Configurations and reconfigurations of the popular monster in Argentine literature

Abstract

This paper traces a brief genealogy among a variety of texts that have shaped popular subjects in a monster-like way from the origins of Argentine literature to the present day. For this purpose, connections are drawn among works by Esteban Echeverría, Hilario Ascasubi, Eugenio Cambaceres, Roberto Arlt, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Jorge Luis Borges, Rodolfo Walsh, Osvaldo Lamborghini, Washington Cucurto and Daniel Guebel in order to point out some of their convergences and divergences. In this sense, while “monsters have always defined the limits of community in Western imaginations” (Haraway, 1991), in Argentina such limits have fluctuated along with the historical ups and downs of the country. For this reason, political re-emergences of popular subjects have demanded diverse literary reconfigurations of a “popular monster” which, despite representing a barbaric otherness that has threatened civilized-cultured-erudite subjects from the very beginning, can also be a victim of its own destructive force.