Chapter 4 - Sovereignty, Democracy and ‘Nonselfsufficiency’ through Touch in Los informantes by Juan Gabriel Vásquez and Diário da Queda by Michel Laub

Summary

Los informantes by Juan Gabriel Vásquez and Diário da Queda by Michel Laub both use family narratives to explore ontological and political relationships. In Los informantes, this chapter demonstrates that the father and son embody Nancy’s notions of ‘sovereignty’ and ‘democracy’ respectively. Their weaknesses reveal weaknesses of such systems of governance, which Vásquez examines in relation to the historic and contemporary Colombian political context. It is through tactile associations and ‘sharing’ emblematized in the character of a physiotherapist, that the possibility of a ‘horizontal’ politics of ‘interdependence’ is explored. Likewise, in Diário da Queda, a lack of touch and familial intimacy frustrates the happiness of a father and son who are the second and third generation, born to a Holocaust survivor who moved to Brazil. This chapter tackles the novel’s radical critique of Holocaust memory used to bind together a Jewish ‘operative’ community, and to justify violence in the present.