Abstract
This article aims to explore the relationships between theoretical issues derived from the concept of utopia and the literary work of the Uruguayan writer Mario Levrero. More specifically, starting from a reinterpretation of the concepts of utopia and counter-utopia, focused on their political, literary and ethical-existential implications, this article—theoretically supported by recent reflections of Nancy, Jameson, Žižek, Vattimo and Agamben, among others—presents a critical narrative analysis of El lugar (1982) and Caza de conejos (1986), ontological novels never before read in parallel that we here propose to describe as utopias of evil. In contrast to the narrative spaces generated by classical and modern utopias and counter-utopias, which are conceived from an optimistic or ironic-satiric perspective, the narrative spaces generated in Mario Levrero’s utopias of evil shape, at the limits of nihilism, perfect and perverse kafkian representations designed for a single and radical purpose: a total, definitive, and meaningless destruction of experience. Compelled by an irrepressible death/destruction drive, this fictional mechanism operates in the construction of two different types of destruction: El lugar, marked by a movement of escape, represents the destruction of experience by means of the destruction of the subject as character in the novel; Caza de conejos, marked by a movement of persecution, represents the destruction of experience by means of the destruction of the subject as reader of the novel.
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This work was supported by Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Research Fund.
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Fernández González, C. Utopías del mal en dos novelas de Mario Levrero. Neophilologus 100, 389–404 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-015-9473-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-015-9473-1