A Strange Case of Literary Minimalism: Roberto Bolaño’s “The Part About The Crimes” in 2666

Abstract

“The Part About the Crimes” poses an unprecedented challenge in terms of the exercise of narrating the femicides committed in Mexico during the 1990s. Against this problematic background, this article unfolds in two parts. In the first one, following Kant and Lyotard, it intends to show the singularity of the experience of the sublime caused by (the account of) the crimes. In the second part, it opens the possibility that an understanding of the event as a whole can appeal to figures of reason, but instead of going back to Kant, it resolves it by appealing to some concepts-ideas by Giorgio Agamben that have come to enrich the landscape of contemporary political philosophy.