Abstract

The objective of this study is to demonstrate that Disturbio by Miguel Ángel Manrique is a postmodern novel. In order to fulfill this purpose we have opted for the vision of postmodernity as a way of problematizing values and ideological interests of modern projects, the parody being a representative strategy of postmodern poetics. I will prove that the novel calls into question the separation between the high, popular and mass culture promoted by the modern emancipating project through the incorporation of the university institution as a thematic nucleus and the textual strategies of which are parody, satire, and irony, the three being closely related. Disturbio can be understood as a parodic satire which uses irony as a trope in order to question the university institution. In the novel, the university is configured as a center of control that legitimizes and promotes the separations between the high, popular and mass culture, maintaining, in this way, a dominant power structure that rests on the values of the liberal humanism. This is in spite of the fact that the members of this institution and the social space that surrounds it are characterized by a highly hybrid context.