Fictions of the After. Notes for a Comparatives Reading of "Nocturno de Chile" and "Enciclopedia de una vida en Rusia"

Abstract

This article focuses on globalization, which is usually spatially analyzed, in terms of a crisis of our moment in time and marked by a mourning for the loss of Modernity. Thinking about globalization as a time-related question can afford an existential depth to this concept, when pitted against ideological short cuts. We question how Latin-American fiction reflects the deep shift of the current "regime of historicity", defined by F. Hartog as "presentism", how it denotes the prevalence of present over past and future. In our time of "post" periods [post-modernism, post-structuralism, post-colonialism], historical consciousness is stuck in an endless present, deprived of any capacity to look to the past or to plan any kind of future. The consequences of this change in the literary field are profound, in particular the notion of "engaged literature" is at stake, in its capacity to formulate knowledge and make propositions for the future. Fiction abounds in relation to historical phenomena, undergirding the "memory boom" (Huyssen) that characterizes current Latin-American culture. We propose to define these forms of fiction as "fictions of the after", because they configure the current crisis of the historical consciousness as described above. We analyze two fictional narratives as illustrative of our thesis: Nocturno de Chile (2000) by Roberto Bolaño and Enciclopedia de una vida en Rusia (1998) by José Manuel Prieto. In so doing, we investigate how, through the registration of "open memories", these fictions provide scenes that allow the reader to question the affective dimension of "globalized memories".