Summary:

The novel Los hermanos Cuervo, by the Colombian Andrés Felipe Solano, underlines, through parody, the illusion of stability of the language and of the subject in which a symbolic violence is amalgamated, naturalized in the family, school and the city. The hyperbolic and derisory obsession of the central character with the unique and extravagant Cuervo brothers illuminates the devaluation and depreciation of himself and his own lineage as the other side of a desire committed to enjoyment that ignores the aspects of the dominant cultural ideology in which it is found. The family configuration in continuity with an education governed by a disciplinary control device, based on examination, standardization of judgment and hierarchical observation, is rooted in an illusion of unequivocally and uniqueness of the linguistic sign; structure that reproduces and perpetuates a weakened self with a low capacity for critical reflection and little autonomy. This subjectivity resonates in a territory rigidly divided into socioeconomic strata, symbolically and imaginarily amalgamated in classist and deeply exclusive cultural narratives, organized around the pair of opposites: all or nothing.

Key words: Psychoanalysis | colombian literature | symbolic violence | linguistics