Secret

Abstract

The Secret corresponds to epi- in the sense of origin. Secret stories mingle family and historical narratives of disappearance or betrayal and reinterpret genealogies as a kind of epigenetic practice—an imaginary epi-drug capable of reading (or making talk) the secret genetic code of experience. This epigenetic secret in literature confronts virtual reality schemes and transhumanist fantasies: it deals with the phantom pain of a lost past and possible future—as in Le Chat de Schrödinger by Philippe Forest [2014], La velocidad de la luz by Javier Cercas [2005] or The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon [2008]. Temporal and political fictions address both past and future issues, by means of specular thought and narrative experiments—through the use, as a sort of present absence, of the very same technique neurobiologists and psychologists employ when they deliver mirror-box treatments to their patients.