Emplotting Nonviolence in Colombian Autobiographies

Juan Camilo Brigard is a doctoral candidate at the Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture at Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany. His research focuses on the intersection of Colombian and postcolonial literature, textual criticism, performance, and the politics of aesthetics.

"Brigard's Emplotting Nonviolence is a seminal example of a study that is based in the discipline of literary and cultural studies but that very convincingly manages to come into dialogue with current debates in Peace and Conflict Studies and, more broadly, in the Social Sciences."-Professor Stefan Peters, Chair of Peace Studies Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen and Director of the Colombo-German Peace Institute CAPAZ, Germany“Introducing the emplotment of ‘nonviolence’ as a cultural concept and structuring principle, it creatively defines the narrative conventions of each autobiography within the framework of literary genres rarely associated with life writing – the bildungsroman, the Cold War thriller, mythical realism, and classical tragedy. Emplotting Nonviolence masterfully demonstrates how a variety of distinct storytelling strategies can be applied to a hitherto narrowly defined genre, and how these plot devices are able to shape distinct narrative conceptions of nonviolent resistance.”-Prof. Ansgar Nünning, Chair of English and American Literary and Cultural Studies, Founding Director of the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC), Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen. Germany“Emplotting Nonviolence highlights the ethical stakes of narrating violence, particularly in contexts of systemic harm and historical oppression. It interrogates how narratives can perpetuate or challenge dominant paradigms of violence, contributing significantly to the study of violence and non-violence by exposing their ethical and aesthetic dimensions and their implications for collective memory and identity.”-Professor Laura Quintana Porras, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia“Emplotting Nonviolence has the potential of being a trendsetting text for envisioning the way we study and approach Colombian cultural production in the post-agreement era. Juan Camilo Brigard has accomplished a text that thoroughly studies the construction of autobiographical texts highlighting their strategies for producing a nonviolent self. Furthermore, his text will potentially help us denaturalize claims of nonviolence, question strategies for justifying violent acts, and envision ourselves beyond a homogeneous ‘self’.”-Professor Carlos Mario Mejía Suárez, Gustavus Adolphus College, USA"In times of ongoing armed conflicts, this pioneering study brings important voices of nonviolence to the forefront. A stimulating and must-read book that offers new narratological insights from exceptional autobiographical texts, highlighting the conflict-solving potential of political (counter)narratives."Doris Bachmann-Medick, Distinguished Research Fellow, International Graduate Centre for theStudy of Culture (GCSC), University of Giessen, Germany

• 1. Introduction: A Nonviolent Approach to Colombian Cultural Violentology1.1. Autobiography as an Interface Between Aesthetics and Politics.1.2. Violence and Nonviolence1.3. A Contextual Narratology of Contingency2. The Thrills of “Democratic Security”: Uribe Vélez’s No Lost Causes2.1. A Heterobiographical Presidential Memoir-Thriller2.1.1. A Presidential Memoir-Thriller2.1.2. The Thriller-like Emplotment of No Lost Causes2.1.3. Suspense, Talking Duels and a Polarized Reception2.1.4. Uribe’s Heterobiographical Voice: Hollywoodization as Suture and Neoliberal Synergy2.2. A Criollo Colonial Heritage: A Nuclear Family and a Neoliberal Colombia2.2.1. Screening Fear Through a Criollo Nuclear Family2.2.2. Ventriloquizing Collectivity in a Democracy of Absentees2.2.3. A Colombia Shaped by an Imperial Vision2.3. Pierced Nonviolence2.3.1. The State’s License to Kill2.3.2. Pierced Nonviolence: Pacification2.3.3. First as Presidential Memoir-Thriller, then as Tragedy?3. Embodying a Mythical Realist Transfiguration: Berichá’s Tengo los pies en la cabeza3.1. A Mythical Realist Autoethnography3.1.1. Mythical Realism3.1.2. A Transcultural Memoir3.1.3. Myths: From the Origin of the World to the U’wa Present3.1.4. Ethnographic Realism3.1.5. A Mythical Realist Autoethnography3.2. Rearticulating Body-Politics and Political Bodies: Berichá’s Adoptive Families, the U’wa, and the National Imaginary3.2.1. From Evangelized Indigenous Woman to U’wa Author3.2.2. From a Monocultural to a Multicultural Colombia3.2.3. An Anthropomorphized U’wa Collectivity3.3. Nonviolent Mythical Inflections of the Real3.3.1. Mythical Realist Transfigurations of Violence3.3.2. Mythical Realist Nonviolence3.3.3. A Sense of Belonging in Rejection4. Ethnicization as Tragedy: Rudecindo Castro’s Calle caliente4.1. A Heterobiography in the Tragic Form4.2. Narrating Afro-Diasporic Heritage4.2.1. A Lineage of Afrocolombian Matrifocal Families4.2.2. Dialogic Hetero-Self-Citation: Collectivization and Social Disintegration4.2.3. A Historically Indebted Colombia: Traditional Historiography Under Afrocolombian Eyes4.3. Tragic Nonviolence4.3.1. Tragic Nonviolence in Calle caliente4.3.2. A Skeptical Take on Tragedy as a Way of Conclusion5. Loca Mariquita’s Apprenticeship: Manuel Antonio Velandia’s De homosexual a marica sujeto de derechos5.1. An ‘Autobioethnography’ of Bildung5.1.1. A Bildung-Autobioethnography5.1.2. Affirmative and Disillusionment Bildungsromane: Personality Development, Responsibilization and Incorporation5.1.3. The Developmental Linearity of Velandia’s Life Story5.1.4. Velandia’s Apprenticeship5.2. From a Catholic Nuclear Family to a Marica Colombia5.2.1. From a Catholic Nuclear Family to a Marica Subject of Rights5.2.2. From Catholic Missionary to LGBTQ+ Politician5.2.3. Narrative Strategies of a Minoritarian Hyperbolic-I5.2.4. From a Catholic to a Queer Cosmopolitan Colombia5.3. Bildung for Nonviolence5.3.1. Treating People as if They Were Trash5.3.2. Bildung for Nonviolence: Queer Humor Facing Death Threats5.3.3. Towards a Self-Ironic Collective Memory?6. Seizing the Nonviolent Occasion6.1. A Multidirectional Reading of Political Identities6.2. Pragmatic and Literary Genres in Comparison6.3. Heterobiographical Narratives6.4. Intertwined Narrating Selves and Experiencing-Is: Retrojection, Liminality, Linear-Developmentalism6.5. Families: Nuclear, Unipersonal, Extended, Adoptive6.6. Compositional Strategies of Individualized Collectivization: Polyphony, Hetero-Self-Citation, Dialogic Hetero-Self-Citation, Illeism, and Self-Citation6.7. Colombographies6.8. Violence: Crosshatched Processual and Physical Injury vs. Enmeshment within Processual Harm6.9. Emplotting Nonviolence6.10. Beyond These Nonviolent Narratives: Routes for Future Research7. Epilogue: Nonviolence as an EmblemWorks CitedIndex