Memorias del espacio: Un estudio geocrí­tico sobre El edificio de los chilenos de Macarena Aguiló y La dimensión desconocida de Nona Fernández

Abstract

By imagining the future in Latin America, it becomes essential to recognize and highlight the past. This is done by acknowledging the power of memory. Recent Chilean works show how second-generation Chileans express their collective resistance to the crimes that were provoked by the Augusto Pinochet regime. The futures that Macarena Aguiló and Nona Fernández envisage are a form of resistance because they conceptualize the past and their memories, and how these memories illuminate the present and the future.Previous investigations focusing on the novel La dimensión desconocida or the documentary, El edificio de los chilenos, have emphasized the use of narrative, as well as the historical and memory contexts. By applying a geocritical method to analyze spatial metamorphosis and importance in both works, I aim to highlight unique interpretations in both works. In employing the geocritical method, I will explain the role of the representations of space and its importance and the metamorphosis of space to place within both works. This study will pose the following question: what new forms of meaning can be achieved with the use of geocriticism in memory studies? The ideas in this essay, specifically how spaces and places are affected by memory, have the potential to bridge the gaps in the post-dictatorial works of Aguiló and Fernández. Moreover, this examination will renew both the understanding and the interest in how geocriticism can be applied to future research in literary and cinematic studies generated in dictatorial regimes.