Abstract
This chapter focuses on the work of Julián Herbert, which is distinct from most narco-narratives in that the consumption of illicit drugs comes to the forefront, the narration exploring relationships of self and other through the lenses of distinct psychotropic phenomena. In Cocaína (Manual de usuario) and Canción de tumba, Herbert, on one hand, develops a narcossist poetics that develops motifs of velocity, circularity, and escape, obliquely tying these kinds of movement to the cyclical frenzy of consumer culture, the inheritor of an anaesthetized Western subjectivity. On the other, he develops aesthetic work—especially writing—as a kind of illness that intoxicates a closed and rigid sense of self through contamination by the other.
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Notes
- 1.
For extended theorization of this tendency, see Herlinghaus, Narcoepics, and the discussion of the same in the Introduction of this book.
- 2.
For other notable, intoxicated narrations of Mexico, see Heriberto Yépez and Carlos Velázquez.
- 3.
Also see Marez and the discussion of his work in Chap. 2.
- 4.
A few caveats are necessary here. While I find Freud’s sketch of the origins of narcissism plausible, I do not subscribe to every aspect of On Narcissism, itself an early writing (what he characterizes here in a schematic way as the internalization of parental and societal criticism he would later systematize as the superego). In particular, Freud’s close association of homosexuality and narcissism is psychologically inaccurate and politically problematic. What is more, it should be clarified that my intention in this chapter is not to ascribe a diagnosis of clinical narcissism to Herbert’s protagonists or to the author himself, but rather to point out the presence of narcissist dynamics, especially in the context of cocaine use, which opens the path for the analysis undertaken here.
- 5.
See Chap. 2 for a discussion of the oscillating “boom and bust” cycle that constitutes part of the structure of the narcossist subject.
- 6.
In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari affirm, “All drugs fundamentally concern speeds, and modifications of speed” (282). Drugs exert “upon the perceived the force to emit accelerated or decelerated particles in a floating time that is no longer our time, and to emit haecceities that are no longer of this world: deterritorialization” (283); that is, in this case, distance from an assemblage characterized by damaged connections.
- 7.
In “Stabat Mater,” Julia Kristeva addresses this scission of self, which, while surely more visceral—for lack of a better word—in biological motherhood, I would argue manifests insofar as a parent is involved with the reproductive processes—biological or social—by which new selves come about. “First there is division, which precedes the pregnancy but is revealed by it, irrevocably imposed. … Then another abyss opens between this body and the body that was inside it: the abyss that separates mother and child. What relationship is there between me or, more modestly, between my body and this internal graft, this crease inside, which with the cutting of the umbilical cord becomes another person, inaccessible?” (145).
- 8.
From this point forward, I will distinguish Julián Herbert the author from his eponymous protagonist in Canción de tumba by referring to the former as Herbert and the latter as Julián.
- 9.
Pavel Andrade has astutely analyzed the circulation of violence, in circuits both personal and political, in Canción de tumba.
- 10.
The Manual opens with an epigraph referencing the fictional detective’s cocaine habit, and the first vignette makes multiple references to him. In A Study in Scarlet, Dr. Watson learns to his horror that Holmes is unaware of the heliocentric nature of the solar system, and the latter, upon learning of it, vows to promptly forget it again, so as not to clutter up his mind with irrelevant facts (Doyle 20). Thanks to Grover Patteson Hernandez for bringing this to my attention.
- 11.
See Smail on the moral alarm caused by habits of reading during the eighteenth century (On Deep History 181–83).
- 12.
See Chap. 2, where this concept is discussed with reference to Eve Sedgwick’s opposition of addiction and “pure voluntarity” (134). Hopefully it is clear that the narcossist “purity” of the cocaine addict that I describe in the previous section functions textually as an ironic aesthetic construct and should not be confused with the ultimate point of enunciation of these works.
- 13.
Timothy Morton has proposed that the contemporary moment, in which humanity persists in destroying its own life support system and environment, is one of universal hypocrisy (134–158).
- 14.
Verduzco comes to a similar conclusion in his excellent essay on Canción de tumba (96–97).
- 15.
See the second section of Chap. 2 and note 27 of that chapter for more discussion of this limitation in Deleuze and Guattari and other thinkers.
- 16.
It should be noted that this affirmation itself is directly deauthorized, as it follows an extract from “el cuaderno rojo,” a notebook detailing Julián’s creative process, that ends “Miento:”—the colon implicating the cited passage.
- 17.
Verduzco identifies Canción de tumba as a “narrative of disappropriation,” in Cristina Rivera Garza’s sense, and while I agree that there is a decentering of the author as speaking subject—largely enacted through techniques of intoxication—this does not imply that the text “detaches from … the ‘other’” (94–95). On the contrary, its intoxicated deauthorization permits a profound intimacy between author, text, reader, and, indeed, the dead.
- 18.
Suggestive in this regard is the fact that biologists Tal Shomrat and Michael Levin have recently demonstrated that a species of flatworm is capable of retaining learned behavior after their heads are cut off and regrow, along with their brains.
- 19.
This reading goes somewhat against the grain of Julián’s use of this passage later in the novel. He refers to the sea cucumber in the context of spending time with Mónica’s extended family, noting that love is what holds back the desire to “escapar arrojándole tus tripas al vecino” (192). My reading is supported by the initial passage, which focuses on the intimacy of the act as interpreted by Mónica.
- 20.
For analysis of a market-based international imagined community, see Cayla and Eckhardt.
- 21.
Verduzco also deserves credit for noting briefly that “[d]estabilization of symbols is also attained by a realistic representation narrated through an altered state of consciousness (such as that produced by fever and opium)” (88).
- 22.
Compare Parménides García Saldaña, referring to the late 1960s student movement in Mexico: “Estoy seguro de que toda esta gente es incapaz de compadecerse por los drogadictos” (Pasto verde 66).
- 23.
See Sayak Valencia for an illuminating discussion of the “narco-nación” (Capitalismo gore 34–37). Regarding the Calderón administration taking sides in disputes between criminal organizations, see articles on the García Luna case such as that of Torrens.
- 24.
For more on this false mythology, see Astorga, Mitología del narcotraficante en México, and Zavala, Los cárteles no existen.
- 25.
It is worth mentioning that Hitler’s frenetic energy depended on injections constituting cocktails of vitamins and an array of “supplements” that likely included what we would consider “hard drugs”—see Ohler.
- 26.
Here I use these terms more akin to how they are deployed in Anti-Oedipus, as an uprooting and reassignment of material “flows,” which is distinct from their deployment in A Thousand Plateaus. (Anti 222–240)
- 27.
Echazarreta also briefly connects Bolaño’s essay to Canción de tumba (317).
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Patteson, J. (2021). Escape Velocity: Narcossism, Contagion, and Consumption in Julián Herbert. In: Drugs, Violence and Latin America . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68924-7_7
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