Narrating from syncretism: the marvelous real as a strategy of epistemic subversion
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.69789/ccs.v12i1.744Keywords:
cultural miscegenation; epistemology; literature; religious syncretismAbstract
This essay analyzes Alejo Carpentier’s novel The Kingdom of This World as a platform for epistemic subversion through a syncretic lens. Using theoretical frameworks such as Bourdieu’s literary field, Genette’s intertextuality, Deleuze and Guattari’s minor literature, Lotman’s semiotics, and the decolonial critiques of Dussel, Mignolo, and Ortiz, the essay shows how the novel challenges European cultural hegemony. The concept of the “marvelous real” is emphasized not as a stylistic ornament but as a strategy to foreground alternative rationalities and Afro-Caribbean worldviews. Key topics include the body as a site of resistance, animality as an epistemological possibility, and non-linear time as a form of narrative decolonization. The text also explores religious and spatial syncretism as elements shaping an insurgent poetics. From these perspectives, The Kingdom of This World emerges as a fundamental work for rethinking Latin American history and literature from its cultural and epistemic margins. The proposed reading invites us to challenge dominant discourses and imagine narrative forms that recognize Latin America’s ontological plurality.
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