Leaky, Dead, and Restless: Afterdeath in Contemporary Venezuelan Fiction

Abstract

This article analyzes “Cadáver,” a short story in the collection Barrio bonito (2015), by Venezuelan author Luis Freites. It argues that, rather than creating an afterlife for the dead characterized by processes of mourning, commemoration, and memorialization, the story captures the body’s afterdeath: the slow decomposition and transformation of the corpse from organic matter to bones and dust. Through the staging of an aesthetic gesture described by Maikel—the story’s protagonist—as “mirar pa’dentro” (to look inside or to look into one’s insides), a temporality determined by the tempo of decay, and the multisensory attack of leaky dead matter dripping from the corpse, the afterdeath that materializes in “Cadáver” creates what I, following the work of Michael Rothberg and Venezuelan poet Igor Barreto, call “networks of implication.” These networks build connections between bodies both human and nonhuman based not on empathy, compassion, or familiarity but on contact, contagion, and unsettling moments of intersection and recognition. I propose that, in doing so, they introduce a form of relationality that is not mediated or circumscribed by grief, and that demands a radical renewal of political vocabularies and a reorganization of social life that has, as its core, the collectivization of death.