Well, the title is, Preferations of Reality, the Motive of the Whole in the Fantastic,
Contemporary Fantastic in Brackets, and there is no doubt that the fantastic in Spain is
in great shape nowadays.
Also, it's like Josemaría Merino, Juan Jose Millais, Cristina Fernández-Curas, and newer
voices like Fernando Iwasaki, David Rojas, and so on, have contributed to the renaissance
of the genre after the 80s in Spain.
This renaissance was encouraged by translations of the great masters of the 19th century that
were only available or maybe commercialized much later in Spain, plus the emergence of
publishing houses that are exclusively dedicated to the short story and to the fantastic and
science fiction genre as well, like Minot Auroval, the Marcelo de Pajina, Pajina de Puma, and
also through the positive reevaluation of the genre through the influence of the Latin
American masters such as Borges, Cortata, and so on, plus the consolidation of critical
perspectives on the fantastic in Spanish academia, for example, Rojas, Erthal Jordan,
Alarraqui, Canberra, and Rice.
Okay, so this is Victor Panorama, nowadays it is in great shape, but what I want to maybe
precise is that my intention today is to cross national borders as we were saying yesterday
and present my corpus as rather being a part of a larger frame which is the postmodern
fantastic or the contemporary fantastic if you want, okay, so we can focus better on the theme.
The fantastic has been largely understood as a way to give voice to the primitive temporal
anxieties of mankind. It seemed to me yesterday that there was a lot of talking about the passing
of time, the decay of the body, a lot of emphasis on the time, and this inherent temporal dimension
of the fantastic has often subordinated that of space, which is extremely important in structure
and reality, everyday experience. If we understand this as a set of boundaries, spatial relations,
zones, itineraries by which the individual can organize and make sense of what that surrounds him.
Space has either been restricted to its function of a container of the plot or if acknowledged as
theme, often reduced in its independence with time, the classic formula of space time transgressions,
so my intention today is to contribute to the rather limited corpus of criticism that reclaims
the essential spatial dimension of the genre, let us not forget that it's based on the conception
and transgression of the limits. The analysis is centered on the function of one of the most
popular motifs in the history of the fantastic, the whole, which is understood here as a perforation
that transgresses the pre-established spatial reference through a variety of stacks belonging
to the contemporary fantastic in Spain. I will develop four lines that explore different aspects
of the whole in the fantastic, also knows, I'm sorry, I disappoint you here, that it's not my
intention to explore the sexual or psychoanalytical connotations of whole, so I prefer to focus on
the function of the whole in the fantastic to unveil how it transmits the different conception
of space that we have nowadays as an absolute category, well that's an abstract category,
sorry, very distanced to the Newtonian objective, solid, measurable category and this I think it's
a key notion to interpret how the fantastic has evolved nowadays now. So let us start.
Since its origins, the concern of the fantastic has been to give voice to that what the discourse
of reason could not codify. The whole is an archetypical image of this process of codifying
the inexplicable. It embodies the subversive essence of the fantastic and in that it metaphorically
attacks the rational discourse of reality, particularly important during the 18th and 19th
century. The rise of the fantastic became a perforation of the rational frames of positivism.
Particularly useful to understand the relevance of the whole in the history of the supernatural,
is Foucault's concept of heterotopia. In his essay of Other Spaces, he analyzes the way different
civilizations have attempted to deal in spatial terms with the deviant by situating them in what
he calls heterotopias that are physical containers with or without clear geographical markers to
place these deviants. For example, madmen, the mad in mad houses and the dead in cemeteries is another
example he gives. If we extend this definition to how society deals with that what their laws of
reason could not codify, the whole becomes the heterotopia of the fantastic for excellence.
Let me give you a couple of examples. In many ancient cosmologies, that could not
scientifically could not be scientifically explained was assigned a space both devoid of
specific reference below or beyond the visible confines of the territory and at the same time
I could sit on part of it at high heterotopia, a metaphorical heterotopia. In many ancient
models of the world, and there is one one of the presocratic and axiomandars, the holes were believed
to be the stars, sorry, were believed to be holes that pierced the sky. And in his case orifices
that revealed the fire beyond what you could see the sky surrounding the earth. Another very good
example of this process is the Roman Mundus, meaning world in Latin. In the Roman city it was
a circular trend excavated for ghosts, spirits and other non-human creatures to be contained and to
avoid them wandering around with human beings. This receptacle of the supernatural, it's an actual
physical hole on the ground, right? I wanted to find a picture but I couldn't, I'm really sorry
so imagine this. As Richard remarks has an essential function in the Roman foundational
ritual of territory, right? After various ceremonies this hole was sealed with a stone
covered and only after this the city was named, the city was born. Now what is very important
is the process of taking possession of the ground by disassociating it from the frightening
or from the unexplained and the hole then becomes a space to locate to the limit to cover and so do
you to control the supernatural. Three times a year however this Mundus was ceremonially opened
to reconcile the two worlds. These were considered days of chaos in which no economic activities
could be carried. Certainly as the Roman Mundus shows the function of the hole as a container
of the supernatural is as important as its liminal status enabling the contact between the two worlds.
As the anthropologist Van Genep and later on Turner remark, entering into a different state
or confined implies a process of dissolution of identity where the individual is forced to
abandon the previous beliefs and reference, it's a liminal image. For example, the story of Jonah
and his struggle to overcome the whale illustrates this liminal property of holes. The empty dark
space of the whale's belly has often been interpreted as a liminal moment of darkness
intermediate between two stages or modalities of existence, in that case the real world and the
fires with the other world. Inextricably related to liminality, the uncertain dimensions and contents
of the hole make it a symbol of the abyss too as Johan has remarked. Just as the famous rabbit hole
in Alice's adventures in Wonderland, the fall is a symbolic projection of the transcendence
from the known, from the known dimensions, from the known code etc. And from these examples we
can summarize very symbolic principles of the fantastic holes. Generally speaking it is a way
to give a physical form to that what could not be impaired to that what is not empirically
perceptive or rationalized. Paradoxically it embodies a referential void. Okay so I'm going
to start now with the examples. The first aspect I want to explore is that of the hole as a
contentious space, as a reduction of the space around it as a microcosm. This principle transgresses
the basic spatial relation of big and small. Johan gives further account of the symbolic
and psychological process of this introducing the big within the small in what he calls the
archetype of the container and the contained and concludes which is very significant that these
images symbolize the inversion and I would ask invalidation of the laws of logic. Jorge Luis
Borges wrote in 1949 a text that very well synthesizes this principle in the Aleph, a very
well-known text. The narrator discovers in the basement a point in space containing all possible
angles of the world. Each thing he says, a mirror's face let us say, was infinite things since I
distinctly saw it from every angle of the universe. This sort of keyhole becomes a metaspace and a
metasign, container of the world in a single absolute image. Although not contemporously
strictly speaking, I've chosen this text because I think it represents a particularly
postmodern appreciation of reality and our spaces in reality. It is conceived as a space containing
and hybridizing multiple languages, symbols and identities and this observation is supported by
the fact that the Aleph has also been interpreted as a precursor of our new spaces of communication
like the internet. A window in which the observer could have access to an
unlimited and probably unmanageable amount of points of views and voices are ported through
which to connect with the multiplicity of layers of society. The theme of the whole as a
microcosm is represented from a different angle in Fernando Iwasaki's La Cueva, the cave.
In his short tale, the narrator explains how one day he decides to explore the imaginary cave he
makes with the bedsheets. When they play imagine they're playing there's a space and he decides to
go in but what happens is that he can never come back. What is particularly unsettling is how
naturally he accepts this fantastic domain as his new reality. We take the conclusion of another
story by Josemaria Merino. The conclusion says this is a world like any other, says the note
written by a character who falls into a well and never returns. Note the parallels there.
Differing from the 19th century idea of reality as something objective would set points of
reference. These texts seem to suggest that there are as many realities as constructions of them
and present a vision of the everyday created generated by the individual who constructs
his reality artificially and subjectively in relation to the surrounding space he has access to.
Now the second aspect, this section examines the limited properties of the whole as a potential
frame onto the fantastic and precisely this idea of potential is the central theme in the blind
house by the ones. The character becomes obsessed with the house he sees from the train in his
regular turn to work. He sees this house but there's a sight he cannot see and that makes
him really anxious and this anxiety increases when he realizes that through his binoculars
that the ordinary orifices of the house like windows and doors are actually fake. They are
painted on the surface. What might be behind those blind frames is what triggers the unbearable
anguish in him. So what's interesting in this story is that the fantastic tension is so to say
a psychological speculation that is concentrated upon the character's projection of the supernatural
potential behind these blind frames. Also in an abandoned house in Josemaria Marinos,
the house with two portals, a group of children cross a door that leads them into a city. Now
this city is just like their city but just grayer, emptier and darker. Crossing this whole reveals
another perspective to the reality they inhabit. It's a vision that will hand them to their
adults and this is the quote and still now when I open, this is the end of the story sorry,
and still now when I open the door of my house and go on the street I am often afraid of finding
myself in that immobile city that created an infinitely sad that accompanies this other one
like an invisible shadow. It's this vision that will hand them forever. This painful confrontation
is also with a world of different physical laws. It's also the core theme of Cristina Fernandez
Cuba's El Angulo de la Ror. The narrator discovers an angle, so sort of invisible keyhole in space
through which the world is presented to him in its most horrendous properties. That's a basic
plot so it's really powerful I think. What is very significant in these three examples is that the
hole in this case is not a classic threshold onto the supernatural. Rather they evoke or suggest the
possibility of a different perception to that what is known and this very different appreciation
is what suffices to trigger this feeling of uncertainty and I think this is very clear.
I'm going to borrow Rose's example here, Rose's exercise. I'm going to read this quote the very
last one and in your minds you substitute the word house for the word reality I think it becomes
very clear. It was this house, this house where you and me are at the moment and nevertheless
there was something strange in it. I was watching it from an unusual angle of vision.
First from the uncanny feeling provoked by a different perception of a known we will move
towards the equally uncanny feeling of a void or a gap that is a missing part of a supposedly
coherent structure. In this respect Cristina Fernandez Cuba's provides one of the most
interesting texts which has been highly influential in the Spanish contemporary
Valerama, Mirmana Elba. In here the narrator finds her old diary where she had described her
childhood together with her sister Elba. In their boarding school years ago they had found some
type of black holes in this boarding school that made them invisible. By accessing these holes they
entered to the hidden areas, they transgressed the limits of the space possible to them, allowed
to them. Much related to the bachelarian idea of the corner as the space of intimacy, these hideouts
from external reality are places where the girls develop their friendship and feel at ease and
free from the rigid rules imposed at the convents. But what's particularly interesting and what scholars
have ignored so far is that the motif of the hole is extended from being a perforation of physical
space of this void corners right to the silences of the text itself. The diaries the discourse of
space through which the narrative voice and the reader as well are confronted with the events of
the past but the narrator's attitude towards this act of remembering is key to understand this.
She does not intervene clarify judge or rationalize what happens. The existence of these fantastic
holes and the subsequent mysterious events like Elba's death are simply left unexplained. These
holes in the text embody the conflict presented with the act of remembering and reconstructing
the past as if in our mind there were a quantity of dead angles that hide some essential clues
to reconstruct memories. Five minutes. Oh yeah yeah sorry but I was timing it actually I think
we started with a nice it doesn't matter so I'll go to the next one and then the conclusions.
To finalize I would like to briefly comment on this inherent vertical of holes also related to
liminality. That is because open cavities are interlinked with the danger of falling and Dora
extensively commented on this song and I'll skip this. Interesting is how in a variety of sex I've
come across this imminent sense of never-ending fall provoked by a cavity is inverted from its
vertical axis to its horizontal one. It becomes some sort of horizontal vertigo which is a term
that has been used by sociologists for example for referring to LA to refer to the sense of
this location provoked by the vast extension of certain modern spaces and this is one of the
stories I've been working with. I'm not going to read the quotes if you can do it yourself
when I write the paper then when I present it or in the presentation. So to come to the conclusions
in the history of the fantastic the whole is a heterotopia of the unknown in that it contains
that what society cannot codify according to their reference and laws of logic. This study
has shown how the basic symbolic lines of this motif are present and have mutated in a contemporary
context and most importantly the different ways in that man interacts nowadays with the
realities surrounding him which is a necessary which necessarily has an impact in the new
constructions of the contemporary fantastic. So let us recap the four models. Inverting with
our relationship big and small creates microcosms that present the whole as container of multiple
realities that each individually subjectively constructs according to the boundaries available
to them. The whole as a frame of potentialities concentrates on the perception of the existence
of an alternate order or point of view to the known. At a language level the gap represents
a lack of some information necessary to reconstruct a logical discourse and in the
presented text it also makes reference to the porous foundation and letting limitation
of memory and identity. And finally the vertigo of falling into a non-codified realm speaks for
the dissolution of spatial reference that make obvious the subject's inability to perform what
Jameson calls cognitive mapping that is to mentally represent and locate themselves in
the global postmodern context. And last comment perhaps what these texts have in common
is that they show an awareness of the whole not only being an archetypical structure of the
fantastic but it also being an integral part of the real. In other words as Cristina Fernandez
Kovas from just referred to before expresses the reveal a notion of contemporary reality
being nothing else but a path full of black holes. Thank you very much.