Refutación de nostalgia. Memoria y cuerpo en „El Tercer Reich y La parte de los crímenes de Roberto Bolaño”

Refutation of Nostalgia. Memory and Body in Roberto Bolaño’s El Tercer Reich and La parte de los crímenesThe aim of the article is to show that Roberto Bolaño reestablishes the continuity of the his­torical process in his prose, which contradicts the dominant postmodern tendency based on the aesthetics of nostalgia. The article analyzes the corporal construction of the protagonist of the novel El Tercer Reich. The analysis is based on the methodology of close reading and then comparative analysis, when it comes to put the results in the context of the representation of body in La parte de los crímenes. The construction of the body emphasizes its deformation and mutilation in order to make it a bearer of memory of the violence of the past. Bolaño’s reflection on history undermines the aesthetics of nostalgia due to ethical concerns related to the process of representation of the past. In his own narrative strategy he follows Walter Benjamin’s principle to preserve the memory of the oppressed. Bolaño understands it as the ethical task of literature.