The impossibility of the origin: the process of historical reconstruction in "Hossein" (1955), by Inés Guzmán Arias

Abstract

Between 1952 and 1958 a range of memory books, testimonies and historical novels were written by Venezuelan women, to reissue some of the past’s events from the present time’s distortion. Through intertextualities, anachronisms, parodies and fragmentation games in these literary works, misrepresentation of history has become an essential notion to acquire a sense of “self”. Starting from this scenery, it is expected to comprehend cast back’s uses in Venezuela during the fifties, taking the novel Hossein by Inés Guzmán Arias as a starting point, a text with unique importance because of its complexity, ambiguity, and paradox. At the same time, it reconsiders the various approximations to twentieth century’s past, from the author’s autofiction and from her point of view as a translator of the facts. A gesture that allows Guzmán Arias to show new events as well as new subjects as essential entities for the construction of collective past.