Abstract
This article explores two texts that offer a self-conscious, metafictional rewriting of Argentina’s founding revolution in May 1810 at the time of the nation’s Bicentenary. It aims to draw out the political focus of both texts (a novel by Washington Cucurto and a play by Manuel Santos Inurrieta) by analysing the ways in which they draw on heavily politicized historical discourses in their fictional appropriations of this moment of origin. This analysis leads to the emergence of two very different ideas of the popular in both works, one closely related to Peronist discourse and the other entwined with the Marxist concept of the proletariat. This article therefore argues for the need to reconsider the definitions of the relationship between literature and history that emerge from postmodernist theory, definitions which centre on the epistemological relationship between ‘fiction’ and ‘fact’. Instead, it proposes a foregrounding of public discourses of history, often employed as political tools, in order to perceive a far more detailed engagement with the political in literary texts that rewrite history. This article is published under a CC-BY license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Highlights
Argentina’s Bicentenary celebrations commemorated the most significant date in the nation’s patriotic liturgy: 25 May 1810
This article will explore the relationship between these characterisations and political traditions within Argentina, those of Peronism and the Marxist Left, in relation to the public discourses of history generated by these groups as a challenge to ‘official’ history
By highlighting the importance of ideologically infused historical narratives for these literary rewritings, I aim to reconsider our assumptions about the relationship between literature and history in self-reflexive fictional engagements with the past, challenging the limited definitions of the ‘political’ that emerge from postmodern readings of the blurring of boundaries between the two
Summary
Argentina’s Bicentenary celebrations commemorated the most significant date in the nation’s patriotic liturgy: 25 May 1810. Cucurto’s novel is a raucous and irreverent romp through an alternative version of the nation’s history, whilst Santos Iñurrieta’s play embarks upon a metatheatrical, Brechtian retelling of Argentina’s founding revolution Both texts’ engagement with the narrative of May 1810 is strongly focused on the idea of the popular, configured in different, and politically significant, ways. Cucurto’s text challenges the reader to abandon the ‘straightjacket’ of liberal discourse and take the alternative he creates on its own terms, as a representation of vitality missing from restricted definitions of the Argentine, and his appropriation of these stereotypes forms part of this challenge By conducting this game of inversion through Independence, the text engages with the status of this period as a focal point for projections of the nation, and employs this to target the intersection of cultural norms, exclusionary discourses of national identity, and the distribution of political and economic power associated with the liberal project. By providing an intensely ironic depiction of this ‘common sense’, made ridiculous through incongruous elements in the dialogue and by placing these words in the mouths of the cast (who represent the pueblo throughout), Moreno destroys the illusion of shared values upon which this discourse depends, paving the way for the popular vision constructed throughout the play to assert an alternative political and cultural structure
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