Exocanonical Memory. Memorialist Counterpoints And Militant Counter-Nationalism In Los Huérfanos by Jorge Carrión

Abstract

The present article addresses the way in which Jorge Carrión’s novel, Los huérfanos, as a work inscribed in a series of novels by the same author, becomes a non-normative memorial story and, consequently, exocanonical as a dissident execution of the subgenre, while remaining rooted in its traditions. This denomination is perceived based on how Carrión’s work distinguishes itself from the typical characterization of this type of novel within the national context. These novels are primarily crafted under the premise of remembrance of Spain’s traumatic past, or of another national reference in the cases of authors associated with different lines of tradition. Although the critique of memory itself should be regarded as one of the weighty characteristics that places this novel outside the strict and defined conservative canon of memorialist narrative in the past two decades (and, by extension, the 21st century), it is the post-national and counter-national discourse that permeates the entire novel that becomes the most determining factor when discussing a memorialist work with an exocanonical essence, which fluctuates between the centers and peripheries of its traditions.