Reconocer lo invisible : miradas desde lo fantástico a la violencia estructural en la literatura contemporánea anglonorteamericana

Abstract

This dissertation (Reconocer lo invisible. Miradas desde lo fantástico a la violencia estructural en la literatura contemporánea anglonorteamericana) seeks to observe how some resources of fantasy literature are used by writers to reflect on the link between direct, structural, and cultural violence in three narrative works: Sing, Unburied Sing (2017), by Jesmyn Ward, First Love: A Gothic Tale (1996), by Joyce Carol Oates, and Super-Cannes (2000), by J. G. Ballard. According to the analysis of the three types of violence carried out by Johan Galtung, we can distinguish between visible (direct) violence, associated with the concept of aggression, and two invisible ones: cultural violence, composed of ideological constructions regarding a community or social group; and structural violence, that which, often from the specific institutions of a state, and supported in most cases by cultural violence, is used to justify tactics such as exclusion, isolation, criminalization or direct violence against oppressed groups who inhabit the periphery: all of them mechanisms difficult to trace for those who are located in the center. Using resources such as that of the ghost or the monster, typical of Gothic literature, or the space which, loaded with dystopian elements, reflects on contemporary society, the works which are analyzed in this dissertation make violence (which has been made invisible or hidden by society, both culturally and through its institutions) visible to readers...