Simulacro, desejo e ética: aproximações entre Slavoj Zizek e A invenção de Morel, de Adolfo Bioy Casares

Abstract

This article aims to critically examine some reflections and possible articulations in common between the book The Invention of Morel, composed by the Argentinian Adolfo Bioy Casares and published in 1940, and the use of psychoanalytic concepts such as ethics, desire of the ‘Other’, and symbolic and imaginary identification by the philosopher Slavoj Zizek. Both Morel’s and the narrator’s conceptions of imagistic projections as ideal life refer to what Zizek (1992) remarks about the psychic constitution of the subject who is unable to communicate with the ‘Other’. The narrator’s resolve, on the other hand, to join his beloved in the world of simulation, even at the cost of his own life, opens way for a consideration of its proximity to the ethics of desire, as proposed by Lacan (2008) in his reading of Antigone. The study of two main works, the book written by Casares and chapter V of For They Know Not What They Do by Zizek (1992), is accompanied by other thinkers of psychoanalysis and literature, which not only results in a theoretical articular that represents and adds to the understanding of the concepts proposed but also opens up space for new readings of the literary text beyond the work of the critic.