Between verses and chains

the matter of the bicycle in Nicanor Parra's poetry

Abstract

The concept of “carrocracia” (Trói, 2017) serves as a platform for problematizing the apparatuses of neoliberal domination – centered on radical individualism, hence the dominance of the private automobiles in the wake of urban planning under the road-centric logic – in the era of the Anthropocene and, why not say, in the era of the Capitalocene (Haraway, 2016). This study aims to investigate an aspect of the poetry of Chilean artist Nicanor Parra through the imagery/symbol of the bicycle: what is the role that this mode of transportation occupies in his poetics? Is there a deliberate tension between language and life in the repeated representation of the bicycle throughout his work? In the analysis, we integrate the repertoire deriving from literary criticism (Campos, A. de; Gallardo, 2004; Grandón, 2014; Valverde, 2022) with urban studies (Carmelini; Mizoguchi, 2022), as well as contributions from organized activism for bicycles and the right to the city (Ludd, 2005; Furness, 2013; Augé, 2009).