Cuerpos al límite: espacios y experiencias de marginalidad

This dissertation explores the ways in which contemporary Latin American narratives address
the issue of marginal bodies and subjectivities by producing intricate aesthetic and ethical
projects that, from a non-representational perspective, challenge the idea of one-dimensional
meanings and clear-cut social and discursive identities. The argument arises from the hypothesis
that these narratives articulate themselves to a contemporary historical moment marked by a
social and epistemological crisis, a crisis that has to do with both current uncertainties about the
future and what seems to be an historical impossibility of solving the social problems and deep
economic inequalities that neoliberalism has brought to outrageous extremes.
Establishing textual connections and thematic encounters between voices that emerge
from different standpoints and enunciation sites, the narratives under discussion pay special
attention to those impoverished and marginal bodies that dwell at the margins of our
contemporary urban societies. These bodies are generally considered useless and disposable,
when not contaminated and corrupted, from the point of view of the ideological prevailing
system. They constitute spaces where unfixed identities are constantly being displayed and
performed and where historical failure has inscribed painful scars and produced social and
physical ruins.
CUERPOS AL LÍMITE:
ESPACIOS Y EXPERIENCIAS DE MARGINALIDAD EN LA NARRATIVA
LATINOAMERICANA ACTUAL
Lucía Herrera Montero, PhD
University of Pittsburgh, 2010
At the same time, these narratives are concerned with the problem of language and its
capacity to depict a reality that cannot be completely contained by human knowledge and
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