Abstract

This presentation brings up some questions that have emerged in my research on exile literature from Argentina, Chile and Uruguay between 1970-2000. I focus on a specific instance in my study, which relates to the more wide-ranging question of how this body of literature makes a rethinking of exile necessary. Specifically, I discuss Cristina Feijóo’s short story ‘Como en las películas’ (1995) against the backdrop of the scholar Claudio Guillén’s ideas in his text ‘On the Literature of Exile and Counter-Exile’. I will present a critique of Guillén’s text to evaluate if his ideas are useful for my thesis-project.

My main conclusion is that Guillén contributes with valuable knowledge about important traditions of themes, styles, literary figures and genres in the history of exile literature, but that this might need to be complemented with a study of how the literary texts respond to the historical and political context of the specific exile that condition them. In line with Edward Said, I will argue that exile has gained a new, different meaning and form in our contemporary and globalized world and that the texts I study both reflect and question how these new exile conditions shape identities. This can, I suggest, be grasped through a performative approach to the literary text and to the exile subject.

Bio

Sofia Iaffa Nylén is a PhD student in Literature Studies at Stockholm University. Her thesis project deals with Hispanic exile literature, written by writers who fled the military régimes of Argentina, Uruguay and Chile during the 1970’s and 80’s. Her main interests are to investigate the effects of censorships and persecutions in the world of Hispanic literature as well as literary constructions of political exile from feminist, materialist and postcolonial perspectives. She also works with translation and literary criticism for the Swedish magazine Karavan. Contact: sofia.iaffa.nylen@littvet.su.se.