Tendencias neobarrocas y monstruos en las obras Salón de belleza y Flores de Mario Bellatin

Abstract

In this thesis, the novels Salon de Belleza and Flores, written by Mario Bellatin, were studied from the Neo-barroque perspective. In Chapter I, the theories proposed by Michel Foucault in Los Anormales and Omar Calabrese in La era neobarroca, were presented and applied to the characters in order to study the figure of the monster. In Chapter II the monstrosity of the protagonist was drawn by the inverted metamorphosis of the butterfly; in other words, the transformation of a barber to a shelter manager, and, therefore, the transformation of his beauty salon into a dying place. However, the real monsters end up being the State and the social institutions such as family, hospitals and religion. Some of the monstrous cases studied in Chapter III were a father that inoculated the AIDS virus to his son, the Kuhn twins (victims of the drug that caused them to be born without arms and legs) and the poet Alba (adoptive mother that rejected her children when they did not meet her expectations). The final case studied was a writer born with a physical disability who dedicated his work to investigate the different ways sex was practiced in the city. However, the narrative voice suggests that the real monsters are the representatives of science.