Ama (2019) or class consciousness through illness

Abstract

In this article, a reading proposal of José Ignacio Carnero's initiatory novel, Ama (2019), is carried out based on the specific application of class analysis. The work revolves around the illness of the protagonist's mother who, affected by cancer, functions as a trigger for the working-class memory of the son. The starting hypothesis holds that the play is composed from the scheme of relations that Pierre Bourdieu (2002, 2003) uses to identify the working class. Hence, the analysis of Ama is organized around five frequent elements in the composition of that social class and especially within the most recent working class narratives: the metaliterary reflection on memory, the figure of the mother as representative of the working woman, the class consciousness of the protagonist, the scarce cultural heritage received and the impostor syndrome. The class analysis applied to Carnero's novel allows, ultimately, to observe the way in which it proposes a reactualization of the working class in the 21st century from the tools of the literary medium.