The Novel as Dislocation. Latin America and the United States in Edmundo Paz Soldán's Norte

Abstract

Edmundo Paz Soldán’s 2011 Norte positions the twenty-first-century novel as a site of dislocation subverts all borders, be they social, political, or literary. Representing the academy as a bastion of capital, where abstract theories reinforce territories such as Latin America and the United States, Norte destabilizes all spaces of consolidated power—including literature, the academy, and, ultimately, the nation—through its imbrications with Laurell K. Hamilton’s 1993 popular novel, Guilty Pleasures, and Juan Rulfo’s 1952 canonical short story, “Luvina.” My discussion of Norte is organized in four sections. The first, “Infiltrations,” foregrounds the tavern as a space where structures of consolidated capital are penetrated. The second, “Gatherings,” discusses Norte’s critique of sites of consolidated power as phantasmal settings, where vampire capital has erased all human initiative. The third, “Dispersions,” formulates the werewolf as a protean figure who morphs relentlessly from alien to citizen. Finally, the last section, “Crossings,” situates the twenty-first-century novel as the site of dislocation, where multiple temporalities intersect in an open expanse, and where no identity is permanent but all are immanent.