Aesthetics and Politics in the Testimonial Poetry of the Colombian Caribbean

Abstract

In this paper on the testimonial poetry of the Colombian Caribbean, I propose a way of reading the affections and images, in the face of violence and hegemonies of the pacifying discourses of the 21st Century. I first take a tour of literary traditions in relation to violence in Colombia. However, I will focus on contemporary production, in regards to publications that are made at a time of post-conflict and memory policy in the 21st Century. I interpret the way in which the poetic image responds aesthetically and politically to what Williams (1982) called the sentimental structure of the time.

I choose the poems of Caribbean Colombian writers on violence: Regresemos a que nos maten amor (Ariza Navarro, 2008), Al otro lado de la guerra (Acosta 2014), Alarmas armadas (Núñez, 2016). My thesis is that testimonial poetry, as an aesthetic flow that comes from the Twentieth Century, manifests and constructs poetic policies from the dialectic of affections, from the footprint of war; he uses images to exhibit violence, but creates a sensibility that questions readers about what is felt in a posthumous reality.