“Ni ahora ni nunca”: diatriba y pensamiento positivo en Contra los hijos, de Lina Meruane

Abstract

Through the idea of ‘positive thinking’ and its presence in the discourses of late capitalism, this article tries to demarcate a theoretical field from which to read texts like Contra los hijos (2018), by Lina Meruane, accentuating the tension between positivity and negativity. Far from offering a rhetorical reading, this paper revisits the origins of the modern diatribe to propose a reading in which diatribes cannot be understood outside a post-dictatorial context, in this case, marked by economic discourses around happiness and their willingness to hide or minimize social criticism. This approach allows us to understand how the politics of diatribe are articulated with a double critical potential: on the one hand, they point to an established target (the obligatory condition of motherhood, in this case) and, on the other, they question certain inflections of the discourses of late capitalism adopted by the Chilean transition that aim, in particular, to avoid and silence most of critical exercises.