The Politics of Pretence: Woman and Nation in Laura Restrepo’s Delirio

Abstract

This article examines the interrelationships among the text’s major themes: violence, dissimulation and delirium, at both the level of nation and also of family and individual. The dysfunctional character of the Loudoño family is reflected in the plight of the nation: while Agustina is the chief victim of her father’s violent outbursts, so the nation is traumatized by the violent outrages committed by the criminal ‘father’, Pablo Escobar. Restrepo shows how, in these circumstances, madness takes its place on the inside of Colombian culture, ceasing thereby to be a state of exception. It is pretence that drives Agustina mad; but Restrepo’s novel is not one-sidedly negative. She locates the possibility of a new order in Agustina’s challenge to patriarchal power through her defiance of her father and through her don de escribir that provides a gender-inflected counterpoint to her mother’s don de encubrir. Particular emphasis is given to the narrative reconstruction of the climactic scene when familial tensions finally spill over: though truth is revealed, the pretence survives unscathed. But Agustina’s own narrative provides a countervailing force: her language declines to conform to the syntax of reason, assuming instead the rhythms of madness. This madness can be seen as creative, a mode of escaping the patriarchal furrow of the male symbolic order and spurious male rationality.