The National Telepathy by Roque Larraquy, skilfully translated by Frank Wynne, is an extraordinary, disturbing, metaphoric read. A satire of scientific racism; a critique of colonialism and its mindset, the novel questions to what extent so-called modern civilisation is founded on violence, racism and warping or erasing memory.
“I do not believe that to be born or raised in a single place necessarily imposes the sentence of a single view of the world, that the lands and frontiers of the State are a prison for identity, nor that the terms Porteño, Peruvian or Canadian contain a millstone whose weight bends our hand. I do not believe in the effectiveness of one unchanging hat for all heads that seek shelter from the sun. To belong to a particular place and culture is not to be yoked to a tragic fate, but rather the capriciousness of an affair that may or may not grow into love.”
The novel begins in 1933. Señor Dam is one of a powerful group of tycoons in Buenos Aires. He commissions the importation of a group of nineteen indigenous people from the Amazon on the borders of Brazil via the Peruvian Rubber Company. His plan is to exhibit them in an ethnological theme park, in Argentina. This echoes the human zoos of the nineteenth century in which indigenous people were displayed in native villages to white, Western audiences.
Marginalisation of Suffering
On arrival, because “the Indians have no surname”, they end up in Dam’s own apartment in a chic neighbourhood while attempts are made to resolve the problems caused by their administrative undocumented status. A ritual object is in the cargo accompanying them: a kind of wooden totem containing a hibernating sloth. The strange horrifying power of the creature manifests when it scratches the leg or the hand of a person. A telepathic connection between two people is triggered, resulting in shared mental states, notably “orgasmic, telepathic bliss.”
This liberating gift, referred to as “the intrusion”, has mystical potential. It could unite consciousness and bridge differences by allowing the affected person to see through the eyes of another rather than remain confined to an ego-bound perspective. But this is overlooked by Señor Dam and his circle. Instead, it is viewed as a business opportunity and a means of satisfying sexual fantasies and desires. The original plan for an ethnological theme park is abandoned and the telepathy becomes the basis for a secret state within a state. The Commission of National Telepathy will institutionalise this power for surveillance, propaganda and repression.
Colonial Scripts
In the first half of the novel, events are recounted from Dam’s and his assistant’s perspectives. The grotesque narrative is laden with scatological and erotic references, fuelled by an extreme form of racism. In the second half of the novel, the style is fragmented like a notebook of materials for a documentary, incorporating letters, bureaucratic reports, decrees, protocols, transcripts. Through this rather confusing archive, the reader grasps how the telepathy apparatus is institutionalised and used as a tool for control. References to the authoritarian Peronist regime points to Argentina’s own history.
A sense of discomfort grows while reading The National Telepathy since it is largely narrated from the point of view of the chief oppressor under a veneer of rationality, all the while exposing the hypocrisy, misogyny and violence of the colonial mindset. Under the guise of progress and science — or today, of technology and relentless armament in the West — cruelty can be systematised. Systems of power can produce horror instead of being civilising. The reader witnesses how the indigenous people – “the Other” – are objectified and sexualised, while their spiritual totem – the sloth – is appropriated for exploitative, perverse ends. The horror and absurdity of that appropriation is truly grotesque in its effectiveness. The National Telepathy is a timely albeit not easy read given the growing influence of extremist politics and the spread of abusive propaganda warping minds throughout the US, the UK and Europe — denied or ignored by so many.
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