COUNTING VIOLENCE: ROBERTO BOLAÑO AND 2666

Author(s): Sol Peláez

Source: Chasqui , Noviembre 2014, Vol. 43, No. 2 (Noviembre 2014), pp. 30-47
Published by: Chasqui: revista de literatura latinoamericana

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43589628

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 COUNTING VIOLENCE:
ROBERTO BOLAÑO AND 2666
Sol Peláez
Mississippi State University

"A mediados de febrero, en un callejón del centro de Santa Teresa, unos basureros encontraron
a otra mujer muerta," the narrator tells us in Roberto Bolano' s 2666 (447/355). 1 Beyond the
violence of postdictatorship and against the grain of globalization, this text destabilizes not only the
great Western narrative of progress, reason, and Enlightenment (in its capitalist and its revolutionary
communist versions) but also that of humanity and human rights and its phallogocentric notion of
fraternity. 2666 explores how the singularity of horror can be shared, that is, how the world (not the
globe) emerges from violence, and how to go from the singularity of pain to the barred universality
of sharing it. Furthermore, in sharing trauma, 2666 challenges language (and its users) with the
ethical dilemma of accounting for violence. Many critics read 2666 from a "morally alert" position,
searching in it for a critique of neoliberalism, of the violence of the 20th century, or of evil.
However, 2666 not only critically narrates these violences; it also examines the enjoyment and
indifference involved in writing and reading about violence. The text explores how the enjoyment
of language and the reification that language entails pervade the telling and reading of violence,
questioning the position of a morally alert criticism. Thus, 2666 locates language at the intersection
of responsibility and complicity, leaving no possible external position from violence and language.
Violence has been one of the core topics of late twentieth-century and early twenty-first-century
Latin American literature. Many of the narratives about violence in the eighties and nineties were
dominated by state political violence. These narratives came in the form of testimonio and
post-dictatorship fiction, the historical novel, or narratives about violent democracies like those of
Mexico, or Peru among others. Sometimes, along with a reflection on political violence came a
critique of the patriarchal system and of heterosexual gender normativity. During the nineties, and at
beginning of the twenty-first century, dictatorship remained relevant, but the focus switched to the
survivors, the next generation, and the remaining effects of violence. New narratives emerged
exploring the transition from the state to the neoliberal market and the violences related to this
passage, such as new poverty and corruption, and the decay of old forms of social organizations that
made more visible older forms of violence. In this frame, novels on drugs trafficking, on urban
violence, on transnational and border experiences and alternative gender identities became more
visible. Among this new trend of narrative, 2666 deserves a special attention.
2666 is a series of five parts, intended to be published separately but published together by an
editorial decision. While the Parts do not reunite in a teleological storyline, they still belong to the
same series, 2666, and gravitate elliptically towards Santa Teresa city, the spectral presence of
Ciudad Juarez (Mexico), and femicide. The Parts are not chapters and do not share a homogeneous

lrThe first pagination refers to the Spanish edition (2004), and the second to the English
translation by Natasha Wimmer (2009).

30

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Sol Peláez 3 1

narrative voic
narrates the ob
von Archimbo
there and mee
professor of ph
Rosa, to a city
an African Am
against wome
the killing of
into Benno von
suspect for the
2666, thus, go
the center of
disrupts the i
the mourning
national-popul
world narrativ
"reformulation
the world" (1
dictatorship,
different expe
political, and
transnational
in its margins
ghosts of the s
post-civil righ
writer for a m
writer probab
to "solve" the
after killing t
killers who ar
taxi driver att
forgotten that
then moved o
teporochos liv
raped, killed, a
It is impossib
about Ciudad J
the Ghosts," B
because Ciuda
Ciudad Juáre
geographical d
Santa Teresa i
foreign capita
Both cities off
human traffick
women, many
hegemonic dre

2For an overv

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 32 Counting Violence: Roberto Bolaño and 2666

Latin America. Modernization - industry - entails here no ideal

also illustrate the collapse of the great neoliberal narrative of the
the market as a pacifying vessel in a world where ideologies see
weight. However, Ciudad Juárez is neither merely a context outsi
fiction, nor is Santa Teresa a mimetic copy of Ciudad Juárez.
recognize the connections, it is also imperative not to erase the mi
between these two cities.3 Ciudad Juárez and the murdered wome
constantly in a relation of deferral to them, that is, we never reach
haunted by their spectral traces claiming for justice. These killed
Lacanian sense - and not a "reality" that is fictionalized, nor an ext
the text.
It is important to notice that groups such as Nuestras hijas de regreso a casa,4 activists,5 social
researchers,6 other art performances,7 and public campaigns8 have been working to bring these
femicides to light or "the killing of women by men because they are women" (and which even
forces them "to be" women) not only in Ciudad Juárez, but also in many other places (Russell,
"Preface" xiv; emphasis in orig.). In one of the first studies on Ciudad Juárez and femicide, Julia
Monárrez Fragoso noted that "The serial femicide in this city is a real social problem. It has to do
with what is irreparable and it is an outstanding debt" (301). Additionally, Alicia Schmidt Camacho
has explained how "voicing the unspeakable in public has been a vital means to interrupt the

3For an analysis of the notion of différance, see Jacques Derrida, "Différance."

4For more information, see the website of what was Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa , one of
the first civil associations of mothers protesting against the tolerance showed by society for the
killing of these girls and women.

5For example, see the Observatorio Ciudadano Nacional del Feminicidio; the Convention on
the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW); Isis International,
Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), Amnesty International, Latin American and
Caribbean Committee for the Defense of Women's Rights (CLADEM); Information and
Communication on Women (CIMAC), the Center of Informative Reports on Guatemala
(CERIGUA); and the Rapporteur on the Rights of Women of the Inter-America Commission on
Human Rights of the OAS. For more information, see The Inter- American Commission of Women
(CIM).

6We can think (and the list does not only focus on Ciudad Juárez) of the works of Julia
Monárrez Fragoso, Ana Carcedo, Montserrat Sagot, Alicia Schmidt Camacho, Marcela Lagarde,
María Jesús Pola. For further bibliography see Russell and Harmes (ed.)

7See, for example, the documentary theater play Mujeres de Arena-Testimonios de Mujeres en
Ciudad Juárez, with texts by Antonio Cerezo Contreras, et al. and the film Señorita extraviada
(200 1 ), directed by Lourdes Portillo.

8 See, for example, the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and
Eradication of Violence against Women (Belém do Pará, Brazil, 1994) signed and ratified by most
Latin American countries; or the Special Hearing on Femicide/Feminicide in Latin America before
the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the OAS (March 2006); or the Regional
Campaign "For Women's Lives, Not One More Death" / " Por la vida de las mujeres, ni una muerte
+ " (2001); and the Special Congressional Commission to Monitor Investigations of Feminicide in
the Republic of Mexico. For an update on the work of different activist Groups, see Leal.

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 Sol Peláez 33

devalorization
desert trash
"what the bo

On Critical Positions

The critical work on Bolano' s 2666 has taken two main critical positions. Taking in account the
situation on Ciudad Juárez and the content of 2666, there is a tendency to analyze this novel from a
morally alert critical position.9 Morally alert criticism reads 2666 in a functionalist key extracting
the value of the text from the "function" that literature should achieve in the social realm, the lesson
it teaches in relation to violence. By contrast, antimoralist literary criticism - to extrapolate Alberto
Moreiras' concept ("Infrapolitics and the Thriller" 147) - attempts to think the literary text beyond
its social or political function, that is, beyond the logic of literature as media. It articulates - and is
articulated by - the infrapolitical aporetic performance of a text. The reader is neither inside nor
outside the text, but in a position of what Jacques Alain-Miller calls extimacy - an exterior-interior.
While both reading positions are opened by 2666, the text aims to destabilize (although it does not
annul) the claims for an exteriority too well defined from which to analyze the text. Indeed, most
critics oscillate betwee the two positions in their analyses, sometimes privileging one over the other.
Morally alert criticism has praised Bolano' s work and 2666 by supposing that its value resides
in the portrayal and condemnation of patriarchal, deterreritorialized, neoliberal, necropolitical
capitalist global violence (McCann 79; Farred 692; Balkan 91, 102). So, Andrew McCann argues it
signals the reemergence of a literature that can "shape" the world and indirectly inspire political
action (74, 79). Taking into account that violence against women is (almost) "invisible" for
patriarchal society, most morally alert criticism has emphasized how 2666 voices the unsayable of
horror, and makes violence visible. For example, Ángeles Donoso Macaya argues that "la noción de
compromiso se hace manifiesta en la escritura de 2666 mediante la elaboración y exhibición de una
metodología del mal, metodología que vuelve visible y decible la forma y el sentido de la violencia"
(128). This politics of visibility seems for morally alert criticism to be positive, since it creates
awareness, and intervenes in the scenario of violence and, perhaps, helps to prevent it.
Paradoxically, other morally alert critics have a problem with 2666 for not being political enough,
like Jean Franco (210), or warn about the risk of exoticizing Latin America for the US (global)
market, like Sarah Pollack (363, 347). These positions - beyond their positive or negative claims
about Bolaño' s work - share the ideal of literature as a tool for awareness in favor of a progressive
politics. However, 2666 destabilizes this kind of morally alert criticism which endows literature
with progressive political power.10 2666 explores the pitfalls of writing violence; it does not only
look to portray or understand this violence, but also explores the enjoyment (and the indifference) of
reading and of telling about violence and about the aporias of the politics of visibility.
From a different perspective on politics and literature, Moreiras argues that 2666 (and the
thriller as genre) performs an infrapolitical position, which is "improperly ethical and improperly
political" ("Infrapolitics and the Thriller" 173). 11 Some critical readers have noticed that Bolaño' s
literature entails a deep critique - and for some mourning - of the deep rooted ideal of literature and

9I am adapting here the notion of "morally alert photographer" as employed by Susan Sontag
(80).

10For Sven Birkerts, 2666 did not reassure his confidence in the transformative power of
reading literature but questioned it (5). Curiously, he does not explore the moments in which 2666
engages in thinking an audience.

11 See also Moreiras "Infrapolitical Literature."

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34 Counting Violence: Roberto Bolaño and 2666

the lettered city as leading forces of the process of modernizat

Benjaminian mode, Bolano' s works show that "There is no docume
the same time a document of barbarism" (Benjamin 256), as Ign
(164). Indeed, according to Villalobos, literature's role as "salvatio
shows that "literature does not save but condemns us to be part of th
(195). In these analyses, literature is implicated in violence and thus i
very same violence.
Keeping in mind these considerations, I propose to look more c
any safe (innocent, non-violent, positive, progressive) point from
literature, but language, that becomes an accomplice of violence;
violence from which to tell violence. At the same time, dwelling
way to open a place extimate to the violence of language. Although
texts, 2666 included, eliminate an outside from which to tell viol
critical reading and the reader as an outside from which to re
Villalobos shows this no-outside of violence must include the read
this paper traces the ways in which 2666 destabilizes the position
central developed country) as an outsider of violence. Being aware
antimoralist criticism.

On Minor Violence

Many critics have emphasized that Bolaño' s writings address constantly the question of how to
count, how to tell horror (Manzoni; Fisher; Burgos; Walker; Donoso Macaya). In the case of 2666,
this horror fully emerges not just because of the narration of classical "political" violence, but from
giving an account of what seems to be minor violence.13 Political violence - i.e., war, mass murder,
slavery, political assassination, torture, treason, dictatorship, terrorism - has been a visible problem,
followed by spectacular crimes against the institutions of society, such as family, marriage (as
exemplified in 2666 by the case of the decapitated wife in Paris), and the Church (as in the
Penitent); in other words, by paradigmatic crimes against legitimate members of society (Bolaño
339/267). This last kind of crime, according to Kessler, one of the characters in 2666 , is
"escribible," "legible" (339/267). The rape, torture, and slaughter of women is, in general, measured
by hegemonic common sense as less significant insofar as it is considered individual, private,
beyond the political, almost beyond the social and communal, just "crímenes comunes y corrientes"
(Bolaño 673/539).Violence against women entails extreme brutality and sadism, yet it is not seen in
all its visibility; that is, it is not registered in everyday life as important violence, or even as
violence.14 If the killings of women are only the "extreme end of a continuum" of violence, then, it
is a violence that gains status in society only insofar as it becomes femicide (Caputi and Russell 15).
The killings of women in Santa Teresa is a border violence not only because these murders happen
on the border between the US and Mexico, but because they are considered a marginal kind of

12See also Cáceres (56). For Valdês, it goes further and explores evil as such.

13I am inspired here by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari who defined minor literature as one
through which a minority writes a major language, or in other words, a deterritorialized language
that is political and takes on a collective meaning.

14For a strong critique of the marginalization of the violence against women in the terrain of
International Law and Human Rights, see Catharine MacKinnon. For a critique of the dismissal of
violence against women as not "real trauma," see Laura Brown.

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 Sol Peláez 35

violence, "inv
easily dismiss
women at the
violences as "minor violences."
Minor violence, as I use the term, is the result of a narration or conceptualization that
destabilizes the above mentioned scales of violence, performs an infrapolitical position and entails a
deterritorialization of violence by locating it in the border. It is a narration which, by sharing
singular violence, disrupts hegemonic collective meaning and imagines a non-whole world. 2666 is
not an attempt at transforming what is minor into a major (absolute universal) violence. All the
killings counted, narrated in 2666, instead become a resistant minor violence. The narration of
violence as minor violence performs an infrapolitical position since it does not hypostatize the
victim into a transcendental, politico-theological, messianic form. Nor does it consider violence as
private, but as a collective phenomenon. Indeed it shows how the private is part of the collective.
Moreover, the narration of violence as minor violence deterritorializes violence. In doing so, on the
one hand, it allows us to map violence in a territory, in its history and its singularity, and in relation
to other violences; and on the other it lets us destabilize this cartography by refusing to give us a
map with a fixed central point.
The narrative of the victims of femicide revolves in an elliptical orbit around other social and
political violences - which are generally considered as major violences but which are narrated in
2666 as minor. It, thus, challenges the making of a scale of violences (private vs public, common vs
political-economical, assassination vs genocide, one woman's death vs femicide) and performs a
deterritorialization of violence. While La parte de los crímenes seems to be a center, when looked at
through the other Parts, the violence of Santa Teresa is at the margins. This destabilizes the center
that Santa Teresa and the narration of its crimes seem to be. Therefore, the narrative becomes
elliptical because it does not revolve around a center - La Parte de los crímenes - but develops
several elliptical orbits, in which Santa Teresa appears at the side. There is no possible hierarchy
and thus, there is no massacre -nazi genocide, soviet purges, slavery, racism, political repression,
femicide - worse than any other. There are only violences that de-center the world. 2666 resists
giving in to a "comparative victimhood," and eludes the possibility of naming who has suffered the
most. The killings of women refuse to become what Dominick LaCapra calls a "total trauma, that is
un(re)presentable" (97). The murder of women at Santa Teresa acts as a pole of attraction for other
violences, unveiling at the same time both its singularity and theirs. The elliptical feature of this
narrative shows through in the fact that there are ellipses in the narrative, and 2666 is never a
complete, unified narrative. The text never exhausts these violences and their connections. There are
ellipses, dots, that suspend meaning between stories and violences, and so the scale of violence is
destabilized.

"Esta criatura no es de aquí"

At the beginning of La parte de los crímenes , the two women in front of the just found "muerta"
declare to the police: "Nunca la habíamos visto. Esta criatura no es de aquF (443-44/353, emphasis
added). This muerta appears within the frame of what classically is called a fictional world: Santa
Teresa City "uno de los... agujeros del mundo," (252/196). Undeniably, the reading of 2666 is
conditioned by Ciudad Juárez, in the State of Chihuahua, Mexico and the killings of more than four
hundred women since 1993 (Leal 32). So, when the praying women declare that "esta criatura no es
de aquí" this could mean different things. If this creature does not belong to Santa Teresa, it might
come from another place, perhaps even Ciudad Juárez; in other words, it could belong not to fiction
but to reality, being one of the victims of Ciudad Juárez, blurring the distinction (the border)
between "reality" and "fiction." For example, Maximiliano Ignacio de la Puente in "Formas de
representar la violencia" claims that in 2666 "se narra como ficción una serie de asesinatos reales.

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 36 Counting Violence: Roberto Bolaño and 2666

La realidad y la ficción se imbrican, se yuxtaponen, se modifica

un orden distinto, una especie de síntesis que no se corresponde
instancias, pero que sin embargo las contiene a las dos" (n.pag
Littschwager in 2666 it is "imposible Piacer] una diferenciac
historia y ficción, . . . [tiene un] carácter textual híbrido" (3). T
dismiss totally, although unwillingly, the real that emerges fro
of Santa Teresa.
Nevertheless, to assume the distinction between literature (as fiction, text) and Ciudad Juárez
(as reality, context) seems limited. The distinction offers the reader a transcendental key, a context
(Ciudad Juárez, the maquiladoras and femicide), to understand the text; a safe point from which to
read, contextualize, and give sense to the text. This is the path that most morally alert criticism
takes. In privileging this frame, the weight of "reality" and neoliberalism imposes itself in the text,
and 2666 is reduced to dramatizing death in neoliberalism and the maquiladoras, which are the
forms that "genocide" attains in these times (Farred 705). In these readings, the last culprit is simply
neoliberalism. For Grant Farred, neoliberalism is "an economic force" which aims to destroy
"postcolonial resources, labor, the environment, and social structures" and its only goal is to be
profitable regardless of "the life or death of the state in which it operates" (692). 15 He argues that
the maquiladoras of 2666 are the places where the "exploitative conditions" of neoliberalism, are
"more evident" (692). Indeed, the maquiladoras are almost omnipresent and menacing in the
narration "con su altar de los sacrificios oculto" (Bolaño 564), and many of the victims are
maquiladoras' workers. But others are not. They are girls, students, girlfriends, housewives,
prostitutes, clerks, immigrants, or simply unknown and undocumented. This perspective thinks their
deaths with a logic of homogenization that privileges the violence and effects of neoliberalism
disregarding singularities and other violences that appear in the text. For Grant Farred, for example,
"Because of neoliberalism' s failure, the maquiladora murders have become a category unto
themselves, usurping and absorbing every act of misogynistic ('casual' or repeated abuse) or run of
the mill of violence (the lovers quarrel, the drunken brawl) into itself' (697). Indeed, to make the
point that any undocumented dead woman in Santa Teresa is a victim of the maquiladoras, directly
or indirectly, Farred uses as an example of "one of the nameless maquiladora victims" a dead
woman who in Bolaño' s text is never recognized as such. Indeed, the narrator of 2666 tells us that
her "perfil no encajaba con el de las desaparecidas de Santa Teresa" (704/564). This singularity, I
argue, is disregarded in an analysis that deduces the meaning of Santa Teresa from Ciudad Juárez
and the reign of neoliberalism, such as Farred's. In his analysis, 2666's violence against women is
remarkable because of the economic base of "the maquiladoras exceptionality" that transforms
"mundane violence" into an important (economic and political) one (696). In all its visibilization,
this analysis subordinates the violence against women into another violence that seems more
legitimate. In Farred's argument the economic reason makes these killings a "major violence" and
not merely excessive misogynie violence against women. A consequence of this kind of analysis
privileging neoliberalism and its consequences is that, in making this homogenization it reinstates
the idea that some violences (such as the economical which is social and claims a political response)
are worse than others (such as patriarchal violence which is private, and although it might need a
political response, it is considered differently). Thus, Farred focuses on the numbers and claims that
what is striking is the "the sheer scale of the murders" (696). Indeed, he does not even speak about
"femicide" but of "genocide" (705). This signals the point where the exemplary violence of
genocide imposes itself as the metaphysical violence per excellence and gives more legitimacy to

15 See Perry Anderson for a more comprehensive notion of neoliberalism and its global
hegemony in the nineties (especially in Latin America) and an exploration of its historical raise and
uneven economic, political, and social success.

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Sol Peláez 37

name what is
by making it
the "continuu
and not just it
From anothe
historical con
victims are m
figurative d
(705). Balkan
most of the v
frame of po
obscuring the
logic of hom
neoliberalism
stance of 266
and their den
goes beyond
works throu
abovemention
that violence.
is hinted in
Klaus Hass h
question of w
(Elmore 259).
political nor e
Privileging
reading that m
not) represent
on how close
nature of the
since fiction
of the narra
supposedly w
Indeed there
pre-conception
This assumes t
Still privilegin
since it does
Juárez (215-1
time, ends by
The praise (or
alert critic, fo
Villoro's view

16For other
McCann and L

17See also Es
how this real

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38 Counting Violence: Roberto Bolaño and 2666

The Killing of Women

The forensic language portraying the dead female bodies is r

authors have noted (Valdês n. pag.; Paz Soldán 20; Villoro 87). It
objective not only by describing the clothes, age, and physical cha
by exposing - without emotion - their wounds:
A finales de septiembre fue encontrado el cuerpo de u
cara oriental del cerro Estrella. Como Marisa He
desconocida de la carretera Santa Teresa-Cananea, s
amputado y el pezón de su pecho izquierdo arrancado
de mezclilla de la marca Lee, de buena calidad, una suda
muy delgada. Había sido violada repetidas veces y
muerte era rotura del hueso hioides. (Bolaño 584/466)
This asexual but normative, non-affective, objective language di
with these tortured female bodies is reified through language ins
of observation. In a sense, this language normalizes the violence
an "objective fact." The "descriptive rigor" of scientific langua
the illusion of a transparent language that aspires to "domin
distortion the violence perpetrated on the bodies (106). This sc
avoid any pathological contamination that might ruin its objectivi
Accordingly, the opening section of La parte de los crímenes
language morphologically marking the gender " la muerto."
completely effaced in "el cadáver" and "la criatura" emergin
reappear clearly in a dead female ( muerta ), the first of a collecti
La muerta apareció en un pequeño descampado en la
de [las dos mujeres rezando] yacía el cadáver. [Los polic
observando el cadáver. El que tenía la pistola... les pr
señor, dijo una de las mujeres. Nunca la habíamos visto
Esto ocurrió en 1993. En enero de 1993. A partir de
contarse los asesinatos de mujeres. (Bolaño 443-44/353,
Part of this erasure of gender can be understood as the invi
traditionally has executed on female bodies by hiding the gende
as if there was no connection between those dead bodies and b
language becomes an accomplice to the patriarchal violence alre
language, on the one hand, erases the gender of the body in th
hand, the iterative nature of the narration of the dead bodies c
within a heterosexual normative "feminine" body, as Littswagch
notion of performative gender (8).
I want to focus on how this normative forensic language is
discovered la muerta call her a "criatura." As criatura , the body
is the interruption of scientific discourse (forensic language
anonymous local women who guard this body and pray in fron
affective idiom among "objective" language. Indeed, as criatura
poor thing" - as Natasha Wimmer, the translator of 2666 , r
innocence, since in Spanish it can mean idiomatically an innocen
criatura might also mark a non-human side of this body and t
interrupting the fixation of meaning proposed by the "body" a

18On the notion of dissemination see Derrida, Dissemination

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Sol Peláez 39

the trace of
Emerging fr
discourse, mar
inaugurated af
criatura , tha
woman, but t
The collective
by the creatur
rest will be.
disturbed by
remain identic
From the sla
"man's right
criaturas mue
Rights declar
with reason
( fraternidad
law of geneal
of humanity
by the logic o
of nationhood
they are "enem
They are kille
finally into th
However wha
that it is impo
murder. They
their accoun
biological tra
being a woma
calls into que
not that of th
the brotherho
does not "belo
as fraternity,
another kind

On Counting

Xenophobia,
become mino
not count the
counted, the v
writing - is t
visibility - do
materialization

19For an anal
Derrida' s Pol

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40 Counting Violence: Roberto Bolaño and 2666

is comparable to the general indifference for the dead people at

dead Africans in the slave ships who - according to Kessl
legitimate members of society (white, male, European), and th
(266/338-39). This is an elided violence, then, since it is surrounde
can only be broken by the counting of bodies. To count is a
bodies, an understanding of them. The counting itself is a w
abstraction, eliminating their singularity. The counting - of num
and social, i.e., collective, mark in this invisible violence. Thus,
itself in the infrapolitics of this minor violence in an attempt to
about the unspeakable, as we must" (Caputi and Russell 20).
To mourn these muertas , the narrator of 2666 counts bodie
measure to horror. Counting the numbers of victims is an import
los crímenes. The narrator avoids aestheticizing (in the classi
romanticize or idealize them. The reifying language make
sorprendió a los periodistas," the narrator tells us, "es que nadi
Como si la niña hubiera llegado sola a Santa Teresa y hubiera
que el asesino o los asesinos se fijaron en ella y la mataron"
seems to have been invisible until she became prey. Literature
this body. For McCann, "literature itself is the resting place of th
where the victims of globalization are remembered" (179). If wr
also true that this visibility is not without problems. As Walke
(although for different reasons) the politics of visibility is questi
limits of the politics of visibilization, not to dismiss it, but as an
shedding light on these lifeless female bodies 2666 reifies them
and words - and through their status as commodity. While 266
reification of the body; it also provides a way of destabilizing it.
To appreciate the aporia of making visible these female bodie
register of these muertas. It is important to note that the account
repetition. The narrator counts the first dead woman of each
mayo" (Bolaño 450/359), or he just tells us the month when t
murió Emilia" (466/372), or "En septiembre se encontró a otra m
us the last one of a month as in "la última muerta de aquel me
just adds "la siguiente muerta" (500/400) and "la siguiente m
Sometimes, the narrator also counts the weeks or days betw
another as when he tells us that "Dos semanas después, en may
(514/412). The narrator even counts the months in which no v
"En julio no hubo ninguna muerta. En agosto tampoco" (470/375
each year are numbered as in "El veinte de diciembre se registr
con víctima femenina" (491/392) or "La primera mujer muerta
we are never given the total of each year. In contrast with ma
narrator never counts them all; he never makes them enter
narrator does not make them belong to the same series; each mon
just to start again the next month or year. It is important then
2666 does not use the most conventional cumulative mode of cou
On the one hand, the accounting seems to depersonalize the de
of the same structure. The narrator describes similar details of

20For authors who have counted the total amount of female

Valdês, Walker (100, 105), and Cáceres (53).

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SolPeláez 41

few traces of
placing the r
seems to era
routinization
narration by
killers) reifi
and the silen
Walker has
different pa
forensic lang
violence, but
gaze - silenci
silence that
descriptions
descriptions
text makes e
not tell all, s
The narrator
victims. The
dead bodies.
Villalobos su
since testimo
dead women
through the
of testimony
does not retu
suffering. Sh
on her body
for the viol
discourse of
La parte de
violence aga
Ciudad Juár
narrative vo
women, alth
cannot give
similar narra
account of t
Confronting
language of
woman, even
The impossi
criatura rem
of names, on
scars of thos
such as suba
multitude. N
and post-colo
for all the ot
the maquilad
victims. Wom

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 42 Counting Violence: Roberto Bolaño and 2666

"identity politics" emerges and that women start being org

violence against themselves in Santa Teresa. However, the ite
the limits of any identity politics while still insisting that this
them to be women, even as it never forgets and insists on the
daughters, students, prostitutes, tourists, or migrants.
2666 makes evident that there is no possible escape from
singularity of each body and the necessity of counting them.
incommensurability of her story, of her wounds, of her death
body. But to make visible and inscribe this singularity we need to
terms, each trauma dwells on this very same aporia. The osci
noted by Moreiras, emerges here again, between the singular
tension is the possibility

of sharing and, thus, of a world. There is no world without count

sharing the singular, that which is not common.

The Violence of Counting

To mourn these muertas , 2666 reflects on how language can

giving an account of horror. In doing so, it explores through its c
episodes, what telling and reading about violence imply. The fir
in La Parte de los críticos we read:
De los cuatro Morini fue el primero en leer... una noticia sobre los asesinatos de
Sonora, aparecida en 77 Manifesto y firmada por una periodista italiana que había ido
a México a escribir artículos sobre la guerrilla zapatista. La noticia le pareció
horrible. En Italia también había asesinatos en serie, pero rara vez superaban la cifra
de diez víctimas, mientras que en Sonora las cifras sobrepasaban con largueza las
cien. (Bolaño 64/43)
The importance of political violence - the Zapatista guerrilla and the violence to which it
responds - is displaced by the horror of more than one hundred victims serially killed. These
nameless dead people are devoid of their singularity when they are integrated into the series. What
calls Morini' s attention is the number of "anonymous" victims. Violence appears as abstract
violence through the distance of geography and of the numbers. There is no mention whether the
victims were women, illegal workers or any other specific social group. There is no discussion of
whether there is a single murderer, or multiple ones. The victims are just a number with no gender,
no reason, nothing to characterize them. A high number does not always imply visibility: in
Morini' s horror at II Manifesto 's news, the victims still remain invisible, covered by the blinding
light of the numbers. The distance in space - between Morini's Italy and Mexico - also makes this
violence manageable, forgettable, and the background scenario for romantic fantasies. "Me
enamoraría de ella [la periodista] hasta la muerte pensó. Una hora después ya se había olvidado por
completo del asunto" (64/43). Sarah Pollack, thinking about the US market's reception of Bolaño' s
Los detectives salvajes , argues that the novel provides an exotic space (in a different way from
magical realism's exotism) where adventure, the beat, and rebellion can happen (360). She leaves
open the question whether 2666 will have the same luck among its US' s readers, presenting an
exotic romantic place for violence. In this line, someone could argue that La parte de los crímenes
might offer a reassurance that femicide is happening in underdeveloped countries, giving the reader
the opportunity of feeling pity for these victims, but also feeling morally superior - since there have
not been such massive serial killings in his/her civilized country - and romanticizing that violent
place. Morini's reaction is a trace that calls attention to the problem of distant and exotic violence

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Sol Peláez 43

and its (non) e

The first ex
recordo enton
las mujeres a
que tuvo que
181/137). In c
collective of m
are not forgo
"tal vez dosci
muchas muje
but they also
According to
exaggerated i
evidentement
an overstated
invites the ot
as performing
is about the b
incredible sto
course, in lan
bond - in its e
Here, howev
repeated seem
Espinoza hint
telling how m
repeated, fas
inviting the t
questions the
cannot be red
enjoyment of
noted the res
argued that
humankind,"
the public sp
moral exemp
the reader to
where the bo
Bolaño's wor
consider liter
The awarenes
civilizingrole
can be extend
enjoyment in
violence, or t
"reflect" ext
possibilities i
and iteration
criticism.
Under other
emerges fro
Nakata - tha

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44 Counting Violence: Roberto Bolaño and 2666

terrorizes another by telling the story of a dead kid. And whi

the teller "parecía morirse de la risa," the listener "estaba notab
front of the suffering of the listener, Pelletier remembered th
the teller by saying "'Cállate, hija de puta, ¿de qué te ríes? ¿te p
niño muerto? ¿te estás corriendo al contar la historia de un
imaginarias?'" (49/30-31). This marginal story displays another
who tells enjoys the torturing power of storytelling. An ambi
murderous and menacing storytelling. Espinoza' s reaction poin
telling these stories, but also towards the frightening and tort
death entailed by storytelling. In this case, this enjoyment dest
but also Bolaño' s position as author.
On another level, 2666 also explores how writing and read
emotions. This is noticed when, on his way to Santa Teresa,
ex-FBI expert on serial killers) statement: "Nos hemos acostu
siempre ha sido así" (337/265). Contrary to a nostalgic ideal vie
violence, the old man insists that violence was always present, a
to tame it through words. For Kessler, there is no telos of increas
neoliberal capital, no Utopian (capitalist) past. What is more
violence, but its familiarity. Violence is not simply a shock
explains that already in the 1 9th century "la sociedad acostumbra
las palabras" (337/266). The implications of this sentence are
metaphor, the liquidity of violence, of horror, that which is unsp
words. Words, like a strainer, make violence slow down and
brutality. Violence was committed yet "Todo pasaba por el filtr
adecuado a nuestro miedo" (337/266). Language here "filters" w
violence lose speed, so we can catch up with it through our im
function of language: to control, to tame violence by using wo
kind of defense, as Kessler' s metaphors shows: "¿Qué hace u
matar? Cierra los ojos... Las palabras servían para ese fin" (338/
not just to show violence but to hide it, to deny its killing fo
eyes through reading about violence. In the very act of spelling
There is an ellipsis in the saying of words, small holes through
communicate remains unsaid. If 2666 can be seen as an attem
bodies, to make them visible, to confront us with the "un-paya
also a text that tames violence; it is also a desperate effort
murdering, unstoppable violence.
On the other hand, while words work to drain (colar) violenc
us. In Spanish colar can mean to seep through, to slip through
information, to introduce something hidden without authoriz
through the drainer of words. If there is a politico-ethical position
grounded in the challenge of confronting the pitfalls of langua
violence. 2666 does not hide these pitfalls, it does not trust lang
communication and visibilization. Further, 2666 does not forge
language. This is the ambiguous infrapolitics of literature in 2666
Kessler' s reflection on Santa Teresa's crime-wave continues wit
"esta sociedad está fuera de la sociedad, todos, absolutament
cristianos del circo" (Bolaño 339/267). Society supposedly binds
we, us, the members) and outside (they the others, the victim
because "we, all" are "as" the victims, the victims are not just o
outside of society. The entering of those dead bodies into societ

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 Sol Peláez 45

of the social
since La parte
nor there is a
illusion of a c
which the text
holds together
fragments the
the one who l
(violence, the
the text and th
disrupts the b
difference bu
possibility of
the same time.
In order to fa
doing so, 266
these bodies),
must not mis
singularity of
acknowledges
infrapolitics o
reading) cann
reduced to La
violences, stru
of the crimes
killed women
before there
universal frat
universal 'Wo
singular caesur

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