Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-vfjqv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-27T20:51:44.673Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Historical Subversion and Violence of Representation in García Márquez and Ouologuem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Edna Aizenberg
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The rediscovery of history, a recent literary-critical event, is problematic in its elision of the non-Western past and its subsumption of non-Western fictional works. Likewise, some new studies on the interplay of violence and representation, while offered as critiques of Western discourse, ignore significant earlier Third World theorizations. This essay, in focusing on Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude and Yambo Ouologuem's Bound to Violence, aims to reinstate the absent history: those Third World conditions and exigencies that link postcolonial novels and a desire to think historically. Both books adopt a violent narrative strategy that reflects their status as products of a ruptured history scarred by imperialization.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 107 , Issue 5 , October 1992 , pp. 1235 - 1252
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Achebe, Chinua. Anthills of the Savannah. 1987. New York: Anchor-Doubleday, 1988.Google Scholar
Achebe, Chinua. Arrow of God. New York: Anchor-Doubleday, 1969.Google Scholar
Achebe, Chinua. Morning Yet on Creation Day: Essays. Garden City: Anchor-Doubleday, 1975.Google Scholar
Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. 1959. New York: Fawcett-Ballantine, 1983.Google Scholar
Ahmad, Aijaz. “Jameson's Rhetoric of Otherness and the ‘National Allegory.‘” Social Text 17 (1987): 3–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aizenberg, Edna, ed. Borges and His Successors: The Borgesian Impact on Literature and the Arts. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1990.Google Scholar
Aizenberg, Edna, ed. “The Third World Novel as Counterhistory: Things Fall Apart and Asturias's Men of Maize.” Approaches to Teaching Achebe's Things Fall Apart. Ed. Bernth Lindfors. New York: MLA, 1991. 85–90.Google Scholar
Armstrong, Nancy, and Tennenhouse, Leonard, eds. The Violence of Representation: Literature and the History of Violence. London: Routledge, 1989.Google Scholar
Ashcroft, Bill, Griffiths, Gareth, and Tiffin, Helen. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-colonial Literatures. London: Routledge, 1989.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Balderston, Daniel, ed. The Historical Novel in Latin America. Gaithersburg: Hispamerica, 1986.Google Scholar
Barkan, Sandra. “Le devoir de violence: A Non-history.” Interdisciplinary Dimensions of African Literature. Ed. Anyidoho, Kofi et al. Washington: Three Continents, 1985.Google Scholar
Barth, John. The Friday Book: Essays and Other Nonfiction. New York: Putnam's, 1984.Google Scholar
Barth, John. “The Literature of Exhaustion.” Friday Book 62–76.Google Scholar
Barth, John. “The Literature of Replenishment: Postmodernist Fiction.” Friday Book 193–206.Google Scholar
Bell-Villada, Gene H. García Márquez: The Man and His Work. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1990.Google Scholar
Beverly, John. “El Tungsteno de Vallejo: Hacia una revindicación de la ‘novela social.‘” Revista de crítica literaria latinoamericana 25.29 (1989): 167–16.Google Scholar
Bhabha, Homi. “Representation and the Colonial Text: A Critical Exploration of Some Forms of Mimeticism.” The Theory of Reading. Ed. Gloversmith, Frank. Brighton, Eng.: Harvester; New York: Barnes, 1984. 93–122.Google Scholar
Borges, Jorge Luis. Labyrinths. Pref. André Maurois. Trans. Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby. New York: New Directions, 1964.Google Scholar
Borges, Jorge Luis. Obras completas. Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1974.Google Scholar
Calvet, Louis-Jean. Linguistique et colonialisme. Paris: Payot, 1974.Google Scholar
Cham, Mbye Baboucar. “The Creative Artist, State, and Society in Africa.” A Current Bibliography on African Affairs 17.1 (1984–85): 17–28.Google Scholar
Concha, Jaime. “From the Modernism of Adorno to the Contemporaneity of Marx.” Larsen, Modernism ix–xxi.Google Scholar
Dorfman, Ariel. Imaginación y violencia en América. Santiago: Editorial Universitaria, 1970.Google Scholar
Dorfman, Ariel. Some Write to the Future: Essays on Contemporary Latin American Fiction. Trans. George Shivers, with Dorfman. Durham: Duke UP, 1991.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Pref. Jean-Paul Sartre. Trans. Constance Farrington. New York: Grove, 1966. Trans, of Les damnes de la terre. 1961.Google Scholar
Fatunde, Tunde. “Images of Working People in Two African Novels: Ouologuem and lyayi.” Marxism and African Literature. Ed. Gugelberger, Georg M. London: Currey, 1985. 110–11.Google Scholar
Franco, Jean. “The Crisis of the Liberal Imagination and the Utopia of Writing.” Ideologies and Literature 1.1 (1976–77): 5–24.Google Scholar
Franco, Jean. “The Nation as Imagined Community.” Veeser 204–20.Google Scholar
García Márquez, Gabriel. Cien años de soledad. 1967. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1968.Google Scholar
García Márquez, Gabriel. El general en su laberinto. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1989.Google Scholar
García Márquez, Gabriel. One Hundred Years of Solitude. 1970. Trans. Gregory Rabassa. New York: Avon, 1971.Google Scholar
García Márquez, Gabriel. “La soledad de América Latina.” Hispania 72 (1989): 331–33.Google Scholar
García Márquez, Gabriel. “The Solitude of Latin America. Nobel Address 1982.” McGuirk and Cardwell 207–20.Google Scholar
Genette, Gérard. Palimpsestes: La littérature au second degré. Paris: Seuil, 1982.Google Scholar
González, Anibal. “Translation and Genealogy: One Hundred Years of Solitude.” McGuirk and Cardwell 65–79.Google Scholar
Graff, Gerald. Literature against Itself: Literary Ideas in Modern Society. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1979.Google Scholar
Graff, Gerald. Professing Literature: An Institutional History. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987.Google Scholar
Greene, Graham. It's a Battlefield. 1943. London: Heinemann, 1948.Google Scholar
Hale, Thomas A. Scribe, Griot, and Novelist: Narrative Interpreters of the Songhay Empire. Gainesville: U of Florida P, 1990.Google Scholar
Harrison, Regina. Signs, Songs, and Memory in the Andes: Translating Quechua Language and Culture. Austin: U of Texas P, 1989.Google Scholar
Hutcheon, Linda. “‘Circling the Downspout of Empire’: Postcolonialism and Postmodernism.” Ariel 20.4 (1989): 149–14.Google Scholar
Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. New York: Routledge, 1988.Google Scholar
Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms. New York: Methuen, 1985.Google Scholar
Imperato, Pascal James. Historical Dictionary of Mali. Metuchen: Scarecrow, 1986.Google Scholar
Irele, Abiola. The African Experience in Literature and Ideology. London: Heinemann, 1981.Google Scholar
Jahn, Janheinz. Leo Frobenius: The Demonic Child. Pref. Ulla Schild. Trans. Reinhard Sander. Austin: African and Afro-American Studies and Research Center, 1974.Google Scholar
Jameson, Fredric. “Postmodernism; or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.” New Left Review 146 (1984): 53–92.Google Scholar
Jameson, Fredric. “Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism.” Social Text 15 (1986): 65–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jan Mohammed, Abdul R., and David Lloyd, eds. The Nature and Context of Minority Discourse II. Spec. issue of Cultural Critique 1 (1987): 1–266.Google Scholar
Jansen, André. “Procesos irónicos en Cien años de soledad.” Explicación de textos sobre Cien años de soledad. García Márquez. Ed. Porrata, Francisco E. San José: Porrata y Avedaño, 1976. 171–17.Google Scholar
Jenny, Laurent. “La stratégic de la forme.” Poétique 27 (1976): 257–25.Google Scholar
Jitrik, Noé. “De la historia a la escritura: Predominios, dismetrías, acuerdos en la novela histórica latinoamericana.” Balderston 13–29.Google Scholar
Kristeva, Julia. Semeotiké: Recherche pour une sémanalyse. Paris: Seuil, 1969.Google Scholar
Larsen, Neil. “Juan Rulfo: Modernism and Cultural Agency.” Modernism 49–71.Google Scholar
Larsen, Neil. Modernism and Hegemony: A Materialist Critique of Aesthetic Agencies. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1990.Google Scholar
Lyotard, Jean-François. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Pref. Fredric Jameson. Trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1984.Google Scholar
Martin, Gerald. Journeys through the Labyrinth: Latin American Fiction in the Twentieth Century. London: Verso, 1989.Google Scholar
Martin, Gerald. “On ‘Magical’ and Social Realism in García Márquez.” McGuirk and Cardwell 95–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martínez, Pedro Simón, ed. Recopliación de textos sobre Gabriel García Márquez. Havana: Centro de Investigaciones Literarias Casa de las Americas, 1969.Google Scholar
McGuirk, Bernard, and Cardwell, Richard, eds. Gabriel Garcia Mdrquez: New Readings. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McHale, Brian. Postmodernist Fiction. New York: Methuen, 1987.Google Scholar
McMurray, George R. Critical Essays on Gabriel Garcia Mdrquez. Boston: Hall, 1987.Google Scholar
Mena, Lucila Inés. La función de la historia en Cien años de soledad. Barcelona: Plaza y Janés, 1979.Google Scholar
Miller, Christopher. Blank Darkness: Africanist Discourse in French. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1985.Google Scholar
Miller, Christopher. Theories of Africans: Francophone Literature and Anthropology in Africa. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1990.Google Scholar
Miller, Christopher. “Trait d'Union: Injunction and Dismemberment in Yambo Ouologuem's Le devoir de violence.” L'Esprit Createur 23.4 (1983): 62–73.Google Scholar
Minta, Stephen. Gabriel García Márquez: Writer of Colombia. London: Cape, 1987.Google Scholar
Montañer, María Eulalia. Guía para la lectura de Cien años de soledad. Madrid: Castalia, 1987.Google Scholar
Morello-Frosch, Maria. “One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez; or, Genesis Rewritten.” Biblical Patterns in Modern Literature. Ed. Hirsch, David H. and Aschkenasy, Nehama. Chico: Scholars, 1984. 155–15.Google Scholar
Mouralis, Bernard. “Un carrefour d'écritures: Le devoir de violence de Yambo Ouologuem.” Nouvelles du sud 5 (1987): 63–74.Google Scholar
Ngate, Jonathan. Francophone African Fiction: Reading a Literary Tradition. Trenton: Africa World, 1988.Google Scholar
Ortega, Julio. “El postmodernismo en América Latina.” Homenaje a Alfredo A. Roggiano: En este aire de América. Ed. McDuffie, Keith and Mine, Rose. Pittsburgh: Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana, 1990. 407–40.Google Scholar
Ouologuem, Yambo. Bound to Violence. Trans. Manheim, Ralph. London: Heinemann, 1971.Google Scholar
Ouologuem, Yambo. Le devoir de violence. Paris: Seuil, 1968.Google Scholar
Ouologuem, Yambo. Lettre à la France nègre. Paris: Nalis, 1968.Google Scholar
Palencia-Roth, Michael. “Prisms of Consciousness: The ‘New Worlds’ of Columbus and García Marquez.” Critical Perspectives on Gabriel García Márquez. Ed. Shaw, Bradley A. and Vera-Godwin, Nora. Lincoln: Soc. of Spanish and Spanish-American Studies, 1986. 15–32.Google Scholar
Rincón, Carlos. “Modernidad periférica y el desafio de lo postmoderno: Perspectivas del arte narrativo latino-americano.” Revista de crítica literaria latinoamericana 25.29 (1989): 61–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rogmann, Horst. “‘Realismo mágico’ y ‘Negritude’ como construcciones ideológicas.” Adas del Sexto congreso internacional de Hispanistas celebrado en Toronto del 22 al 26 agosto de 1977. Ed. Gordon, Alan M. and Rugg, Evelyn. Toronto: Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese, U of Toronto, 1980. 632–63.Google Scholar
Said, Edward W. The World, the Text, and the Critic. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1983.Google Scholar
Schwartz-Bart, André. Le dernier des justes. Paris: Seuil, 1959.Google Scholar
Sellin, Eric. “Ouologuem's Blueprint for Le devoir de violence.” Research in African Literatures 2 (1971): 117–11.Google Scholar
Sellin, Eric. “A Reply.” Research in African Literatures 4 (1973): 129.Google Scholar
Sellin, Eric. “The Unknown Voice of Yambo Ouologuem.” Yale French Studies 53 (1976): 137–13.Google Scholar
Slemon, Stephen. “Magic Realism as Post-colonial Discourse.” Canadian Literature 116 (1988): 9–24.Google Scholar
Sellin, Eric. “Modernism's Last Post.” Ariel 20.4 (1989): 3–17.Google Scholar
Sommer, Doris. “Irresistible Romance: The Foundational Fictions of Latin America.” Nation and Narration. Ed. Bhabha, Homi K. London: Routledge, 1990. 71–98.Google Scholar
Sommer, Doris, and Yúdice, George. “Latin American Literature from the ‘Boom’ On.” Postmodern Fiction: A Bio-bibliographical Guide. Ed. McCaffrey, Larry. New York: Greenwood, 1986. 189–214.Google Scholar
Songolo, Aliko. “Fiction and Subversion: Le devoir de violence” Substance 21 (1978): 141–14.Google Scholar
Songolo, Aliko. “The Writer, the Audience, and the Critic's Responsibility: The Case of Bound to Violence.” The Artist and the Audience: African Literature as a Shared Experience. Ed. Priebe, Richard K. and Hale, Thomas A. Washington: Three Continents, 1979. 126–12.Google Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. New York: Routledge, 1988.Google Scholar
Tiffin, Helen. “Post-colonial Literatures and Counter-discourse.” Kunapipi 9.3 (1987): 17–34.Google Scholar
Tittler, Jonathan, ed. Violencia y literatura en Colombia. Madrid: Origenes, 1989.Google Scholar
Veeser, H. Aram, ed. The New Historicism. New York: Routledge, 1989.Google Scholar
Wolitz, Seth L. “L'art du plagiat, ou une brève défense de Ouologuem.” Research in African Literatures 4 (1973): 130–13.Google Scholar
Wright, Derek. “Orality in the African Novel: Yambo Ouologuem's Bound to Violence and Ayi Kwei Armah's Two Thousand Seasons.” Journal of Commonwealth Literature 22.1 (1988): 91–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yúdice, George. “¿Puede hablarse de postmodernidad en America Latina?” Revista de crítica literaria latinoamericana 25.29 (1989): 105–10.Google Scholar
Zabus, Chatal. The African Palimpsest: Indigenization of Language in the West African Europhone Novel. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1991.Google Scholar