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Writing under the influence: The fiction of the artist under contract in novels of organized crime from Italy and Mexico

Ducoux, Antoine 2020. Writing under the influence: The fiction of the artist under contract in novels of organized crime from Italy and Mexico. New Readings 17 (2) , pp. 48-69. 10.18573/newreadings.114

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Abstract

Fiction writers have sought to provide original descriptions of the mafia's obscure and changing worlds and reflect on their own representational strategies by using metaliterary devices. In Yuri Herrera’s Trabajos del reino (2004), Walter Siti’s Resistere non serve a niente (2012) and Víctor Hugo Rascón Banda’s Contrabando (2008), the representation of the artist under contract with organized crime provides a narrative content and a metaliterary figure which can help us make sense of the complex relationship between literary fiction and organized crime. The artist under contract is shown to put their own credibility at risk and reflect from a position of fragility and dependence. From the intra-diegetic representation of an author under contract with organized crime—a key aspect of Herrera’s Trabajos del reino—, to the blurring of the autobiographical pact with the reader in Resistere non serve a niente and Contrabando, this article asks how authors creatively question the credibility and the authority of their own literary discourse on organized crime? Through the study of the contractual aspects of the literary text (as an intra-diegetic component and a constitutive element of the autofiction genre), the article discusses the hermeneutic value of fiction: is there a productive use of ambiguity that can facilitate the interpretation of the secretive and ambiguous worlds of organized crime?

Item Type: Article
Date Type: Publication
Status: Published
Schools: Modern Languages
Subjects: F History United States, Canada, Latin America > F1201 Latin America (General)
H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare
P Language and Literature > PC Romance languages
P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0080 Criticism
P Language and Literature > PQ Romance literatures
Publisher: Cardiff University Press
ISSN: 2634-6850
Date of First Compliant Deposit: 15 January 2021
Date of Acceptance: 4 April 2020
Last Modified: 03 May 2023 23:50
URI: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/138012

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