‘Los que se fueron y los que se quedaron’: History, Exile and Censorship in Ricardo Piglia's Respiración artificial and Manuel Puig's Maldición eterna a quien lea estas páginas

Abstract

Ricardo Piglia's Respiración artificial and Manuel Puig's Maldicióneterna a quien lea estaspáginas were both published in 1980 during military rule in Argentina and both are examples of resistance to the dictatorship through literature. However, whilst Piglia's novel was published within Argentina, Puig's novel was written in exile and published outside Argentina. Whilst exile afforded Puig the opportunity to write freely without the constraints of censorship, his authority to write a novel of the dictatorship is questioned as he did not experience life under the regime. In contrast, Piglia's work is heralded as an example of authentic resistance as his heavily coded novel successfully evaded the censors. By comparing the strategies of resistance in these two novels, this article seeks to challenge the categorization of the novel of the dictatorship along the dividing line of exile. Whilst both novels reveal different perspectives on the theme of exile, they share a common sensitivity to the ethical problems of narrating the dictatorship. Both novels adopt strategies of censorship in order to avoiding complicity with the regime and this self-censorship emerges as a shared act of resistance.

Notes

¹Luis Gregorich, ‘La literatura dividida’, Clarín, 29 January 1981. Quoted in Jorgelina Corbatta, Narrativas de la Guerra Sucia (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 1999), 32.

⁴Andrés Avellaneda, ‘The Process of Censorship and Censorship of the Proceso: Argentina 1976–1983’, in The Redemocratization of Argentine Culture 1983 and Beyond; An International Research Symposium at Arizona State University, February 16–17, 1987, ed. David William Foster (Tempe: Center for Latin American Studies, Arizona State Univ., 1989), 23–47 (p. 24).

²Argentina. Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas, Nunca más: Informe de la Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas (Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 1984).

³Santiago Colás, Postmodernity in Latin America: The Argentine Paradigm (Durham, NC/London: Duke U. P., 1994), 122.

⁵Avellaneda, ‘The Process of Censorship’, 24.

⁶Jerry W. Knudson, ‘The Argentine Press and the Dirty War, 1976–1983’, Latin American Perspectives, 24:6 (1997), 93–112 (pp. 100–01).

⁷Proyecto Desaparecidos, Muro de la Memoria de Periodistas y Escritores Desaparecidos, <http://www.desaparecidos.org/arg/victimas/listas/periodistas.html>.

⁸David Rock, Authoritarian Argentina: The Nationalist Movement, Its History and Its Impact (Berkeley/Oxford: Univ. of California Press, 1993), 229.

⁹Universidad Nacional de la Plata, Nómina de Desaparecidos y Asesinados de la UNLP, <http://www.unlp.edu.ar/nomina_de_desaparecidos_y_asesinados_de_la_unlp>.

¹⁰Rock, Authoritarian Argentina, 228.

¹¹Gregorich, ‘La literatura dividida’, 32.

¹²Daniel Balderston, ‘El significado latente en Respiración artificial de Ricardo Piglia y En el corazón de junio de Luis Gusmán’, in Daniel Balderston et al., Ficción y política: la narrativa argentina durante el proceso militar (Buenos Aires: Alianza, 1987), 109–21 (p. 109).

¹³Gregorich, ‘La literatura dividida’, 32.

¹⁴Beatriz Sarlo, ‘El campo intelectual: un espacio doblemente fracturado’, in Represión y reconstrucción de una cultura: el caso argentino, ed. Saúl Sosnowski (Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria, 1988), 98–108 (pp. 101–02).

¹⁵David William Foster, Violence in Argentine Literature: Cultural Responses to Tyranny (Columbia: Univ. of Missouri Press, 1995), 8.

¹⁶Manuel Puig, Maldición eterna a quien lea estas páginas (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1993), 7. Further references are to this edition and will be given in parentheses in the text.

¹⁷Ricardo Piglia, Respiración artificial (Buenos Aires: Planeta, 2000), 9. Further references are to this edition and will be given in parentheses in the text.

¹⁸Edgardo H. Berg, ‘La búsqueda del archivo familiar: notas de lectura sobre Respiración artificial de Ricardo Piglia’, in Itinerarios entre la ficción y la historia: transcursividad en la literatura hispanoamericana, ed. Elisa T. Calabrese (Buenos Aires: Grupo Editor Latinoamericano, 1994), 117–35 (pp. 120–21).

¹⁹Ricardo Piglia, Crítica y ficción (Buenos Aires: Siglo Veinte, 1990), 188.

²⁰Laura Demaría, Argentina-s: Ricardo Piglia dialoga con la generación del '37 en la discontinuidad (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 1999), 83.

²¹Corbatta, Narrativas de la Guerra Sucia, 36.

²²Colás, Postmodernity in Latin America, 122.

²³Manuel Puig et al., ‘Writers and Repression’, Index on Censorship, 13:5 (1984), 28–33 (p. 31).

²⁴Jorgelina Corbatta, ‘Encuentros con Manuel Puig’, Revista Iberoamericana, 123:24 (1983), 591–620 (p. 620).

²⁵Lori Chamberlain, ‘The Subject in Exile: Puig's “Eternal Curse” on the Reader of These Pages’, NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, 20:3 (1987), 260–75 (p. 264).

²⁶Hernán Kesselman, ‘Facetas del daño psicológico en la Argentina de hoy y su repercusión en la salud mental’, Página 12, (April 1999), n.p.

²⁷Berg, ‘La búsqueda del archivo familiar’, 121.

²⁸Guillermina Rosenkrantz, El cuerpo indómito: espacios del exilio en las novelas de Manuel Puig (Buenos Aires: Simurg, 1999), 166.

²⁹Francine Masiello, ‘La Argentina durante el Proceso: las múltiples resistencias de la cultura’, in Balderston et al., Ficción y política: la narrativa argentina durante el proceso militar, 11–29 (p. 13).

³⁰Chamberlain, ‘The Subject in Exile’, 262.

³¹See Alejandro Herrero-Olaizola, The Censorship Files: Latin American Writers and Franco's Spain (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 2007), 141–54 for an account of the censorship of Puig's first two novels in Spain and Argentina.

³²Herrero-Olaizola, The Censorship Files, 154.

³³Manuel Puig, ‘Losing Readers in Argentina’, Index on Censorship, 14:5 (1985), 55–57 (p. 56).

³⁴Andrés Avellaneda, Censura, autoritarismo y cultura: Argentina 1960–1983/1 (Buenos Aires: CEAL, 1986), 114.

³⁵Rock, Authoritarian Argentina, 223.

³⁶Corbatta, Narrativas de la Guerra Sucia, 21.

³⁷Puig, ‘Losing Readers in Argentina’, 56.

³⁸Sarlo, ‘Final’, Punto de Vista, 90 (2008), <http://www.bazaramericano.com/ultnum/revistas/nro_90_sarlo_final.html>.

³⁹The Journalists’ Memorial, <http://www.thejournalistsmemorial.org/spip.php?recherche=seman&id_article=1836>.

⁴⁰Balderston, ‘El significado latente en Respiración artificial de Ricardo Piglia’, 113.

⁴¹Susan J. Brison, ‘Trauma Narratives and the Remaking of the Self’, in Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present, ed. Mieke Bal, Jonathan Crewe and Leo Spitzer (Hanover/London: Univ. Press of New England, 1999), 39–54 (p. 44).

⁴²Sigmund Freud, The Essentials of Psychoanalysis (London: Penguin, 1986), 530.

⁴³Rosenkrantz, El cuerpo indómito, 145.

⁴⁴Berg, ‘La búsqueda del archivo familiar’, 124.

⁴⁵Demaría, Argentina-s, 131.

⁴⁶Joanna Page, ‘Ricardo Piglia: Towards a Re-Socialized Literature’, Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, 10:2 (2004), 169–89 (p. 172).

⁴⁹Saúl Sosnowski, ‘Manuel Puig: entrevista’, Hispamérica, 1:3 (1973), 69–80 (pp. 70–74).

⁴⁷In 1956 Puig went to Italy on a bursary to study at the Centro Sperimentale de Cinematografia. It was only through realizing his shortcomings as a screenplay writer that he began to write his first novel, La traición de Rita Hayworth. See Suzanne Jill Levine, Manuel Puig y la mujer araña: su vida y ficciones (Buenos Aires: Planeta, 2002).

⁴⁸Corbatta, ‘Encuentros con Manuel Puig’, 601.

⁵⁰Jorgelina Corbatta, Mito personal y mitos colectivos en las novelas de Manuel Puig (Madrid: Orígenes, 1988), 60.

⁵¹Puig, ‘Losing Readers in Argentina’, 56.

⁵²Levine, Manuel Puig y la mujer araña, 276.

⁵³Masiello, ‘La Argentina durante el Proceso’, 19.

⁵⁷Piglia, La Argentina en pedazos, 116.

⁵⁴Princeton University, ‘Program in Latin American Studies. Fall 2009–2010 Course Offerings’, <http://www.princeton.edu/plas/about/docs/F2009-2010-courses.pdf>.

⁵⁵Jorge Fornet, Ricardo Piglia al cuidado de Jorge Fornet (Bogotá DC: Instituto Caro y Cuervo/Casa de las Américas, 2000), 22.

⁵⁶Ricardo Piglia, La Argentina en pedazos (Buenos Aires: Ediciones de la Urraca, 1993), 115–16.