Monsters in Latin American Fiction



Three-week course, first session



In Abnormal: Lectures at the College de France (1974-1975), Michel Foucault traces a "genealogy of the abnormal" based on the relationship between knowledge, power and society, and social mechanisms of identification, distance, inclusion, and exclusion. In this course we will explore one of the most common figures of abnormality, the human monster, together with violence, a violence shaped by both social and natural laws. This course takes students on a journey through the different representations in Latin American literary and film narrative of the human monster and other marginal figures such as criminals, fallen women, rebels, and the strange and unclassifiable. Texts will include works by Borges and Bioy Casares, Horacio Quiroga, Leopoldo Lugones, Gabriel García Márquez, Julio Cortazar, Roberto Bolaño and Silvina Ocampo. There will also be several other cultural artifacts, such as movies, photography, arts, and music, showing the relationship between the monstrous “other” and social and political power as one of discipline, control, and standardization. (.5 unit)