OKTUBRE, the Montage of an Era or “Rock As All Weeping”.

Abstract

Affectivity makes us play with the syllables that -in a sort of juggling- leads us to elaborate other -sometimes strange- new names that do not always manage to establish themselves in the crowd or last through time, but they -without stopping in their fleetingness- pretend to embrace an object of love. In Carolina Bello's novel oktubre, this is the Platense band Los Redó or Los redondos, as Patricio Rey y sus Redonditos de Ricota (1976-2001) is popularly known, one of the most iconic bands of "Argentine national rock",1 which has unveiled journalism and social sciences2 as it sculpted a cultural phenomenon that has been the axis of an important process of subjectivation among its followers, (self-)ascribed as ricoteros. Before covid, their "misas ricoteras" summoned some one hundred thousand people, who made these "pilgrimages" to attend the "biggest pogo in the world" -which only the Indio,3 the band's vocalist, is capable of unleashing- and which hardly generates indifference among those who are aware of its existence, whether for its recriminations against violence, for the affective waste of those who sing and dance to its songs or for its extremely high level of attendance.