L’eterno mascolino futuro prossimo. Il protagonista transumano della trilogia antropologica di Borislav Pekic

This chapter traces the evolution of the protagonist of 1999, the novel by Yugoslav writer Borislav Pekić (1930-1992) published in 1984 and dedicated to George Orwell’s 1984. Initially a male figure, in the course of the narrative this character gradually modifies his nature and from human becomes android through a metamorphosis that also involves his gender and then eventually returns to being a male, although with the features now of a robot. The novel, hovering between science fiction and philosophical speculation, is part of Pekić’s anthropological trilogy (the other two titles are Atlantis and Rabies) about the future of our civilisation, here conceived from an Anglo-Saxon point of view and transposed, from a literary point of view, in line the Dostoevskian paradigm that accords an absolute highlighting of the human condition and its values. The almost total absence of women in Pekić’s works is striking, in the sense that they are never protagonists, and therefore not functional in the plot. This extraordinary and prolific writer apparently was unable to find the time or the space for a female protagonist who would be credible in the complex role of a protagonist in this dystopic future universe. It cannot be ruled out that the constant references to Dostoevsky could have had its weight in this regard. Like Dostoevsky’s female figures, those in Pekić’s work are mostly ‘mute’ and marginal. These features are also evident in 1999, where the woman in the story is an android, a robot, that seems somehow subjugated by the dominant presence of the male protagonist, metamorphosed into an android but still male.