Abstract
Based on the work of four creative personalities – the writers Roberto Bolaño and André Valias, and the plastic artists Juan Carlos Romero and Nuno Ramos – this text seeks to comprehend the meaning that inventories, catalogues and lists take place in the Latin American culture of the last few decades, focusing with special interest on the connection they keep with a broader reflexion over the violence that trespass and constitutes an important part of that culture. We are dealing here with a process of formal reassigning, given that that lists and enumerations were important in the culture of Colonial Latin America, as associated with the narrative inventories of the exotic and marvelous produced by travelers and conquers. In contemporary scope, though, what we observe is the political (re)invention of language and technique, the emergence of other lists, true inventories of horror: in face of the unbearable violence, art and literature elaborate their catalogs of pain and revolt, part of the infinite task of mourning.
Keywords
memory; latin american literature; narrative inventories; violence