Miquel de Palol i els límits de la consciència: modes de subjectivació en Salamó i La nit italiana

Abstract

The Catalan artistic and literary production during the Transition to Democracy was characterised by a mixture of interartistic practices grounded on experimentation and hybridism. Significant to this period are Miquel de Palol’s books of poems Salamó (1981) and La nit italiana (1986) since they explored new subjectivities built on the dialogue between desire, imagination and the creative process. Drawing from the theoretical framework disseminated by the TelQuel group, in particular by Michel Foucault, Philippe Sollers and Jacques Derrida, this article analyses two key aspects that will define Palol’s poetic voice: firstly, the existing and sometimes neglected connections between these initial poems and the theories concerning the limits of the act of writing (Sollers 1983). And, secondly, it explores in which manner these poems formulate subversive subjectivities inspired in the theories of decentralization, alienation of consciousness and ‘desubjectivation’ of the subject (Deleuze 1977; Foucault 1998).