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River darkness blurs the line between absence and presence, turning the water’s smooth surface into a living reminder of state terror.",{"@graph":14,"@context":72},[15,34,55],{"@type":16,"itemListElement":17},"BreadcrumbList",[18,23,27,31],{"item":19,"name":20,"@type":21,"position":22},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",1,{"item":24,"name":25,"@type":21,"position":26},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",2,{"item":28,"name":29,"@type":21,"position":30},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/literature/","Literature",3,{"item":32,"name":10,"@type":21,"position":33},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/black-waters-spectrality-and-pollution-in-postdictatorial-fiction/515509/",4,{"url":32,"name":10,"@type":35,"image":36,"author":41,"headline":10,"publisher":44,"fileFormat":47,"inLanguage":8,"description":12,"dateModified":48,"datePublished":49,"encodingFormat":47,"isAccessibleForFree":50,"interactionStatistic":51},"DigitalDocument",{"url":37,"@type":38,"width":39,"height":40},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/black-waters-spectrality-and-pollution-in-postdictatorial-fiction/515509.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":42,"@type":43},"Ezra","Person",{"url":19,"name":45,"@type":46},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-17","2026-10-06",true,{"@type":52,"interactionType":53,"userInteractionCount":26},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":54},"ViewAction",{"@type":56,"mainEntity":57},"FAQPage",[58,64,68],{"name":59,"@type":60,"acceptedAnswer":61},"What does the article mean by “black water” in postdictatorial fiction?","Question",{"text":62,"@type":63},"It treats black water as opaque, toxic or otherwise, and inherently violent and alluring—an element that disturbs and cannot be reconciled with order.","Answer",{"name":65,"@type":60,"acceptedAnswer":66},"Which two literary works are analyzed and what shared purpose do they serve?",{"text":67,"@type":63},"The analysis centers on Nona Fernández’s Mapocho (2002) and Mariana Enriquez’s “Under the Black Water” (2015), both using black waters to critique Chilean and Argentine postdictatorial society.",{"name":69,"@type":60,"acceptedAnswer":70},"How does the article connect black water to disappearance and state terror?",{"text":71,"@type":63},"It argues that the river’s darkness and the tension between absence and presence reflect the violent practice of throwing bodies into waterways, making water a visual and memorial icon of state terror.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":32,"og:type":74,"og:title":10,"og:site_name":45,"og:description":12},"article",{"robots":76,"canonical":32},"index,follow",{"doc_id":78,"site_id":7},515509,1792211704,{"code":4,"msg":81,"data":82},"success",[83,87,90,94,99,104,109,114,119,122,126],{"id":22,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":84,"show_sort_weight":85,"slug":86},"Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":26,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":29,"show_sort_weight":88,"slug":89},80,"literature",{"id":33,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":91,"show_sort_weight":92,"slug":93},"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":95,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":96,"show_sort_weight":97,"slug":98},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":100,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":101,"show_sort_weight":102,"slug":103},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":105,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":106,"show_sort_weight":107,"slug":108},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":110,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":111,"show_sort_weight":112,"slug":113},8,"Research & Report",30,"research-report",{"id":115,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":116,"show_sort_weight":117,"slug":118},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":117,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":120,"show_sort_weight":117,"slug":121},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":123,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":124,"show_sort_weight":123,"slug":125},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":127,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":128,"show_sort_weight":95,"slug":129},19,"General","general",{"code":4,"msg":81,"data":131},{"doc_id":78,"user_id":132,"nickname":42,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":26,"category_name":29,"doc_title":10,"doc_description":12,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":26,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":22,"is_downloadable":22,"audit_status":22,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":8,"site_id":7,"html_lang":8,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":12,"update_tm":144,"read_time":145},1099514068035,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_276721f389ce27ea32af1340a28f341c","Black Waters. Spectrality and Pollution in Postdictatorial Fiction  \nBieke Willem  \nBlack water is opaque water, toxic or not. Black water is always violent, even when slow moving. Black water dominates, bewitches, subdues.  \nBlack water is alluring because it is disturbing and irreconcilable. Blackwater is violent because it is alluring, and because it is water.  \nRoni Horn, Saying Water  \n1. Black Water  \nThe colour blue in the denomination ‘blue humanities’ refers to the water that we see when we observe our planet from a certain distance. Blue is also the colour in which rivers, lakes, seas and oceans are usually depicted on maps, in clear contrast with the green or brown colour that indicates land. Aquatic environments, in which the human species not only interacts with water, but also with rocks, sand, mud, other animals, plants and all kinds of remnants of its own activities, are, however, rarely just blue. The art installation Oír-Río (2023–2024) by Máximo Corvalán-Pincheira reminds us of this fact. The reconstruction of a part of the Mapocho River in the National Art Museum ofSantiago does not only call attention to the sound of the river that crosses the capital, as  \nthe title of the work indicates, but also to its smell and, most of all, its dark brown colour speckled with lighter brown foam, which cannot be described in anyother way than‘fecal’. In Spanish, the term aguas negras, blackwater, is used to refer to a kind of wastewater that contains human excrements.  \n2023–24,“Oír-Río”, Installation Máximo Corvalán  \nPincheira, 21mx 2mx 2m, Museo de Bellas Artes  \nSantiago.  \nPhoto Credits: Jorge Brantmayer.  \nThis article focuses on murky, dark, non-transparent waters in the novel Mapocho (2002) by Nona Fernandez and the short story“Under the BlackWater”(“Bajo el agua negra”, 2015) by Mariana Enriquez, two texts which, like Corvalán’s art installation, offer a critique of the Chilean and Argentinean postdictatorial society by connecting the eschatological dimension of the aguas negras not only to contemporary environmental problems but also to the violent history of both countries. The overall affect working through both texts is fear, which emerges from the darkness of the rivers in and around which the narratives are constructed.  \nThe U.S. American artist Roni Horn begins her monologue Saying Water, a text she wrote about the River Thames in London, with the association between the black water of the river and the fear it provokes:  \nIn the waiting room of a doctor’s office some years ago, I overheard a mother talking about how her kids were afraid of it. If they couldn’t see into it, they wouldn’t go into it. It’s like being dismembered. When you wade into this dark fluid, a kind of milk without nurture, you disappear. (Horn n. p.)  \nThe children that Horn talks about are afraid of losing themselves, or at least a part of their own body, in the darkness of the river. Everything inside it remains invisible, cut off from the rest ofthe world, and appears to be dead or non-existent. What Horn does not mention, however, is that the opposite can happen, too, and that it might be as frightening as the possibility of disappearance: (parts of) human bodies may resurface from the blackwater and blur the boundaries between absence and presence, between the dead and the living.  \nThis blurring of the boundaries between the dead and the living is particularly relevant in the context of the violence of the last dictatorships in the Southern Cone, where thousands of bodies were thrown in the Río de la Plata, the Río Mapocho, the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans, as part of the politics of disappearance.1 Because of this connection with  \n1 Concerning the so-called death flights (‘vuelos de la muerte’) in Argentina, see, for instance: CLACSO and Crenzel. For Chile, see, for instance: Bonnefoy and the  \nthe recent dictatorial past, water is for Fernando Reati (294) an iconic image that visualizes the memory of state terror: “[su","cbCaiu8XFHz5J7UL","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaiu8XFHz5J7UL","pdf",390045,28,"English","# Black water as violent, alluring matter\n## Blue humanities and non-transparent aquatic worlds\n## Linking aguas negras to postdictatorial critique\n## Fear, disappearance, and resurfacing bodies\n## Water as icon of state terror in the Southern Cone\n## Rivers as unmarked graves and devices to hide evidence","[{\"question\":\"What does the article mean by “black water” in postdictatorial fiction?\",\"answer\":\"It treats black water as opaque, toxic or otherwise, and inherently violent and alluring—an element that disturbs and cannot be reconciled with order.\"},{\"question\":\"Which two literary works are analyzed and what shared purpose do they serve?\",\"answer\":\"The analysis centers on Nona Fernández’s Mapocho (2002) and Mariana Enriquez’s “Under the Black Water” (2015), both using black waters to critique Chilean and Argentine postdictatorial society.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the article connect black water to disappearance and state terror?\",\"answer\":\"It argues that the river’s darkness and the tension between absence and presence reflect the violent practice of throwing bodies into waterways, making water a visual and memorial icon of state terror.\"}]","Black Waters - Spectrality and Pollution in Postdictatorial Fiction | PDF",1791316909,43]