Resumen de Ethnic Disavowal: Political Emancipation and Representation in Najat El Hachmi's La caçadora de cossos
Najat El Hachmi’s La caçadora de cossos (2011) has been described by critics as a failed novel: a failure that, after the great expectations raised by El Hachmi’s first novel, led many to question the state of Hispanophone literature. Although El Hachmi’s L’últim patriarca had led many to believe that Catalonia’s Amazigh community was beginning to articulate a clear demand for recognition, her re-fusal to embrace this identity in her second novel disappointed critics and public alike. This essay aims to provide much-needed perspective to El Hachmi’s second novel by contextualizing her contentious disavowal of ethnic identity in the post-ethnic drive that has informed much of Francophone literature in the last two decades. I claim that recognition is not a first step towards political emancipa-tion, but rather that recognition and political emancipation are constantly being rearticulated to respond to fluid socio-economic challenges
