Escribir-excavar entre las ruinas del Wasteocene: El libro centroamericano de los muertos y la poética arqueológica post-testimonial de Balam Rodrigo

Abstract

This article analyzes Balam Rodrigo’s poetics in El libro centroamericano de los muertos (2018) through the lens of forensic archaeology and the Wasteocene (Armiero 2021). I argue that the work proposes a post-testimonial poetics, detached from the testimonial paradigm of “giving voice”, in which writing means excavating among the “ruined bodies” resulting from a colonial process of “othering”, or “wasting” (Armiero 2021), which has its roots in the Colonization of the Americas and discards subaltern subjects through racist, classist, and sexist relations. Through his archaeological writing, Rodrigo confronts the coloniality of power and gender, reconfiguring the “ruined body” not only as a marker of the continuum of colonial violence perpetuated by the Wasteocene, but also as a space for resistance in which other worlds can be imagined.