"A language not of this world": Depersonalization and Unintelligibility in Robert Bolaño's "The Part about the Crimes"

Abstract

The following article deals with the intersections of the linguistic, the literary, and the political in Roberto Bolaño’s “The Part about the Crimes”, the fourth chapter of his novel 2666. Building on Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito, Argentinean anthropologist Rita Segato, and American scholar David Kurnick, I propose that Bolaño engages with what I call “symbolic unintelligibility”, using it to respond to literary tradition and to the political conflicts of our times. Show more