SOURCE: Levinson, Brett. “The Other Origin: Cortázar and Identity Politics.” The Latin American Literary Review 22, no. 44 (July-December 1994): 5-19.

In the following essay, Levinson considers the “return to origins” theme in “Azolotl” and discusses the link between origins, identity, authenticity, and Otherness in Latin American thought.

The “return to origins” is one of the recurring themes of Latin American cultural criticism and literature. The discussion has assumed many forms, but a more or less “dominant school of thought” has established itself, one that associates the return to origins with the recovery of a former authenticity and/or an “Other” (once held, now lost) subject position.¹ The following study will not challenge this association of origins, authenticity and Otherness but reevaluate it by creating an intersection of Julio Cortázar's 1956 tale “Axolotl” and a hermeneutics that could perhaps best be labeled “radical” since its purpose is to get to...