Distorted mapping and marginal bodies in the narrative of Diamela Eltit

Abstract

This paper analyzes three novels by Chilean writer Diamela Eltit: Lumpérica, Los vigilantes and Los trabajadores de la muerte, considering geographical space and the body as the center of power relations and the materiality of the body as a container for a historical violence that attempts to subject it to various forms of normalization. Despite the violence inflicted, this body is also a form of resistance that enshrines, in its own materiality, narrative memory in order to retell the past and criticize the present. The aim is to develop apolitical interpretation of history through the body in order to interpret the signs of social and mental distress of a society that continually attempts to erase its past.