All or nothing: The problem of (in)authenticity in Rayuela

Abstract

Rayuela by Julio Cortázar has been interpreted as a denunciation of inauthenticity by way of the absurd. However, such a denunciation is not in itself a sufficient condition for the possibility of an authentic existence in a strict existential-ontological sense, that is, a resolved commitment in the face of finitude which is first revealed in being-toward-death but requires a projection toward future possibilities from the irreplaceability of each Dasein. Accordingly, the misfortunes of Horacio Oliveira are not attributable to a hedonistic impulse or a life without rules, but are linked to his erratic and reduccionist methodology. To the degree that it is possible to treat rationality and irrationality as two sides of the same metaphysical coin, Oliveira’s skeptical, "all-or-nothing" search can be understood as a critique of the radical subjectivism and the methodological individualism upheld modernity.