Heterotopias and Discouragements in Pisingaña (1985): A Cinematographic Interpretation of Colombia's Rural Armed Conflict

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Published: Jun 24, 2022
Keywords:
Colombian cinema;  political violence; armed conflicts; rape; heterotopia.

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Carlos-Germán van der Linde
Universidad de La Salle

Abstract

Pisingaña depicts a plausible scene of the armed conflict in Colombia about displaced persons from rural areas to cities by force. Graciela’s drama in the countryside continues in the city. This article seeks to demonstrate that through dystopia Pisingaña critiques rural and urban spaces as locus amoenus (“pleasant places”). The concept of “heterotopia,” initially introduced by Foucault and later reexplored by Lefebvre, Hetherington, and Harvey, among others, allows us to examine a new emplacement based on love and reconciliation, whose characteristics —as the movie shows— are marked by fugacity and, ultimately, unattainability. 

Article Details

Issue
No. 59 (2022)
Section
Articles
Author Biography

Carlos-Germán van der Linde, Universidad de La Salle

Associate professor at the University of La Salle (Bogotá). He holds a PhD in Contemporary Latin American Literature from the University of Colorado (Boulder). His primary research interests are the representations of violence in Latin American literature and cinema. He is coauthor of the book “Pa’ las que sea, parce!” Límites y alcances de la sicaresca como categoría estética (2014), focused on narco-narratives and the sicario sociocultural phenomenon, and the editor of Representaciones estéticas de las violencias en Colombia. Novela y cine sobre el conflicto armado con una mirada a la violencia bipartidista (2020), about representations of the Colombian armed conflict in novel and film.