Under his hand. Writing and sovereignty in Yo el Supremo

In this article, I propose a critical reading of the relationships between sovereignty and writing in the novel << Yo el Supremo >> by Paraguayan author Augusto Roa Bastos. Focusing on various allusions and the role played by hands in the novel, I delve into how the narrative offers a sophisticated review of sovereignty, exploring the dualities of the sovereign's biological and political bodies. I argue that the figure of the sovereign is reconfigured through the mimicking and replication of its handwritten letter, which tensions the relationship between document and fiction and prompts the death of the sovereign's political body. My article examines five singular forms of writing that correspond to various hand movements in the novel, reflecting the ambivalences of sovereignty. I divide the article into these five forms: << the hand that commands,>> << the hand that (writes for) him,>> << the hands that (dis)order,>> << The hands that move,>> and << The hand that erases >>. These categories demonstrate how the figure of the sovereign transcends the biological-political body duality, as argued by Ernst Kantorowicz, and is instead configured as an assemblage of multiple bodies, materialities, and writings. This assemblage allows me to demonstrate how Roa Bastos surpasses the historical representation of the dictator figure as a representative of sovereignty, instead presenting a complex network of hands that make sovereign power viable. In conclusion, I suggest how the possibility of mimicking the sovereign's handwriting results in the death of the biological-political body duality.