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Roberto Bolaño Ir Socialinės Dekompozicijos Literatūrinė Diagnozė

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Roberto Bolaño Ir Socialinės Dekompozicijos Literatūrinė Diagnozė VYTAUTO DIDŢIOJO UNIVERSITETAS POLITIKOS MOKSLŲ IR DIPOLOMATIJOS FAKULTETAS SOCIALINĖS IR POLITINĖS TEORIJOS KATEDRA Arnoldas Stramskas PASIPRIEŠINIMAS DABARČIAI: ROBERTO BOLAÑO IR SOCIALINĖS DEKOMPOZICIJOS LITERATŪRINĖ DIAGNOZĖ Magistro baigiamasis darbas Socialinės ir politinės kritikos programa, valstybinis kodas 621L20008 Politikos mokslų studijų kryptis Vadovas Doc.dr. J.D. Mininger______________ (Moksl. laipsnis, vardas, pavardė) (parašas) (data) Apginta_Prof. dr. Šarūnas Liekis_______________ (PMDF dekanas) (parašas) (data) Kaunas, 2013 Contents Santrauka (lietuvių ir anglų k)..................................................................................................0 Introduction..............................................................................................................................1 1. Approaching literature with Deleuze and Guattari……………………….…………….5 2. Situating post-Boom Latin American literature and political economy……………….....11 3. Literature is not made of words alone: A very brief biography of Roberto Bolaño…..…18 4. Lines of flight and revolutionary hopes in The Savage Detectives………………………21 4.1 ―The true poet is the one that is always abandoning himself‖………………...….....22 4.2 ―We dreamed of utopia and we woke up screaming‖.................................................26 4.3 ―The attempts at a consistent ethic-aesthetic are paved in betrayal or pathetic survivals‖....................................................................................................................29 5. Archeology of the social in 2666........................................................................................36 5.1 Decomposition or the end of the social .......................................................................38 5.2 Imperceptibility, anonymity, and striving for singularity............................................47 5.3 Violence as a state form...............................................................................................54 6. Rethinking the social through literature.............................................................................63 6. Conclusion……………………………..............................................................................69 Works cited.............................................................................................................................70 Santrauka Šis magistro darbas gilinasi į produktyvias sąsajas tarp sociopolitinės kritikos ir literatūros. Sekant Gilles‘iu Deleuze‘u ir Félixu Guattari, šiame darbe naudojama klinikinė prieiga prie literatūros, teigiant, jog literatūra turi diagnozuojančią funkciją. Darbe yra priešinamasi poţiūriui, kad literatūra yra nepilnavertė ar maţiau efektyvi socialinės ir politinės kritikos tyrimų ir išraiškos forma. Darbe yra teigiama, kad dėl fundamentalaus neapibrėţtumo ir prasmių įvairovės literatūra nepateikia teiginiais grįstų, aiškiai suformuluotų atsakymų į keliamas problemas, tačiau tai nėra jos silpnoji pusė, o greičiau atvirkščiai. Šis magistrinis darbas pritaria Deleuze‘ui ir Guattari, teigiant, jog literatūra yra tapsmo ir vengimo linijų erdvė. Tapsmas ir vengimo linijos priešinasi tvarkai ir subjekto uţdarymui, bei uţsidarymui savyje. Šiame darbe literatūra yra analizuojama ne semiotiniais prinicipais, bandančiais iššifruoti po literatūros darbais slypinčias reikšmes, bet jos poveikius. Deleuze‘as ir Guattari klausia ne ką literatūra reiškia, bet kaip ji veikia? Taikant šią literatūrinę-klinikinę prakitiką yra naudojamasi dviems Roberto Bolaño literatūriniais darbais, iliustruojant kokias jungtis jie kuria ir kokią kritiką formuoja dabarčiai. Viena pagrindinių temų, kuri jungia šį darbą, t. y. literatūrą ir socialinę kritiką, yra termino „socialinis‖, kaip valstybinės formos, permastymas ir įţvalga, kad literatūra gali turėti įrankių alternatyvių socialumo formų paieškose. Raktiniai ţodţiai: vengimo linijos, tapsmas, socialinis, valstybės forma, Deleuze, Guattari. Summary This thesis explores productive linkages between social and political criticism and literature. Following the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, this thesis takes a clinical approach, suggesting that literature reflects a kind of diagnosis of the state of the world. Complementary to this clinical approach, the perspective here resists prevailing notions that literature is inferior to or less effective than other fields of social and political critical inquiry and expression. The thesis argues that if, because of the fundamental ambiguities and pluralities of meaning animating it, literature does not offer propositional, well-defined answers to overtly posed or covertly insinuated problems, this is not therefore a weakness, but a strength. This thesis concurs with Deleuze and Guattari in asserting that literature is a site of becoming and of lines of flight. Lines of flight and becoming are resistant practices against imposed order and (self)closure of the subject. The method here eschews a semiotic approach to literature, which begs facile answers by simplistically answering: what does the work mean? Instead, the clinical approach taken here asks ―how does the text work?‖ Using this approach, the central literary object in this thesis is author Roberto Bolaño, whose two novels––The Savage Detectives and 2666––serve to illustrate literature‘s vast potential as valuable critique and resistance to the social and political ills of the present. The thesis calls for, and acts upon, an attempt to rethink the concept of ―the social‖ otherwise than as a state-form, and to explore possibilities where literature may offer insights for alternative forms of sociality. Key words: lines of flight, becoming, the social, state-form, Deleuze, Guattari. 0 Introduction ―We lack creation. We lack resistance to the present.‖1 ―And if you want to live, then live! Dance, sing, scream until your lungs bleed! And if you want to die, die then! Plunge deep into hell, with me clasped tight in your embrace, and we'll make an end to all this. But you don't want to live or die, do you?‖2 In an interview Gilles Deleuze once expressed his idea of writing about authors of literature as follows: ―My ideal, when I write about the author, would be to write nothing that could cause him sadness, or if he is dead, that might make him weep in his grave. Think of the author you are writing about. Think of him so hard that he can no longer be an object, and equally so that you cannot identify with him. Avoid the double shame of the scholar and the familiar. Give back to an author a little of the joy, the energy, the life of love and politics that he knew how to give and invent‖. 3To write neither scholarly nor familiarly but rather affectively about literature is most definitely not an easy task. Neither is it entirely convincing that it is a proper approach (if there would be such thing as proper). The work that follows is a modest attempt to show how literature can express ―the joy, the energy, the life of love and politics‖ of the author; this thesis is also an exercise in giving back to the author, in Deleuze‘s sense, and yet being fully conscious of the entirely probable and real possibility of failing to do so. The consolation is that Roberto Bolaño, the centerpiece of this thesis, had a sense of humor too sophisticated to weep over these lines, even if they are far from his intentions. However, Deleuze and Guattari– 1 Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. What Is Philosophy? Trans. Tomlinson, H. and Burchell, G. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. P. 108. 2 Catharsis, ―The Witch‘s Heart‖, Passion, Crimethinc., 1999, CD/LP. 3 Deleuze, G. and Parnet, C. Dialogues. Trans. Tomlinson, H. and Habbeerjam, B. New York: Columbia University Press, 1987. P. 119. 1 the other central figures in this thesis––are quite explicit in stating that the beauty and potentiality of literary works, in part, are constituted by the dissolution of the personified author, his or her intentions, his ―public‖ persona. It is the works themselves that are either productively working for us, or not at all. The immediate question for the reader of this thesis within the confines of methodology and academic concerns is: what does literature have to do with social and political critique? My aim is to demonstrate that literature not only shares common elements and possible intentions with sophisticated social and political critique, but that literature can be a—perhaps surprisingly, yet uniquely and perhaps even strangely—effective form of social and political criticism, if it is allowed to be itself—i.e. to be literature and function as literature. This thesis demonstrates several points in support of thesis methodological claim to literature‘s critical value. In order for such a critical project to work, long-lasting hierarchical relations which assign science a privileged role over fiction, literature, and art in general, must be suspended, overturned, or still better: displaced. This is even more relevant for the social sciences and humanities than for the natural sciences. Deleuze and Guattari teach that ―Philosophy, science, and art want us to tear open the firmament and plunge into the chaos.‖4 That is something significantly different from the role assigned to activities that typically refer to explanatory, unifying, and systematizing actions. This is not to claim that these activities are identical, but that their differences do not merit the imposition of hierarchy. Secondly, and this may be more difficult, Deleuze and Guattari advise not to try to decipher
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