The Global South as an Exhibition of Pain

This chapter examines Colombian writer Evelio Rosero&s;s novels Stranger to the Moon and Toño the Infallible . Stranger to the Moon , originally published in 1992, establishes Rosero&s;s interest in the idea of the Other as a scapegoat. This is amplified in Toño the Infallible , when Rosero shifts his focus from the implications of exceptional Colombian violence he had explored in his earlier novels to the implications of exceptional pathological violence and audiences’ obsession with serial killers. This chapter is part of a shift in the focus of literary studies and critical criminology, specifically zemiology, from serial killers and crime to serial spectators and harm that steps back from subjective violence to perceive objective violence. It draws a parallel between the undue attention given to the eponymous Toño Ciruelo, who is described in the blurb as a “kind of Colombian Rasputin,” as the criminal Other and the harms concentrated upon Colombia in Northern audiences’ construction of a Colombian Other. Constructing an Other is not criminal, but it puts those who are Othered in harm&s;s way when they are discriminated against, dehumanised, and consigned to violence or victimhood.