Roberto Bolaño and the intelectual lumpenism

Abstract

The figure of the intellectual in Roberto Bolaño's work is often interpreted through the prism of marginality. This category is defined by a certain attitude towards the universe of symbolic exchanges in the field, being configured by a voluntary and/or involuntary non-belonging to it. However, some of Bolaño's characters constitute a style that goes beyond these limits in such way that the author's intellectual ideal can be understood as a refusal not only to the field, but also, and perhaps above all, to an economic and political model. Following clues from his own work, this article intends to present the category of intellectual lumpen or intellectual lumpenism, an idea that merges in the characters Arturo Belano, Ulisses Lima, Cesárea Tinajero, Auxilio Lacouture and Benno von Archimboldi. The latter would be, finally, the most finished version of an intellectual model conceived by Bolaño, becoming Belano's overcoming, that is, the author's last alter ego.