Material imagination and tropisms. On the connection between Juan José Saer and Nathalie Sarraute

Abstract

This paper analyzes the link between the narrative of Juan José Saer and Nathalie Sarraute. For this, it presents the hypothesis that Saer elaborates the theory of “tropisms” and transforms into a particular material imagination: the one which makes his fiction space into a fluid, pasty, gelatinous world. This convergence is possible because in the source of both fictions the same element is interrogated: the sensitive status of the world for an awareness that is still rising and blurred. A dark area previous to the rational constitution that separates the subject from the object and the Cartesian world’s awareness.