THE AVATAR IN PANAMA - Theses - Flinders University

3.3 Reinventing the Double The Avatar in Panamathe most common form of visualisation: subjects usually seethemselves in the middle of a visualised scene as actors or spectatorsoften due to an unfulfilled desire. This is true of the protagonists in both“La tarde del encuentro” and “El esposo”. 2 As with the traditionalliterature of the double, psychoanalytic and psychological factors suchas wish fulfilment and inadvertent summoning of the double, madness,loss of reason and psychic collapse, paranoia, jealousy, andvengeance, are explored as motivating causes for the emergence andpresence of doubles and doubling in the Jaramillo Levi's work. 3Structurally, within this first classic category, Jaramillo Levi creates plotdrivenstories which demand memory, intelligence, and lateral thinkingfrom the reader. There is frequently a traditional linear narration ofevents, comprising a preliminary incident, conflict and crisis,reappearing characters and concepts, and a resolution of sorts. Thisnarrative sequence forms the foundation for “Es él” and “El vecino”. Thesubdivision “Incidencias” in particular, comprises such anectodal tales. 4By interpreting the “borrowed” as those elements from the morerecent double discussed between 2.3 and 3.2, the presence of thepostmodern concepts for which Jaramillo Levi has become renowned,can be recognised throughout his fiction. Technically, the author revealsnon-linear narratives; he employs devices such as foreshadowing,adumbration, the use of flashbacks through memory, dream, daydream,(“El búho que dejó de latir”, “Mientras dormía”), and through theretrospective reconstruction of events by characters (“Síntesis corregiday aumentada”). As opposed to the linear, non-linear stories often beginin media res, beginning with climactic ending, and prefiguring at the endof a story what is likely to come (“Los anteojos”). The retelling of thesame text so that it is reshaped and presented with a new perspectiveis common to postmodern literature and this revision of existing texts isa process that Jaramillo Levi undertakes before each publication. 5 Thisclass of story provides brief flashes of information or a keyhole view of asituation from which the reader must put together a plot. There arevarious motives which can be attributed to both the older and morerecent fiction, in terms of the double’s development. Characters splinterand fragment, or in fact, they disintegrate or dissipate. The perspectiveof the narrator may be doubled with that of the reader, and there maybe dual or multiple view points. Doubling appears more often instructure and technique as there is often a spatial and temporaldoubling as far as text concerned, a fusion of fiction and reality.Metafictional devices such as self-referential fiction and themes; thestory within a story; narration through the reading of journals and books;2 See 1.1 Beside Oneself: Impaired Reality, footnote 70 34.3See Appendix A1 question 2.4 “El espectáculo” falls into this category and is imbued with the feel of a fable.5 See 3.2 Jaramillo Levi’s Revisionist Texts 205.223