Etna Ávalos, Assistant Professor of Spanish, authored the chapter, “Partes de guerra como contra-archivo afectivo en el contexto de la violencia de género,” which appears in the edited volume En torno a Jorge Volpi: la razón del discurso, el discurso de la razón (Héctor Jaimes, ed.), published by Iberoamericana-Vervuert (2026). In this chapter, Dr. Ávalos analyzes Jorge Volpi’s novel Partes de guerra (2022) through the lens of affect theory and archive studies. The novel interweaves two narratives: the story of Lucía, a psychologist marked by domestic violence and neurological illness, and the feminicide of Dayana, a fourteen-year-old girl in Chiapas. The essay argues that the novel functions as an affective counter-archive, which is a narrative device that challenges official records and institutional silences around gender-based violence in Mexico by depicting the body as a site where trauma is both inscribed and testified. Drawing on Derrida, Cvetkovich, Segato, Caruth, and Sara Ahmed, the chapter examines how Volpi’s fragmented structure, generic hybridity, and non-linear temporality transform writing into an affective practice of resistance.
