index_img1.gif Post-Boom Detective Fiction: Santiago Gamboa and Luis Ospina

See this page as a graphical Mind Map
1. Suggested authors / directors / texts
2. It all begins with Borges...
3. It all begins with Poe... “The Purloined Letter”
4. It all begins with Sophocles... Image: Gustave Moreau, Oedipus and the Sphinx
5. Perder es cuestión de método (1997)
6. Soplo de vida (1999)
7. The fall of the detective
8. Back to the purloined letter
Suggested authors / directors / texts It all begins with Borges... It all begins with Poe... “The Purloined Letter” It all begins with Sophocles... Image: Gustave Moreau, Oedipus and the Sphinx Perder es cuestión de método (1997) Soplo de vida (1999) The fall of the detective Back to the purloined letter
1. Suggested authors / directors / texts
1.1 Rubem Fonseca (Brazil)
1.2 Leonardo Padura Fuentes (Cuba)
1.3 Ricardo Piglia (Argentina) La ciudad ausente (1992) Plata quemada (1997)* *Not if you studied it for SP5
1.4 Fernando Spiner, dir., and Ricardo Piglia (Argentina) La sonámbula [film] (1998)
1.5 Paco Ignacio Taibo II (Mexico)
1.6 Santiago Gamboa (Colombia) Perder es cuestión de método (1997) and/or film version directed by Sergio Cabrera (2004)
1.7 Luis Ospina, dir. (Colombia) Soplo de vida [film] (1999)
1.8 Jorge Navas, dir. (Colombia) La sangre y la lluvia [film] (2009)
1.9 CLIP1 from opening of Perder
1.9.1 Note the song is “Untados” from Colombian rock group Aterciopelados
index_img2.gif 2. It all begins with Borges...
2.1 “El jardín de los senderos que se bifurcan” (1941)
2.2 “La muerte y la brújula” (1942)
2.3 “Abenjacán el Bojarí, muerto en su laberinto” (1951)
2.4 Detective as “reader” – as proxy for the reader
2.4.1 Traditional detective as super-reader
2.4.2 Borges’ inversion: criminal Red Scharlach weaves trap (fictional labyrinth) for Erik Lönnrot
2.4.3 Detective/reader gets caught in a fiction he believes to be true
2.5 “Lönnrot se creía un puro razonador, un Auguste Dupin” (“La muerte y la brújula”, p.148)
index_img3.gif 3. It all begins with Poe... “The Purloined Letter”
3.1 Edgar Allan Poe’s tales of “ratiocination”
3.1.1 Detective C. Auguste Dupin
3.2 “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841)
3.3 “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” (1842)
3.4 “The Purloined Letter” (1844)
3.4.1 The importance of the stolen letter
3.4.2 The loss / purloining of a text and its attempted recovery
3.4.3 Recovery of lost text = restoration of meaning
3.5 Lacan’s “Seminar on the Purloined Letter”
3.5.1 Letter represents death (of Queen)
3.5.2 Related to originary trauma / sexual transgression / primal scene (in the Queen's boudoir)
3.5.3 Letter repeatedly "not seen" = disavowed (thus letter represents lack/castration which cannot be acknowledged under pain of death)
3.6 Derrida’s “Le Facteur de la vérité” (Truth's Postman / The Purveyor of Truth)
3.6.1 Criticizes Lacan's reading for being fixated on the (veiled) "truth" of castration
3.6.2 Lacan pays no attention to the "scene of writing" (of the letter, of Poe's trilogy)
index_img4.gif 4. It all begins with Sophocles... Image: Gustave Moreau, Oedipus and the Sphinx
4.1 Oedipus solves the riddle of the Sphinx
4.2 Later he tries to discover the murderer of his father Laius
4.3 “Sophocles’ tragedy initially looks like a detective story, as does the antidetective story, in that its principal action begins with attending to a murder (albeit a rather tardy attending) and is spent upon investigating that crime. It becomes an antidetective story however when the pursuer turns out to be the pursued. Or, to straighten out the chronology here, Sophocles’ drama offers the narrative structure for one type of antidetective story, a type built upon three mythemes: the disclosure of a death (12); the investigation surrounding that death (13); and the investigator’s recognition of his or her complicity (15). The first two mythemes form the structural core of the detective tale, but when the third is deployed, we have moved into the realm of the antidetective.” (Moddelmog, p.64)
5. Perder es cuestión de método (1997)
5.1 Plot
5.1.1 Journalist and private detective Víctor Silanpa
5.1.2 Called on by police captain Aristófanes Moya to solve mystery of gruesomely staked body
5.1.3 Three rival strong men are trying to gain control of a piece of prime real estate by the side of a lake near Bogotá
Marco Tulio Esquilache, concejal
Vargas Vicuña, constructor
Heliodoro Tiflis, mafioso
5.1.4 Deeds [escrituras] have disappeared -- different people possess them at different times
5.2 Temporal dysphasia
5.2.1 Detective's relationship to time: Víctor Silanpa p.14
5.2.2 Fernando Guzmán, 'mad' former editor of national newspaper p.30
CLIP 2: Guzmán
5.2.3 Toma del Palacio de Justicia Nov 6th 1985
M-19 - 76 dead, including 11 judges 10 canteen workers "disappeared"
5.2.4 Exactly one week later: Armero tragedy, Nov 13th 1985
Nevado del Ruiz volcano - mudslide 25,000 killed
index_img5.gif 6. Soplo de vida (1999)
6.1 CLIP 3: Opening sequence from Soplo de vida
6.2 Plot
6.2.1 Emerson Roque Fierro
6.2.2 La Golondrina
6.2.3 Irene
6.2.4 Medardo Ariza
6.3 Displacement and trauma
6.3.1 At least 3,000,000 displaced people
6.4 Citation of noir genre
6.4.1 CLIP 4 & 5: Las Nieves
7. The fall of the detective
7.1 No longer an agent for morality
7.2 Silanpa undertakes private detective work on behalf of jealous wives
7.2.1 Loss of ethical imperative of detective p.33
7.3 Detective as loser
7.3.1 "Perder es una cuestión de método" p.45 (Sepúlveda)
7.4 No longer an agent for truth in postmodern society
7.4.1 Loss of ultimate signifiers
7.4.2 Note names of characters suggesting classical grandeur, degraded in present
8. Back to the purloined letter
8.1 Escrituras
8.1.1 CLIP 6: Escrituras
8.2 Circulation of escrituras parallel to circulation of dead body
8.2.1 As in Marx, capital = undead labour
8.2.2 Capital as disavowal of its own cruelty; Cain prospers through disavowal of murder of Abel
CLIP 7: Gambling
8.3 Return of repressed at end of Soplo de vida
8.3.1 CLIP 8: Discovery that Golondrina = Pilar
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