Presentation of paper

Acquiescent Subjects in the Utopian City: Ray Loriga’s Rendición

In his 2017 novel RendiciónSpanish author Ray Loriga’s first person narrator relates, in an ongoing narration always trapped within the present moment, his and his family’s transition from a rural village into a transparent city. They and their fellow villagers are re-settled in this eco-utopian urban space supposedly due to the threat posed by external enemies. My analysis will focus on the concept that sets the title of the novel, rendition, and on the ways in which the first person narration tracks and traces the gradual erosion of any capacity to resist or dissent the positive utopian rationale actualized in the transparent, ecologically sustainable architecture and urban life of the transparent city. My analysis will draw out the intersections between affects, the infrastructural and architectural features of the city, and the politically vacuous discourses and practices that are enacted in the city, and that then make worm their way into the subjectivity of the narrator as he normalizes them by narrating them.