Crazy tales: the case of César Aira’s La Villa and China Miéville’s Embassytown

Authors

  • Valeria Wagner University of Geneva, Switzerland

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7203/eutopias.0.18646

Keywords:

Collapse, decolonization of the imaginary, disconnection, desprendimiento, Embassytown by China Miéville, La villa by César Aira

Abstract

Even though projects and experiences of alternative management and life are on the rise, visions of the future still tend to fall back on schemes inherited from the narrative of progress. In this essay I suggest that «collapse» (effondrement) as a horizon of expectation can avoid the automatisms and dead-ends that block the imagination on certain scenarios of the future. In this essay I focus, firs, on the implications of Pablo Servigne’s and Raphaël Stevens’ vision of collapse and of the hypothesis that it is possible to «decolonize the imaginary» by means of «beautiful stories». In order to understand what such a «decolonization» could consist in, I focus on the process of disconnection (débranchement) they recommend, and I compare it to that of epistemic de-linking (desprendimiento) developed in the context of decolonial thinking. I then analyze the complementarity of these two processes through the reading of Embassytown by China Miéville and La villa by César Aira, two texts that show the potential toggle effect of small gestures and daily re-positionning on this imagination « out of work ».

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Aira, César (2001), La villa, Buenos Aires : Emecé.

— (2003), Le Manège, trad. Michel Lafon, Mareille : André Dimanche Éditeur.

Atwood, Margaret (2003), Oryx and Crake, London : Bloomsbury.

— (2009), The Year of the Flood, London : Bloomsbury.

— (2013), MaddAddam : A Novel, New York : Nan A. Talese/Doubleday.

Bacigalupi, Paolo (2013 [2009]), La fille automate, trad. Sara Doke, Paris : J’ai Lu.

Benjamin, Walter (2000), « Sur le concept d’histoire », Œuvres III, trad. Maurice Candillac, Paris : Gallimard.

Castro-Gómez, Santiago & Grosfoguel, Ramón (eds.) (2007), El giro decolonial. Reflexiones para una diversidad epistémica más allá del capitalismo global, Bogotá : Siglo del Hombre Editores (Disponible en ligne, <http://www.ceapedi.com.ar/imagenes/biblioteca/libros/147.pdf>)

Delmas-Marty, Mireille (2016), « Le dérèglement climatique : une dernière chance pour l’humanité », Le Temps, 10 mars (<https://www.letemps.ch/opinions/2016/03/10/dereglement-climatique-unederniere-chance-humanite, consulté le 29 juin 2016>).

Jameson, Fredric (2003), « Future City », New Left Review, 21, pp. 65-79 Mai-Juin (disponible sur <https://newleftreview.org/II/21/fredric-jameson-future-city, consulté le 29 juin 2016)>.

López-Labourdette, Adriana, & Wagner, Valeria (2016), « Del pensamiento a la práctica colonial », Versants. Revista suiza de literaturas románicas, à paraître.

Miéville, China (2010 [2009]), The City and the City, London : Pan Books.

— (2011 [2010]), Kraken, London : Pan Books.

— (2012 [2011]), Embassytown, London : Pan Books.

— (2015), Légationville, trad. Nathali Mège, Paris : Fleuve Éditions.

Mignolo, Walter D. (2007), « DELINKING. The rhetoric of modernity, the logic of coloniality and the grammar of de-coloniality », Cultural Studies, 21(2), pp. 449-514 (URL: <http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09502380601162647>).

— (2008), « La opción de-colonial : desprendimiento y apertura. Un manifiesto y un caso », Tabula Rasa, 8, pp. 243-281 Enero-Junio (en ligne : consulté le 22 juin 2016; disponible sur <http://www.revistatabularasa.org/numero-8/mignolo1.pdf>)

Servigne, Pablo & Stevens, Raphaël (2015), Comment tout peut s’effondrer. Petit manuel de collapsologie à l’usage des générations présentes, Paris : Seuil.

Zizek, Slavoj (2011), <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPgz6K-gl7g, consulté le 29 juin 2016.>

Downloads

Published

2016-12-27

How to Cite

Wagner, V. (2016). Crazy tales: the case of César Aira’s La Villa and China Miéville’s Embassytown. EU-topías. A Journal on Interculturality, Communication, and European Studies, 12, 119–130. https://doi.org/10.7203/eutopias.0.18646
Metrics
Views/Downloads
  • Abstract
    301
  • PDF (Français )
    30

Issue

VOL. 12 (2016)

Section

DOSSIER

License

The authors conserve the copyright. All content published in EU-topías. Journal of interculturality, Communication, and European Studies are subject to the license Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 license. The full text of the license can be found at <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0>

They may be copied, used, disseminated, transmitted and publicly displayed, provided that:

  • The authorship and original source of the publication is cited (journal, publisher and URL of the work).
  • They are not used for commercial purposes.
  • The existence and specifications of this license of use are mentioned.

It is the responsibility of the authors to obtain the necessary permissions for images that are subject to copyright.

Metrics

Similar Articles

<< < 

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.