Quijano’s imminent death, governor Panza’s present death

Abstract

From the definition that Sancho Panza gives of his government as "present death", when abandoning it after so much desiring and seeking it, this paper constructs the image of the present time as an arrest of any flow and, as the limit of this movement, as the death of writing. The post of governor, bound to a number of codes of conduct, has converted the object of his adventures into its closure, in which the paper sees the identity between function and terminus.Besides this, the episode of Alonso Quijano's testament is analyzed, especially the withdrawal of the Quixote that it implies, leaving to the lucid and well-behaved gentleman the role of dying, unsuitable for the delirious knight he had created. The hens of his testament allow us to see an echo of Socrates' preparation for his poisoning scene, which creates a contrast between with the finalism of our culture and the free behavior of Don Quixote.This, however, is not a specific theme of Cervantes’ book nor of his time. Thus, this paper seeks to construct another image of this present as dead time, from aspects specific to contemporary reality, but with the same detention of writing as the previous one.The ways with which the knight of la Mancha and his squire face the subject of death (present or imminent) are thought of as modes of inventive writing, which can’t be reduced to the division between functional and dysfunctional as a criterion of production or reading.