Intellectuals, Revolution And Popular Culture: A New Reading Of El Eternauta

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Notes

 1 This version, published in Gente, was illustrated by Alberto Brecchia in a markedly more avant-garde style. The journal called off the serialization, resulting in a rushed ending and considerable loss of narrative coherence.

 2 De Santis, La historieta en la edad de la razón, 76–7. Juan Sasturain also suggests that ‘His growing awareness of the tool he wielded and the need to formulate an explicit ideological project weakened El Eternauta II, severing the identification with the protagonists triggered in the first series and bringing the plot to a heroic and terrible end, an exemplary spectacle’. El domicilio de la aventura, 192.

 3 Miguel Briante, for example, argues that the first part of El Eternauta cannot be read without the second part, ‘And none of it can be read from any perspective other than that of the deep abyss of contemporary reality: Oesterheld's four daughters fallen in the methodical earthquake of military repression, Oesterheld himself disappeared in the autumn of 1977’. ‘La galera del tiempo’, 20.

 4 See the second version of the series, with illustrations by Gustavo Trigo, originally published in the newspaper Noticias (a Montonero publication) in 1974 and compiled in Colihue's 1998 edition. The series was not finished because the Noticias editorial house was forcibly closed by the police later that year.

 5 Briante, ‘La galera del tiempo’, 21.

 6 Sarlo, Una modernidad periférica: Buenos Aires 1920 y 1930, 55–7.

 7 Oesterheld and Solano López, El Eternauta: 1957–2007 / 50 años, 77. For the sake of clarity, references to this original series will be marked with ‘I’, to distinguish them from the second series, abbreviated to ‘II’.

 8 Judith Gociol and Diego Rosemberg, La historieta argentina: Una historia, 515.

 9 Oesterheld, Prologue to El Eternauta: 1957–2007 / 50 años, 2.

10 See Sasturain, El domicilio de la aventura, 188, and Martín García, ‘El eternauta, la zona de exclusión y la democracia’, 34.

11 Terán, ‘Ideas e intelectuales en la Argentina’, 65.

12 Sigal, Intelectuales y poder en la década del sesenta, 168. Sigal notes wryly that the ‘final phase’ of the project ‘could be sketched out differently, in the end, according to one's own particular ideological orientation’, which perhaps explains both its appeal and its rapid disintegration.

13 García claims that Oesterheld's Argentine Army differs markedly from the real one, as ‘Its project, confronted with aggression from outside the country's borders, is not different from that of the civilians. Together they mount a heroic defence against the attack of Them, the powerful masters who are trying to colonize the country’. ‘El eternauta, la zona de exclusión y la democracia’, 34.

14 Pablo Silva, ‘Entrevista a Víctor Bailo y Daniel Stefanello’, http://www.leedor.com.

15 Terán, ‘Ideas e intelectuales en la Argentina’, 67.

16 Foucault, ‘Truth and Power’, 67.

17 Foucault and Deleuze, ‘Intellectuals and Power’, 206–7.

18 Terán, De utopías, catástrofes y esperanzas: Un camino intelectual, 91–2.

19 Terán, De utopías, catástrofes y esperanzas: Un camino intelectualIbid., 82.

20 Terán, ‘Ideas e intelectuales en la Argentina’, 80.

21 Gilman, Entre la pluma y el fusil: Debates y dilemas del escritor revolucionario en América Latina, 163.

22 Conti, ‘Compartir las luchas del pueblo’. Originally published in Crisis 16 (August 1974) and reprinted in María Sonderéguer, comp., Revista Crisis (1973–1976) antología: Del intelectual comprometido al intelectual revolucionario, 536–7.

23 This reading is also suggested by Martín García. However, García's account of the futility of the struggle ‘heading towards the final holocaust’ is telling of the extent to which his analysis of the first series is still oriented towards the imaginary of dictatorship rather than civil war and influenced by a knowledge of the political context of the second series; the scepticism and disillusionment he attributes to the first series (‘There is no way out. No choices. Defeat is inevitable’) not only forecloses the story's more open ending but also ignores the positive role given to the exercise of practical knowledge and the significance of the task assigned to the writer/intellectual who, in the very last sequence, is charged with warning the world. See García, ‘El eternauta, la zona de exclusión y la democracia’, 35–6.

24 ‘El pueblo echa al invasor inglés.’ Originally published in El descamisado 11 (31 July 1973) and compiled in Oesterheld and Leopoldo Durañona, Latinoamérica y el imperialismo: 450 años de guerra, n. p.

25 Sarlo, Tiempo pasado: Cultura de la memoria y giro subjetivo; Una discusión, 90–1.

26 Bourdieu, ‘The Intellectual Field: A World Apart’, 145.

27 Terán, ‘Ideas e intelectuales en la Argentina’, 80.

28 Bourdieu, ‘The Uses of the People’, 150–1.

29 Bourdieu, ’The Uses of the People’Ibid., 150.

30 Sigal, Intelectuales y poder en la década del sesenta, 251–2. Original emphasis.

31 Foucault, ’The Concern for Truth’, 265.