PUNTOS CIEGOS EN LA RECIENTE NARRATIVA DE ECUADOR Y COLOMBIA: NUEVO REALISMO EN EL CAMBIO DE SIGLO (1990-2006)

Abstract

This dissertation examines Ecuadorean and Colombian novels written by authors born in the late 1950s or after, and written between 1990 and 2006, who challenge conventional and totalizing perceptions that used to be the trend of their respective literary traditions. Instead, in hard-boiled novels they focus on topics such as nomadism in the postmodern city, the figure of the writer and the role of literature in society through metafictional techniques, and the search for meaning in a particularly violent and convulsed environment. Far from adopting canonical versions of a socially committed realism prevalent in previous generations, the recent novels from Ecuador and Colombia look upon the blind spots hidden in sociopolitical, historical and current contexts.

The concept of "blind spots" that I introduce in this dissertation depicts the marginalized realities that have been deliberately obscured by the univocal gaze whose presence affects the way of conceiving the world and, therefore, to write it. This concept addresses a possible aesthetic defined by the connection between the act of writing and the gaze in order to register the hidden and opaque cracks of everyday reality; namely, the vicious circle of violence, social inequality, the fissures of a corrupt system, the lack of social and democratic projects, and the indifference of the establishment, the media, and the institutions.

This dissertation shows how writing returns to the partiality of the real, unveiling gaps and fragments instead of a supposed totality, while establishing literary links, thus far unexplored, between the narratives of both Andean countries.