Marco Denevi: An Argentine Anomaly

Hipotermia by the Mexican author Álvaro Enrigue was published in 2006. Even though it is considered an example of the most recent Latin American narrative, reflecting on the effects of globalization and neoliberalism in Mexico, the most evident effect of which is a blurring of the idea of nation, it has not been well acknowledged for depicting the incertitude of our days in a more social way. In this article I read Hipotermia as a novel where the Writer (as a social representation of the intellectual) deals with a creative block as a result of his anxiety regarding the traditional concept of an author in the boom period (1970s). The way he works through it consists in a fictional project about non-epic characters. As a result of this, the book creates a mosaic of voices that can be identified as experiences of the middle class in the context of a global society. I try to prove that the concept of “Global Class,” developed by Saskia Sassen, describes Enrigue’s conception of both the exile’s experience and the middle class’s subjectivity.