A mirror and an explosion : mapping the spaces of Roberto Bolaňo's 2666

Abstract

This thesis analyses space and place across Roberto Bolano's 2666. It conducts an analysis of the architecture and the topography of the novel, addressing the ways in which Bolano's deployment of spatial images and his representation of the physical terrain of the novel articulates a perspective on the world at large and the position of the writer within it. The thesis finds that in this fictional reflection of the world, 2666 incorporates a critique of its own modes of representation. In Chapter One the thesis investigates how Bolano plays with the tension between reality and perception in the architectural spaces of the text. It identifies the layered qualities in Bolano's spatial representations with particular attention to the built and lived spaces in the novel. Chapter Two reveals how the spatial imagery of 2666 negotiates the ethics pertaining to the practices of writing and artistic production, which foreground the violence of language while asserting the necessity of writing. Bolano represents topographies of existential unease, spaces which manifest the unknown or unknowability itself, and articulates the position of the writer as one of inherent risk. The novel also underlines the specific linguistic violences occurring as the victims of rape and murder in The Part About the Crimes are made legible through attribution to specific spaces, a process explored in Chapter Three. 2666 uncovers the power of space to narrativize the crimes and thus reduce, control, and even conceal them. The suspension of resolution in the spatial and literary antagonisms set up in the text allows the text to resist aspects of the violence it identifies in "the filter of words."