Cultural nomadism and the representation of otherness in Santiago Gamboa’s El síndrome de Ulises (2005)

Rees, Aled

doi:https://doi.org/10.3828/jrs.2022.11

Rees, Aled

Journal of Romance Studies (2022), 22, (2), 197–216.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3828/jrs.2022.11
Language: English
Pages: 20

Abstract

Fernando Aínsa maintains that contemporary Latin American narrative has been marked by the nomadic condition. In light of this observation, this article examines the figure of the cultural nomad in Colombian author Santiago Gamboa’s El síndrome de Ulises, to analyse the ways in which this subject negotiates and reconfigures their identity as a consequence of relocating to Paris. It argues that the traditional notions of nationality, origin, and personal history have been superseded by the concepts of work, relationships, and consumerism as key factors in the creation of identity and a sense of subjectivity. Moreover, it explores the culturally nomadic narrator’s engagement with current debates surrounding the ability of the ‘lettered’ intellectual to represent and encapsulate otherness in discourse, not only on an individual level but also in relation to the Europe-Latin America paradigm.

FormatOnline article

£25.00

READ THIS ARTICLE

If you have private access to this content, please log in with your username and password here

Works cited

Achotegui, Joseba (2004) ‘Emigrar en situación extrema: El Síndrome del inmigrante con estrés crónico y múltiple’, Revista Norte de salud mental de la Sociedad Española de Neuropsiquiatría 5.21: 39-53. Google Scholar

Aínsa, Fernando (2014) ‘Nueva cartografía de la pertenencia. La pérdida del territorio en la narrativa latinoamericana’, Iberoamericana 54: 111-126. Google Scholar

Appiah, Kwame Anthony (1992) In my father’s house: Africa in the philosophy of culture (London: Oxford University Press). Google Scholar

Averis, Kate (2014) Exile and Nomadism in French and Hispanic Women’s Writing (Oxford: Legenda). Google Scholar

Bauman, Zygmunt (2007) Consuming Life (Cambridge, MA: Polity). Google Scholar

Braidotti, Rosi (2011a) Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory (New York: Columbia University Press). Google Scholar

Braidotti, Rosi (2011b) Nomadic Theory (New York: Columbia University Press). Google Scholar

Brooks, Peter (1993) Body Work: Object of Desire in Modern Narrative (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Google Scholar

Clifford, James (1997) Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Google Scholar

Durham Peters, John (1999) ‘Nomadism, Diaspora, Exile: The Stakes of Mobility within the Western Canon’, in Home, Exile, Homeland: Film, Media, and the Politics of Place, ed. Hamid Naficy (New York: Routledge), 17-41. Google Scholar

Echevarría, Ignacio (2002) ‘La patria de un autor es su biblioteca: Rodrigo Fresán’, El País: Dossier, Hispanos de vida, 9 March 2002. Google Scholar

Freud, Sigmund (1990) The Question of Lay Analysis (New York: W. W. Norton). Google Scholar

Freud, Sigmund (2001) ‘Dreams’, in Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (London: Hogarth Press), 83-233. Google Scholar

Fuguet, Alberto and Sergio Gómez (1996) McOndo (Barcelona: Mondadori). Google Scholar

Gamboa, Santiago (2005) El síndrome de Ulises (Barcelona: Seix Barral). Google Scholar

García Canclini, Néstor (1995) ‘Narrar la multiculturalidad’, Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana 42: 9-20. Google Scholar

García Márquez, Gabriel (2009 [1967]) Cien años de soledad (Barcelona: Mondadori); trans. Gregory Rabassa (1978) One Hundred Years of Solitude (London: Picador). Google Scholar

González Echevarría, Roberto (1990) Myth and Archive: A Theory of Latin American Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Google Scholar

Grinberg, León and Rebecca Grinberg (1983) Psychoanalytical Perspectives on Migration and Exile (Madrid: Alianza). Google Scholar

Herrero-Olaizola, Alejandro (2007) ‘Se vende Colombia, un país de delirio: el mercado literario global y la narrativa colombiana reciente’, Symposium 61.1: 53-56. Google Scholar

King, John (2005) ‘The Boom of the Latin American Novel’, in The Cambridge Companion to the Latin American Novel, ed. Efraín Kristal (New York: Cambridge University Press), 59-80. Google Scholar

Ortega, Julio (2000) ‘La literatura hispanoamericana a comienzos del siglo XXI’, in Crisis, apocalipsis y utopías, ed. Rodrigo Cánovas and Roberto Hozven (Santiago: Pontifica Universidad Católica de Chile), 30-36. Google Scholar

Palaversich, Diana (2005) De Macondo a McOndo: Senderos de la posmodernidad latinoamericana (Mexico City: Plaza y Valdés). Google Scholar

Rivera, José Eustasio (2004) La vorágine (Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa). Google Scholar

Robledo Hoyos, Óscar (2006) ‘“El síndrome de Ulises”. Un viaje desde la literatura a lo social’, Polis 13: 1-10. Google Scholar

Said, Edward (1990) ‘Reflections on Exile’, in Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures, ed. R. Ferguson, M. Gever, T.T. Minh-ha, and C. West (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 357-366. Google Scholar

Said, Edward (1993) Culture and Imperialism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf). Google Scholar

Spivak, Gayatri Chakrovorty (1993) ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, in Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory, ed. P. Williams and L. Chrisman (London: Harvester), 271-313. Google Scholar

Swanson, Philip (2014) The Companion to Latin American Studies (New York: Routledge). Google Scholar

Trigo, Abril (2000) ‘migrancia: memoria: modernidá’, in Nuevas perspectivas desde/sobre América Latina: el desafío de los estudios culturales, ed. Mabel Moraña (Santiago, Chile: Editorial Cuarto Propio), 273-291. Google Scholar

If you have private access to this content, please log in with your username and password here

Details

Author details

Rees, Aled

Journal of Romance Studies