Fábula del poder: Corporalidad, biopolítica y violencia en la narrativa de Sergio Ramírez

Daniel Chávez Landeros

A noncommissioned officer of the Nicaraguan National Guard travels to New York to meet the famous bodybuilder, Charles Atlas. When he approaches his hero, he finds a body pierced with syringes and tubes, a cyborg of fragile artificial life. In the garden of a Central American dictator’s mansion, a prisoner is locked in a cage next to a lion’s. Nature and animal instinct will take their course. In post-Sandinista Nicaragua, an amputee policeman must face—alone and wounded—a drug gang commanded by his former guerrilla leader. Despite the gravity and violence present in many of Sergio Ramírez Mercado’s short stories and novels, his writing is governed by irony and parody. Fábula del Poder proposes a novel critical assessment of the narrative work of Ramírez, who won the Cervantes Prize in 2017, emphasizing the mechanisms of representation and criticism of power in contemporary Latin American literature. In an entertaining and dynamic way, the book applies an interdisciplinary, theoretical approach, borrowing concepts from political theory, literary criticism, video games, visual culture, sports studies, and reviews the contemporary historiography of Nicaragua and Latin America.

“This monograph is a strong addition to the research already done on Sergio Ramírez’s work and contemporary Central American narrative. Of particular interest are Chavez’s detailed analyses of the texts’ discursive strategies and the connections between these and their political ramifications and/or intentions. Chaves provides an effective and insightful exploration of the literary production of Sergio Ramírez.”

 —Yvette Aparicio, Grinnell College

Daniel Chávez Landeros is an associate professor of international affairs as well as Latin American and Latinx visual culture and literature at the University of New Hampshire. His articles on poetry, narrative, film, television, and comics have appeared in journals in Mexico, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. He obtained a PhD in Romance languages and film criticism from the University of Michigan. His other books include Nicaragua and the Politics of Utopia, and poetry collections Raya y Suerte, Hasta Nuevo Aviso and Versiones en Luna Agreste y Nitrato de Plata.

PSRL 89. Paper. $45.00. e-Book available. 

Page last updated on 9 January 2024.

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