Boundaries of the Human in the Contemporary Post-Apocalyptic Novel: McCarthy and Houellebecq.

  • Valentino Baldi University of Malta
Keywords: human, novel, return of the repressed, violence.

Abstract

This paper focuses on the analysis of Houellebecq’s La possibilité d’une île and McCarthy’s The Road with the objective to trace how the representation of the human changes in the contemporary post-apocalyptic novel. The article is based on references to the theories of Agamben, Bauman and Žižek and it develops an idea of literature as return of the repressed theorised by Francesco Orlando. 

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Author Biography

Valentino Baldi, University of Malta
Lecturer in Letteratura italiana e letterature comparate. Faculty of Arts. University of Malta

References

Agamben, Giorgio, Homo sacer. Il potere sovrano e la nuda vita, Einaudi, Torino, 1995.

Baudrillard, Jean, La Transparence du Mal (1990), trad. it., La trasparenza del male. Saggio sui fenomeni estremi, Milano, Sugarco, 1991.

Bauman, Zygmunt, Modus Vivendi. Hell and Utopia in the Liquid World (2006), trad. it., Modus Vivendi, Inferno e utopia nel mondo liquido, Bari, Laterza, 2007.

Cataldi, Pietro, “Cormac McCarthy. La strada (2006)”, Allegoria, 63 (2011).

Houellebecq,Michel, La possibilité d’une île (2005), trad. it., La possibilità di un’isola, Bompiani, Milano, 2009.

McCarthy, Cormac, The Road (2006), trad. it., La strada, Einaudi, Torino, 2006.

Orlando, Francesco, Per una teoria freudiana della letteratura, Einaudi, Torino, 1992.

Id., Gli oggetti desueti nelle immagini della letteratura, Einaudi, Torino, 2015.

Id., “Statuti del soprannaturale nella narrativa”, Il romanzo, Ed. Franco Moretti, Einaudi, Torino, 2001.

Kollin, Susan, “Genre and the Geographies of Violence: Cormac McCarthy and the Contemporary Western”, Contemporary Literature, 42.3 (2001).

Grindley, Carl James, The Setting of McCarthy’s the Road, The Explicator, 67.1 (2008): 11-13.

Žižek, Slavoj, Welcome to the Desert of the Real, Verso, New York, 2002.

Id., Living in the End Times (2010), trad. it., Vivere alla fine dei tempi, Ponte alle Grazie, Firenze, 2011.

Published
2015-11-30
How to Cite
Baldi, V. (2015). Boundaries of the Human in the Contemporary Post-Apocalyptic Novel: McCarthy and Houellebecq. Between, 5(10). https://doi.org/10.13125/2039-6597/1547
Section
Narratives and Imaginaries in Politics and History