Trabajo de grado - Pregrado
Analysis of the armies by Evelio Rosero: a view from the subjectivity of violence
Autor
Silva Velandia, David Stiven
Carreño Brochero, María Sofía
Institución
Resumen
This monograph aims to make an analysis of the novel The armies, by Evelio Rosero, a novel
that tells the story of Ismael Pasos, an 80-year-old teacher who worked in the small towns of Colombia
until he reached San José. There Ismael resides with his wife Otilia and he stands out not only for
having taught to read and write to most of the people of the town, but in his old age he also becomes
that distant spectator who narrates in a typified, normalized way, and almost natural, the violent
events, the traumas and the culture of violence created by the conflicts between legal and illegal
armed groups. In order to show the impact and some effects of the state abandonment that the novel
exposes, it is intended to relate some violent events that occurred in Colombia with the situations that
take place in San José. Likewise, in this work it will be found the concept of Empathic Unsettlement, a
term proposed by the American professor and historian Dominick LaCapra (2001), as the literary
resource that the writer used when deciding how to tell his novel. It should be emphasized that Rosero
did not experience violence directly, however, he takes the necessary experience for the narrator from
the information published in the different media.
Key words: historical memory, empathic unsettlement, violence, normalization of
violence, The armies. Esta monografía pretende hacer un análisis de la novela Los ejércitos, de Evelio Rosero,
novela que cuenta la historia de Ismael Pasos, un profesor de 80 años de edad que ejerció dentro
de los pequeños pueblos de Colombia hasta llegar a San José. Allí, Ismael reside junto a su
esposa Otilia y él se destaca no solo por haberle enseñado a leer y escribir a la mayor parte de las
personas del pueblo, sino que en su vejez también se convierte en aquel espectador distante que
narra de forma tipificada, normalizada y casi natural, los hechos violentos, los traumas y la
cultura de violencia creada por los conflictos entre grupos armados legales e ilegales. Con el
propósito de mostrar el impacto y algunos efectos del abandono estatal que expone la novela, se
pretende relacionar algunos hechos violentos ocurridos en Colombia con las situaciones que se
protagonizan en San José. Así mismo, en este trabajo se encontrará el concepto de Desasosiego
Empático como el recurso literario que utilizó el escritor al decidir cómo contar su novela. Es
preciso recalcar que Rosero no vivió la violencia directamente, sin embargo toma la experiencia
necesaria para el narrador desde la información publicada en los diferentes medios de
comunicación.
Palabras Claves: memoria histórica, desasosiego empático, violencia, normalización de
la violencia, los ejércitos. Table of contents
Abstract 3
Resumen 4
Table of content 5
Introduction 7
Chapter 1. Problem statement 11
1.1 Research question 14
1.2 General objective 14
1.3 Specific objectives 14
Chapter 2. Theoretical framework 14
2.1 Violence 15
2.2 Culture of violence 17
2.3 Empathic unsettlement 20
2.4 Hermeneutics 22
2.5 Historical memory 24
Chapter 3. State of art 27
3.1 Violence 28
3.1.1 Half a Century in the company of the
One Hundred Years of Solitude 28
3.1.2 Implications Around the Phenomenon of the violence
in Ashes of the Wind by Hernando Tellez 28
3.2 Culture of violence in literature 29
3.2.1 The Phenomenon of Cultural Violence Behind
6
the Literary Work, The Study of Comparative
Literary Model by Sylvie Meiliana. 29
3.2.2 Violencia novelada, una mirada comparativa a
las novelas Muertes de fiesta y Los ejércitos
del escritor colombiano Evelio Rosero Diago 30
3.3 Historical memory 33
3.3.2 Spanish Literature and the Recovery of Historical Memory 33
3.4 Empathic unsettlement 34
3.4.1 "This, too, was myself ": Empathic Unsettlement and
the Victim/Perpetrator Binary in Robert Louis
Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 34
Chapter 4. Methodology and analysis 36
4.1 Direct violence 37
4.2 Violence since state abandonment 46
4.3 Other important symbols of violence 50
4.4 Culture of violence 52
4.5 Empathic unsettlement 56
4.6 Historical Memory 60
Chapter 5. Conclusions 64
References Pregrado Profesional en Lenguas Modernas Lenguas Modernas