Latin American Literature Commons^™

The Disembodied Subject: Resistance To Norms Of Hegemonic Identity Construction In Carmen Naranjo’S Diario De Una Multitud, Regan Boxwell

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Costa Rica, whose civil war ended in 1948, represents a distinct literary space in which problematics of subjectivity were debated long before such dialectics appeared overtly in the rest of the isthmus. Carmen Naranjo’s novel Diario de una multitud (1974) is situated in this context, and her novel demonstrates a preoccupation with the heterogeneity of tico identity.

Naranjo favors a collective representation of the urban citizenry. Through the perceptual liminality of the individual subject, the friction generated by its absence, the constant blurring that resets the boundaries of specific identities, and the disappearance of the private realm, Naranjo avoids inscribing …