El idiota de la familia: Mario Vargas Llosa y la imposible coartada en el ser.

Abstract

This paper analyzes Mario Vargas Llosa‘s theoretical displacement related to his conception of literature‘s ethical function through the study of essays. I will explore how the Peruvian author shifted from an ethical position in which the writer commits himself with the possibility of a different social order, to literary position in which the writer‘s only commitment is with his writing, postulating an inmanentist view of literary production. I also show how the displacement is closely linked to his shift of a philosophical view of history that moved from a pro-socialist progressive conception to a neoliberal conservative one. In that sense all of Vargas Llosa‘s comments on authors like Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Gustave Flaubert should be read as moments in the evolution.