Seeing the unseen: abjection, social death, and neoliberal implication in Héctor Tobar’s The Tattooed Soldier

This article analyzes Héctor Tobar’s The Tattooed Soldier as a hemispheric critique of racialization and social dispossession bridging the gap between Central America and the United States. Examining the homeless and the refugee subjects in the novel as structurally equivalent, the article explores the ramifications of internal and external displacements in relation to the protections of citizenship and political asylum. It explores how neoliberal ideologies and practices allow for the creation and naturalization of urban spaces of abjection, effectively condoning the social death of subjects not deemed worthy of respect or social value. In doing so, the article demonstrates how social and spatial dispossession is subsumed into everyday life, becoming naturalized and invisible. It demonstrates how social and political disenfranchisement are constructed discursively and spatially, considering the novel’s stories of immigration and asylum-seeking not only as Latina/o/x stories but also as intrinsic parts of the stories that constitute the United States.