Maria Vargas Llosa's El hablador as a Discourse of Conquest

In this article I study how Mario Vargas Llosa's El hablador proposes to deconstruct indigenist narrative and promotes the assimilation of Indian cultures under the model of modernity. In this sense, the novel El hablador is written as a discourse of conquest in which the construction of th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Main Author: José Castro Urioste
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: New Prairie Press 2000-06-01
Online Access:http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol24/iss2/4
Description
Summary:In this article I study how Mario Vargas Llosa's El hablador proposes to deconstruct indigenist narrative and promotes the assimilation of Indian cultures under the model of modernity. In this sense, the novel El hablador is written as a discourse of conquest in which the construction of the self—through the evocation of various oppositions—represents an allegory of modern nation. I begin my article with the analysis of the notion of discourse of conquest, as well as one of its most reiterated images of power, the "civilization-barbarism" dichotomy. I follow this with an analysis of the oppositions through which the representation of the self and the nation are elaborated.
ISSN:2334-4415