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Una espectralidad cibernética: Cuestionando un presente hauntológico en Historias del séptimo sello, de Norma Yamille Cuéllar (pp. 84-97; DOI: 10.23692/iMex.16.6)

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David Dalton

David S. Dalton is an Assistant Professor of Spanish at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. His research focuses primarily on Mexican literary and cultural production with an emphasis on the interface between technology and culture. He is the author of Mestizo Modernity: Race, Technology, and the Body in Postrevolutionary Mexico (University of Florida Press, 2018) and coeditor of Trans-Atlantic Zombies: Undead Colonialism (special edition for Alambique, 2018). A few recent publications include “Liberation and the Gothic in Carlos Solórzanos Las manos de Dios” (Latin American Gothic, edited by Sandra Casanova-Vizcaíno and Inés Ordiz); “Mexican Cinema in the Buffyverse: Toward and Ethics of Transnational Adaptation and Appropriation” (Where is Adaptation, edited by Casie Hermanssen and Janet Zepernick, John Benjamins 2018); “Immunizing the Zetas: Drug Violence and Zombie Biopolitics in Pedro M. Valencia’s Con Z de zombie” (Revista de Literatura Mexicana Contemporánea, vol. 24, no. 73).

 

Norma Yamille Cuéllar’s Historias del séptimo sello (2010) is a novel that puts hauntology in dialogue with cyborg theory because the main characters communicate with the dead through technology. As such, the novel provides an interesting space from which to gauge the reach of both cyborgs and ghosts in engaging trauma. Unlike many hauntological works, where the main protagonist—who functions as a synecdoche for an entire community—brings about a healing of sorts by engaging with spectral voices from the past, the main character of this novel tells of past crimes in an attempt to bring the collective trauma of Monterrey to the fore. As the people of Monterrey become privy to the voice of the ghost, primarily through newspaper conversations, they recognize a shared trauma, and the resulting apocalypse is understandable. Far from liberating or cleansing, the voice of the revenant anchors the traumatized to their previous experiences with no hope of exorcizing the pain.

 

Historias del séptimo sello (2010), de Norma Yamille Cuéllar, es una novela que pone la teoría hauntológica en diálogo con la teoría cyborg ya que se trata de personajes que se comunican con los muertos a través de la tecnología. Como tal, el texto nos brinda un espacio fascinante desde el cual podemos cuestionar hasta qué punto tanto el cyborg como el fantasma pueden navegar el trauma. A diferencia de muchas obras hauntológicas, donde el protagonista principal —quien funciona como sinécdoque de una comunidad entera— lleva a cabo cierta especie de sanación al interactuarse con las voces espectrales del pasado, la protagonista de esta novela reporta los crímenes del pasado en un intento de publicitar el trauma colectivo de Monterrey. Al enterarse de las palabras de los fantasmas regiomontanos —algo que se logra mayormente a través del periódico— el pueblo reconoce un trauma compartido, y el apocalipsis que resulta es de esperarse. Lejos de libertador (o sanador) la voz del revenant ancla a los traumatizados a sus experiencias anteriores sin esperanza de exorcizar el dolor.