Reliquaries with the innermost self: the daily journals of Adolfo Bioy Casares and Ricardo Piglia

Abstract

This research project aims to analyze the literary works Descanso de caminantes (2001), by Adolfo Bioy Casares and Los diarios de Emilio Renzi written by Argentinian writer Ricardo Piglia and published in three volumes: Años de formación (2015), Años felices (2016) e Un día en la vida (2017), in order to discuss how the authors re-elaborate their lives in their journals by remembering and reinventing themselves, and, thus, to examine the unique aspects of Casares and Piglia's narratives within the category "writers' journals" (Giordano, 2017). In the sequence, we intend to discuss the development process of the memories of character narrators, in an approach that is both micro (with regard to the personal experiences of each narrator) and macro (concerning historical issues presented in the works), seeking to understand how the individual rememorizing process is represented in the pieces selected from the journal, as well as their relationship to collective memory (HALBWACHS, 1990) and archive (DERRIDA, 2001); (ASSMANN, 2011). In addition, the study also aims to promote a debate over the relevance of testimonies in the narratives as well as discuss the concepts of authorship and the problematization of the author's figure in the works, by observing how reality/fiction, memory/History, the I/the other are intertwined in the narratives. To this end, this work's main bases for theory and critique will be Lejeune (2007; 2014), Ricoeur (2007), Halbwachs (1990), Derrida (2001), Barthes (2004; 2015), Foucault (2004; 2009), Giordano ( 2017), Seligmann-Silva (2008), among others. (AU)