Haunting Without Ghosts

Winner, William M. LeoGrande Prize, Center for Latin American and Latino Studies at American University, 2022 For half a century, cultural production in Colombia has labored under the weight of magical realismabove all, the works of Gabriel Garca Mrquezwhere ghosts told stories about the countrys violent past and warned against a similarly gruesome future. Decades later, the story of violence in Colombia is no less horrific, but the critical resources of magical realism are depleted. In their wake comes "spectral realism." Juliana Martnez argues that recent Colombian novelists, filmmakers, and artistsfrom Evelio Rosero and William Vega to Beatriz Gonzlez and Erika Diettesshare a formal and thematic concern with the spectral but shift the focus from what the ghost is toward what the specter does. These works do not speak of ghosts. Instead, they use the specter to destabilize reality by challenging the authority of human vision and historical chronology. By introducing the spectral into their work, these artists decommodify well-worn modes of representing violence and create a critical space from which to seek justice for the dead and disappeared. A Colombia-based study, Haunting without Ghosts brings powerful insight to the politics and ethics of spectral aesthetics, relevant for a variety of sociohistorical contexts.