Ghostly memories

In a 3-5-page essay, analyze ghostly memories of what this book offers regarding drug trafficking violence and social/political/cultural
patriarchy. This first option concerns the Laura Restrepo novel, Delirium and the Harvard University e-zine on “Memory” which is already posted on our site.
Please consult both sources before you attempt to answer this first option.
I will now proceed to offer the book’s connections to Harvard’s Revista. Then, I will indicate some possible relationships.
The edition of Harvard’s e-zine, that will interest us for this exam is called “Memory”. This area is very significant if we are to understand why Agustina is in
such poor mental health. Make sure that you have read pages 18, 19 and 20 from this issue. The article on those pages, that I would suggest for this
analysis, is entitled, “Liquid Tombs for Colombia’s Disappeared” by María Victoria Uribe. Be aware of certain words/phrases in that commentary, such as,
“dismembered corpses”; “fratricidal violence”, “crimes never brought to justice”; “impunity”; “disgraceful past”, “rivers as concealment”; forgetting, traumatic
etc. All these thoughts from Uribe are obliquely part of the Restrepo text as well. There is an important association here to think about. Uribe believes that
when people disappear there is a crime but no victim. Think about Agustina. She is there but her mind is not. Her mind has assumed the role of the victim
and has disappeared. It has become a ghost. Therefore, what was the crime and how did it cause her mental problem? “If societies do not examine
themselves through the mirror of memory, the cycles of violence repeat themselves.” (Uribe 18) If there is no memory, as in Agustina’s case, it can only be
presumed that in the future, violence will repeat itself and, in Agustina’s particular case, will be her constant companion. So, why is private memory so
important in socio-political spheres? How can this process be termed ghostly?
As the course descriiption states, “Ghosts will be seen and not feared, because most importantly, they will be used as effective analytical tools, able to
discover and shed light on social, ethical and political questions as well as individual and collective affective reactions.” So where are Agustina’s ghosts and
how do they help us with understanding the book’s spectral meanings?
Background Information: Delirium, as you should recall, concerns the loss of the mind of Agustina, one of the main characters in this book. The word,
delirium, as defined online by The Mayo Clinic, “is a serious disturbance in mental abilities that results in confused thinking and reduced awareness of the
environment.” This is immediately visible as you enter the novel’s narrative world. When Aguilar, Agustina’s husband, states, “I knew something irreparable
had happened the moment a man opened the door to that hotel room and I saw my wife sitting at the far end of the room, looking out the window in the
strangest way” (1) it becomes increasingly apparent that this cognitive fragmentation has had a long timeline. Agustina’s fractured mind did not come about
suddenly; but somehow extends back into the past. It seemingly offers glimpses not only of her childhood and adolescence but also of different parts of the
Colombian society. This broad spectrum of time in the text is necessary to piece together the supposed reasons for her delirium, while at the same time
gaining access to the world of Agustina’s secrets. In Restrepo’s book, the past is an important key to the present. It is its memory and a ghostly one at that.
The time frame for this novel includes the 1980’s but in a way seems endless. As we know the 80s was a definite historical era, dominated to a certain extent,
by the drug lord Pablo Escobar. The influence of the Medellin cartel was felt deeply in Colombia and throughout the world. Drug traffickers used murder,
violence, and corruption to control and/or overtake police officers, government officials or global law enforcement agencies and personnel. This situation
made Colombia a very fragile democracy and an extremely dangerous nation. Societal instability caused the sanity of many citizens to be severely affected.
“A desolate panorama of chronic violence” (18) became the everyday landscape, creating a certain hopelessness to be imprinted on the national character. If
we want to tie this into the realm of ghostliness more closely, Maria del Pilar Blanco has stated that, “Haunting can take many forms…it can mean the
disquieting experience of sensing a collision of temporalities or spaces…an experience riddled with doubt and uncertainty.” In this book, this can be viewed
as seeing “different perceptions of haunted landscapes…that produce a particular site of haunting…with shifting sets of perceptions of local, national and
transnational space.”
With this insightful comment as a compass for interpretation, it would seem as if Agustina was born into and has lived through a kaleidoscopic state of drug
violence, patriarchal power, and haunted landscapes where only her madness provides a respite from societal decay and familial falsehoods. Restrepo has
stated in an interview that,” Madness is that territory where not only people but also societies become lost.” After investigating so many examples of spectral
texts, we may presume that this territory of madness is also ghostly.
Additional Information: If you have read the novel or are still reading it, it should be clear how drug trafficking violence and private/public patriarchal issues
have affected Agustina and her mind. Therefore, memories are a significant part of understanding Laura Restrepo’s thoughts in this book. Since memories
exist while being mostly invisible and free floating, they may be loosely termed spectral. These spectral thoughts ultimately push our protagonist into a state
of “madness”.
Brian Murphy, a journalist, recently wrote an article about Covid 19 and memory. He highlighted the following. “How will we remember Covid 19? [Although] it
encases fragments of time and holds them in place, our sharpest memories can often be the smallest bits…Huge events can be pared down to slivers…A
random object, a few overheard words, a small gesture, dappled light” will all be part of our remembrances.”
If we turn from our current reality to Restrepo’s book, what were the fragments or bits and pieces that Agustina was holding on to? What was the
fundamental violent event or events which provoked her to fall into a form of insanity? Which objects, gestures or scenes might have caused her to retreat
and disappear causing her mind to spectrally fragment and forget? Why? Has she become a form of a ghost?