Disobedience Spectres. Plague, the Double and Abjection in La sed by Marina Yuszczuk

Abstract

I approach a reading of the contemporary gothic across the novel La sed (2020), by the Argentinean Marina Yuszczuk. The dialectical critique orientates the interpretation by promoting a dialogue between hermeneutical levels and planes of the social mode of production. The double and the abjection are critical instruments that allow us to consider the articulation of two narrative voices. On the one hand, the story presents the enunciation of a vampire who deploys her murderous craving in various epochs, on the other, a young woman voice who seeks to overcome domestic and social alienation in contemporaneity. Likewise, historical transformations present discontinuous and overlapping temporal logics, such as "the plague" of yellow fever in the 19th century and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. These scenarios indicate the functioning of a conflictive social totality that appear as "structural evil", insofar as it reveals keys of domination that persist precisely because they obscure the understanding of their link with the individuals.