My current project focuses on a discourse and spatiotemporal analysis of representations of violence in Roberto Bolaño’s novel 2666. The novel centers on the city of Santa Teresa, which is largely accepted as a fictional representation of Ciudad Juárez. Ciudad Juárez is located along the U.S.-Mexico border and is known for the femicides (homicides committed against women) that have been occurring with impunity since 1993. The novel is divided into five temporally and geographically distinct plotlines, all of which end in Santa Teresa. Mapping the violence along the movement of these distinct plotlines will allow me to visualize the way in which representations of violence evolve in the novel across both time and space. Moreover, this project will allow me to probe new inquiries into contemporary forms of violence by understanding them to be a global, instead of a static phenomenon anchored to specific sociopolitical contexts

López-Prieto, Guillermo D.

English

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Death: Reporting and Reflecting
A Discourse Analysis of Roberto Bolaño’s 2666
Guillermo D. López-Prieto, PhD. Candidate in Hispanic Literatures and Cultural Studies
Introduction
Since its publication in 2004, Bolaño’s posthumous novel, 2666 has been analyzed through a
number of critical frameworks including: a reliance on a forensic discourse to narrate the
feminicides in the fictional city of Santa Teresa (Frantzen); a focus on the violence triggered by
the implementation of neoliberal policies across the U.S.-Mexico border (Velasco & Schmidt);
an examination of the way in which the bodies of maquiladora workers along the U.S.-Mexico
border are reduced to “bare life” (Driver); an analysis of the development of physical and
structural gender-based forms of violence (Shaj); as well as an analysis of the text’s form and
content via its engagement with the subject of boredom (and horror) as the overall “mood” that
connects its distinct narratives (Levinson).
Research Questions
The novel’s depiction of horror across transnational spaces including the United States, Mexico,
and several European locations highlights a recurrent theme that links the disparate stories and
characters of 2666’s five chapters: death. This poster examines chapters 4 and 5 using visual and
concordance analysis tools to look at the distribution of distinct portrayals of death across the
novel. As the medical examiner’s cause-of-death perspective in chapter 4 is unique among the
five chapters, the frequent use of the term ‘death’ in that chapter lends itself as the target term
for a textual analysis using Voyant Tools and AntConc. The results of this query are compared to
the other four chapters on the basis of a) frequency and b) textual features that help define the
novel’s engagement with the subject of death (as a theme). Therefore, my research questions are:
1. Does the frequency of the term ‘death’ distinguish chapter 4 as unique within the 
work?
2. Does another chapter emerge as a unit that is comparable to chapter 4 on the basis 
of a) frequency and b) narrative treatment of death (as a theme)?
3. If so, on the level of content/form, how do chapter 4 and its comparative chapter 
differ, if at all?
Bibliography
Driver, Alice Laurel. “Ma ́s o menos muerto: Bare Life in Roberto Bolanõ's 2666.” Journal of
Latin American Cultural Studies, vol. 23, no. 1, 2014, pp. 51–64.
Frantzen, Mikkel Krause. “The Forensic Fiction of Roberto Bolanõ’s 2666.” Critique: Studies in
Contemporary Fiction, vol. 58, no. 4, 2017, pp. 437–448.
Levinson, Brett. “Case Closed: Madness and Dissociation in 2666.” Journal of Latin American
Cultural Studies, vol. 18, no. 2-3, 2009, pp. 177-191.
Shaj, Mathew. “Ciudad Jua ́rez in Roberto Bolanõ’s 2666: Mexico’s Violent Cradle of
Modernity.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, vol. 57, no. 4, 2016, pp. 402–416.
Velasco, Juan, and Tanya Schmidt. “Mapping a Geography of Hell: Evil, Neoliberalism, and
the Femicides in Roberto Bolanõ's 2666.” Latin American Literary Review, vol. 42, no. 83, 2014,
pp. 97–116.
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my gratitude to the directors and staff of IDAH for their helpful and
insightful feedback throughout this process.
Corpus
Bolaño, Roberto, 2666 [2004]. Translated by Natasha Wimmer, New York, Picador: Ferrar,
Strauss & Giroux, 2008.
o With 893 pages, the novel is divided into five chapters corresponding to the parts of the
novel: 1) “The Part about the Critics,” 2) “The Part about Amalfitano,” 3) “The Part
about Fate,” 4) “The Part about the Crimes,” and 5) “The Part about Archimboldi”
(hereafter referenced by chapter number).
o Note: I agree with the consensus articulated by Bolaño scholars that the five sections of
2666 are “parts” and not chapters in the traditional sense. However, for the purposes of
this poster and the data visuals therein, the term ‘chapter’ is more conducive to clearly
articulating the steps of my analysis to an interdisciplinary audience.
Methods
Voyant Tools: text mining with visualization of word frequency and distribution across the corpus
o Utilize Voyant’s Trends tool to display the occurrence of the target term (death) across
all five chapters [Table Voyant A]
o Use Voyant’s Bubblelines tool to visualize the frequency of the target term across the
corpus as a whole and across each chapter individually [Table Voyant B]
AntConc: text mining with concordance analysis features
o Conduct concordance analysis to examine the context in which target term (death)
appears in chapters 4 and 5 [Table AntConc A]
o Identify words (common collocates) that appear near the target term in chapters 4 and
5 to pinpoint patterns [Table AntConc B]
Results
Voyant allows for the exploration of parts 1 and 2 of my research question. Created using the
Trends tool, Table Voyant A shows the frequency of the target term (death) across all five chapters,
indicated by each of the labeled columns. The visualization reveals a sharp rise in the target
term’s frequency in chapter 4. This result corresponds with the overall theme of chapter 4,
which is largely focused on a series of femicides (homicides committed against women) in the
city of Santa Teresa, a fictional representation of Ciudad Juárez, that have been occurring with
impunity since 1993. Table Voyant A confirms my hypothesis that the appearance of the target
term 98 times in chapter 4 distinguishes it as unique within the work. Furthermore, the Voyant A
query shows that chapter 5 employs the target term 54 times and, therefore, establishes it as a
point of comparison with chapter 4. This data is consistent with the atrocities depicted in
chapter 5, which is set in the context of the Holocaust. For perspective, chapters 1 and 3 each
contain the target term 11 times, while chapter 2 only uses it three times.
As a further safeguard, I used the Bubblelines tool of Voyant (Table Voyant B) to compare
visualizations of the use of the target term across each chapter to ensure it is a constant feature
rather than a single occurrence. In Table Voyant B, each chapter is represented by a horizontal
line, and the target term (death) appears as a bubble. The size of the bubble corresponds with
the number of occurrences of the target term in a specific segment of each of the chapters. Once
I identified and confirmed chapter 5 to be a point of comparison for chapter 4, I shifted my
methodology to a concordance analysis using the AntConc program and examined the context in
which the target term appears. The Collocates tool of AntConc searches for words that regularly
figure near the target term. My query produced data revealing “the”, “was”, “a”, “found”, “in”,
and “to” among the most frequent terms. Their occurrence is ranked by frequency in relation to
other terms, as well as by frequency in relation to their position, that is, whether they appear to
the right (Freq R) or to the left (Freq L) of the target word.
Comparing the chapters, Table AntConc A speaks to part three of my research question by
illustrating the differences between the chapters’ themes, tone, and plotlines through a
numerical representation of the words most frequently accompanying the target term. Chapter
4’s forensic register is apparent through the numerous appearances of participles such as
“found” and “discovered” in relation to multiple female victims, which are represented by the
terms “another”, “woman”, and “girl”. Chapter 5 appears similar to chapter 4 with respect to
the frequency of prepositions and passive voice constructions that surround the target term
including “of”, “to”, and “was”.
Moving beyond a numerical record of the frequency of these terms, Table AntConc B
demonstrates the context in which they occur. For example, chapter 4 uses “of” frequently to
refer to “the cause of death”, while in chapter 5, it appears in phrases describing the passing of
individuals such as “the day of her death”, “the death of his wife and children”. Moreover, in
chapter 4, “to” explicates that an action has been determined to be the direct cause of death in
phrases like “stabbed to death”. The use of “to” in chapter 5 is not wholly dissimilar because it
also features predominantly in descriptions of actions that could lead to death. However,
examples including “a disease that led not to a long, drawn-out death or to a death that was too
sudden” and “I have everything I need to stave off death” demonstrate that the tone of chapter 5
is decidedly less forensic. Finally, in chapter 4, “was” occurs in forensic statements including
“the cause of death was determined to be”, whereas chapter 5 employs the passive voice to
describe death as a condition or state in examples such as “death was a necessity” and “death
was a bore”.
Conclusions: 
How the Data Informs Literary Analysis
As illustrated in Table AntConc B and in accordance with prominent literary scholarship, the
appearance of the term ‘death’ in chapter 4 falls within the context of procedural, impersonal
reports that mirror those written by medical examiners and law enforcement officials. The
reliance on slight variations of cause-of-death phrases such as (stabbed) to death is prominent and
conveys an overwhelming accumulation of cases as well as the pattern of the violent means used
to cause death and the repetitive condition of the murders that speak to the materiality of death
in this chapter. Even though the repetition is portrayed within the conventions of forensic
reports, the narration does not allow it to create a recognizable and lawful pattern that ideally
results in investigations and convictions. Instead, the reports do not lead to justice, but pile up
unclaimed much like the bodies they examine. In chapter 5, however, death emerges as an
abstract topic of discussion in conversations that range from philosophical references to the
mythological Sisyphus and his death-cheating schemes to the essential bureaucratic function of
death in regulating population density. Moreover, these abstract reflections on death do not
transpire in a vacuum. Instead, they are presented with direct reference to the Holocaust, which
renders the sophisticated and multidisciplinary engagements with the subject of death futile in
the context of such atrocities. Through these distinct rhetorical strategies, both chapters reveal a
shared inability to provide logic or reason with respect to death.
Ch 1
Ch 4 Ch 5
Ch 1
Ch 2
Ch 3
Ch 4
Ch 5
Ch 2 Ch 3 Ch 4 Ch 5
Table Voyant B
Table AntConc A
Table AntConc B
Table Voyant A
Ch 4 Ch 5


Death: Reporting and Reflecting - A Discourse Analysis of Roberto Bolaño's 2666

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Death: Reporting and Reflecting - A Discourse Analysis of Roberto Bolaño's 2666

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