Aesthetics of subversion: François Rabelais and Enrique Marty, two ways of coexisting with intolerance

Abstract

In the last decades, one of the issues tackled by Literature and Art Theory has been to specify their role in the construction of social identities. Despite the differences between theoretical perspectives, they all agree that the process of constructing a group identity is based on several interests and not only gives privilege to some singularities and leaves others behind, but also that some differences and divisions inside the group are taken as an intolerable and insurmountable distance between individuals or communities.

Within this perspective, we are able to analyze two pieces, one from literature and other from art that in specific historical periods had led to a certain counter-representation of the societies in which they are set. In this way, Rabelais during the Renaissance, and Enrique Marty in contemporary culture, assume a check- up of the established models and that they question the idea of joint identity, as well as all that has been taken as acceptable.