%0 Journal Article
%T Axolotl/Bichos Raros Cr¨®nica
%A Susana Ch¨¢vez-Silverman
%J PORTAL : Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies
%D 2012
%I 
%X In this cr¨®nica, I pay homage (and talk back to!) one of my favourite authors, Julio Cort¨¢zar, who I had the great privilege and pleasure of befriending in 1980, when he was a visiting professor at UC-Berkeley. I have been obsessed with time-travel, doubling, and interstitiality since I was very young; even the most casual Cort¨¢zar reader (if such a thing is possible) will immediately recognise these as recurrent themes in his work. Here, faced with several actual axolotl in a Buenos Aires aquarium, I explore and comment on Cort¨¢zar¡¯s strangely mesmerising meditation on identity and transformation. My personal connection is (as in much of my writing) concerned with aspects of gender and sexuality suppressed or (more likely) ignored in Cort¨¢zar¡¯s version. I identify, too, with a poignant in-betweenness and ambiguity I read in the figure of the axolotl¡ªand in the work of Cort¨¢zar and Alejandra Pizarnik.
%K cronica
%K chronicle
%K Susana Chavez-Silverman
%U http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/portal/article/view/2514