“LESS-THAN-HUMAN”: POROUS BOUNDARIES IN AUGUSTO MONTERROSO’S “MISTER TAYLOR” AND MERCÈ RODOREDA’S “LA SALAMANDRA”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24029/lejana.2020.14.1661Keywords:
Mercè Rodoreda, Augusto Monterroso, less-than-human, neocolonialism, gender violenceAbstract
This paper proposes to analyze two short stories, “Mister Taylor” by Augusto Monterroso and Mercè Rodoreda’s “La salamandra”, with the aim of studying the peculiarities of the term “less-than-human.” This concept, I argue, is a humanist instrument used for violence and exploitation, however, it also refers to the fact that the human can become “something else”, offering the latter a post-humanist critical view of processes such as gender violence (as in “La salamandra”) or neocolonialism (in “Mister Taylor”).
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