THE AVATAR IN PANAMA - Theses - Flinders University

Introducing the Double:The Seductive ParadoxThere are, it would seem, innumerable means of depictingdoubles and doubling. As a matter of course, in the literature of thedivided self or double, there is a situation, an action, a thought, a locale,an agent or an object, which is used consciously or unconsciously bythe subject in order to provoke the emergence of a double. The creationand facilitation of doubles and doubling by the fictional characters areforms of conscious or unconscious interior communication with the self.A fascinating aspect to note is that frequently these situations, actions,and thoughts, and their representation are strangely similar despite thecultural and chronological differences of the literature. Although inrecent times its popularity as a theme seems to have waned, the doublehas successfully re-emerged with a new twist as it has moved into thesphere of postmodernism. Although it has employed elements of theseprecedents, more recently postmodernism has deconstructed thenarrative structure of the text itself and manipulated the realms of timeand space.Regarding critical studies on Jaramillo Levi, there have beenseveral general collections of essays and articles compiled by Elba D.Birmingham-Pokorny (Critical Perspectives in Enrique Jaramillo Levi'sWork: A Collection of Critical Essays; Referencias cruzadas:Entrevistas al escritor panameño Enrique Jaramillo Levi); Yolanda J.Hackshaw M. (La confabulación creativa de Enrique Jaramillo Levi);Ricardo Segura J. (Mar de fondo: 10 breves estudios en torno a la obraliteraria de Enrique Jaramillo Levi; Puertas y ventanas: Acercamientosa la obra literaria de Enrique Jaramillo Levi); and Margarita Vásquez dePérez (Inventario crítico: Duplicaciones y Tocar fondo). 4Despite the fact that the theme of the double has a personalrelevance to Jaramillo Levi and that it figures so abundantly in hisliterary output, the critical research has been somewhat limited as onlyselected collections of his works have been studied. Few of the studiessolely analyse Jaramillo Levi’s employment of the double, none of themdo so comparatively, nor from more than a particular point of view. Withthe exception of one major study by Ángela Romero Pérez (La miradaoblicua: Voces, siluetas y texturas en ‘Duplicaciones’ de EnriqueJaramillo Levi), and Patricia M. Mosier’s article on treating the conceptof the double in certain stories from Duplicaciones (“Caja de4 Elba D. Birmingham-Pokorny, ed., Critical Perspectives in Enrique Jaramillo Levi'sWork: A Collection of Critical Essays (Miami, Florida: Universal, 1996); Referenciascruzadas: Entrevistas al escritor panameño Enrique Jaramillo Levi (San José, CostaRica: Perro Azul, 1999); Yolanda J. Hackshaw M. ed., La confabulación creativa deEnrique Jaramillo Levi (Panamá: Universal, 2001); Ricardo Segura J., Mar de fondo:10 breves estudios en torno a la obra literaria de Enrique Jaramillo Levi (Panamá:Instituto Nacional de Cultura, 1992); Puertas y ventanas: Acercamientos a la obraliteraria de Enrique Jaramillo Levi (San José Costa Rica: Editorial UniversitariaCentroamericana, 1999); and Margarita Vásquez de Pérez, Inventario crítico:Duplicaciones y Tocar fondo (Panamá: Universidad Tecnológica de Panamá, 1998).3