La Formación del Homo Sacer Peruano: Violencia Sistémica en Cuatro Relatos Sobre el Perú Contemporáneo

Abstract

La formación del homo sacer peruano: violencia sistémica en cuatro relatos sobre el Perú contemporáneo (The Formation of the Peruvian Homo Sacer: Systemic Violence in Four Narrative Texts About Contemporary Peru) applies the theory of Jacques Lacan about the orders of the Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real to analyze the phenomenon of violence as portrayed in: Candela quema luceros (1989), De amor y de guerra (2004), Chungui: violencia y trazos de memoria (2005), and La niña de nuestros ojos (2010). Through a Lacanian analysis of these four texts my investigation reveals the mechanisms of how imaginary violence is sustained by real violence and, principally, by symbolic violence in the context of Peru of the 1980s and 1990s. Of crucial importance is the incorporation of Lacan's theory of the superego and lamella to argue that these narrators shed light upon the processes of the formation of the Peruvian homo sacer, a life deprived of any value. I argue that it is only with the consolidation of the homo sacer was possible to kill with total impunity 70,000 Peruvians.