The jungle of the in-real. Theoretical fiction in Juan José Saer

Abstract

The problem of fiction is a vast area of inquiries that frequently exceed the specificity of literature. This theoretical and critical "excess" of fiction can be traced to the amount and the nature of the questions it raises: the relationship between fiction and reality, the relationship between fiction and truth and the relationship between fiction and politics, to name a few areas of examination. In this article we intend to investigate the place that the problem of fiction occupies in contemporary debates about capitalism, subjectivity and imagination and, from the operative notion of theoretical fiction, to examine and reconstruct the theory of fiction of Juan José Saer, present both in essays (El concepto de ficción) and in fictional texts (“Traoré”; “En línea”, “Lo visible”; “Cosas soñadas”) and which we believe it is possible to link to contemporary criticism and aesthetics. Centrally, we propose that the saerian idea of ​​fiction as speculative anthropology is projected onto discussions close to posthumanism that see in fiction and literature the affirmation of a reality that does not exclude the non-existent and unverifiable and the expansion of the political horizons of an in-real ontology.