The Subjugation of the Subject and the Colonization of the Lifeworld: A Critical Sociological and Phenomenological Re-reading of Gabriel García Márquez's "I Only Came to Use the Phone" through a Seven-Fold Theoretical Synthesis
Abstract
Adopting a multidisciplinary and critical lens, this essay offers a conceptual and hermeneutic exegesis of Gabriel García Márquez’s tragic short story, Solo vine a hablar por teléfono (“I Only Came to Use the Phone”). The research investigates the institutional, discursive, and interpersonal mechanisms through which a subject possessing rational and autonomous agency—María de la Luz Cervantes—is systematically stripped of her authentic agency and reconfigured into the manufactured identity of a “psychiatric patient.” To elucidate this transformative process, this article establishes a composite, seven-fold framework derived from prominent philosophical and sociological traditions: (1) Max Weber’s instrumental rationality and the iron cage of bureaucracy; (2) existentialist thrownness and the absurd (Sartre and Camus) in the face of an indifferent world; (3) Michel Foucault’s disciplinary power and regimes of truth regarding the discourse of “madness”; (4) labeling theory (Becker and Lemert) and the imposition of a “master status” as secondary deviance; (5) Erving Goffman’s total institutions, stigma, and the mortification of the self; (6) the phenomenology of intersubjectivity and embodiment (Husserl and Merleau-Ponty) and the collapse of the shared lifeworld; and (7) Jürgen Habermas’s communicative action and the colonization of the lifeworld by technological-bureaucratic authority.
The findings reveal how an ostensibly trivial incident, centered on a simple biological request—the need to use a phone—is subjected to the overlapping mechanisms of medical-psychiatric surveillance, patriarchal complicity, and bureaucratic deafness, effectively mutilating the totality of María’s existential identity. Ultimately, by reinterpreting her initial acts of rebellion as clinical evidence of insanity, this analysis demonstrates that the subjugation of the subject is not a product of internal dysfunction, but the consequence of the structural determinism of a total institution that renders the reclamation of authentic agency impossible.
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BibTeX
@misc{madani2026subjugation,
title = {{The Subjugation of the Subject and the Colonization of the Lifeworld: A Critical Sociological and Phenomenological Re-reading of Gabriel García Márquez's "I Only Came to Use the Phone" through a Seven-Fold Theoretical Synthesis}},
author = {Yousef Madani},
howpublished = {Zenodo},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.23504669},
url = {https://zenodo.org/records/23504669},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - The Subjugation of the Subject and the Colonization of the Lifeworld: A Critical Sociological and Phenomenological Re-reading of Gabriel García Márquez's "I Only Came to Use the Phone" through a Seven-Fold Theoretical Synthesis
AU - Yousef Madani
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/20
PB - Zenodo
DO - 10.5281/zenodo.23504669
UR - https://zenodo.org/records/23504669
AB - Adopting a multidisciplinary and critical lens, this essay offers a conceptual and hermeneutic exegesis of Gabriel García Márquez’s tragic short story, Solo vine a hablar por teléfono (“I Only Came to Use the Phone”). The research investigates the institutional, discursive, and interpersonal mechanisms through which a subject possessing rational and autonomous agency—María de la Luz Cervantes—is systematically stripped of her authentic agency and reconfigured into the manufactured identity of a “psychiatric patient.” To elucidate this transformative process, this article establishes a composite, seven-fold framework derived from prominent philosophical and sociological traditions: (1) Max Weber’s instrumental rationality and the iron cage of bureaucracy; (2) existentialist thrownness and the absurd (Sartre and Camus) in the face of an indifferent world; (3) Michel Foucault’s disciplinary power and regimes of truth regarding the discourse of “madness”; (4) labeling theory (Becker and Lemert) and the imposition of a “master status” as secondary deviance; (5) Erving Goffman’s total institutions, stigma, and the mortification of the self; (6) the phenomenology of intersubjectivity and embodiment (Husserl and Merleau-Ponty) and the collapse of the shared lifeworld; and (7) Jürgen Habermas’s communicative action and the colonization of the lifeworld by technological-bureaucratic authority. The findings reveal how an ostensibly trivial incident, centered on a simple biological request—the need to use a phone—is subjected to the overlapping mechanisms of medical-psychiatric surveillance, patriarchal complicity, and bureaucratic deafness, effectively mutilating the totality of María’s existential identity. Ultimately, by reinterpreting her initial acts of rebellion as clinical evidence of insanity, this analysis demonstrates that the subjugation of the subject is not a product of internal dysfunction, but the consequence of the structural determinism of a total institution that renders the reclamation of authentic agency impossible.
ER -