Estudios de Teoría Literaria (Mar 2023)
The body as an archive. Datification of affects and subjectivity in Ansibles, perfiladores y otras máquinas de ingenio by Andrea Chapela
Abstract
In the face of the imminent datification and digitalization of existence (Srnicek 2018; Costa 2021), recent Latin American science fiction has inquired into the figuration of corporeality no longer only from an organic status, but also towards its virtual and artificial projection. This paper explores two stories from Andrea Chapela's Ansibles, perfiladores y otras máquinas de ingenio (2020) considering the ways in which bodies and technologies are linked. It is proposed that in these stories corporeality can be understood as an archive (Castillo 2020), to the extent that it is sifted by the actions of informational capitalism, which brings with it the datification of the human, particularly of affects and subjectivity. In this sense, the body becomes information and is delimited from the organic margins that traditionally define it, projecting itself as a quantifiable archive prone to surveillance.
