La Busqueda de Mis Visceras

My thesis is an experimental project that explores the connection between aesthetics and meaning-formation. The inspiration for the project emerged out of my research into the work of a group of poets known as infrarrealistas, whose most famous member, Roberto Bolaño, has become one of the widely read writers of our times. In the recently published anthology titled Perros habitados por las voces del desierto (2014) Rubén Medina, a founding member of the group, explains the infrarrealistas' artistic motivation as an attempt to capture the multiple forces that shape the subject's identity (16); forces that operate beneath the complex symbolic systems of communication. These forces are responsible for shaping the subject's immediate experience, or being-alive-ness. Influenced by the group's motivations and recent conceptualizations within the field of affect theory, the following project is an exercise in using poetry as a way to re-conceptualize the experience of being alive. Discursive formulations are avoided in an attempt to create a text whose meaning derives from its affective connection with the reader, and not from the intricate economies of meaning that limit the affective scope of academic and scholarly language. As a result, the following thesis upon first glance looks like the work of a mad man. Poems, citations, excerpts from books, pages from my personal diary are bundled together in a way that challenges what is commonly understood as an academic thesis. However, its validity rests in the fact that it tries to engage with current work in the field of affect theory, experimenting with aesthetics and meaning-formation, and leaving aside the discursive formulations to engage with its reader at an affective, or visceral level.