Fiction and Self-fiction in Thebes Land, Ostia and The Wrath of Narcissus

Abstract

This paper deals with the notion and the resource to self-fiction in the play-writing of the contemporary producer Sergio Blanco, articulating aspects of three of his latest plays: Tebas Land, Ostia and La ira de Narciso. In a brief approximation and history of the concept of self-fiction, the paper is an attempt to interrogate it from the perspective of psychoanalytic conceptualizations that play down on the frontiers between reality and fiction. In this sense, the ego itself is viewed as a fiction and the explosion of its assumed unity is discussed. In turn, certain notions, such as the non-contradiction and the lack of temporality of the unconscious, are considered, together with the screen memories, in order to discuss some passages from the previously mentioned plays. The Lacanian concept of the false trace is added to the discussion, in its sense of forever being alienated from «reality» and immerse in language. Finally, the paper proposes the consideration of self-fiction, together with psychoanalysis, as alternatives of resistance against the desubjectivating intimidation of our present context, as forms of recovering a human dimension, as reflective and thoughtful possibilities, as a place for commotion and affect.