Metamorfosis, animalidad y voces más-que-humanas en escritoras del Río de la Plata de los siglos XX y XXI
This seminar will explore depictions of animals, metamorphosis or crossbreeding between species in the works of a corpus of authors from the Río de la Plata region in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries: Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (1811-1888), Silvina Ocampo (Argentina, 1903-1993), Julio Cortázar (1914-1984), Elvira Orphée (Argentina, 1922-2018), and Marosa di Giorgio (Uruguay, 1932-2004).
Metamorphoses are a literary topic with a vast and rich genealogy, from Ovid's μεταμόρφωσις and Apuleius' Asinus aureus to Franz Kafka's Die Verwandlung (1915). It is both ancient and contemporary. In the present, it encapsulates a reflection on what it means to be human in relation to other spheres of existence, both living and non-living (vibrant matter and deaf matter, more precisely).
Metamorphoses focus on the unstable, the changing, and the multiple, and in that sense they resonate with contemporary subjectivities. From Kafka onwards, they function as a critique of the Cartesian subject of modernity, characterized by its stability and unity with itself. Insofar as the idea of a subject in control of itself, its “natural environment,” and the “savage others” associated with a state of nature is at the root of the capitalist plundering of the planet, we understand that rethinking these issues from a contemporary perspective will allow us to reflect on pressing ecological, but also social, economic, and political issues.
- Kursleiter*in: Ludmila Soledad Barbero