Iberian Nearby Experiences: (In)utility and Lightness (of Being and Things)

This article draws on considerations by Nuccio Ordine in L’utilità dell’inutile and Josep M. Esquirol in La resistència íntima: assaig d’una filosofia de la proximitat to discuss the uses of collage and the approach to the everyday experience in several Iberian texts. In a collage, the different elements retain their discreteness and fragmentary quality. Therefore, this is a useful method to address lightness and inutility in the work of several twentieth-century Iberian writers such as Pessoa, Castelao, Josep M. de Sagarra, Ramón Gómez de la Serna and Tere Irastortza. These writers vindicate the need to live a true life, to be aware of nothingness and of the abyss, which is always a very radical experience.