La saga de los Marx by Goytisolo: Marx Kultur and Mass Culture on the television screen

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze how Juan Goytisolo (Barcelona, 1931) combines together the narrative practices of television and his performative and metanarrative writing in La saga de los Marx (1993). The author uses that hybrid prose for two principal purposes: on one hand he criticizes the figure of Karl Marx and the dictatorial application of his theories by some governments, claiming for the need to avoid the widespread ahistorical vision created by the too often announced "end of History"; and, on the other hand, emphasizing the ironic approach inherited from Cervantes, he paradoxically uses some audiovisual genres -such as documentaries, docudramas, TV series and talk shows- to revitalize literature in a postmodern society that relies too much on technologies.