Manuel Joseph's 'Amilka aime Pessoa' Explores Schizophrenic Doubling

In his work 'Amilka aime Pessoa', Manuel Joseph employs a doubling technique that has few equivalents in contemporary literature. His doubles—real or fictional—are neither different from himself nor truly similar, but rather alter the narrator's primary identity. This schizophrenic element produces a language where intoxication and detoxification of the self contaminate each other. Joseph's use of heteronyms diverges from Fernando Pessoa's model; instead, it parallels the plastic work of artists like Thomas Hirschhorn and Jean-Luc Moulène. The incorporation of the other does not involve mirroring or twin completeness; the double exists to turn the psyche back on itself, opening it to a multiplication of other identities. This viral form of the self is a rupture, as shown by an excerpt from Georges Bataille's 'Le Bleu du ciel' inserted in the text. Through this generalized colonization by all communities—authors, anonymous figures, friends, administrations, direct or indirect flows of control systems—the narrator/author accesses a 'biopolitical' truth. The text as foreign body is threatened to the extent that this body threatens society. Even détournements infiltrate like 'products'; chemical mentions double, making protection and destruction indiscernible, acting as social agents that alienate subjectivity while liberating alienation for their own benefit. This experience pervades 'Amilka aime Pessoa', leaving the reader no other way out.