SICARIATED BODIES: THE SPACE OF VIOLENCE IN THE VIRGIN OF THE SICARIANS OF FERNANDO VALLEJO

Abstract

This study explores the relationships and meanings of the body in the space of violence, in the novel La virgen de los sicarios (1994) by the Colombian writer Fernando Vallejo. In this work, violence expresses its territorial nature; it needs symbolic, physical and corporal spaces to demarcate, tear, fracture. This socio-spatial and corporal configuration cannot but be understood in relation to the materiality of the power exercised over the body (Foucault; 1980). And it is precisely in the figure of the hit man where this materiality shapes subjectivities that become subjection (Butler 2010), in a space surrounded by what we could define as “micro-politics of violence”.