Chapter: Latin American Violence Novels: Pain and the Gaze of
Narrative

Building on Gustavo Pellón’s classification of Spanish-American novels as documentary novels (novela testimonio), historical novels, detective novels, and marginalized novels, this chapter places them into two groups of psychoanalytic categories: voyeurism/exhibitionism and sadism/masochism, that influence the identity of the subject. The schematic voyeurism-exhibitionism/sadism-masochism in the novels explored in this chapter places focus on concepts that imply an Ego placing its gaze on the world; it acknowledges that we are in constant repetition, learning how to deal with the levels of violence and pain, which, in essence, is translated into how to deal with the Eros and Death drives. Examining Rosario Tijeras by Jorge Franco as a case study, the chapter explores the applicability of psychoanalysis as it applies to these texts and considers some of the other categories of novels that emerge from this larger, complex cultural context of Latin American literature.