“The Baroque was seen as being restricted to one genre (architecture), or to an increasingly restrictive determination of periods and places, or yet again to a radical disavowal: the Baroque never existed. It is nonetheless strange to deny the existence of the Baroque in the way we speak of unicorns or herds of pink elephants. For in this case the concept is given, while in the case of the Baroque the question entails knowing if a concept can be invented that is capable (or not) of attributing existence to it. Irregular pearls exist, but the Baroque has no reason for existing without a concept that forms this very reason. It is easy to call the Baroque inexistent; it suffices not to propose its concept” (Deleuze)

“I believe that the term Baroque is beginning to stink” (Lezama Lima)

On the occasion of the appearance in English of Severo Sarduy’s 1974 volume Barroco and Other Writings, this seminar will reexamine Sarduy’s engagement with the Baroque alongside other twentieth-century (re)inventions of this aesthetic, historical or epistemic category.