DescriptionThis dissertation studies a corpus of Chilean narrative texts published from the late 1980s to the 2000s, understanding them as active participants of the social processes of the period. The corpus includes works by Gonzalo Contreras, Alberto Fuguet, Carlos Franz, Ramón Díaz Eterovic, Diamela Eltit, Gonzalo León and Marcelo Mellado. Through the analysis of the literary texts and their relation to public/cultural discourses (both official and non-official), I describe the political positions that can be traced within those narratives, both in their fiction and their enunciation. The positions described are grouped by the way in which they address their social context, as well as textual strategies that concern narration as a political practice. Taking into account the specific Chilean experience of capitalism, implemented during the dictatorship and consolidated in the later democratic governments, an important part of the characterization of these three positions relates to the representation of violence and mourning. Drawing on the work of intellectuals such as Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, Frantz Fanon and Slavoj Žižek, I address the theoretical discussion regarding violence as a social phenomenon as well as the difficulties of its representation. The ways in which violence is represented in the literary texts situates them in specific and socially representative practices and discourses. The political positioning that derives from the narration of violence, responds both to its representation and the strategies by which the reader is invited to see that violence. The question of mourning is addressed in relation to the practices that are implied with regards to the representation of violence and the invoked function of the reader. In dialog with the work of Sigmund Freud and Idelber Avelar, I describe and evaluate the ways in which mourning is deferred or sought through these practices of narration. This responds to an ethical problem, as understood by Jacques Lacan and Alain Badiou, where the main question pertain the subject – his relation to his desire, and his place within a political structure. This is observed in the texts through the analysis of both the represented subjects and the reader as a function.