The Abstract Allegory of Griselda Gambaro's Stripped (El despojamiento)

Abstract

In this one-act play, written as Argentina began to slide into a repressive dictatorship and produced just as the country was returning to democracy, Griselda Gambaro improvises on the allegorical genre so as to allow for multiple, simultaneous, interdependent perspectives on an enigmatic theatrical universe. "Abstract allegory," as practiced by Gambaro, is a more sophisticated political and aesthetic strategy than either what Fredric Jameson calls "national allegory," which simply tells one (private) story to refer to another (public) issue, or what Doris Sommer refers to as "dialectical" allegory, in which two narratives are equally significant and mutually constructed. Just as any one of the fractured forms in an abstract painting might hint at a landscape or a human figure, the drama simultaneously alludes to several antagonisms between powerless individuals and menacing authority figures: 1) women oppressed by abusive men; 2) ordinary civilians at the mercy of low-level torturers; and 3) civilian leaders subjugated by military authorities.