Elsa Drucaroff (2011)
Buenos Aires: Emecé, 530 p.
Reviewed by Candela Marini
Duke University
Elsa Drucaroff’s Los prisioneros de la torre has caused
quite a commotion among the Argentine academic community, a good
sign of the possible new debates. Drucaroff intended to attract
attention – that of the general public, but especially the critics
– to the rich and significant literary production of the new
generations in Argentina. In her book, she objects the literary
void that is said to have followed the generation of militants
– the one that fought and suffered the last military dictatorship,
1976-1983 – and the alleged lack of creativity and commitment in
the post-dictatorship generations. Both ideas should in fact be
credited to a perception bias by the older generation, which
largely seems to have failed to acknowledge more recent literary
production.
Drucaroff is a researcher, critic, writer and professor with a
long and dedicated career. She currently teaches at the University
of Buenos Aires. Los prisioneros de la torre inserts
itself into the Argentinean tradition of essay-writing, since it
goes beyond a literary critique of the novels and short stories
published between 1990 and 2007 by those born in and after 1960.
This book is at once a political statement about literature and
the role of writers and critics, a psychological reflection of the
fears, traumas and silences that are within each generation, and a
sociological diagnosis of what has happened since the return of
democracy and especially since the 2001 crisis to the present day.
Last but not least, it is a direct confrontation with the figures
that have dominated the intellectual sphere of production: David
Viñas, Noé Jitrik and, above all, Beatriz Sarlo. Drucaroff’s book
is a wake-up call to the academic community: critics need to pay
more attention to the New Argentine Narrative (NNA), and expand
their views and criteria to current methods and discourses, which
differ significantly from those during the dictatorship.
Claiming that there is such a thing as a NNA, different but just
as rich and valuable as previous epochs, is a big enterprise.
Drucaroff’s ambitions and objectives in this project are enormous,
a fact that she is well aware. First, she must define who the new
generations are and in which ways they differ from previous ones
(still producing literature). She has to survey a large anddiverse
literary corpus not always found in the traditional spaces of
publication, by exploring blogs, online magazines, and
publications in small circulation. She also wants to identify
tendencies and common themes (David Viñas’ manchas temáticas)
in a corpus of literature that until now was non-existent to many.
Her reading is one of the many that are possible; yet, she does
not claim to have the final word. On the contrary, hers is the
first of what we hope will be the beginning of many heated
readings and discussions about the NNA. The book is divided into
thirteen chapters. Throughout the first five she presents her
argument and begins a debate on the common beliefs of today’s
Argentine literature. According to Drucaroff, it is untrue that
the post- dictatorship generations are apathetic and socially
uncommitted. They do not share the idealism and activism of the
militant generation, because they grew up in very different
political realities. Yet, this does not mean that their cultural
productions are indifferent to their surrounding world. On the
contrary, the themes and perspectives that are common to many of
these works express a deep uneasiness with the post- dictatorship
reality. There is nothing to fight for anymore; the young of the
past are an example impossible to emulate; and the parental advice
“be a rebel as we were” is more than a tricky predicament. It is
nevertheless once she leaves behind her discussion with Beatriz
Sarlo that Drucaroff starts discussing the characteristics she
sees repeated in the NNA, such as the cynical air that accompanies
the “democracy of defeat” of the 90’s, the presence of ghost-like
characters, and the recurrent theme of
filicide.
As a revalorization of this new body of literature, this book has
long been needed. But in fighting the blind spots and biased
perceptions of Sarlo and other important Argentine literary
critics, Drucaroff reveals some of her own. She chooses, for
instance, to leave poetry aside. She claims to do so purely for
practical reasons, but there is also a tacit implication that
poetry – as the prejudice goes – is something different, which
resists any kind of sociological analysis. Drucaroff clearly
privileges a literature that engages with reality, one that
proposes a reading of its contemporary society. But how do we
delimit that? She is not aiming at some kind of social realism
(her analysis of Mariana Enriquez’s writings, for instance, is an
example of how literature can be political even when not directly
shown), but her reading does seem to approve of only a certain
kind of literature. This appears to contradict her intention of
opening our eyes to all that is new and break apart from the
accepted canons of producing literature. In this respect, her
long, condemning analysis of César Aira’s literature – an author
of great success not only among the literary authorities, but also
among young writers – does not seem justified. Halfway through the
book, Drucaroff not only continues her debate with Sarlo, but also
deems it necessary to dispel one writer’s fame before making room
for the new generation of authors. As a result, what was at first
exciting and refreshing becomes a sort of internal battle that
only postpones the stated central concern of the book: the new
literature. The critique is necessary, but at points it seems
to exhibit the very same plainness it critiques. At the same time,
the theory Drucaroff uses to sustain her arguments against this
criticism and against Aira’s literature seems out of place. Early
20th century Russian formalists Bajtin,
Shklovski and Tinianov are some of the names that resonate the
most. From José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) she takes the image of
how each generation succeeds the previous one forming a tower thus
the name of the book. This dated theoretical foundation is a
dubious platform to launch a renovation of the Argentinean
literary criticism, especially when one of her demands to the NNA
is their lack of essay- writing. It is actually when she dialogues
with Andrés Neuman, Sol Echevarría, Aníbal Jarkowski, or her own
students, that a gust of fresh air starts to flow and the most
interesting observations are made.
A final comment concerns the literature she leaves aside.
Drucaroff does an exhaustive reading of what is being produced in
Buenos Aires and she closely follows the debates taking place
among the people studying or working at the University of Buenos
Aires. However, there is no mention of what is happening outside
the capital city – just a few names from Córdoba and Santa Fe find
their way into her book. So again, if we are trying to open our
eyes to a vivid literary activity that not long ago was completely
ignored, we need to stop reducing Argentinean reality to what is
happening in Buenos Aires.
All in all, Drucaroff’s book offers itself to all kind of
criticisms and dialogues, because that is exactly what it intends
to do. The book not only attempts at a possible reading of what is
being produced by the new generations, it is also a call to read
those texts and to debate their message. It is, in this sense,
very successful. For all those interested in Argentine literature,
it is a book that needed to be written and needs to be read.