Beyond biopolitics: reading BolaƱo's human fragments
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Abstract
The fiction of Roberto BolaƱo is filled with images of bodies in extremis: in situations of violence, sexual activity, illness and death. While bodily experience in BolaƱoās work has not received great critical attention, some of these bodies have achieved paradigmatic status, particularly among those critics who draw out the biopolitical implications of his writing. Chief among these are the corpses of the murdered women in Santa Teresa that litter the pages of āLa parte de los crĆmenesā in the posthumous novel 2666. Many critical accounts of this section of the novel view the corpses as evidence of the deadly power of the neoliberal order. These biopolitical readings of BolaƱo's work are undoubtedly of value, and cannot be disregarded. Nonetheless, what follows here is born of a suspicion that the bodies in BolaƱo's fiction provide, at best, precarious conduits for biopolitical reflection. Following the influential definition of biopolitics proposed by Michel Foucault, as āthe entry of phenomena peculiar to the life of the human species into the order of knowledge and powerā (History of Sexuality 141), I will suggest that BolaƱo in fact demonstrates the difficulty of maintaining the body within any order, and particularly within that of representation.
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This is the final version of the article. It was first available from Liverpool University Press via http://dx.doi.org/10.3828/mlo.v0i0.61
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2052-5397