Effects mobilizing affects

Abstract

This article aims to show the many ways in which the affective tone of the short story ‘Sólo vine a hablar por teléfono’ (1992) [‘I only came to use the phone’] ([1992] 2006) by Gabriel García Márquez is produced, while also reflecting on the significance of adopting such a critical approach. To do so, I draw on contemporary affect theory, particularly on Sianne Ngai’s view of ‘affective tone’ as an expansion of affects as effects, and on Jane Bennett’s concept of ‘vital materialism’. The story tells the journey of a Mexican woman who is institutionalized and subjected to unimaginable abuses during Franco’s dictatorship in Spain. By focusing on the author’s use of literary effects and considering the aesthetics and the political together, this analysis reveals how negative or strange feelings are multiply generated, contributing to create a pervasive sense of uncanniness both within the text and in the reader. I conclude by arguing that an approach that considers how e ffects mobilize a ffects ultimately exposes how great fiction, through the mechanics of the text, can efficiently deploy transhistorical and trans-spacial structures in the operation of affects related with processes of dehumanization and loss of agency.