Several years ago I try to think about South American cultural production itself, a global context, and not in opposition or response to traditional centers of power that no longer hold an exclusive authority. The premiere of the series based on The Eternaluta of Hg esterheld y Francisco Solano López It is a good excuse to think once more about this dislocation, which implies not looking in mirrors but perhaps locating ourselves in an exchange where we start thinking about parities. And not only in inheritances, unilateral influences and intellectual colonization.
The concept of “responding to the empire”, so booming since the second part of the twentieth century intended and achieved it with masterful works, planting as the resistance through The imitation and subversion of colonial discourse. At that time, “imitate” from the former colonies, former empires, former conquests, the literary canons of the empire was a necessary action to raise several ideas that germinated and detached in the type of literature that is read today. Condemn from the mimesis the stereotype of the native, of the wild, of the idea of civilization as long as designed from Europe and from the Catholic Church required that response in mirror, a countercase of the same currency.
A couple of wonderful examples can be found in The width of the sargazos of Jean Rhys that tells the history of the crazy attic invisible in Jane Eyre and then subvert the barbaric speech. Another brilliant example is the counterpart of Martín Fierro what are you doing Gabriela Cabezón Cámara in The adventures of China Iron. We could list hundreds of literary pieces that took as the main reason the narration of Another storyagainst the officer.
The case of The Eternaluta It is also a great example of mimesis: written under the influence of the great representatives of the science fiction genre, Oesterheld emerges from the stereotypes of the north and creates a cartoon with all the topics of science fiction of the moment (nuclear danger, cold war, fear of control of mind and private life) and places it in Buenos Aires and thus writes a apocalyptic gaucho In the twentieth century where, against the reigning individualism of the time, it resorts to the epic of the group and the common man.
Today, the series starring Ricardo Darín and directed by Bruno Stagnaro It is among the three most views of Netflix worldwide. What tells us this and how does it contribute to this mimesis shift as the only field of artistic management?
In his seminal book The place of culture, Homi bhabha declared that the colonial subject could destabilize the centrality of the empire from a subtle imitation, slightly altered both of history and language. However, the clear risk has already confirmed, is that Mimesis did nothing but reaffirm the centrality of -Valga the redundancy sought- center. The “almost the same, but not quite” of Bhabha is an discomfort: if the colonized subject can imitate and subvert the artifice of the colonizing object, then the fragility of the last is exposed. However, it is still a mirror that reflects “the real”, which is the one who wants to destabilize.
It will be Gayatri Spivakin Can subordinates speak?who raises the true conflict that this mimesis generates: Imitation alone cannot empower subaltern subjectssince the dominant discourse systematically denies them true representation. We are more the characters of The Eternaluta What else.
The comic lovers and the post apocalyptic stories we saw -and enjoyed- The Walking Dead based on the wonderful cartoon of Kirkman y Moore (2003). We delight with The last of usbased on a video game developed for PlayStation 3 in 2013, but also, readers of The Eternaluta We were able to find parallels with a work written in Argentina in 1957 and that for its originality is until today considered one of the most influential comics in its kind. Written in Buenos Aires eight years after 1984 of George Orwell and 46 years before The Walking Dead.
However, in networks they soon left negative comments from the series as if this were an imitation of the great apocalyptic series and not their genesis. And perhaps this is the most critical point of the approach of this article: as long as we continue to define our art only in terms imposed by cultural domination, Our own production will be betrayed Because many times they simply will not fit into the categories created for other worlds.
In short, the problem is not the absence of artistic production in the periphery, but the predominance of expectations that ignore our traditions and the influence of certain genres (which are wonderful) but that in their imposition disfigure other possible genres that we had at your fingertips long before.
The appearance of the series The Eternaluta It should be, if it is nothing else, the space for debate for the construction of critical and artistic frames that are internally consistent and that become independent of the external as the only parameter. Subvertwriting in response is no longer enough. It is due Write and create forwardforming decentralized cultural networks. That a text is silenced does not mean that it is necessarily bad but rather that it has been filtered by conditions of production and validation that do not always apply.
But for that, to gestate autonomy, dialogue and mature exchange, an intellectuality at the height is needed, which knows how to detach from the market indicators, which can value itself and by virtue of pairs away from the north-south binarity where North dictates the filtering. Only It can be battered on the same landbut it is invasion and there is no possible battle. Here a new question is born, and it is worth giving the battle. The resurgence for many, the discovery for many others of The Eternaluta And how enlightening is its film version, is an example of why it is worth thinking from ourselves.
However, I want to insist with this, it is not in social networks where this issue can be discussed in depth. It takes, said, an intellectuality that knows how to battle from the systemic, from the creation and criticism, from the generation of own intellectual categories to the dissemination and study of our productions because only from there you can generate an adult dialogue, no longer subaltern but alternate, another, diverse. There lies the wealth, in our diversity, in our productions that have always anticipated genres and have created without knowing it categories that are then imposed as a novelty.
Explains much better Homi bhabha: “It is the intermediate space that carries the burden of the meaning of culture, and when exploring this third space, we can avoid the polarity policy and emerge as The others of ourselves”.
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