Between repetition and lack: Elegías para los niños perdidos in Desierto sonoro by Valeria Luiselli

Abstract

The article centers on a reading of Valeria Luiselli's Desierto sonoro (2019), with a focus on the Elegías para los niños perdidos, an apocryphal text included in the novel. In light of the reflections made by Judith Butler (2010) concerning precariousness, as well as the inequality of distribution in terms of the greater or lesser recognition of the value of life with respect to different populations and affective dispositions of political importance, we consider that the novel, and particularly the Elegías, builds a moral and affective positioning in relation to the situation of children who migrate to another country in search of refuge. Using different motifs, the two diegetic planes of the novel are linked in a way that presents Desierto Sonoro as a biopolitical elegy: while capturing the vulnerability of their lives and expressing the pain of their losses, its argument intervenes as a critical instrument of denunciation that questions the dominant frameworks (political, legal, media) related to forced displacement and the search for asylum. The scansion of the Elegías throughout the novel, oscillating between repetition and lack, as well as the motif of displacement that, through the predominance of ominous atmospheres, constructs a chronotope of life out in the open, braving the elements, are some of the procedures used to question the biopolitical frameworks which weigh in when it comes to deciding the value of the lives and deaths of children.