THE POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS OF PEASANT WOMEN: ADOLFINA’S VERTRETEN AND DARSTELLEN IN UN DÍA EN LA VIDA OF MANLIO ARGUETA

Abstract

The novel Un día en la vida (1980), by Manlio Argueta, is one of the testimonies that, from fiction writing, best describes the sociopolitical context that preceded the Civil War in El Salvador (1979-1992). It is also a text that grants –unlike other similar writings published in Latin America during the 20th century– relevance to female characters. This article examines the chapters of the book in which the character of Adolfina takes center stage, with the aim of evidencing to what extent Argueta’s representation of the political consciousness expressed by this character conflicts with the representation of the others traumatized consciences that circulate in the other female characters. Using as theoretical support Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s discussion of representation/vertreten and re-presentation/darstellen in her study “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1998), it is proposed as a hypothesis that in the representation made of Adolfina the acquisition of a political consciousness and/or class consciousness is expressed.