Julio Cortázar’s Dark Cities: From Literature to Urban Studies

Abstract

This article examines the p non of the city in fiction, with the aim of demonstrating the relevance of fictional texts for urban studies. Beginning with modernism in the 1900s, it explores the border between fiction and documentary, and the development of the author as a chronicler who registers events without adding an ideological valuation. While giving an overview of the theories at the intersection of urban and literary studies, from the “proto-urbanism” of Benjamin, Debord, and Simmel to the modern interdisciplinary approaches of literary geography and econarratology, the article especially focuses on Timothy Morton’s concept of “dark ecology”. From this literature review emerges a previously unexplored problem: when a space is outside of any observer’s gaze, does it remain stable, or does it change? Addressing this question, and building on Morton’s work, I develop the term “dark city” for analyzing literary texts. Analogous to Morton’s concept, the dark city determines unexplored realms of everyday city life, such as fears, emotions, or hidden control. To explore this concept, I analyze three short stories by Julio Cortazar, a situationist writer from the first half of the twentieth century. Cortazar’s Text in a Notebook, as I argue, explicates the shadowy side of the metro. As a parallel world inside the city, Cortazar’s image of the metro can be read either as a fantastical world inside the world of reality (sci-fi), or as a manifestation of the potential shadow functions of urban infrastructure. In another short story, Graffiti, he explores urban subcultures of communication, presenting the figure of the graffitist as an eyewitness to “dark” everyday urban life, both through his visual practice (graffiti) and his verbal practice (story). Finally, Cortazar’s short story Press Clippings captures two spaces—the daytime city and the nighttime citywhich have different influences on the plot. Darkness stimulates the plot’s development, I argue, because of its unpredictability and otherness, turning a night walk through the city into a crime. In the conclusion, the article proposes the further application of the term “dark city” to less-studied areas—specifically urban subcultures, folklore, and psychological effects.