This paper proposes an understanding of Juan Goytisolo’s novel El sitio de los sitios as a cultural response to the crisis of traditional Western models of rationality. The article focuses on the study of the dynamics of global social decomposition and the emergence of marginal figures seeking to recover their transgressive capacity through their bodies and the appropriation of urban space. By bringing memoricide and ethnic cleansing in the novel as negative expressions of modernity, Goytisolo questions the role of the reader, the author and the novel itself as essential elements in the literary representation of reality.