Form and ideology. Mechanisms of integration and submissiveness in 'Lectura fácil', by Cristina Morales

Abstract

The aim of this article is to study Cristina Morales’ novel Lectura fácil from two premises: first, literature’s radical historicity, which forces us to pay attention to the ideological and production conditions of the text; secondly, the need to revolutionize the literary form in order to participate in and transform reality. On the one hand, these propositions lead us to analyze the procedures through which Morales’ fiction denaturalizes the submissiveness and integration mechanisms displayed by the system. On the other hand, it helps us by clarifying the way in which text transforms the novel form, illustrating it as a result of an assembly process. Understanding the novel as an assembly of different voices and materials, real and/or fictitious, allows us to understand reality as a construction, a necessary step to face the inevitable dialogue between the ideology of form and the ideology of content. Only through this dialogue can we finally learn about the conditions and contradictions of the internal logic of advanced capitalism and the radicalism of the Morales’ approach.