The “ideological-abominable”: the inability to protect the “child of the night” in Un lugar soleado para gente sombría, by Mariana Enríquez

Abstract

This article proposes to turn into literay motif a recurrent theme in Mariana Enríquez’s books such as Los peligros de fumar en la cama (2021), Las cosas que perdimos en el fuego (2016), and, in her last volume of short stories, Un lugar soleado para gente sombría (2024): the “vicarious motherhood”. Drawing on concepts from the theory of the fantastic by Roas (2001) and Bessière (2001), as well as psychoanalytical and sociological aspects by Vegetti (1993), Saletti Cuesta (2008) and Žižek (2009) that, it will be argued that the origin of terror lies, in many of her protagonists, in the impossibility of a vindication of those who have been left in the most vulnerable positions of a society that has been devastated economically and politically (women, homeless and, 
above all, children). This situation triggers in its narrators a shudder that, by not having a possible canalization or implementation, takes the form of fantasy sublimation, and therefore, of a recognition that the fearful element will actually be within the usual happenings, as opposed to the imaginary. The marked protective impulse of the main characters —which, ultimately, cannot prevent the social damage— will give rise to this procedure, typical of Mariana Enriquez’s literature and which, from this work onwards, will be referred to as “ideological-ominous”.