Overflows. Ethnographic Fictions in the Narrative of Chejfec and Bizzio

Abstract

The article examines Boca de lobo by Sergio Chejfec and Rabia by Sergio Bizzio, and proposes a shift in reading protocols that typically prioritize the issue of realism, instead placing other questions at the center: what populations does fiction summon and what relationships of inclusion or exclusion does it establish? How does it address social, economic, and cultural differences? How does it shape relationships of domination and bodily, symbolic, and verbal violence? The article argues that the novels reactivate the constitutive transformation of modern fiction (Rancière) and shift towards the margins, embracing minor and inconsequential subjects, individuals who occupy a subordinate position in power relations. In doing so, the fictions reconfigure the territory of the visible and the sayable, constructing a symbolic topography that problematizes the forms of perception and knowledge of subjects marked by differences. Additionally, the article considers both novels as “ethnographic fictions”, which explore relationships with social and cultural others as a cognitive endeavor, and in this direction, it analyzes how they appropriate the figure of the ethnographer and reveal the risks, difficulties, and limitations of that ethnographic task.