Paper short abstract:

I will examine how the seriousness of supposedly ‘radical’ aesthetics (post-apocalyptic, gothic, and telepathic) have been challenged in two of Roberto Bolaño’s early novels set in Europe through the humorous re-appropriation of the British and Northern American discourses on the Self.

Paper long abstract:

In my presentation I will examine how Roberto Bolaño challenges the seriousness and even certain 'aura' of 'exploratory' artistic imagery which, although being supposedly radically critical of rigid delimitations of the Western subject and progressive vision of the future, nonetheless participates in the consolidation of the Western hegemony due to its pervasive lack of humour. In Monsieur Pain and The Skating Rink among his other novels, Bolaño re-appropriates post-apocalyptic science fiction imagery, gothic aesthetics and telepathy as artistic modes 'proper' of Great Britain and the US and exposes them into a wider geopolitical context inclusive of the 'Third World'. Without stepping into genre variations which continue to function on the lower level of critical engagement despite all the recent efforts to the opposite (i.e. comedy), Bolaño gives an ironic twist to the Western explorations of the Self and the distressing catastrophe which awaits the Western subject as an outcome of their encounter with regions with less stabilized individualism. Mocking the feat of the blurring of some rigid limits of the previously delineated, individualized Self, the author, as if unwillingly, raises awareness of the concrete historicity which informs literary endeavours.