The materiality in the dystopian vision of Agustina Bazterrica: the aesthetic of the object deviation

Abstract

In her short stories Nineteen paws and a dark bird and her novel Exquisite corpse, Agustina Bazterrica shows us a disturbing society where human relations have been reified, automated. It is a cannibal society where some of them devour others; where consumerism and materialism destroy the atavistic relationship among words, things and human beings. Through her plots, Bazterrica announces the cultural requirement of the search of a new cultural code which allow a better society, a more solidary world and the refoundation of humanity. Through the plots we can see an example of diasporic literature which shows us a daily world whose characters use technological objects in a fantastic virtual world that supposes overcoming the referentiality and verisimilitude. These devices and objects evidence a cold world, a world of relationship lacking affection and sense, where cannibalized human beings are only things at the service of the others who dominate them and destroy their identity by fragmentation of their bodies alive or dead.