013), and Elizabeth Burgos’s Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú y así me nació la conciencia (1997). These literary works show the statement, temporal structure and guiding approach of narrations, as well as the significance and discursive articulation that narrate stories of three cities (Santiago de Chile, Mexico City and Guatemala) at a specific moment of history. This work aims to present the city as a narrative of violence and exclusion in a literary work (novel), from a ghostly journey that inquires about its origin, past and identity, and as a place that seems to be alien after the last dictatorial period in two testimonial fragments through the eyes of indigenous women.