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Argentine Sociopolitical Commentary, the Malvinas Conflict, and Beyond: Rhetoricizing a National Experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2022

David William Foster
David William Foster*
Affiliation:
Arizona State University
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It was inevitable that after the demise of the series of military dictatorships that ruled Argentina so violently between 1976 and 1983, the return to democratic institutions would occasion an outpouring of the kinds of writing and cultural activities banned or censored by the generals. Movie distributors in Argentina today cannot keep up with the demand for films that could not be seen during these years (or were seen only with extensive and capricious cuts). Theaters are competing with each other to present works dealing with human rights violations and related themes. Television programming, which the military assiduously controlled, has now begun to evince some social consciousness. Meanwhile, the print media have filled bookstores and kiosks with myriad publications bearing witness to the attempt to recover a cultural tradition altered and fragmented by the so-called Proceso de Reorganización Nacional.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , 1987 , pp. 7 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 by the University of Texas Press

References

Notes

1. For an analysis of Muecas and other works published in Argentina during this period, see David William Foster, “Narrativa testimonial argentina en los años del ‘Proceso’,” Plural, 2d series, no. 150 (1984):21–23.

2. My theoretical points of departure are similar to those used in the essays in Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism, edited by Josué V. Harari (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1979), and in the seminal writing of Hayden V. White, particularly his Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978). Works on Latin America that parallel in several ways my essay are Eliseo Verón, “Ideología y comunicación de masas: la semantización de la violencia política,” in Lenguaje y comunicación social (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Nueva Visión, 1976), 133–91; The Discourse of Power: Culture, Hegemony, and the Authoritarian State in Latin America, edited by Neil Larsen (Minneapolis: Institute for the Study of Ideologies and Literature, 1983), particularly Hernán Vidal's “La declaración de principios de la junta militar chilena como sistema literario: la lucha antifascista y el cuerpo humano,” pp. 43–66; and Hernán Vidal, Dar la vida por la vida: la Agrupación Chilena de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos (ensayo de antropología simbólica) (Minneapolis: Institute for the Study of Ideologies and Literature, 1982).

3. Indeed, one might argue that the attempt at the neutral transmission of meaning is an extreme example of rhetoric, as did Roland Barthes in his famous essay he Degré zéro de l'écriture (Paris: Editions Seuil, 1953).

4. One should also consult Nunca más: informe de la Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas (Buenos Aires: Editorial de la Universidad de Buenos Aires). The preparation of this report was overseen by novelist and essayist Ernesto Sábato, who served as the president of the commission. This report is destined to be counted as one of the most important sociocultural documents in Argentine history.

5. Many of the terms and concepts I employ concerning narrative and semantic structure are related to the model developed by Algirdos Julien Greimas and Joseph Courtés in Semiotics and Language: An Analytical Dictionary, translated by Larry Crist et al. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982).

6. Marcos Aguinis, Carta esperanzada a un general: puente sobre el abismo (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana/Planeta, 1983).

7. Eduardo Luis Duhalde, El estado terrorista argentino (Buenos Aires: Ediciones El Caballito, 1983).

8. Camps played a prominent role in Jacobo Timerman's Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number, translated by Toby Talbot (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981). Timerman's book was the first major document published outside Argentina on human rights violations, and its detailing the experiences of one of the powerful figures of Argentine journalism contributed to its international recognition. Significantly, the original Spanish edition, Preso sin nombre, celda sin número (Buenos Aires: El Cid Campeador, 1982), carries the cover title El caso Camps: punto inicial.

9. See also p. 159 on the language of the interrogators and pp. 221ff on the vocabulary of the processes of extermination.

10. Carlos Gabetta, Todos somos subversivos (Buenos Aires: Editorial Bruguera Argentina, 1983). The book was originally published in French in 1979.

11. Miguel Bonasso, Recuerdo de la muerte (Buenos Aires: Editorial Bruguera Argentina, 1984).

12. Another recent sociopolitical document that could have been included in this study is Juan José Sebreli, Los deseos imaginarios del peronismo (Buenos Aires: Editorial Legasa, 1983). A political journalist of considerable eloquence, Sebreli is described by the cover as examining “elementos bonapartistas y fascistas del peronismo. Sus relaciones con la clase obrera y la clase media. Imperialismo. Fascismo de izquierda: el fenómeno del terrorismo. La sociedad civil hoy.”

13. Some of these issues are examined in David William Foster, “Latin American Documentary Narrative,” PMLA, Publications of the Modern Language Association 99 (1984):41–55.

14. O. R. Cardoso, R. Kirschbaum, and E. van der Kooy, Malvinas, la trama secreta; 13th printing (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana/Planeta, 1984).

15. For a record of the extensive publications now available on the Malvinas, see Roberto Etchepareborda, “La bibliografía reciente sobre la cuestión Malvinas (primera parte),” Revista interamericana de bibliografía 34, no. 1 (1984):1–52.

16. Daniel Kon, Los chicos de la guerra: hablan los soldados que estuvieron en las Malvinas, 8th printing (Buenos Aires: Editorial Galerna, 1983).