Escatología y marginalización en la literatura andina: las porosas fronteras sociopolíticas en Los ríos profundos de José María Arguedas

Authors

  • Tamara Mitchell University of British Columbia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18192/rceh.v43i2.4659

Abstract

This paper establishes the existence of an extensive allegory in José María Arguedas’s Los ríos profundos (1958), in which marginalized individuals – Indigenous Peruvians, Afro-Peruvians, and women – are associated with abject materials. This allegory underscores and critiques the economic and political inequalities of mid-twentieth-century Peru’s social system in order to demonstrate that, just as excrement is indispensable to the proper functioning of the human body, these individuals, despite their marginalized status, are essential to Peru’s economy and body politic. Finally, I show how the border between the hegemony and the marginalized class is not only artificial, but also imminently vulnerable.

Author Biography

Tamara Mitchell, University of British Columbia

Assistant Professor of Spanish. Department of French, Hispanic and Italian Studies. University of British Columbia

Published

2020-04-19

Issue

Section

Articles