The aestheticization of the child’s gaze in the narration of Cartucho

relatos de la lucha en el Norte de México, by Nellie Campobello

Abstract

This article aims to analyze how the aestheticization of child’s gaze and voice takes place in the narration of Cartucho: relato de la lucha en el Norte de México, by Nellie Campobello (2016). Published in 1931, Cartucho is a work set during the Mexican Revolution, being late integrated into the set of Novelas de la Revolución. To do so, we rely on the concept of focalization, as theorized by Mieke Bal (2017), to justify the child’s perspective as an aesthetic choice; the concept of aestheticization of discourse, as theorized by Mikhail Bakhtin (2015), to reflect on the manipulation of the aesthetic effect based on the author’s choice to privilege a childish vision to the detriment of the adult writer’s rationality; and the concept of social imaginaries, as elaborated by Brolislaw Baczko (1999), which helps us to show the aesthetic game constructed by Campobello. We observed that the writer uses the child’s social imaginary to aestheticize the child’s perspective, breaking down prejudices through the shock effect. It is in the balance between the effects of credibility and shock that Nellie deconstructs speeches and reconstructs another meaning for being a child in war and for the events of the Revolution itself.