Gendered Violence and NeoliberalDesaparecidosin Luis Cano’sSocavón

Abstract

This article situates Socavón (1999), a monologue by leading Argentine playwright Luis Cano, in terms of former Argentine President Carlos Menem’s (1989–99) economic policies in post-dictatorship Argentina, demonstrating how neoliberalism can be understood through the gendered shame and violence it produces. Shunted aside in Buenos Aires and haunted by its legions of desaparecidos, protagonist Ulisito desperately seeks throughout Socavón to regain his masculinity – as well as his personhood and his visibility – through aggression. I argue that Ulisito’s violence is a form of civil resistance, a reaction against a dehumanizing economic regime, as well as a critique of unresolved human rights issues haunting democratic Argentina. Cano draws on numerous dramatic and literary antecedents, including a play that is foundational to dramatic modernity, Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck, as blueprints for a contemporary crisis. Socavón suggests that unless a more equitable society is created, women in particular will continue to be the victims of a collapsed masculinity trying to reassert itself.