La prospettiva straniante della scienza in un’utopia di Eduardo Holmberg: Olimpio Pitango de Monalia (1915)

Federica Scopsi

doi:10.13125/2039-6597/5846

Federica Scopsi University of Pisa

DOI: https://doi.org/10.13125/2039-6597/5846

Keywords: Utopia, Estrangement, Eduardo Holmberg, Positivistic materialism, Argentinian literature

Abstract

It is customary to think of utopia as a genre that deals mostly with socio-political issues and that takes a revolutionary approach to a status quo. This paper reflects on the impossibility of identifying a common and original aim behind the utopian genre, especially that of cognitive estrangement, if understood as a critical-dialectical, liberating and dubitative epistemological approach. The analysis of a utopian novel by Argentinian writer Eduardo Holmberg shows that the presence of estranging procedures does not necessarily lead to scepticism about the ‘normality’ of social facts. On the contrary, it can serve the purpose of persuading about the existence of a more valid and normal social order compared to the existing one. The paper proposes then a key to interpret utopian texts in relation to the problem of evil and suggests expanding the meaning of the word ‘estrangement’ to take into account the different aims which can coexist within the same literary procedure.

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Author Biography

Federica Scopsi, University of Pisa

Federica Scopsi is Phd candidate in Discipline linguistiche e letterature straniere at the University of Pisa. Her dissertation thesis, which will be defended shortly, focuses on the emergence of utopian and science fictional tradition in the late XIXth century South America. She holds a master's degree in spanish and latin american literature from Universitat de Barcelona. Her master's thesis deals with mexican and argentinian dystopian novels in the late XXth century. Her research interests currently revolve around the representation of rituals in Julio Cortázar's narrative and the concept of estrangement.

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The estranging perspective of science in Eduardo Holmberg’s utopia Olimpio Pitango de Monalia (1915)

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