Literary-Legal Representations: Statelessness and the Demands of Justice in Hector Tobar's "The Tattooed Soldier"
Academic Article
Overview
Research
Identity
Additional Document Info
Other
View All
Overview
abstract
[Scholars such as Arturo Arias, Ana Patricia Rodríguez, and Claudia Milian have brought to light the importance of the historical specificity and traumatic experience of the (largely undocumented) Guatemalan diaspora in the US in the wake of the Guatemalan civil war. These and other scholars have generally used a trauma studies framework to read Hctor Tobar's The Tattooed Soldier (1998/2000) and Central American migrant characters in Latinx literature in general. This article focuses on the novel's deployment of human rights language and categories, particularly refugee-ness and statelessness. I argue that the novel, through the representation of refugees, homeless people, and a child soldier, critiques the narrow definition of statelessness provided by governmental bodies and instead reveals the experience of statelessness shared by migrants and other marginalized citizens. In addition, I assert that the novel critiques commonly offered modes of justice in the wake of human rights violations, a topic undertheorized in human rights and literary studies, and encourages new models of justice for victims of state violence.]
