Madness, Monstrosity and Writing: Towards a Genealogical Analysis in 'El obsceno pájaro de la noche'

Abstract

Drawing on Foucault’s concept of “genealogy,” this article explores madness, monstrosity and writing in José Donoso´s The Obscene Bird of Night(1970). Like Foucault, Donoso is interested in studying the body as “the inscribed surface of events,” the locus of a dissociated self (adopting the illusion of a substantial unity), and a mass in perpetual disintegration. Like Donoso, Foucault assaults enlightened reason and the principle of reality in order to subvert and transgress the instrumental rationality and normalcy of bourgeois culture. This essay analyzes Donoso’s novel in light of these concepts in order to open a new path for understanding one of the most obscure texts in modern Latin American fiction.

Keywords

• Donoso
• Foucault
• locura
• monstruosidad
• escritura