Type

Text

Type

Dissertation

Advisor

Burgos-Lafuente, Lena | Firbas, Paul | Pérez-Melgosa, Adrián | Uriarte, Javier | Price, Rachel

Date

2017-12-01

Keywords

Latin American literature

Department

Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature

Language

es

Source

This work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree.

Identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/11401/78258

Publisher

The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.

Format

application/pdf

Abstract

This dissertation explores the coloniality of being in mid-twentieth century Spanish Caribbean war literature. I examine literature as a means of fostering decolonial thinking, as working to reverse coloniality’s effects. The dissertation takes into account the context that triggered the armed conflicts in which Spanish Caribbean soldiers were involved. It emphasizes the United States’ imperialistic attitude towards the Caribbean, a common factor in threading stories of male affect. In the first chapter, I study four short stories by Emilio Díaz Valcárcel which focus on the participation of Puerto Rican soldiers in the United States Army during the Korean War. In each tale, the discrimination suffered by these soldiers–based on their ethnic and linguistic difference– indelibly shapes the subjectivity of Puerto Rican military men who, as a result, must embark on a perennial quest for a sense of belonging. The second chapter analyzes a collection of short stories by Eduardo Heras León. He writes of the battles that took place during the Invasion of the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. Heras León’s characters aim to emulate an abstract image of the modern Western soldier by projecting themselves as emotionless, as virile killing machines. However, the fallacy of this overrepresented image surfaces in the portrayal of the internal conflict Cuban soldiers suffer, since they are constantly fighting their own emotions. In the third and final chapter, I delve into war and social poetry by Jacques Viau Renaud. His poetry was produced during the turmoil that followed the coup d’état that ousted President Juan Bosch in the Dominican Republic in 1963. Viau’s poems build on the idea that marginalized and colonized subjects must turn to each other with love, in order to fight against the oppression they suffer. Through an analysis of these writers’ works, I demonstrate that the experience of war helps to reveal the underpinnings of a coloniality of being. Colonial subjects, consequently, embark on a process of decolonial thinking and loosen the stranglehold imposed by a colonized psyche. | 235 pages

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