From Globalizing Logic to Contemporary Fragmentation: Latin American Crime Novels

Abstract

This paper compares two formal perspectives of the crime novel as a gen re. First, the noir or detective novel defined by Classical causal logic (as discussed in the concept of ratio by Siegfried Kracauer), which seeks a resolution grounded in penalization; and, second, the fragmentary crime novel in which this relationship is substantially changed and we find a situation of anomie, that is, one in which the law has lost validity or cannot be applied in the narrative world. The Western causal logic of crime and punishment, the basis of globalization, corresponds to the totality of global capitalist law protecting personal property, which serves as the formal foundation of noir or detective novels. In contrast, the social anomie corresponding to local conditions, for example, in Latin America, that question this global causal logic is reflected in the formal fragmentation of what can more precisely be referred to as crime novels. By way of illustration, three Latin American crime novels are analyzed: El capítulo de Ferneli (1992), by Colombian Hugo Chaparro Valderrama, Los detectives salvajes (1998), by Chilean Roberto Bolaño, and Los minutos negros (2006), by Mexican Martín Solares.