Science Fiction in Argentina: Technologies of the Text in a Material Multiverse

by Joanna Page

Overview

It has become something of a critical commonplace to claim that science fiction does not actually exist in Argentina. This book puts that claim to rest by identifying and analyzing a rich body of work that fits squarely in the genre. Joanna Page explores a range of texts stretching from 1875 to the present day and across a variety of media-literature, cinema, theatre, and comics-and studies the particular inflection many common discourses of science fiction (e.g., abuse of technology by authoritarian regimes, apocalyptic visions of environmental catastrophe) receive in the Argentine context. A central aim is to historicize these texts, showing how they register and rework the contexts of their production, particularly the hallmarks of modernity as a social and cultural force in Argentina. Another aim, held in tension with the first, is to respond to an important critique of historicism that unfolds in these texts. They frequently unpick the chronology of modernity, challenging the linear, universalizing models of development that underpin historicist accounts. They therefore demand a more nuanced set of readings that work to supplement, revise, and enrich the historicist perspective.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780472900046
Publisher:	University of Michigan Press
Publication date:	04/05/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	245
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Joanna Page is Senior Lecturer in Latin American Cultural Studies at the University of Cambridge.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Fantasy and Science between Intellectuals and the Masses 15

Science, Fantasy, and the Masses in Holmberg's Narrative Fiction 16

El Eternauta: The Intellectual in War and Revolution 31

Conclusion: Materialism, Between Darwin and Marx 47

2 Mediation and Materiality in Graphic Fiction 51

Myth and Materiality in the Neoliberal City: Ricardo Barreiro's Science Fiction Comics 54

Comics, the Archive, and Cognitive Practices 68

Conclusion: (Re)Materialization in Graphic Fiction 79

3 Time, Technics, and the Transmission of Culture 81

Cultural Transmission, Apocalypse, and the End of History in Plop 84

Evolution in Reverse: Post-Darwinism and Mnemotechnics in El año del desierto 88

Cruz diablo: Technics, Psychopower, and the Cybernetic Gaucho 96

Conclusion: The End of (Universal) History 104

4 Projection, Prosthesis, Plasticity: Literature in the Age of the Image 106

Life beyond Death in the Cold Chemistry of Quiroga's Celluloid Screens 108

The Magic of Machines: Anthropomorphic and Cosmomorphic Desire in La invención de Morel 114

El juego de los mundos: From Prosthesis to Plasticity 119

Conclusion: Plasticity and the "Dusk of Writing" 128

5 Beyond the Linguistic Turn: Mathematics and New Materialism in Contemporary Literature and Theater 131

The Mathematics of the Material Universe: The Science Fiction Theater of Javier Daulte and Rafael Spregelburd 133

New Subjectivities and New Materialisms in Marcelo Cohen's Metafictions 142

Conclusion: The "Eternal Dance of Atoms" 152

6 Modernity and Cinematic Time in Science Fiction Film 154

Polytemporality in Estrellas and Cóndor Crux: A Critique of the Homogeneous Time of Historicism and Modernity 155

Retrofuturism and Reflexivity: The Construction of Cinematic Time in La antenna and La sonámbula 171

Conclusion: (Post)Modernity and Cinematic Time 187

Conclusion 192

Notes 197

Bibliography 215

Index 229