Open Collections

Literatura Venezolana de la primera década del siglo XXI : la narrativa de Eduardo Sánchez Rugeles

University of British Columbia

This thesis studies the representational forms of the sociopolitical “decadence” in Twenty-First century Venezuela in the works of emergent writer Eduardo Sánchez Rugeles, author of Blue Label/Etiqueta Azul (2010) and Transilvania Unplugged (2011). The core argument states that Sánchez Rugeles’ postmodern/postautonomous aesthetics deliberately blend commercial mass culture expressions into the literary work, in order to represent Venezuelan city dweller’s “everyday” present life. The destiny of the characters represented by Sánchez Rugeles is marked by an unprecedented reality: the Diaspora of middle-class and affluent Venezuelans, triggered during Hugo Chávez’s presidency due to social fractures, economic difficulties and fears to the “ghosts” of a totalitarian, communist regime. In a twofold metafictional gesture, the writer constructs a narrative “present” that mirrors the fragmented texts and images transmitted through different mass media and virtual channels, without considering boundaries of temporality or spatiality. However, while Sánchez Rugeles’ literary work appears to “integrate” itself into the consumer society’s commercial manifestations, it also proves effective in its questioning of the autonomous state of art, the fragility of historical memory, the glorification of heroes of the past and the ideological conflicts of the present in which it is inscribed.

Text

2011-09-15

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/37366

Hispanic Studies

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/