Abstract
The bodies of murdered Mexican women in Roberto Bolano's novel 2666 have been taken by critics to signify the biopolitical power of the neoliberal order. This article will contend that such readings overlook a broader crisis of bodily representation, which is apparent both in 2666 and in Bolano's earlier novels. The extent to which the body might be ‘read’ as part of a signifying system is insistently challenged in Bolano’s work, where images of the human are frequently fragmented or unstable. Drawing on ideas from Levinas and Deleuze, I suggest that the difficulty of representing the human, and the political implications of that act, are particularly clear when Bolano approaches the face. I then argue, following Jean-Luc Nancy, that the theological imagery which accrues around the body of the artist in Bolano’s work stages the deconstruction of Christian humanist aesthetics. Ultimately, Bolano’s fragmented bodies invite a mode of reading which is not uniquely concerned with representation.
Highlights
As the archaeology of our thought shows, man is an invention of recent date
While bodily experi ence in Bolaño’s work has not received significant critical attention, some of these bodies have achieved paradigmatic status, among those critics who draw out the biopolitical implications of his writing
Chief among these are the corpses of the murdered women in Santa Teresa that litter the pages of ‘La parte de los crímenes’ in the posthumous novel 2666
Summary
As the archaeology of our thought shows, man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end. The work of Emmanuel Levinas and Gilles Deleuze will provide useful contexts for a discussion of the face’s difficult relation to human experience, after which, following the thought of Jean-Luc Nancy, I will argue that unclear or fragmentary human figures in Bolaño’s fiction point towards the dissolution of the human as a representable category, at least in the sense developed by the Christian humanist tradition.
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