When the Others Appear. Ways of Narrating Transformations of Neoliberalism in Marcelo Cohen's Los acuáticos

Abstract

This work investigates how some social processes which happened during the deepening of neoliberalism in the 90s are narrated. The tales “El fin de la palabrística” and “Cuando aparecen Aquéllos” (Los acuáticos 2001) by Marcelo Cohen, are analysed paying attention to two main questions. Firstly, the building of urban space, frontiers and tensions between global interconnectivity and the isolation of excluded sectors. Secondly, the configuration of how impoverishment was experienced and how the social and cultural other was perceived. Lastly, it proposes an interpretation of the fantastic as a metamorphosis law which operates from spatial disintegration in imaginary territories and the time projection in a futuristic landscape. These fantastic mutations allow the appearance/vision of shared experience amid the implausible.