Abstract: “The decolonial bildungsroman: a theoretical perspective vis-à-vis Bakhtin’s

chronotope in Deep Rivers (1958) by Jose María Arguedas”

This research paper intends to examine the Arguendian novel Deep Rivers (1958) via a

theoretical framework rooted in three principles: decoloniality, the bildungsroman and the

chronotope. It will be argued that the aforementioned novel can be understood as a decolonial

bildungsroman within the specific milieu of its chronotope.

Firstly, the paper will seek to clearly define the concept of decoloniality. Decoloniality

has been established as a communal epistemology, perhaps initiated at the Bandung Conference

of 1955, which directly rejects both capitalism and socialism (Mignolo, 2013). As such, it is a

non-Eurocentric perspective whose origin is the Third World; furthermore, it is a detachment of

philosophic, economic and political affiliation with what can be referred to as the colonial matrix

of power (Quijano, 1992). In short, Deep Rivers espouses decoloniality as the only option for its

main character-narrator, Ernesto, as he comes to realize that the ayllu, the communal indigenous

space, is the only Peruvian space where he genuinely belongs.

Secondly, it will be demonstrated that the concepts of decoloniality and the

bildungsroman, a Germanic term Maynard describes “as a novel (Roman) about human

development and formation (Bildung)”, are inextricably linked in Arguedas’ Deep Rivers due to

the fact that the former becomes the outcome of the latter. Ernesto’s coming of age story can be

portrayed as a set of experiences within the time-space boundaries of mountainous south-central

Peru in the 1950s (Lambright, 2000). This notion of time-space, the chronotope as coined by

Mikhail Bakhtin, is the avenue through which young Ernesto’s novelistic trajectory is plotted.

Finally, the boarding school Ernesto attends, the chicherías, the houses of the rich

hacendados, and, finally, the caserío where the tenant farmers reside will be analyzed in order to

manifest Ernesto’s negation of these 1950s Peruvian spaces, thereby proving his allegiance to the

ayllu.