Batman y las sombras de la modernidaduna genealogía crítico-material del héroe contemporáneo

Resum

This work aims to study Batman as the foundational figure of the contemporary superhero and its imbrication in the fundamental problem of modernity on the basis of a critical-material genealogy. After a first chapter of methodological contextualization where the methodological limits for the specific object of the analysis are be established, the second chapter of the work analyzes the composition of the character from the context of his hometown. This first level points out the ways in which the character helps to narrate and consolidate the mythical presuppositions that are necessary for the consistency of that city, an idea that is reinforced by an example of "revisionary literature" (H. Bloom). This leads us to the third chapter of the thesis, which deals with the question of sovereignty and the state of exception: in discussion with philosophers such as Hobbes, Carl Schmitt, or Michel Foucault, this chapter discusses the role of the comic-book superhero from the nature of political power, democracy and its suspension, demonstrating thus how superheroe narrative represents fascist voluntarism and incurs its legitimization. This relationship between vigilantism and fascism leads in the fourth chapter to the general question of the redeemer from the problematic of modern nihilism. For its study, we proceed in a comparative manner. Superhero scenarios explicitly refer to the exercise of “vigilantism” and his universalization of revenge as a crusade. First appearing in the first novels of chivalry, this feature reappears in Don Quixote and after him in all modern action heroes (Raskolnikov, Bruce Wayne, etc.). From the origins of modern novel to superhero comic-books, this third chapter shows a space of coincidence in modern narratives that is not only formal but also material-structural and demonstrates a synchrony in the key stories about nihilism from the point of view of the characters and their actions: the recurrent chronicle of "crime and punishment". This chapter concludes with a brief comparison between Batman and Gothic novel that reveals the paradigmatic nature of modern hero as a monster. The fifth chapter of this work studies the problem of super villain starting from the programmatic confusion between the superhero and the superman. What is the real meaning of the superman in the problem of modernity? Is the (super)hero a real superhuman (Übermensch), or rather a further example of "the last man" as Nietzsche conceived him? Following M. Foucault in his genealogical analysis of madness as anathema to difference, this penultimate chapter delves into the roots of a typology that culminates in Joker and who revolves against a system of order based on control through fear. For this purpose, we will study in a regressive way the figures of the "man of the underground" by F. M. Dostoevsky and his immediate ancestor "Rameau's nephew" by Diderot as the first figures in literature of this alternation to normality. From the hand of M. Bakhtin's work, the sixth and last chapter of this work culminates with a study of the comic as a recovery of the polyphonic and divergent word, which means openly democratic. Two analyses of comic-books will demonstrate the ideas contained in this last chapter.