Olhares decoloniais à dessacralização dos heróis – ressignificações literárias de Simón Bolívar em uma perspectiva transcultural – caminhos à formação leitora decolonial.

Abstract

Our thesis, situated within the Research Group “Resignifications of the past in America: processes of reading, writing, and translation of hybrid genres of history and fiction – pathways to decolonization,” confirms that the historical novel in Latin America has developed from its early critical/deconstructionist expressions to the decolonial aesthetic projects of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. These are movements from the confrontation with the European canon and the deconstruction of its heroicized images toward the incorporation of the decolonial turn and the contestation of the coloniality of power, knowledge, and being. Such critical and formal movement can significantly contribute to the formation of the decolonial literary reader, especially within Higher Education. We delineate here the key moments necessary for understanding the most significant changes in hybrid writing forms in Latin America, focusing primarily on the fictional configuration of Simón Bolívar, the leader of 19th century political and military independence campaigns. Our general objective is to highlight the decolonial, deconstructivist, and experimentalist potential of hybrid works that depict Simón Bolívar, published in recent decades, as a support for decolonial literary reading formation. Our central hypothesis concerns the possibility that, by understanding the historical trajectory of the historical novel in Latin America, it is possible to better equip a project for decolonial literary reading formation in higher education through a Thematic Literary Workshop. The trajectory of these critical writings has been examined in studies such as those by Chibán and Altuna (1999), Cobo Borda (1989), Pomar (2007), Rios (2013), Oviedo (2015), Galvez (2018), among others. Thus, the hybrid writing of history and fiction continues to this day, expressing its confrontation with the officialized versions recorded by those in power throughout different periods. These confrontations are enacted through distinct aesthetic and ideological projects that underlie the remeaning of History using various narrative strategies, writing techniques, and approaches to historical material, including formal and linguistic experimentalism, deconstructivism, the humanization and Latin Americanization of historical figures, and the epistemological decolonization of history and literature.Our study focuses on the comparative analysis of literary works that fictionalize Simón Bolívar: Mi Simón Bolívar (1930) by Fernando González Ochoa – as a precursor to the critical phase of the historical novel; El General en su laberinto (1989) by Gabriel García Márquez and En busca de Bolívar (2010) by William Ospina – as representatives of the mediation historical novel (Fleck 2017); Conviene a los felices permanecer en casa (1992), by Andrés Hoyos, – novel that inaugurate the most deconstructivist phase of the genre centered on Bolívar; and La carroza de Bolívar (2012) by Evelio Rosero and La visita de Bolívar (2018) by Herbert Morote – works associated with contemporary decolonial theories. We compare this corpus to confirm the aesthetic and ideological pathways followed by historical novels that fictionalize Simón Bolívar. To achieve this, we are grounded in theoretical frameworks such as those proposed by Aínsa (1988; 1991), Hutcheon (1985, 1991), Menton (1993), Weinhardt (1994, 2002, 2019), Sommer (2004), Mignolo (2000, 2006, 2007), Fleck (2005; 2007; 2008; 2017; 2023; 2024), Assmann (2011), Klock (2021), among others. This is a qualitative, interpretative research study, based on bibliographic review, but also propositional, as this thesis puts forward a Thematic Literary Workshop for reader formation. Through literary analysis and the integrated didactic methodological proposal, this study demonstrates the potential of decolonial aesthetic projects in fostering decolonial reading formation in higher education, serving as a pathway to the decolonization of minds, identities, and imagination.