Verónica Abrego

Cosmopolita desde sus motivos y personajes, su lenguaje, intertextualidades y posicionamientos, la obra de Julio Cortázar (1914-1984) se reconoce como eminentemente latinoamericana, aunque el espacio material de su creación sea en gran parte transatlántico, razón por la cual cabe considerarla como precursora de las literaturas entre mundos o posnacionales. Al radicarse en Francia en 1951, el escritor y traductor de origen argentino, interesado desde joven en las literaturas y culturas mundiales, expande su contexto inmediato de referencia y profundiza la interacción con el entorno cultural marcado por la época geopolíticamente álgida de la Guerra Fría. Nexos y espacios compartidos cumplen un papel significativo en las identificaciones y las metamorfosis que se producen en la tarea de un escritor que inicialmente estuvo enfocado en el mundo de la imaginación para convertirse en el intelectual comprometido que invierte gran parte de su tiempo en promover el cambio social y los derechos humanos. En un intento de cartografiar la red de conexiones y vínculos en la que está imbuida su literatura, las siguientes páginas indagan en esa otra trama que el escritor tejió desde su correspondencia.

How do women authors shape their labors of memory? What strategies do they use in order to evoke past sorrow or confront residual trauma? Which present-day circumstances can reawaken embodied memories? This essay draws on post-colonial theory, specifically the concept of “writing back,” in order to unveil the multiple layers of remembering enclosed in the corpora of testimonial and fictional texts written by Argentinean women. Since the forces of state repression targeted rebellious women in two ways, by declaring them “subversives” and via a generally misogynistic society, this literature counters hegemonic versions of the past while reframing memory in a gendered way. This essay discusses these acts of strategic “writing back” on the basis of testimony by Pilar Calveiro, Graciela Feinstein, Alicia Kozameh, Alicia Partnoy, Susana Romano Sued and Nora Strejilevich, and fictional texts by Cristina Feijoo, Manuela Fingueret, Norma Huidobro and Sara Rosenberg.

Since 2015 a new human rights movement struggle against violence against women, Ni una menos. From the perspective of cultural studies, there is a strong link between these women struggling for cultural transformation and the long lasting battle against oblivion carried out by Argentinas Human Rights Movement and especially, by the Mother and Grandmother of Plaza the Mayo. Against the background of state terrorism and its literature written by women, this contribution reflects on methodology studying Argentina women’s literature on state repression and also on the role of women as agents of social transformation.

En las últimas décadas y debido a la globalización, aun siendo su afincamiento restrictivo, la movilidad de personas coloca incluso a sociedades como la argentina, que se autodefine como de inmigrantes, frente a interesantes encrucijadas discursivas: ¿Qué elementos mueve la vulnerabilidad de los actuales inmigrantes en la autopercepción de las autobiografías migratorias de lxs argentinxs? El artículo 25 de la Constitución argentina fomenta explícitamente “la inmigración europea”, pero, ¿qué sucede con la “nueva migración”, por ejemplo con la de personas originarias de China, que se establecieron en los años 1980 y ya cuentan con una “segunda generación” o con otras llegadas aún más recientemente provenientes del continente asiático y que apenas llevan pocos años en el país? ¿Qué imágenes de anfitrión/-a registra quien es acogidx y proviene de un núcleo cultural distinto? A partir de una conceptualización de interseccionalidad que no se restringe a los tradicionales ejes de “género, ...

In the light of the material turn in the Humanities some aspects of Julio Cortázar’s (1914–1984) work become very evident today as a laboratory of the future. For Cortázar, reading was a transforming impulse, part of a process of liberation from mental ties to which he contributed as an author, challenging the barrier between the fantastic and the real, the limit between the human and the animal, between the living and the inert. Thus, as a critic on blind Modernity, Cortázar, from his stories, questions anthropocentrism in a gesture that in the current crisis of the Anthropocene could not be more topical. Moreover, while he supported the transformation of people’s material conditions of life in Latin America, he innovated and celebrated literature in intermedial texts that are the decanted result of a creative performance, embedded in the strongly transcultural context of a diaspora that was first voluntary and then became exile.

This article discusses the political and social awareness present in Lucrecia Martel’s Salta Trilogy by applying the concept of intersectionality as an analytical tool. The Trilogy includes the director’s first three arthouse films La ciénaga [The Swamp] (2001), La niña santa [The Holy Girl] (2004) and La mujer sin cabeza [The Headless Woman] (2008). These have more in common than just the setting: they all focus on the micro-politics of interpersonal relations in Salta society as seen from the sharp scalpel of the child’s gaze. From there, intersectional analysis (in the crossing of origin and ‘race’, along the axes of racialized class and of religion and class, as well as in the crossing of origin, religion and age) allows us to unravel how the director challenges reality’s legitimacy by audiovisual means.

In the light of the material turn in the Humanities some aspects of Julio Cortázar’s (1914–1984) work become very evident today as a laboratory of the future. For Cortázar, reading was a transforming impulse, part of a process of liberation from mental ties to which he contributed as an author, challenging the barrier between the fantastic and the real, the limit between the human and the animal, between the living and the
inert. Thus, as a critic on blind Modernity, Cortázar, from his stories, questions anthropocentrism in a gesture that in the current crisis of the Anthropocene could not be more topical. Moreover, while he supported the transformation of people’s material conditions of life in Latin America, he innovated and celebrated literature in intermedial texts that are the decanted result of a creative performance, embedded in the strongly transcultural context of a diaspora that was first voluntary and then became exile.

Since  2015  a  new  human  rights  movement  struggles  against  violence  against women, “Ni una menos”. From the perspective of cultural studies, there is a strong link between these  women  struggling  for cultural  transformation  and  the  long  lasting  battle  against oblivion  carried  out  by  Argentina’s  Human  Rights  Movement  and  especially,  by  the  Mother and  Grandmother  of  Plaza  the  Mayo.  Against  the  background  of  state  terrorism  and  its literature  written  by  women,  this  contribution  reflects  on  methodology  studying  Argentina women’s literature on state repression and also on the role of women as agents of social transformation.

How do women authors shape their labors of memory, to which strategies do they return in order to evoke past scenarios of sorrow, or confront traces of trauma? And which circumstances can re-awaken embodied memories today? Presenting a decolonial studies-based perspective, the present article borrows the concept of “writing back” from postcolonial theory to unveil the multiple layers of remembering enclosed in the corpora of testimonial and fictional texts written by Argentinean women authors. Since rebellious women were targeted by the forces of state repression in two ways: as “subversives” and in the name of a misogynist society, their literature not only counters hegemonic versions of the past, but also reframes memory in a gendered way. Strategic “writing back” is discussed on the basis of testimonio by Pilar Calveiro, Graciela Feinstein, Alicia Kozameh, Alicia Partnoy, Susana Romano Sued and Nora Strejilevich, and fictional texts by Cristina Feijóo, Manuela Fingueret, Norma Huidobro and Sara Rosenberg.

Este volumen, en sí transatlántico, explora diversos aspectos de esa larga pugna por la hegemonía desde las perspectivas de los estudios literarios y de género, de la musicología, la historia global y la historia del arte, configurando un panorama interdisciplinario de las dinámicas de formación de redes intelectuales y artísticas, de acción y solidaridad, y de materialización de los nodos geográficos.

Las migraciones transforman la manera de concebir la Nación y convulsionan las estructuras tradicionales de pensamiento, impulsando la búsqueda de nuevas identificaciones. Durante centenares de años las naciones de la Península Ibérica se idearon como entidades de relativa homogeneidad, tanto étnica como religiosa. En las últimas décadas, sin embargo, los movimientos migratorios cambiaron de dirección, generando nuevas opciones de autopercepción colectiva y abriendo espacios para desarrollar nuevas concepciones.

While the Year of the Woman was being declared internationally in 1975, in Argentina, a wave of serious abuses of the human rights of women was getting underway. The intersectional investigation of the narrative of remembrance illuminates a dark chapter in the history of gender.