ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses Prosa del observatorio will consist of a number of relatively complex and interrelated stages, all of which, however, address a single question: to what extent is Julio Cortázar capable of 'rescuing' Man from his metaphysical/scientific imprisonment, and what traces does the attempt to extricate him leave in the text? It begins with a comparison of the socio-political aspects of Prosa del observatorio and the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, whom it invokes, but for whom it would very probably appear 'all too human'. The chapter describes that many of the phenomena and issues with which Prosa del observatorio deals might be fruitfully reconsidered in deconstructive terms, and indeed Jacques Derrida extends his thinking to specific questions concerning the status of Man and humanism. The science challenged by Cortázar is Newtonian science. Michel Serres sees the resultant systematization/idealization as an inherently fatal, hypertelic attempt to subjugate the whole of the living–a 'science of death' or 'stragtegy to kill'.
