Testimonial prologues: paratext, otherness and textual colonization

Abstract

This paper examines the editorial construction of the interviewee within the prologues of three Latin American Contemporary testimonies. Gerard Genett’s notion of the paratext makes it possible to consider the formation of the Other within a contemporary narrative of national legitimacy. The prologues in question are Miguel Barnet’s in Biografía de un cimarrón (1967), Berta Ribeiro’s in Antes o mundo não existía (1980) and Elizabeth Burgos’s in Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú y así me nació la conciencia (1983). These prologues are analyzed as cultural and textual strategies of objectification, subordination and inclusion of the subaltern within national and historical narratives that materialize them.