POETICS OF DISEASE: BIOMEDICINE, VIOLENCE, AND POETRY IN LATIN AMERICA (1973-2020)

Abstract

In the late twentieth century, Latin American national governments reformed their fiscal programs according to free-market policies, and, at the same time, they propelled a new understanding of well-being. Developed under the sphere of neoliberalism, biomedicine emphasizes the role of the individual in achieving wellness while belittling the fact that economic and political factors increase sickness burdens in specific social groups. My research demonstrates that the poetry of disease in Latin America resorts to communal imagery that includes a long and painful history of loss, political violence, and socioeconomic precariousness in order to challenge biomedical, linear narratives that exalt individual wellness and understate communal bonds. Poetry reformulates the discourses of biomedicine to root them in the historical and cultural reality of patients and their communities. I coined the concept of Latin American poetry of disease to pinpoint a literary corpus that works as a collective memory mechanism through the representation of sick bodies between 1973 and 2020. This poetry defies hegemonic visions of health and sickness by exploring their ideological ties with the recent history of authoritarianism and neoliberalism in the Spanish-speaking hemisphere. HIV/AIDS poetry and cancer poetry are two case studies that illustrate new ways in which language can relate to living and dying. The works of Moisés Agosto Rosario (Puerto Rico), Abigael Bohórquez (Mexico), Enrique Lihn (Chile), Gonzalo Millán (Chile), José Watanabe (Peru), and Teresa Orbegoso (Peru) build poetics of fragmentation, memory, and queerness that surpass the physiological meaning of the authors’ afflictions and interweave notions of sickness that are not subordinated to biomedical knowledge. Finally, Covid-19 poetry reveals that contemporary disinfection and cleaning practices are tied to a history of exclusion and discrimination of domestic workers in Latin America.