¿Pero había que mataral mimo? Las trampas del humor explosivo en La virgen de los sicarios

Authors

  • Andrés Sanín Universidad de Harvard

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.30827/rl.v0i12.3873

Keywords:

Fernando Vallejo, La virgen de los sicarios, humor, violencia, literatura colombiana, discursos de odio

Abstract

Our Lady of the Assassins (1994), the most renown novel from the Colombian writer Fernando Vallejo, has been criticized because of the irresponsible laughter that it fosters in its public or the paralysis, melancholy and the feeling of helplessness that it produces trough the depiction of a country condemned to be a perpetual disaster. My reading opens a third way: to interpret the perplexity that Vallejo creates, with the juxtaposition of black humor and violence, as a (meta)humorous trap that encourages the reader to reflect on humor itself, in an aesthetic and ethical sense. In this trap, laughter does not come automatically or as a simple form of catharsis. It is obstructed, defamiliarized and questioned. I argue that the novel pushes the reader to take the decision on whether she or he laughs or not with certain humorous invitations, taking into consideration if they contribute to resist or exacerbate the violence that is represented. This would foster a kind of horizontal (re)education of humor, in which the text opens the question on the (im)propriety of laughter as a response to violence, but does not give an answer, since the agency to decide whether to laugh or not to laugh is in each reader. I explore a passage that critics usually do not consider, the murder of a street mime who is making fun of a defenseless old man. The episode allows me to show how the narrator gives some clues to imagine a kind of humor that is not another form of violence against others. A humor that, in the middle of the disaster, is able to bring some light by allowing us to have the greatness of laughing of our own ego and misfortunes. .

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Published

2014-06-01

How to Cite

Sanín, A. (2014). ¿Pero había que mataral mimo? Las trampas del humor explosivo en La virgen de los sicarios. Revista Letral, (12), 91–102. https://doi.org/10.30827/rl.v0i12.3873