The slum through the mirror. Cesar Aira's La villa as an optical device

Cesar Aira's La villa appears in the emblematic year of 2001. This oeuvre works as an optical device that allows to visualize certain contusions of the social and its effects, thanks to the residual as content and as material. The residual materializes in the novel in three levels. At the level of the plot, La villa has as space the landfill of the city, inhabited by supernumerary and anodyne characters who, nevertheless, keep a disturbing potential. At the formal level, Aira employs worn generic matrices, such as detective novels, fairy tale, and TV shows. At the level of the imaginary, the oeuvre works with the privileged commonplaces of the middle class. These three inflections of the residual are superimposed forming a small fresco, a bunch of stories that are interwoven by the magical and implacable logic of fiction.