ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the peculiarly double-edged nature of Rayuela's rejection of, but simultaneous adherence to, the very metaphysics that it so yearns to abandon. It suggests a thinking of this complex and irreducible 'double-bind', rather than any naïve proclamation of its resolution, that might permit a reading of the novel which does not simply succumb to the metaphysical assumptions which it seeks to renounce. Martin Heidegger was the first philosopher to question systematically the foundations of Western metaphysics. 'Being-in-the-World' is reduced to cataloguing, and dwelling is defined by demographic statistics, reconfirming the link between prescriptive metaphysics and analytical scientism and its proliferating army of 'isms'. Heidegger is even forced to describe the ineffable Event of Appropriation in terms of a 'framework', conceding that structurality seems to intervene even at the 'origin', and that 'everything that results from the step back may merely be exploited and absorbed by metaphysics in its own way'.
