INSULARITY IN THE NOVEL ARENA NEGRA BY JUAN CARLOS MÉNDEZ GUÉDEZ

Abstract

The relationship between the Canary Islands and Venezuela developed over years, constantly mediated by the Atlantic Ocean and marked by the comings and goings of migrants and travelers, sometimes from Spain to Venezuela, at other times from Venezuela to Spain. These historic intercontinental relationships are well documented in the works of several Venezuelan authors, configuring the Canary Islands as a non-place (Augé, 2000), marked by movement and transience. The example examined here is Arena Negra (2013), by Juan Carlos Méndez Guédez, a narrative that explores the metaforicity of the island and its subjective repercussions on the main character, providing a representative view of the Canary Islands as a fractal
space based on the studies of insularity by Antonio Benítez Rojo (1989), Edouard Glissant (1990, 2008) and Ottmar Ette (2016, 2018).