In(ter)venciones estéticas en Ema, la cautiva, de César Aira

Abstract

This article analyzes the way in which Cesar Aira intervenes in the 19th century Argentine literary metanarrative through the re-elaboration of one of its main themes: the peculiar culture generated by the encounter between the indigenous people and the occupying military outposts of the territory of Pampa. In Ema, la cautiva Aira uses this historical and narrative space to superimpose a writing that deliberately traverses the topics of civilization and barbarism. The narration is an aesthetic in(ter)vention in a border story, characterized by the introduction of a new language that establishes its own references. The anachronisms, the mixture of genres, the stylistic ruptures, the praise of frivolity, indifference, exoticism, and hedonism break with the canon and inscribe the novel in the most innovative contemporaneity of Argentine literature.