Epistolary Writing and the Law

Los vigilantes, Eltit's fifth novel, was awarded the José Nuez Martín prize for the best novel published in Chile in 1994–95 and was written during Eltit's period of residence as the Chilean Cultural Attaché in Mexico City. In her extensive interviews with Leonidas Morales, Eltit states that Samuel Beckett's Molloy and William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury were two important references in her writing of the novel, as were certain elements of the work of Brecht and Kafka. However, she also states that her main aim in writing this novel was to explore the idea of power, beginning from within the home and extending outwards into the social sphere, and she comments on the influence of the theoretical ideas of Foucault regarding power and surveillance. The link between power and writing was another point that Eltit wished to interrogate. As she states: ‘Estaba pensando en cierta escritura también: en la medida en que no pacta, sale.’

Eltit has made reference to the huge effect that the change of political discourse in Chile had on her writing of the novel. It was written during the first government of the Concertación, and she describes her shock at the profound changes that intense neo-liberalism was effecting in Chile: ‘estaban cambiando las relaciones sociales, la cuestión literaria. Se instalaba el mercado […] en ese sentido me afectó, y lo vi más dramático, digamos, el retiro, la exclusión, la diferencia, la soledad.’ Eltit's perception of post-dictatorship Chilean society at this time as reified, acritical and depoliticized, and traversed by consumerism, competition and social inequality, is embedded within the novel. As she states: ‘La sensación de desprotección urbana […] fue recayendo en la novela […] Fue recayendo incluso en la misma escritura como cerco, soledad y margen, como ajenidad en medio de sociedades que construyen su orden a través del consumismo.’