COLONIALITY OF POWER IN THE DESERTER AND THE STRIKE A DECOLONIAL READING OF THE NARRATIVE OF MANUEL ZAPATA OLIVELLA

Abstract

The article uses coloniality to examine how fictional worlds are represented in literary discourse, alongside themes of individual resistance, structural violence, abuse, and solidarity. Its theoretical framework draws on the Modernity/Coloniality group, particularly the work of Aníbal Quijano, Walter Mignolo, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, and Katherine Walsh, in dialogue with how the Afro-Colombian writer Manuel Zapata Olivella develops these ideas in his stories The Deserter and The Strike, published in Tales of Death and Freedom (1961).The analysis offers a comparative reading of the two stories, aiming to uncover the tensions experienced by their characters' figures portrayed as subaltern within a setting that reflects Colombia as shaped by the historical and social realities of the 20th century. This reality is informed by the author’s professional experience, through which he depicts everyday cultural life and the injustices faced by marginalized communities. His work stands as an example of decolonial writing well before such theories were formally articulated in Latin America.In this way, the study identifies key features of the theoretical model’s main proponents and explores how a decolonial perspective can produce moments of rupture and leave a lingering sense of surprise within the narrative.