Introduction

This introduction frames the poetry of César Vallejo from the ideas of Alain Badiou. The chapter argues that many of Vallejo’s poems emerge from having been confronted with an event that has taken subjectivity out of its inertia to reinvent it from other convictions. It is a poetry that announces the event that testifies its presence and defends it in spite of its political failure. The book studies the emergence, in the poems, of a subject that interrupts hegemonic repetition, affirms a truth that exceeds the law and never gives up despite failure or “lost causes.”