Animate Objects: Being, Obsolescence and the Limits of Citizenship in Gómez de la Serna

I consider not only how Ramón’s privileging of objects brings them to life—literally—as co-citizens alongside human characters but also how their innate obsolescence as things conditions a general understanding of the inanimate in Ramón’s work as a whole. I establish a theoretical understanding of “community” as it relates to the narrated built environment and then pinpoint how Ramón animates the inanimate while detailing its case for citizenship within his urban world. Having considered the animate object’s “birth” and possible integration as a citizen, I engage the other finite extreme: the ostensible death of the object through obsolescence.