Estudios de Teoría Literaria (Nov 2021)
The value of the unreadable: Sarlo and Gramuglio’s commitment to Saer’s literature
Abstract
In the texts on the literature of Juan José Saer that María Teresa Gramuglio and Beatriz Sarlo published from 1969 to 1986 it is possible to trace a persistence: Saer’s work is unique because it resists the readability codes of the time. Thus, the emphasis on the unreadability of his work demands a fundamental role for criticism: to commit to its uniqueness in order to shape a reader for Saer´s literature, in other words, to found a possible time and space for his work. In this critical approach, two subtle displacements occur: from the desire for the literary work to the desire for the own act of writing, and from the irreductible experience of literature to its moral interpretation. These two movements can be understood as contingent manifestations of an inherent tension in critical discourse. The commitment to the unreadability of Saerian literature ends up reducing it to an institutional value.
