The Feeling-thinking Subject in Horacio Castellanos Moya’s "Insensatez"

• In Event: Testimony, Post-Testimony, and Identity

Abstract

Horacio Castellanos Moya’s 2004 novel Insensatez has been interpreted by several critics as a post-testimonial narrative given that the text is deeply marked by the exhaustion of the political euphoria that was once attached to the genre "testimonio". It has been argued that the novel represents not the experiences of oppression recounted by testimonial subjects, but rather the experience and effect of reading such accounts. As a post-testimonial narrative, Castellanos Moya’s writing suggests a shift of focus from the meaning of testimonio towards its affective power. The role of affect in the novel has been brought up by several critics, but remains to be further addressed by way of a conscious engagement with affect theory. I will draw on Brian Massumi’s notion of affect and read Insensatez as a literary rehearsal of his theorization. To make the general interest a reality, Massumi proposes that the individual must come to affectively embody the collective structure, and live it in the everyday. The ladino narrator/protagonist in Insensatez, instead of acting as a traditional leftist intellectual "speaking for" the subaltern groups in the interest of national popular projects, has come to "feel like" them by citing fragments of the indigenous testimonies and applying them to distinct occasions of his personal life. He is depicted, I will argue, as a Massumian "feeling-thinking subject" in relation to the testimonial accounts, and echoes with Massumi’s call for the primacy of affectivity over rationality as a basic presupposition for a new project of solidarity and resistance.

Author

• Tingting Zhang, Indiana University Bloomington