Politica, poetica ed estetica di Ricardo Piglia

Abstract

The article analyzes the impact Ricardo Piglia has had on Argentine literature, first as a reader of Borges and the Argentine tradition, and later as an innovator in writing. It delves into how the author has managed to turn both his fictional works and theoretical texts into genuine laboratories of hypotheses, strategies, and techniques capable of offering new responses to the discussion on literature and society. After a careful distinction between the first phase of Piglia’s writing – permeated by the influence of the Marxist debate in literature during the 60s and 70s –, and the second – oriented towards avant-garde and experimentation, inaugurated by Crítica y ficción and continuing until his posthumous works –, we here identify a common thread between the two phases in the Argentine way of writing “as if it were translated”, within that national literary identity based on translation and transculturation. The essay unfolds in three sections: the first, dedicated to politics, will address the concept of the author as a producer, together with the concept of value in his writing; the section dedicated to poetics will delve into Piglia’s literary ideology, discussing the links between criticism and fiction, and outlining his non-fiction works and those of an autobiographical journal nature, yet still marked by elements of (auto)fiction; the final section, devoted to aesthetics, will cover the main theoretical devices and strategies used in Piglia’s writing, including the “secret”, the “unreliable narrator”, and the “split subject”.

Keywords

• ricardo piglia
• politics
• fiction