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Isolation
and Exile: AIDS and the Solitary Body in Latin American Literature
Jodie
Parys
Department
of Spanish Languages and Cultures
Alverno
College, Milwaukee
(Estados
Unidos)
This paper examines fictional literary representations of the
individual AIDS-infected body as it purposely separates itself from the
social body, whether physically or emotionally. The focus will be on the
new markers of identity from this position of isolation and the altered
perception of the body and AIDS itself, as viewed from the protagonists’
positions on the physical and psychological margins of society. The works
I use to illustrate this point are Ricardo Prieto’s play Pecados
mínimos from Uruguay, Nelson Mallach’s (Argentina) short story “Elefante”
and Pablo Pérez’s (Argentina) diary Un año sin amor. In essence, the
protagonists in these narratives choose to attempt to erase themselves
from the social body by fleeing the society or social group they are part
of or self-destructing. Particularly in the first two works studied, there
is an internalization of the early messages by many societies toward
AIDS-patients: they were treated and seen as a type of leper who should be
isolated from the general population. These narratives perpetuate that
urgency to cleanse the social body by showing the protagonists willingly
removing their diseased bodies from the collective realm. In contrast,
Pérez’s work focuses more on the destruction that AIDS wrecks on the
individual rather than playing into the paranoid notion of the risks posed
by the HIV-positive individual to society. I recur to various theories on
both internal and external exile, particularly those offered by Amy K.
Kaminsky and Sophia A. McClennen, to scrutinize the types of isolation and
exile depicted in these works. While not the overt variety experienced by
individuals forced to leave their homes and countries due to war,
repression, or other reasons, these three works do depict varying degrees
of both physical and psychological exile, consistently imposed by the
protagonists rather than the society around them. The protagonists
depicted by Prieto, Mallach and Pérez all grapple with the compounding
effects of the social taboos against HIV and AIDS, made more difficult to
deal with given their physical deterioration and concurrent unwillingness
to accept their burgeoning identities as HIV-positive individuals. The
common thread throughout the three texts is the protagonists’ decision
to shirk away from their changed selves and to alter their notion of space
through extreme isolation and self-imposed exile. However, in two of the
three works, there is a process of self-discovery that eventually occurs,
ultimately leading to a re-conceptualization of self and one’s place in
society. This paper examines both the markers of self-imposed exile
illustrated in these three works, as well as the gradually transformation
that emerges in Mallach and Prieto’s protagonists from the isolated
spaces they constructed.
About Jodie Parys
Jodie Parys is an Assistant Professor of Spanish Languages and Cultures
at Alverno College in Milwaukee, WI. Her research focuses on
representations of HIV/AIDS in Latin American Literature, examining
diverse genres and authors from across Latin America. Her future research
will examine visual representations of AIDS from Latin America and U.S.
Latino culture.
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