The Space of Disappearance

Karen Elizabeth Bishop

Description

More than thirty thousand people were forcibly disappeared during the military dictatorship that governed Argentina from 1976 to 1983, leaving behind a cultural landscape fractured by absence, denial, impunity, and gaps in knowledge. This book is about how these absences assume narrative form in late twentieth-century Argentine fiction and the formal strategies and structures authors have crafted to respond to the country's use of systematic disappearance as a mechanism of state terror. In incisive close readings of texts by Rodolfo Walsh, Julio Cortázar, and Tomás Eloy Martínez, Karen Elizabeth Bishop explores how techniques of dissimulation, doubling, displacement, suspension, and embodiment come to serve both epistemological and ethical functions, grounding new forms of historical knowledge and a new narrative commons whose work continues into the twenty-first century. Their writing, Bishop argues, recalibrates our understanding of the rich and increasingly urgent reciprocities between fiction, history, and the demands of human rights. In the end, The Space of Disappearance asks us to reexamine in fiction what we think we cannot see; there, at the limits of the literary, disappearance appears as a vital agent of resistance, storytelling, and world-building.
Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Space of Disappearance: Knowledge, Form, Rights

Historical Distortions
Modes of Disappearance
Refraction and Resistance
Literary Form and Human Rights
At the Limits of the Literary
The Book to Come

1. Mimesis by Other Means: The Aesthetics of Disappearance in Rodolfo Walsh's "Variaciones en rojo"

Operation True Crime
In the Beginning
Variations in Red
Privileged Sight
The Framing and Unframing of Art
Bloody Dawn

2. Double Exposure: The Hermeneutics of Catastrophe in Julio Cortázar's Fantomas contra los vampiros multinacionales

A Fellowship of Exile
On Gaining Political Purchase
Smokescreen
Catastrophe and Consciousness
Double Vision
Force of Form

3. In Abeyance: Strategies of Suspension in Tomás Eloy Martínez's La novela de Perón

Other Logics
A Deliberate Gap
Dead Center
What World Is This?
Where in the World?
Anticipatory Fictions

4. Errant Metonymy: The Embodiment of Disappearance in Tomás Eloy Martínez's Santa Evita

Liquid Sun
Null Intersection
Simulacra, Site, and the Superabundant
Burial Plots in the Bardo
Aesthetic Justice

Conclusion: The Disappearance of Literature

Notes
Works Cited
Index

Sujets

• Caribbean
• Latin America
• Literary theory
• Latin American

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438478531
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Space of Disappearance
SUNY series in Latin American and Iberian Thought and Culture

Rosemary G. Feal, editor Jorge J. E. Gracia, founding editor
The Space of Disappearance
A Narrative Commons in the Ruins of Argentine State Terror
Karen Elizabeth Bishop
Ferrari, León (1920–2013)
Untitled. 1962. Ink on paper, 40 × 28⅝” (101.6 × 72.7 cm).
Copyright: FALFAA–CELS Agreement
Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bishop, Karen Elizabeth, 1972– author.
Title: The space of disappearance : a narrative commons in the ruins of Argentine state terror / Karen Elizabeth Bishop.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, 2020. | Series: SUNY series in Latin American and Iberian thought and culture | Based on the author’s dissertation (doctoral)—University of California, Santa Barbara, 2008. | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2019042440 (print) | LCCN 2019042441 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438478517 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438478531 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Argentine fiction—20th century—History and criticism. | Disappeared persons in literature. | Political persecution in literature. | Literature and society—Argentina.
Classification: LCC PQ7707.D58 B57 2020 (print) | LCC PQ7707.D58 (ebook) | DDC 863/.640935882064—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019042440
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019042441
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
for my mother, Helen, and my sons, Theo and Julian, for teaching me to see otherwise
What is there, with the absolute calm of something that has found its place, does not, however, succeed in being convincingly here. Death suspends the relation to place, even though the deceased rests heavily in his spot as if upon the only basis that is left him. To be precise, this basis lacks, the place is missing, the corpse is not in its place. Where is it? It is not here, and yet it is not anywhere else. Nowhere? But then nowhere is here.
—Maurice Blanchot, The Space of Literature
History isn’t done yet with turning itself into stories.
—Jacques Rancière, Figures of History
Contents
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction The Space of Disappearance: Knowledge, Form, Rights
Historical Distortions | Modes of Disappearance | Refraction and Resistance | Literary Form and Human Rights | At the Limits of the Literary | The Book to Come
Chapter One Mimesis by Other Means: The Aesthetics of Disappearance in Rodolfo Walsh’s “Variaciones en rojo”
Operation True Crime | In the Beginning | Variations in Red | Privileged Sight | The Framing and Unframing of Art | Bloody Dawn
Chapter Two Double Exposure: The Hermeneutics of Catastrophe in Julio Cortázar’s Fantomas contra los vampiros multinacionales
A Fellowship of Exile | On Gaining Political Purchase | Smokescreen | Catastrophe and Consciousness | Double Vision | Force of Form
Chapter Three In Abeyance: Strategies of Suspension in Tomás Eloy Martínez’s La novela de Perón
Other Logics | A Deliberate Gap | Dead Center | What World Is This? | Where in the World? | Anticipatory Fictions
Chapter Four Errant Metonymy: The Embodiment of Disappearance in Tomás Eloy Martínez’s Santa Evita
Liquid Sun | Null Intersection | Simulacra, Site, and the Superabundant | Burial Plots in the Bardo | Aesthetic Justice
Conclusion The Disappearance of Literature
Notes
Works Cited
Index
Illustrations
1.1 Diego Velázquez, Las Meninas .
1.2 Blueprint of Peruzzi’s studio. Rodolfo Walsh, Variaciones en rojo .
1.3 Daniel’s hypothesis. Rodolfo Walsh, Variaciones en rojo .
2.1 Cover of Julio Cortázar’s Fantomas contra los vampiros multinacionales , by Oswaldo for Excélsior Cia.
2.2 Cortázar on the phone with Fantomas in “Inteligencia en llamas.” Julio Cortázar, Fantomas .
2.3 Metropolitan skyline. Julio Cortázar, Fantomas .
2.4 Buñuel reinterpreted. Julio Cortázar, Fantomas .
2.5 Exposures. Julio Cortázar, Fantomas .
Acknowledgments
T his book is the product of many conversations, collaborations, and generosities, for which I’m grateful to many. At Rutgers, my colleagues in both the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Program of Comparative Literature have been an important source of camaraderie and intellectual motivation. I am particularly indebted to Marcy Schwartz for many lively and incisive exchanges about the evolution of this project and her support throughout; to Andy Parker for his unwavering support and the generosity of his counsel; to Tom Stephens for sharing with me what he knows; and to Camilla Stevens, Susan Martin-Márquez, Carlos Narváez, Dámaris Otero-Torres, Miguel Jiménez, Anjali Nerlekar, Janet Walker, Michael Levine, Jeff Lawrence, and Rhiannon Noel Welch for their collegiality and encouragement of my work. A bit further beyond Seminary Place, friendships with Michelle Van Noy, Hilit Surowitz-Israel, Azzan Israel, and Jamie Pietruska and her family have all sustained me while at Rutgers. The years I spent before moving to New Jersey on the faculty of History and Literature at Harvard were among my happiest. There I taught with and wrote alongside some of the most curious, creative, and talented scholars I know. I am grateful to Jeanne Follansbee for her unrivaled direction and continued friendship. And among my many esteemed colleagues who made the basement of the Barker Center home, Penny Sinanoglou, Teresa Villa-Ignacio, Anna Deeny Morales, and Patrick Pritchett continue to be dynamic collaborators and dear friends.
The idea for this project first took root in the form of a now-distant doctoral dissertation in the Program of Comparative Literature at UC Santa Barbara. I remain indebted to my dissertation committee—Ellen McCracken, Shirley Geok-lin Lim, and Suzanne Jill Levine—for their kind and rigorous engagement, and the many conversations that helped shape my early thinking on this work. Thanks also to Swati Chattopadhyay for her intellectual solidarity and generosity throughout, and to Susan Derwin, Elisabeth Weber, Catherine Nesci, Enda Duffy, and the late Timothy McGovern for their always-open doors. This book has also been informed and improved by many keen questions and conversations, in class and beyond, from students at both Harvard and Rutgers. My particular thanks to the students in my seminars on the Legacies of Torture, Lives of the Dead, Human Rights and Latin American Literature, and Writing Torture in the Southern Cone, as well as to the very talented doctoral students and senior thesis writers with whom I’ve had the good fortune to work.
A number of friends and colleagues, in whose debt I remain, read and provided invaluable feedback on portions of the manuscript: David Kurnick, Marcy Schwartz, David Sherman, Penny Sinanoglou, Lisa Swanstrom, and Teresa Villa-Ignacio. Many thanks also to Christiane Ingenthron and Kathy Sherretts for help with images. My sincerest thanks to the two anonymous reviewers of this project’s early manuscript, the integrity and depth of whose comments much improved the book and helped it find its final shape. Finally, warm thanks to this series’ editors, Jorge J. E. Gracia and Rosemary Geisdorfer Feal, to Rebecca Colesworthy for her initial interest and enthusiastic support of the project throughout, to Dana Foote for her expert and generous assistance in preparing the final version of the book, and to Holly Day for preparing the index.
I am grateful for an American Council of Learned Societies New Faculty Fellowship, for a grant from the Rutgers Research Council, to Rutgers for a semester’s sabbatical, and to the Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos in Seville, which provided me with library space to work while abroad. I am also grateful to Julieta Zamorano and Anna Ferrari, as well as to Cecilia Ales from the Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales in Buenos Aires, for their generous permission to use León Ferrari’s artwork on the cover of this book. Many thanks also to Iara Freiberg from the Fundación Augusto y León Ferrari Arte y Acervo.
I am most thankful for the generosities of my wide and cherished community of friends, variously near and far as I have moved from one corner of the world to the next. This book would not have reached its conclusion without the support, afforded in many different ways, of Lisa Swanstrom, Eliza Zingesser, Stacey Van Dahm, Yanoula Athanassakis, Anne Marcoline, and Christiane Ingenthron. Rachel Hart, Jennifer Fregeolle, and Terry Besch provided welcome drinks and warm conversation when most needed. In Seville, I am thankful for old friends who have seen me through this project from the beginning and new friends, particularly los de la Huerta, who have seen me through the end of it with many unforgettable kindnesses.
My family has entertained my desire to read and write about books long p