The unconfortable literature: Roberto Bolaño and his Argentine readings

Abstract

This research intends to map the important role of Argentine Literature in the writings of the Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño, especially in relation to the debates developed in key-moments, about production processes, the circulation and the validation that configure the condition of enunciative possibility of the literary speech. Thus, we shall take the works of Jorge Luis Borges as a starting point, in whose short-stories and essays the constitutive foundation is the contradiction between what is written and the place where it's written (or read), tension that gains an ethic dimension, as we put forward from in "La literature nazi en America". Then, based on the text "Derivas de la pesada", we will try to understand the strategies implicated at the critic made by Bolaño on what he calls "the three points of reference" of the contemporary Argentine literature: Osvaldo Soriano, Ricardo Piglia e Osvaldo Lamborghini. We will show how the dissonance towards the persistence of those projects, developed in the 1970s and 1980s, decades when the dictatorship was strong, relates with the changes in the discursive paradigm after the so-called democratic transition. At last, we will see how the search for different places of enunciation, after the 1990s, has confluences into the work of Bolaño. César Aira, Washigton Cucurto and others who, associating the production and the circulation, provide an effort to create a parallel or underground literary field, a scenario that has consonance with Detectives Salvajes. Thereby, we intend to contribute for the understanding of the discussions in which the works of Bolaño participates and to offer a privileged spot for reflection. (AU)