Resumen de Love and the revolution: the potential and limitations of love and differential consciousness in Héctor Tobar’s "The tatooed soldier"
Love and the revolution connect in Héctor Tobar’s The Tattooed Soldier (1998) with the use of a quotation from Ernesto Guevara. This specific connection applies to both the Guatemalan civil war and the Los Angeles 1992 protests in the novel. Revolutionary love can be seen as analogous to what Chela Sandoval in Methodology of the Oppressed (2000), identifies as the hermeneutics of love, which is a certain skill set that can mobilize love in the service of social change. Within this frame, she considers that the most important skill is that of a “differential consciousness,” an ability to shift in and out of different subject positions and learn of other realities. In this essay, I contend that in her personal reflections and social activism during the Guatemalan civil war, the character of Elena shows the distinctions between revolutionary and familial love and the potential of differential consciousness. In contradistinction, other characters in the novel show the limitations of differential consciousness and love. The Tattooed Soldier recognizes and enacts numerous manifestations of love and differential consciousness in the public world, only to approximate social change sometimes but to demonstrate its need all the time.
