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Placebo Intellectuals in the Wake of Cosmopolitanism: A “Pharmacological” Approach to Roberto Bolaño’s novel 2666

Offering a “pharmacological” perspective, this essay elaborates on the Chilean Roberto Bolaño’s novel 2666. It discusses narrative imaginaries that regraph cultural experiences and spaces of self-consciousness as they emerge from singular global south networks. In 2666, the Mexican-U.S. border region operates as a fraught site through which a global a esthetics of sobriety gains shape and texture, a phenomenon upon which Bolaño’s text depends for its critique of Western academic knowledge. From there, I consider how a “pharmacological” problematization of Western culture can reshape our perspective of the constitution of a global modernity.