creation and crisis of latin american self-fiction in césar aira and mario bellatin gerardo...

Creation and Crisis of Latin American Self-fiction in

César Aira and Mario Bellatin

Gerardo Cruz-Grunerth

Erasmus Mundus Crossways in Cultural Narratives

University of Santiago de Compostela

César Aira (1949)

Cómo me hice monja (1993)How I Became a Nun

Mario Bellatin (1960)

El Gran Vidrio. Tres autobiografías (2007)

The Large Glass. Three Autobiographies

How I Became a NunMy story, the story of "how I

became a nun", began very early in my life; I had just turned six. The beginning is marked by a vivid memory […] Before, there is nothing, and after, everything is an extension of the same vivid memory, continuous and unbroken, including the intervals of sleep, up to the point where I took the veil. (Aira, 1998: 11).

How I Became a Nun

How to (avoid) speaking about how I became a nun

How I Became a Nun

“They call me always by my name, César […] they had a confusion between me and other girl who has the same name than me” (Aira, 1998: 91)

How I Became a Nun

“The promise has trapped to the I who promised to talk to other, tell him something […] in the last point: we have to shut up, and shut up what is not possible to say” (Derrida, 2011: 22).

How I Became a Nun

“[In How I Became a Nun] self-fiction remains destroyed” (García, 2006: 252)

The Large Glass. Three autobiographies

1) “My luminous skin”

2) “The true illness of a sheika”

3) “An apparently modern character”

The Large Glass. Three autobiographies

1) “My luminous skin”

Character: He is a boy with mental illness who has extremely big testicles and a luminous skin, and he is shown in public by his mother. The character has no name

The Large Glass. Three autobiographies

2) “The true illness of a sheika”

Character: An author-narrator who never says his name

Many others authors-narrators duplicated in metafiction: dreams, novels.

The Large Glass. Three autobiographies

3) “An apparently modern character”

Characters:1. A guy who has a German girlfriend2. An adult woman who looks like a

pretty marionette or a young girl3. The author Mario Bellatin

The Large Glass. Three autobiographies

HeterocosmicaRhizomatic fiction

The Large Glass. Three autobiographies

Possible worlds1. MP 1. Guy who has a German

girlfriend2. MP 2. Marionette-Woman3. MP 3. The author Mario Bellatin

The Large Glass. Three autobiographies1. The young guy says: “In that

time, I don´t remember well the reasons to that happen, I had a German girlfriend [...] “Although, as the facts were, it was impossible for me to have at that moment a German girlfriend. Moreover […] because I´m the younger daughter of my family” (Bellatin, 2014: 143)

The Large Glass. Three autobiographiesMy girlfriend must to perform the

character of a nurse […] In the other side, there was stand a cultural journalist of an important newspaper […] He will be able to discover that he was not in presence of a little marionette in company of his German girlfriend, but in presence of the writer Mario Bellatin […] I was [in feminine in Spanish: asistida] assisted by a beautiful woman, my prestige was in risk in front of that journalist”. (146).

The Large Glass. Three autobiographies

Possible worlds1. MP 1. Guy who has a German

girlfriend2. MP 2. Marionette-Woman3. MP 3. The author Mario Bellatin

The Large Glass. Three autobiographies

Possible worlds1. MP 1. Guy who has a German

girlfriend2. MP 2. Marionette-Woman3. MP 3. The author Mario Bellatin4. MP 1a. First autobiography5. MP 2a. Second autobiography

The author as transformer, paratext and hipertext

Marcel Duchamp

The Large Glass

The author as transformer, paratext and hipertext

Marcel Duchamp

Given

The author as transformer, paratext and hipertext

Marcel Duchamp

Rrose Sélavy

The author as transformer, paratext and hipertext

Marcel DuchampGreen Box

He [Nietzsche] has taken out a loan with himself and has implicated us in this transaction what, on the force of a signature, remains of his text […] he does not live presently: “I live on my own credit; it is perhaps a mere prejudice that I live”. (Derrida, 1985: 8-9)

Mishima's Illustrated Biography

“Couple of analysts that worked in the Mishima case”

The Large Glass. Three autobiographiesThe Large Glass is a party

that takes place annually within the ruins of the destroyed buildings in Mexico City, where hundreds of families live. The act of living among the traces left behind by broken buildings represents an important symbol of social invisibility. (Bellatin, 2007)

Breaking with teleology and hermeneutics. The rhizomatic identity disseminated

“...that dissimulation that demands be many and differ of our self; it supposes also the space for a promised world, in other words, is a footprint” (Derrida, 1985: 24).

There is the need to erase all the footprints of past, blur as much as possible a determined identity […it is necessary to] change tradition, name, history, nationality, religion, because these are a sort of constant points […there is in fiction] a true time that in fact doesn’t exist, and for that reason, is more real than reality. (Bellatin, 2014: 165).

“What is true and what is lie in each one of these three autobiographies? To know it has absolutely no importance” (163).

Lyotard > GlassTo interpret is futile. You might

as well try to circumscribe the true effect of the Large Glass and hence its true content; the Glass is made precisely in order not to have a true effect, nor even several true effects, according to a mono- or polyvalent logic, but to have uncontrolled effects. (1990: 64)

Duchamp > Glass“The Glass is not my

autobiography, nor is itself expression” (quoted by Tomkins, 2014: 12).

Works cited

Aira, César. (1998). Cómo me hice monja. Barcelona: Grijalbo Mondadori.

Bellatin, M. (2007). El Gran Vidrio. Tres autobiografías. Barcelona: Anagrama.

--- (2005). Underwood portátil: modelo 1915. Lima: Sarita Cartonera. --- (2006). “El auto del señor Dufó” en Los mejores cuentos

mexicanos: 2006. (ed. Rosal Beltrán y Alberto Arriaga). México: Planeta-Joaquín Mortiz.

--- (2007). El Gran Vidrio. Tres autobiografías. Barcelona: Anagrama. --- (2014). “El Gran Vidrio. Tres autobiografías” en Obra reunida 2.

México: Alfaguara. --- (2014) “Los cien mil libros de Bellatin” en Obra reunida 2. México:

Alfaguara. --- (2014) “Underwood portátil: modelo 1915” en Obra reunida 2.

México: Alfaguara. Casas, Ana (2012). “El simulacro del yo: La autoficción en la

narrativa actual” in La autoficción. Reflexiones teóricas. Madrid: Arco Libros.

Culler, Jonathan (1998). Sobre la deconstrucción. Teoría y crítica después del estructuralismo. Madrid: Cátedra.

Deleuze, Gilles y Félix Guattari (2002). Mil mesetas. Capitalismo y esquizofrenia. Valencia: Pre-Textos.

Works cited Derrida, Jacques (1982). “Signature, event, context” en Margins of Philosophy.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press. --- (1985). “El suplemento de origen” en La voz y el fenómeno. Valencia: Pre-

Textos. --- (1985b). “Otobiographies” en The Earof the Other. Otobiography,

Transference, Translation. New York: Schocken Books. --- (2011). “Cómo no hablar. Denegaciones” en Cómo no hablar. Madrid:

Anthropos. --- (2013). “La Différance” en Márgenes de la filosofía. Madrid: Cátedra. Doležel, Lubomír (1999) Heterocósmica. Ficción y mundos posibles. Madrid:

Arco Libros. Doubrovsky, Sergei (2012). “Autobiografía/verdad/psicoanálisis” in La

autoficción. Reflexiones teóricas. Madrid: Arco Libros. García, Mariano (2006). Degeneraciones textuales. Los géneros en la obra de

César Aira. Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo Editora. Gasparini, Philippe (2004). Est-il je? Roman autobiographique et autofiction.

París: Seuil. Genette, Gérard (1989). Palimpsestos. La literatura en segundo grado. Madrid:

Aguilar Taurus. --- (2001) Umbrales. México: Siglo XXI. Hillis Miller, J. (1990). “El crítico como anfitrión” en Teoría literaria y

deconstrucción, ed. Manuel Asensi. Madrid: Arco Libros. Lejeune, Philippe (1975). Le pacte autobiographique. París: Seuil. Lyotard, Jean-François (1990). Duchamp´s TRANS/formers. Venice, California:

The Lapis Press.

Thank you very much for kind attention.