Abstract In this analysis of Ramón Gómez de la Serna’s avant-garde novel El caballero del hongo gris (1928), I examine the narrative centrality of the main character’s use of a bowler hat, which, after its invention in the mid-nineteenth century, would become a frequent cultural reference. I engage Jacques Derrida’s conceptions of ipseity and democracy to explore the opposition of the singular and the iterable via the transnational business exploits of the protagonist Leonardo and his bowler, to which he attributes his economic success and ascension in society. This particular hat—offering democratizing possibilities and social mobility—is compared in the text to a crown, a figure of sovereignty, while the character is likened to a prince, king, and president. Read against the backdrop of the collapse of parliamentarism during the 1920s and 1930s, the paradoxical associations of the bowler—fluctuating between the democratic and the authoritarian—allow for a reflection on Leonardo’s classism and disregard for social disparities. Asserting himself to be the singular “caballero del hongo gris,” he is confronted on separate occasions by two different doppelgängers sporting bowlers, who disrupt his ipseity and reveal an underlying anxiety about the prospect of an individual becoming iterable, namely substitution and death. I thread into my discussion this fear of death with Leonardo’s trepidation concerning the discontent of the majority of society. Menacing over his opulent lifestyle is the specter of an imminent catastrophe, a literary anxiety which symptomatically responds to the political and economic crises of the interwar period.

中文翻译：

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民主的皇冠：单一的圆顶礼帽，Ramón Gómez de la Serna 的 El caballero del hongo gris (1928) 中的可迭代个体

摘要 在对 Ramón Gómez de la Serna 的前卫小说 El caballero del hongo gris (1928) 的分析中，我考察了主角使用圆顶礼帽的叙事中心性，圆顶礼帽在 19 世纪中叶发明后，将成为一个频繁的文化参考。我利用雅克·德里达 (Jacques Derrida) 的 ipseity 和民主概念，通过主角列奥纳多 (Leonardo) 及其投球手的跨国商业冒险探索单一性和可迭代性的对立，他将他的经济成功和社会地位提升归因于这些。这种特殊的帽子——提供了民主化的可能性和社会流动性——在文本中被比作王冠，一个主权的象征，而这个角色被比作王子、国王和总统。在 1920 年代和 1930 年代议会制崩溃的背景下阅读，投球手自相矛盾的联想——在民主派和专制派之间摇摆不定——让我们反思莱昂纳多的阶级主义和无视社会差异。声称自己是唯一的“caballero del hongo gris”，他在不同的场合遇到了两个不同的投球手，他们破坏了他的虚幻性，并揭示了对个人变得可迭代的前景的潜在焦虑，即替代和死亡。我将这种对死亡的恐惧与列奥纳多对社会大多数人的不满的恐惧联系到了我的讨论中。威胁着他奢华生活方式的是一场迫在眉睫的灾难的幽灵，一种文学焦虑，它对两次世界大战期间的政治和经济危机做出了有症状的反应。