Investigating Dictatorship and Other Authoritarian Enigmas: Roberto Bolaño re-voicing Adorno and Benjamin

• In Event: Frankfurt School in Latin America

Abstract

My paper will discuss the Roberto Bolaño effect in Europe and Latin America. Tracing the political resonances and afterlives of the Chilean writer and literary provocateur, I will explore important parallels between Bolaño, Adorno and Benjamin. Nocturno de Chile, Estrella Distante and El Tercer Reich will serve as key documents that I will compare to Walter Benjamin's Critique of Violence and Theodor Adorno's The Authoritarian Personality. I will examine the politics of Bolaño's writing and his legacies as a Latin American author in Europe. My presentation will illustrate the ethical and political commonalities between the European philosophers and the Chilean author as well as the implications of these intersections for human rights politics in Latin America.

Author

• Alhelí M Alvarado