The purpose of the article is to reflect upon the role of political context in the short story collection published by Alejandro Cuevas in 2018: Mariluz y el largo etcétera. The politics is defined here according to one of the most commented theory of the aesthetics by Jacques Rancière and his concept of the “sensible”. It also focuses on the impact of the democratization of the subject-matter presented in the literary works of art since 19th century. Rancière’s approach together with considerations by Gonzalo Navajas, Vicente Luis Mora and others on the specificity of Spanish contemporary narrative reveal the intensity of the collective anxiety and problematical aspects of socio-economic reality that permeate the short stories by Cuevas, letting the reader notice in them glimpses of the series of issues regarding the Bubble Generation, sometimes also referred to as the Millennials or the 15-M Movement and other groups forming Spanish contemporary society. Cuevas manages to build in the political context without afflicting neither the humour nor the engaging expressiveness of his literary style.
The cross-interpretation of two texts: a novel by Margarita García Robayo, The Delivery (2022), and an essay by Violeta Serrano, “Flowers in the Dustbin” (2022) focuses on four main issues: the intention that reveals itself in the genre, the considerations on everyday life in regard to the family baggage that one carries and has to deal with in order to redefine their own identity, the migrant’s status and its relation to the quotidian dimension of being, and, lastly, the employment precariousness and financial difficulties common in the lives of the millennials. The article also outlines the significance of Argentina as setting in both texts. The methodological frame is constituted by the metatextual ponderings by García Robayo, the notion of Everyday according to Alfred Schutz, Maurice Blanchot and Roland Barthes, as well as a concept of degrowth by Serge Latouche.
The main objective of the article is to investigate the usefulness of the notion of Capitalocene proposed by Jason W. Moore in the interpretation of Alejandro Cuevas’s most recent novel: Mi corazón visto desde el espacio (2019). The work of Cuevas, a writer from Valladolid with much experience in challenging various social problems of 21st century Spain, indeed gains a much more nuanced interpretative dimension, as it reveals the scope of the author’s critique of contemporaneity that encompasses a whole range of issues that go beyond the boundaries of the Anthropocene and require a bolder and more contemporary frame of reading. Thus, Cuevas’s fifth novel can be read as a “capitalocenic novel” as it turns out to be a quasi-manifesto of the weaknesses of the self in today’s System.
ES
El objetivo del artículo es investigar la utilidad de la noción de «Capitaloceno» propuesta por Jason W. Moore en la interpretación de la novela más reciente de Alejandro Cuevas: Mi corazón visto desde el espacio (2019). La obra de Cuevas, un escritor vallisoletano con mucha experiencia en desafiar los problemas sociales de la España del s. XXI, gana en efecto una dimensión interpretativa mucho más matizada, ya que revela el alcance de la crítica de la contemporaneidad del autor, que engloba toda una variedad de cuestiones que superan los límites de Antropoceno y requieren un marco de lectura más atrevido y más actual. Así, la quinta novela de Cuevas se deja leer como una «novela capitalocénica» por ser un cuasi manifiesto de debilidades del yo en el Sistema de hoy.
JavaScript is turned off in your web browser. Turn it on to take full advantage of this site, then refresh the page.