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Placebo Intellectuals in the Wake of Cosmopolitanism: A “Pharmacological” Approach to Roberto Bolaño’s novel 2666
- The Global South
- Indiana University Press
- Volume 5, Number 1, Spring 2011
- pp. 101-119
- 10.2979/globalsouth.5.1.101
- Article
- Additional Information
Offering a “pharmacological” perspective, this essay elaborates on the Chilean Roberto Bolaño’s novel 2666. It discusses narrative imaginaries that regraph cultural experiences and spaces of self-consciousness as they emerge from singular global south networks. In 2666, the Mexican-U.S. border region operates as a fraught site through which a global a esthetics of sobriety gains shape and texture, a phenomenon upon which Bolaño’s text depends for its critique of Western academic knowledge. From there, I consider how a “pharmacological” problematization of Western culture can reshape our perspective of the constitution of a global modernity.