Island Studies Journal , Vol. 4, No. 2, 2009, pp. 203-224 Figurations of Islandness in Argentine Culture and Literature: Macedonio Fernández, Leopoldo Marechal, and César Aira Norman Cheadle Laurentian University Sudbury ON Canada
[email protected] Abstract: This article explores islandness in the River Plate imaginary. Two modern foundational “island texts” – Thomas More’s Utopia and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe – have exerted a formative influence on the Spanish-American colonial imagination, an influence inflected by the particular historical experience of the River Plate region and its dominant city, Buenos Aires. The figuration of islandness is examined in three twentieth- century Argentine novels by Macedonio Fernández, Leopoldo Marechal, and César Aira. The article finds both continuity and evolution in the images of islandness in these novels. Keywords: Argentina, Buenos Aires, Derrida, islandness, Jesuit missions, literature, Robinson Crusoe, utopia. © 2009 – Institute of Island Studies, University of Prince Edward Island, Canada Introduction This paper’s working hypothesis is that figures of islandness turn up in Argentine culture and literature for specific historico-cultural reasons. “Islandness” connotes two related formal qualities: isolation (separateness) and insularity (self-containment). These two qualities may be associated with two parallel colonial enterprises that have informed the historical experience of the River Plate area of the Southern Cone, as well as its cultural memory and literary imaginary. Isolation characterizes the area’s political and commercial history, and more particularly the city that came to dominate it, Buenos Aires. This is because Río de Plata, in the colonial period, was a zone of secondary interest to the Spanish Empire, whose main interest lay in the mineral wealth of the Andes and of Mexico.