Dystopia, Silence and Bodies in Rosa Arciniega’s Mosko-Strom

Abstract

Rosa Arciniega’s (1903–1999) third novel, Mosko-Strom (1933), presents a dystopia disguised as a utopia, centred on a city, Cosmópolis—perfect, modern, and active—where punctuality, precision, and progress constitute the sole paths to human and scientific development. Max Walker embodies the American dream: a successful chief engineer at one of the city’s largest automobile companies, he represents the modern man—active, punctual, rational, and wholly devoted to the religion of progress. Following a series of traumatic personal events and through his friendship with Jackie Okfurt, his exact and mechanical nature gradually begins to fracture. Cosmópolis, conceived as a complementary and alternative version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, is transformed into a gigantic body that crushes its inhabitants within a suffocating space where noise is omnipresent, leading to its obsessive identification with the Maelstrom. Silence, with its multiple interpretations, frequently appears associated with “un horizonte que la técnica todavía no ha absorbido con sus enormes medios” (Le Breton, 2006, p. 112), and ultimately crystallises in an idealised rural life, the only possible remedy to the ailment of modernity.