The effect of technical imagination in literature

Abstract

Technical objects appear in literary works as objects positioned within the limits between art and technique, between magic and reason, the real and representation. In such a frontier zone where literary discourse develops, the technical object triggers ambiguity and delusion. Lima Barreto, in his short story Um e outro, aims at an automobile but hits Lola’s hesitation, a character divided between the imagination of the object and the passion for the driver. Both Cortázar, in his short story Las babas del Diablo, and Antonioi, in his film Blow up, deconstruct photographic pictures as imitations of the real. The narratives by these authors go beyond the mere usefulness of the technical objects and point to an imagination that frees the human being from a direct relation to technique. The objective of this work is to situate these texts within the frontier zone between the symbolic and the technical.