Fernando Vallejo’s Splendor: Building a Post-National Anti-Romance.

• In Event: Narco, belleza y violencia en la narrativa colombiana actual

Abstract

This paper exposes how Colombian author Fernando Vallejo puts a spin on the romances that nineteenth century Latin American writers used to cement their nations. Vallejo’s non-conformist and rebellious prose in his novel La Virgen de los Sicarios (1994) uses the narrative tropes characteristic of these romances to shatter the dream of a unified and peaceful Colombian imagined community. Indeed, Vallejo’s narrator's depiction of his romance with a young assassin from Medellín’s shantytowns subverts the traditionalist take on love that informed Latin-American nation building projects. Instead of using love narratives to bring together the different racial and social elements that compose the nation, I build on theories by Jacques Lacan, Doris Sommer and Juan Carlos González-Espitia to show how Vallejo’s transgressive stand on desire counters the symbolic union of opposites that love narratives perform.

Author

• Sebastian Patron Saade