Los orígenes onto-cosmo-lógicos de Severo Sarduy

Abstract

 This article deals with the concept of origin or origins in Severo Sarduy’s philosophical thought. Self-claimed «inheritor» of Lezama Lima, one of the founders of Orígenes magazine, Sarduy nonetheless rejected the notion of ontological origins, for serving as the basis of all kinds ethnic, racial, and national essentialisms. Published in 1967, a year after the famous Heidegger interview in Der Spiegel (1966), De donde son los cantantes is a novel that parodies the Heideggerean-Nazi ontology of the great destiny of the German nation. As a counter-proposal to notion of ontological origins, Sarduy put forth the idea of a cosmological origin, such as that of the Big Bang theory: a moment of dispersion, non-teleological and without determinate destiny. As such, this article underscores the importance of these philosophical concepts in Sarduy’s aesthetics and ethics.