Photography and Neobaroque Imaginary in Julio Cortázar’s “Las babas del diablo”: Can the Neobaroque Name a Photograph?

Abstract

This article examines Julio Cortazar's short story Las babas del diablo from a visual perspective and at the intersection of Roland Barthes's ideas on photography and Severo Sarduy's theory on the Neobaroque. I propose that in Las babas del diablo photography and the Neobaroque—two seemingly unrelated concepts—interact and complement each other to create a story that negotiates the Neobaroque's persistent desire to name and the photograph's stubbornness to stay unnamed. Through an intense interaction with the photograph and an unrestrained production of verboseness stirred by the punctum of the image, Roberto Michel gives birth to a Neobaroque narrative that inverts the established order of things: both the photograph and the narrative transcend spatio-temporal limits leaving the narrator-photographer in complete immobility.