Limits of the representation of the voice of the subordinate subject in Balún Canán.
Keywords:
Subalternity, Indigenist narrative, Testimony, Rosario CastellanosAbstract
This article examines the limits of representing the indigenous subaltern voice in Rosario Castellanos’s novel Balún Canán (1957), drawing on subaltern studies and testimonial theory. The author critically analyzes the narrative strategies through which the novel seeks to give voice to silenced indigenous subjects, focusing on two key figures: the child narrator and the indigenous nursemaid. Although both characters occupy marginal positions within the patriarchal and social order, the study demonstrates that their degrees of subalternity are not equivalent, since the child ultimately belongs to the dominant ladino world, while the nursemaid occupies an ambivalent position as both mediator and collaborator with hegemonic power. The article also examines the novel’s second part, narrated by an omniscient voice, showing how this narrative instance reinforces hegemonic control over indigenous discourse, even when employing free indirect discourse. Engaging with theorists such as Gayatri Spivak, Jean Franco, and Martin Lienhard, the study argues that the indigenous subaltern voice in Balún Canán is refracted and filtered through ladino mediators, preventing fully autonomous representation. The article concludes that the novel reveals both Castellanos’s ethical commitment to giving voice to the marginalized and the structural, historical, and epistemological limits inherent in such representation.Downloads
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