A dead man’s “great exterior”

From magical realism to the magic of the real

Abstract

This article proposes a speculative exegesis of Horacio Quiroga’s “The dead man” from a perspective akin to new realism and object-oriented ontology. It sets out from the general premise that this tale is an important precursor of magical realism in literature, and seeks to identify –in its texture– the concrete conditions of the actualization of this genre as such. It posits that “The dead man” grants us access to a kind of “great exterior” that is non-correlative to anthropocentric thought: an ultra-world without givenness where life and death seem to be superimposed on a plane of perfect immanence, a “kingdom of this world” in which objects rule. Thus, it contrasts this absolute dimension with postmodernity’s endless relativism and fascination with “the death of man”, while characterizing the magical realist genre, not through the wellknown opposition of reality/magic, but on the basis of the emergence of a real that imposes its own magic.