Bolaño histórico: Chile, Neoliberalismo, Obsolescencia

Abstract

This dissertation argues that the works of the late Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño present at their core a stark contrast between a remembered revolutionary past and the neoliberal present from which that past is remembered. While neoliberal technocratic governments insist on pretending that there still exists a shared hegemonic history, Bolaño creates a literature that constantly reopens a convoluted past that has been forcibly shut down but which hasn’t been properly dealt with. In chapter 1, I explore the presence of evil in Bolaño’s work as a historical recurrence that connects different moments in time. Only the bolanian poet, akin to Nietzsche’s untimely and Agamben’s contemporary, is able to link these different historical crimes and understand their interconnectedness, thus opening up the past. I exemplify this with an analysis of El Tercer Reich and its rebellion against the forced closure of history. Chapter 2 briefly summarizes the way in which the transition to democracy only deepened the neoliberal turn in Chile, and describes how Bolaño denounces the Nueva Narrativa’s uncompromised literature in Nocturno de Chile. Chapter 3 claims that Bolaño presents in La literatura nazi en América a chronology of the 20th Century to explain the individualistic and uncommitted dismal present seen in Estrella distante, which corresponds with Bolaño’s own present. Chapter 4 argues that despite the inherent pessimism brought about by political obsolescence, Bolaño tries to redeem his generation by placing non-practical and non-utilitarian activities in the foreground of his narrative, mainly sleep and travels with no destination, which he presents as antidotes to neoliberalism. Finally, this dissertation closes with a short survey of contemporary Chilean authors in light of the October 18th social unrest brought about by the neoliberalism model addressed in Bolaño’s work. If Bolaño’s literature is a continuous gaze towards a past that stands in opposition to this present of ours, will his legacy forever bear the imprint of nostalgia and utter hopelessness, or will the October 18th “estallido social” somehow change that?