La novela de crímenes colombiana contemporánea y la problemática del sujeto cultural

Abstract

This research-creation project, titled The Contemporary Colombian Crime Novel and the Problem of the Cultural Subject, proposes a sociocritical reading of a corpus of novels published between 2001 and 2021. Its aim is to analyze how these literary fictions construct representations of violence, impunity, and anomie in Colombian society. Through an interdisciplinary methodology that brings together literary, cultural, and artistic approaches, this dissertation examines how these works build narrative memories and give voice to subaltern subjects historically marginalized by official discourse (intrahistory). The main hypothesis that this dissertation explores is that the Colombian crime novel diverges from the classical detective story and traditional noir fiction genre because it does not seek the restoration of order or the resolution of a crime, but rather exposes the absence of justice and the fragmentation of the state’s normative apparatus, where impunity becomes the law. Thus, crime is not a mystery to be solved but a structural manifestation of an anomic society. The category of “anomie,” borrowed from sociological research by Gustavo Forero Quintero, becomes a key axis for understanding the specificity of this narrative form in the Colombian context. This research-creation endeavor builds on the concepts of ideosema, ideologeme, and cultural subject, developed by Edmond Cros, to analyze how social and ideological practices are transcribed into the formal structures of the novels. Through an approach that accentuates textual morphogenesis, this study explores how literary discourse semiotically transforms referential reality, revealing the ideological traces underlying the construction of characters, narrative voices, and literary memory methods. The corpus that was analyzed encompasses eight novels that fictionalize key historical events from the perspective of marginalized subjects, configuring an intrahistorical narrative—a category proposed by Miguel de Unamuno and revisited by Luz Marina Rivas—that challenges hegemonic versions of national history. These works are: Satanás (2002), by Mario Mendoza El Eskimal y la mariposa (2004), by Nahum Montt El crimen del siglo (2006), by Miguel Torres Los ejércitos (2007), by Evelio Rosero Desaparición (2012), by Gustavo Forero Quintero El incendio de abril (2012), by Miguel Torres La invención del pasado (2016), by Miguel Torres La sombra de Orión (2021), by Pablo Montoya Campuzano These novels address events such as El Bogotazo, the Palace of Justice siege, the Bojayá massacre, and Operation Orión, among others, from a perspective that elevates the voices of the subaltern, the forgotten, the violated bodies, and the marginalized. In these narratives, criminality is not merely a narrative theme but the representation of the structural and systemic modus operandi of a society that has normalized violence as a way of life. Impunity, the absence of justice, and institutional decay become, therefore, recurring themes that allow for a critical reflection on the country’s recent history. Beyond critical analysis, this dissertation also constitutes a poetic wager in its very form of writing. Its fragmentary structure, the use of the essay as a literary form, and the inclusion of fictional exordia, epistolary essays, and personal reflections reveal a constant dialogue between the poetic and the theoretical. Criticism becomes creation and writing becomes an act of aesthetic resistance. Hence, this dissertation not only studies literature as a form of knowledge but also positions itself as a literary practice that explores, through sensitivity and imagination, the limits of language, memory, and subjectivity. Therefore, this study stands at the verge between academic research and literary creation as well as between criticism and autofiction. The voice of the researcher interweaves with that of the narrator, and it is there that analysis becomes a way of narrating thought. The hybrid structure of the study responds to an expanded conception of knowledge, in which literature is not only an object of study but also a method and a form of involvement in the world. The dissertation, hence, becomes a space of border thinking, where critical writing opens itself to formal experimentation and the exploration of new ways of saying and telling. From this perspective, the essay becomes a crucial tool for thinking literature through literature itself. Inspired by authors such as Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin, Maurice Blanchot, and Roberto Bolaño, the text embraces the risk of a writing that does not seek to close meanings but to open them. Reading becomes an act of creation and criticism a way of life. The dissertation, then, not only analyzes novels that narrate crime but also questions the very conditions of possibility for narrating in a country where violence has been systematically marginalized or aestheticized. Lastly, this work proposes that the contemporary Colombian crime novel not only documents criminality and corruption but also acts as an aesthetic-political method that allows us to think about the country through its fractures, its marginalizations, and its absent voices. In a country where impunity is the rule, literature becomes a sensitive archive of collective memory, a space of symbolic resistance, and a form of narrative justice. As such, this dissertation is an invitation to read critically, to write consciously, and to imagine other ways of inhabiting language and history.