ADOLESCENT CORPOGRAPHIES IN LATIN AMERICAN MIGRATION LITERATURE

Abstract

In the following text, I will examine the corpographies of adolescents in transit by linking them to the necropolitical context of precarious migration in which the resistance strategies of the following protagonists are developed: Jean in “Ciudad Berraca” (2018) by Chilean writer Rodrigo Ramos Bañados, Tayson in “Seoul, São Paulo” (2019) by Bolivian author Gabriel Mamani Magne, and Walter in Amarás a Dios sobre todas las cosas (2013) by Mexican author Alejandro Hernández. In all three itineraries, bodies are marked by a process of metamorphosis linked to their peculiar moment of growth to which is added a radical spatial change that encloses them in discriminating racial logics. This double limitation damages their psychic construction and at the same time drives them to deploy abilities to overcome the trauma of the reification and spectralization of their bodies. Each adolescent discovers in the resilience of creation and micropolitical desire (Rolnick and Guattari) a sensitive way to tolerate the structural violence of migration: Jean with his chameleonic capacity to reappropriate the historical narrative, Tayson with dance as a “surface of projection” (Le Breton), and Walter with testimonial writing. By transforming bodies in becoming into worlds of desire, it allows us to think of a new ethical code (Braidotti) and to re-politicize the writing on migration.