The figure of loss as catastrophe of the contemporary individual in the trilogy Un animal mudo levanta la vista by Germán Marín: A reading based on Peter Sloterdijk

Abstract

The article suggests a reading of the novels El palacio de la risa, Ídola and Cartago by Germán Marín, departing from the image of the individual’s loss of a uniting shelter, symbolically represented by the dyadic bubble proposed by the philosopher Peter Sloterdijk. Putting into dialogue Marín and Sloterdijk, this article shows that the narrative of the Chilean writer reiterates in its plot the modern individual’s catastrophe of an irretrievable loss, remaining expelled of a significant protective sphere. The recent history of Chile functions as a metonymy of an existential cataclysm of the human being understood as marked by a lack.