“62: A Model Kit”: A Situationist novel by Julio Cortázar
- DOI
- 10.5922/2225-5346-2026-3-11
- Pages
- 178-202
Abstract
The article analyses Julio Cortázar’s novel “62: A Model Kit” (1968) in the context of the Situationism movement. The novel is considered as part of the writer's corpus of works from the 1960s and 1970s, a period when he underwent political reorientations in connection with the aggravation of the political situation in Latin America (the military dictatorship in Argentina, the socialist revolution in Cuba). Political events in Europe at this time, particularly the student riots of May 1968, were reflected in the almanack “Last Round” (1969). However, beyond the general socio-political context, typological and contact links are discovered between the Situationists and Cortázar. The novel “62: A Model Kit” describes a group of characters reminiscent of the Situationists in their language and the form of their activity — the psychogeographical practices of drift. It is also established that Cortázar was familiar with “The Situationist Times” journal. Both Cortázar and the Situationists share a focus on the city and a desire to transform the everyday: for the former, the artistic goal was to liberate literature from the confines of art through an appeal to the reader's urban subjectivity; for the latter, it was to disrupt the specialised structures of power and test methods for creatively exploring the urban environment. The similarity between the Situationists' texts and Cortázar’s works is reinforced by a shared philosophical pretext — namely, Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Being and Nothingness”, which outlines the concept of ‘situation’, the key concept for the Situationists. These points of intersection between Cortázar and the Situationists suggest a connection not only at the level of the socio-political and intellectual environment in Europe in the 1960s, but also at the level of strategy and the language of artistic reflection and practice. The discovery and consideration of the Situationist layer in the novel “62” allows us to include it in the studies of the political history of the XX century, as well as in urban studies and the city-oriented artistic practices.
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