An uncontrolled and shameless economimesis: Costa Lima, Borges and sociology

Abstract

In  a  critical  judgment  that  updates  Kantian  projections,  Costa Lima  and  Borges,  in  the  periphery,  try  to  measure  the  losses  and  gains  of what was left of the theory, after the catastrophes that tried to demolish the mimesis, in  crises  of  legitimation  of  all  (dis)order  that  swept  the  20th century. However, their ways of ethical resistance, in our view, hardly heal the   lacerated   cracks   of   the   fictitious   inflation,   in   a   preciosity   that   is somewhat  deterministic  or  indexing  of  morality  that  does  not  come  by chance.  So,  they  try  another  turn.  The  well-known  refusal  to  confine mimesis  to  the imitatio of  Truth  in  Costa  Lima,  combined  with  another realism in Borges, don’t crystallize the formal game and attempt to cross the evaluative limits   of   fiction,   questioning   the   sublime   of   a   subaltern existentialism  and,  at  the  same  time,  the  myth  of  the  objectivity  of  our material misery. So, what is intended in theory? Between the sterility of the “steel cage” of an alienating moral background (the very impossibility of art) and  the  aesthetic  pleasure  of  horror, between  raids and  alleged economic agreements,  some  means  of  interlocution  should  be  sought  in  critical theory,  and  not  just  a  putative  overvaluation  of  what  is  wanted  to  be redeemed in the sociological form.