Los vigilantes, de Diamela Eltit: carta, escritura y poder

Summary

The aim of this paper is to analize Diamela Eltit's work Los vigilantes (The surveillants), in which the problematics of the letter, the writing and the power are entwined. The letter is considered a discursive type that has the necessity to display the statement and recep tion situation from its source and, furthermore, it is a genre that elaborates a procrastinated dialog. This postulate is confirmed since the author of the letters that give shape to the novel is permanently haunted by a surveillance system, that transforms the narrated world —any Latin American city— into a great panoptic whose temporal indetermination allows it to be located as well in the Colonial Age as in the future. The writing, the space that is located outside the repressive circuit, reveals dimensions associated to the idea of deliverance.