Abstract for 2008 Honors Colloquium
Olga Grosh
Hispanic Studies
"Opposition to Symbolic Violence in the Nobel Lectures of Latin American Laureates"
This paper examines the Nobel lectures of Peace and Literature Prize laureates Pablo Neruda, Gabriel García Márquez and Rigoberta Menchú. I argue that the lectures reduce Western and Latin American symbolic violence against Latin America's attempts at social change. Moreover, I propose that the lectures' power to change this perspective comes from the very fact that they are important cultural productions that provide a space within which social relations may be presented and negotiated. These Nobel lectures reduce symbolic violence against Latin America as they expand literary and political discourses to include the continent's subaltern voice.
