Fictions of authority: The dictator novel
In this first set of readings centered on the expression and critique of political authority, we’ll dive into the Latin American dictator novel
The dictator novel, most generally, is any novel depicting the nature and complications of dictatorial or authoritarian power and its subjects. More specifically, it is a genre of novels out of Latin America, collected here. But fictionalizations of dictatorship and authoritarianism emerge just about everywhere dictatorial and authoritarian governments emerge—in Latin America, of course; and also in North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia.
Given the recent re-emergence and re-intensification of dictatorial and authoritarian governments in the Americas, Eastern Europe, and Africa, the time is ripe for considering the dictator novel anew—as not just an expression of the nature of extreme political power but, perhaps, as a species or mode of protest literature.
The dictator novel, in the narrow sense of the Latin American genre, is interesting in particular because it not only depicts the nature and complications of political authority; it also reflects, self-consciously, on the relation between authority and writing itself. Writing and narrative, ambiguously, can be both agents of authority, political and otherwise, and means of critique and subversion. Writing is a crucial medium in which political power expresses and guarantees itself, just as writing harbors the potential for radical critique of that power.
Under the heading of a discussion of “fictions of authority,” I propose to trace the history and wealth of instances of the dictator novel and its satellites, beginning, here, with the Latin American core.
Texts
The dictator novel is, in the narrowest sense, a genre of novels out of Latin America from about the second half of the twentieth century, three of them coming out in two years, 1974–1975. The chief exemplars, chronologically, are these:
- Miguel Ángel Asturias, Mr. President (1946, Guatemala)
- Alejo Carpentier, Reasons of State (1974, Cuba)
- Augusto Roa Bastos, I, the Supreme (1974, Paraguay)
- Gabriel García Márquez, The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975, Colombia)
- Mario Vargas Llosa, The Feast of the Goat (2000, Peru/Dominican Republic)
These works were, collectively, inheritors of a loose family predating them, the most direct predecessor being:
- Ramón del Valle-Inclán, Tyrant Banderas (1926, Spain)
And then, more distantly, two works from the middle of the nineteenth century—most directly:
- Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, Facundo (1845, Argentina)
and, less directly:
- José Mármol, Amalia (1851, Argentina)
Those eight works arguably comprise the ‘core’ of the dictator novel, and, while there certainly are satellites, and some in more proximate orbits than others, it is around these works that they move.
I would like to include as a supplement to these eight a work of non-fiction, which may be seen as seeding the dictator novel its form, namely:
- Euclides da Cunha, Backlands: The Canudos Campaign (1902, Brazil)
These, then, comprise the core readings of the first exhibit of our “fictions of authority” reading tour.
A Bookshop shelf featuring all but one of them (Carpentier’s Reasons of State) is here.