Letras Hispanas Volume 15

Title: Desiring a (Sur)real Body: The Feminine and Nature Beyond the Nation in Argentine Surrealist Poetry Author: Conor Craig Harris Email: [email protected] Affiliation: University of California, Riverside; Department of Hispanic Studies; 2401 HMNSS Building; Riverside, California 92521 Abstract: The goal of this article will be to trace a destabilization of the literary cartography that set the stage for the Argentine state’s national language—one realized in surrealist po- etry’s appropriation of the figures and images of the earth, woman, and the unobtainable. To this end, I will center certain fragmentary tendencies in the works of four surrealist poets: Juan José Ceselli, Juan Antonio Vasco, Francisco Madariaga and Enrique Molina. I will outline the slippages and breaks in their poetic language, which open space for an understanding of the impossible grounds of Argentina’s patriarchal national language, as it is articulated in literature from as early as Sarmiento. Keywords: Surrealism, Poetry, Argentina, Deconstruction, Feminism, Nature Resumen: El fin de este artículo será trazar una desestabilización de los términos de la cartogra- fía literaria que daba (y da) escena al lenguaje del estado-nación argentino—una desestabi- lización realizada a través de una apropiación de las figuras e imágenes de la tierra, la mujer y lo inalcanzable dentro de la poesía surrealista argentina. Para lograr esta meta, indagaré en los trabajos de cuatro poetas argentinos: Juan José Ceselli, Juan Antonio Vasco, Fran- cisco Madariaga y Enrique Molina. Destacaré los deslizamientos y quiebres en su lenguaje poético para fundar un entendimiento de la base imposible del lenguaje patriarcal nacional de Argentina, tal como se ha articulado en la literatura desde Sarmiento. Palabras clave: surrealismo, poesía, Argentina, deconstrucción, feminismo, naturaleza Date Received: 3/3/2019 Date Published: 8/23/2019 Biography: Conor Craig Harris received his doctorate in Hispanic Studies from the University of California, Riverside. His research focuses on poetry, video and militancy in Argentina, Chile and among the Mapuche, as ways of thinking alternative relational modalities in the neoliberal moment. His interests also extend to urban spatial practices, graffiti, idleness and the affective charge of the martyr.

ISSN: 1548-5633 104 Letras Hispanas Volume 15

Desiring a (Sur)real Body: The Feminine and Nature Beyond the Nation in Argentine Surrealist Poetry

Conor Craig Harris, University of California at Riverside

This article will trace a destabilization that it is erected on and through an imagi- of the literary cartography that set the stage nary that violently assumes the femininity of for the Argentine state’s national language— certain bodies and the land, associating two one realized in surrealist poetry’s appropria- concepts that both supersede and encompass tion of the figures and images of the earth, the discursive limit at which this poetry situ- woman, and the unobtainable. To this end, ates itself, in ruins. in the works of four poets—Juan José Ce- To approach the issue from another an- selli, Juan Antonio Vasco, Francisco Madar- gle, one perhaps more generative—maintain- iaga and Enrique Molina—I will highlight the ing all the weight of that perhaps—I will re- ruins, remains, hints and signs of a reading call a reflection by the Argentine philosopher that would expose a tendency and an imagi- León Rozitchner. Exploring similar themes nary before which the presuppositions of a in his posthumously published Materialismo determinate nation-state’s literature would ensoñado, he avers that “la palabra poética tremble. Although the poets, all men, fail to habla prolongando en nosotros la lengua ma- escape the patriarchal limits of the moment’s ternal: convierte en lengua viva una lengua literature—itself a phallogocentric construc- que fue dada por muerta” (22). So, in keep- tion serving only to engender new forms of ing with the spirit of that poetic prolongation, subjectivation—their poetry presents us, per- this work will attempt to exceed a mere close haps unwittingly, with a different vision of reading, for all that that will be essential to nature and the feminine than that of domi- my study, because any particular reading will nant national tendencies. By not attempting only ever trap the same repressed forces that I to ground a totalizing understanding of the propose to trace. This article will be based on feminine, nature, and the terms of the unsta- a both fragmentary and inadequate selection ble signifying chain binding the two concepts of certain aspects of these works by neces- in the group’s work, these poets undermine sity of demonstrating the need to constantly the base required for the inscription of a na- affirm any given language’s inability to refer tional language. These concepts presuppose something completely alien to it. I do not passivity when used to establish the patriar- propose that these themes are the dominant chive’s intrinsic hierarchy so, insofar as they ones in the group—rather, because they un- become confused and unstable in the group’s derlie their poetry, bringing them to the sur- works, those same works will never be com- face reveals the group’s limits, as well as those pletely incorporable to a nationalist literary of all national literatures. However, by way of project. They force recognition of the nation- an introduction, we must realize that there is al nomos as incomplete and unstable, given no approach to surrealism, wherever it may Conor Craig Harris 105 be, that can presume for it an isolated origin. nation’s language was also a violence inher- So, I will begin in another place, at another ent to literature—that is, it had to confront moment, to later arrive at Argentina. its own violence. We should ask—why do I situate the * Argentine surrealist group, the first outside of France, so obliquely? Initially because the Surrealism in France began to regroup poets whose works I examine here were writ- in the wake of the second world war and, ing in the wake of this very crisis. But also, in 1947, Georges Bataille set about re-intro- because they were supremely aware of the ducing it to the world with an exposition of crisis as it emerged in France and thus influ- surrealist works. But the prior years’ brutal enced their own works. Although never with- violence broke through to affect the members out reservations nor qualifications, this is due of a movement that had conceived of itself as to Latin American artists not being able to beyond the capricious inauthenticity of the entirely subtract themselves from their his- world, a group bound up in its own dreams. tory’s colonial dialectic and its intellectual Placing surrealism into dialogue with the and cultural aftermath. A truth that persists world it pretended to abandon, an always im- even as their art’s situation vis à vis Europe possible abandonment, Bataille asserts that demonstrates a mimesis exceeding the terms despite any coming changes, the world of any symbolic-mimetic relationship that might obtain, with an eye toward founding a cannot be entirely freed from the ‘utili- national being in that excess. I note this here tarian, rational, aesthetic or moral im- to underline the traces of a shared responsi- peratives’ from which the surrealist act bility hidden beyond the word “surrealism” necessarily frees itself. Such an act can that the Argentines borrow from the French, be performed only if it is accepted as despite being more than just their European a sacred act (in the profanatory sense influences, and how that responsibility bears of the word): against the unacceptable on their work’s conflictive relation to the Ar- world of rational utility. (69-70) gentine nation. The question of this difficult relation, that of literature’s role in articulating Setting itself beside the world was never a distinct (national) being, is crucial to the enough; following Bataille, surrealism need- stakes of my investigation and, as emerges ed to recognize the potential inherent to a in criticism and the writings of these poets, combative relationship with the various or- is key for any approach to questions of Latin ders belonging to the world, to be free. That American nation-hood and of Latin Ameri- is, the potential of opposition to the concept can being. Jean Franco highlights that Latin of Order itself. It was time for the move- Americans have tended to see art “as an ex- ment to (re)enter the flow of history—a flow pression of the artist’s whole self: a self which that had violently erupted in the lives of the is living in a society and which therefore has a world, belying and undermining the pre- collective as well as an individual concern”— sumed moral base of the concept “Europe.” and cannot, thereby, be isolated nor asocial Thus, having witnessed a crisis of the Law (11). This echoes Aldo Pellegrini, founder of that destabilized the Law’s foundation, surre- the Argentine group—who, by way of self- alism was set to take up anew the question of justification, notes in the first edition of the Law’s inherent violence, manifest in its foun- magazine Qué that dational archivization of national linguistic and social norms within geographically de- toda palabra está en el corazón mis- limited spaces. But, in doing so, it also had mo de los problemas del ser. Es decir, to confront the fact that the violence of the que para un hombre determinado, su 106 Letras Hispanas Volume 15

misterio toma la forma de sus pala- to the Law. Sarmiento, in this telling, begins bras (en un sentido más amplio: toma the tradition that encompasses the surreal- la forma de sus signos). (19) ists; with Sarmiento begins the literary task that will demand constant responses from One can bring those two assertions to- coming Argentine literati (and in a work that gether thus: as soon as being becomes gener- opens with a French phrase, no less). As the alizable and thus generalized in a word, here process of naming territories and establish- “Argentine,” it has already long been sepa- ing a hierarchical relation between state and rated from the human body in order to (re) territory begins, a literary duty is proposed, a impose itself on that very body, in a double call to which all subsequent Argentine writ- gesture that constructs both the nation and ers respond in one way or another. Although the national subject. The state’s word is im- this debt may never be contained in a mere posed upon the citizen. Or, more accurately, duty, and the responses will be unique to the it is always retroactively written on the body authors who respond to this call, and always that comes to be “citizen,” rendering the pre- incomplete. sumptively passive body either masculine or This focus on taming the space of the feminine and (re)affirming it as the space of territory, the land and nature, will form a the nation-state’s law. A law that must always constant part of Argentine literature, at times mark its subjects as it is erected, establishing explicitly and at others implicitly. As Montal- borders and terms for the traditions of the do asserts, subjects it individualizes, and who embody the nation as they are incorporated to it. para Sarmiento hay que retrazar el Moreover, this process does not exclude the mapa, apropiarse de ese cuerpo, asen- fatherland’s literal and figurative “body”—na- tarlo y fijarlo a través de la navegación ture and the land—subjected to the Argentine de los ríos, las costumbres de la polis, national imaginary’s civilizing impulses since establecer sobre el espacio la tela de the foundational tension between civilization araña de las comunicaciones. (114) and barbarism. A foundational tension that is the very denigration/denial of the land and A nation will always appropriate its “savage nature upon which the national vision is in- body” to found itself—a “body” which, of scribed, and which is “naturalized” in being course, neither belongs to nor has anything named. to do with the nation, and will be made sav- For Argentina, as for any other colo- age, “saved” as much as “animalized,” only by nized country, dictating the national. And for Sarmiento,

naturaleza culturizada y cultura nat- la manera de apropriarse de ese cuer- ural son los polos sobre los que se po, puramente bárbaro, es a través asienta un problema cultural y políti- del mundo de la estética, es decir, de co: la gobernabilidad de América La- la “mentira.” La naturaleza contiene tina, la constitución de los estados. la diferencia radical y absoluta con la (Montaldo 107) identidad de la barbarie social. (Mon- taldo 117) Here, Graciela Montaldo puts in stark relief the problematic borne by Argentine litera- “Argentine” aesthetics, from their beginning, ture and culture and locates its beginning in have been forged in a constant relation with Sarmiento. His work unleashed the process of the state and its laws—this, in fact, is the only fabricating a national writing that was a con- way to articulate this aggregation of power’s stant vacillation between various perspectives pre-tensions. Montaldo says it well when she intending, every one, to subordinate nature underlines this process as one half of a dual Conor Craig Harris 107 directionality inherent to this imposed reflec- Feminine in its conjunction with Nature. This tion on the country’s space— juncture is that onto which the state’s law at- tempts to write itself; and, the object of this la primera dirección focaliza el pro- poetry’s desire. This poetry is launched at blema de escribir la patria y el Esta- the Feminine-Nature conceptual juncture, do—el momento de constitución del searching for something other beneath the Estado—[…] en un espacio que tam- bién es real y relativamente descono- nation, at the limits of its law and alongside cido, resistente a la ley, que la escri- the natural. While it never escapes the afore- tura debe cartografiar para ubicar y mentioned presumptions, for being, in the organizar la acción política. (104) end, poetry, there is within or behind it an excess that upends the presumptions of both By assuming this task, Argentine litera- natural and feminine servility predominant, ture has vacillated between, on the one hand, then as now, in a nationalist poetry seeking discarding nature completely in favor of the to perch on “nature’s body” to proclaim itself urban and, on the other, total condemnation masculine. Argentine surrealism intended, of urban “civilization’s” superficiality, with- albeit briefly and frustratedly, to situate itself out at any point ceasing to subordinate the as close as possible to the insurmountable natural to human efforts. Nevertheless, the and uncontainable natural. In that attempt, appearance of surrealism signaled a deviation this poetry signaled that limit from which from the two routes characterizing Argentine a new system of (anti)national signs might literary production up until that point—Sur begin. As such, I intend to trace here the versus Boedo, European aesthetics versus so- interruptions of the predominant vision of cial engagement and popular aesthetics. A the natural/feminine/poetry glimpsed in the duality in which neither group sufficiently works of four members of the group. In this interrogated the place of its own writing, the way, we can see where and how to follow this place proper to it, which directly and indi- path; where and how this illusory, impossible rectly determined its terms. This is not to say figure comes, ever so slightly, into view. that the surrealists rejected the fundamen- tal gestures of the literary—how could they hope to achieve this, located as they were in Juan José Ceselli’s Ritual Latin American urban centers?—but rather that they expropriated the tools and visions Although by no means the best known predominant in nationalist literature and al- of the group’s works, Juan José Ceselli’s 1966 lowed them to become confused in their po- El paraíso desenterrado offers us an introduc- etry. This poetry sinks into the endless signi- tion to the themes that will come to dominate fying of the finite literary system—the poets my work, scattered throughout the works of do not escape, but nor do they give in to the these poets. As he said in a rare interview, forceful expectations and presumptions of the book is an attempt at “recuperación del their milieu. Upon reading their works, they bien perdido por medio del conocimiento y resound as a writing of the impossibility of del amor” (“Reportaje…”). Although I will phallogocentric national literature contain- differ from a straightforward reading of the ing the natural within a single sign—neither book’s arcane and esoteric themes, this sense woman, nor nation, nor state, nor the parts of loss, recuperation and celebration of the of nature that serve as synecdoche for all of human (without primitivist reductivism) nature. Nature cannot be contained even in will be important below. These reflections are the signifier “nature,” hinging as it does on something of a poetico-theoretical excursus, and in the law. And languishing behind this as well as an introduction to the broader im- poetic signifying chain is the very idea of the petus of my work. Just as this book presents 108 Letras Hispanas Volume 15 itself, from the beginning, as a book-ritual—a undermines the edifices proper to and nec- lib-rito—it will present me with the necessary essary for the state’s project of figurative and tools for my own academic-discursive ritual. subjectivizing territorial delimitation. Reacti- I will here attend to the book’s introduction, vating through its ritual structure the playful the putting-itself-in-play that opens the ritu- tendencies underlying the foundational pre- al, the book and my own analysis. sumptions of the national, this work inaugu- El paraíso desenterrado sets out by rates a confusion of the discursive distinc- warning its readers that the book itself wishes tions between the natural and the civilized. to be buried; requesting blessings for Continuing in the titular poem, the book emphasizes its attempts at drawing near Cualquiera que alterara las palabras to a femininity constantly distanced by, and [de este libro yet inscribed in writing, found only on the O destruyera su contenido pages produced in and by the written word. O cambiara su sentido Without it being clear the “tú” to whom the O deformara sus imágenes O lo ocultara titular poem is addressed, it repeats a com- O lo cubriera con materias viles mon surrealist gesture by sexualizing the in- O lo enterrara terlocutor and attributing an obscure, dream- O lo quemara like power to it—“tu sexo ha convertido mi O lo arrojara al agua… (9) alcoba / en un palacio de fatigas” (13). The “tú” possesses the power to completely trans- It refuses its own force, its distancing from form the speaker’s hiding place—poetry. It nature, its unicity and consistency. The book unveils the pages-walls erected as the place to situates itself at the edge of a collapse postu- and from which the word is consigned. The lated by the indeterminacy proper to the im- book and the poetry therein signal a nostal- perfect subjunctive, leaning out to the condi- gic, paradisiacal, almost utopian, impulse to tional future and the past, searching for who become life itself by wishing to return to the might fulfill its wishes. It calls on us to toss earth. They strive to be buried by the transfor- it out over the void, to undo its legibility; it mations that this writing proposes. And this demands of us that we grant it death. From “tú,” becoming feminine in the lines “cada vez the first page, the text wishes to (un)make que te poseo / te transformas en una mujer itself part of nature (although we recognize diferente,” further refuses to be either univo- the impossibility) and implores readers to cal or possessed (13). True possession of this become executioners, witnesses to a ritual “tú” would be an act of endless dedifferentia- burial deferred in reading. This book insists tion that could not but impose itself on the repeatedly and formally on its own negation object, desired and possessed by desire. The and, so, beginning at the beginning, its struc- very violence of language is highlighted here: ture hinges on a double negative formed in the violence of a law that intends to archive two commands to the reader: “read me to un- every facet of the nation, to preserve and de- read me,” that is, “read that this isn’t a book stroy it at the same time, despite never cap- to be able to read;” and “do what I request to turing the same thing twice. Nonetheless, by undo the request that I am” or “I am a ritual sinking into this attempted personal posses- that exists only to not exist.” Each section ne- sion, the poetry confronts she who is always gates itself, complicating any consistency of other, different than before. The lyrical I -be presentation, forcing us, as readers, to accept comes livid, lunatic: only its ambivalence and slippery signifying chains. Keeping in sight writing’s emptiness le prendo fuego a los muebles through a consistent written ritual negation echo a rodar los retratos (and writing always conceals a ritual), the text ¿qué historias son esas de la vida eterna? Conor Craig Harris 109

nada hay más allá de ti y de mí terms that come to form the ritual thematic. nosotros seremos a la vez el Infierno The first term that appears to be problema- [y la Gloria tized is “the body,” in the increasing indeter- nosotros seremos la Eternidad (13-14) minacy between the (feminine) other’s body and nature: “su cuerpo es una fiesta de man- It seeks mystical demystification, as paradoxi- antiales / su sexo un mordisco de hierba fr- cal as it sounds—a differential unity between esca” (15). The you is distant—the voice has heaven and hell, the idea of eternity beyond switched to the third person and now reflects the present of the two and of writing, re-pre- on her instead of discoursing with and before sented on poetry’s page alone. Something far her. This lends a more reflexive and memo- off but interminable, absent but pursued— rial tone, much as it signals the vacillation of from the beginning we perceive surrealist au- this “you” between interlocutor and object of tomaticity in the distance, and must (again) desire, future present and past, that will mark grasp and bury it, for it to be Bataille’s imma- the rest of the book. While the poems reflect nent critique of the transcendent order of the on what she may be, she is depersonalized world and not merely an attempt at escape. and the earlier, intimate tone is undermined This (feminized) you as interlocutor, in this hesitant transition. Thus, the relation desired femininity, eternity’s moment; she is between speaker and interlocutor becomes all of this without being exhausted in any one confused, as she/you becomes more object term. The titular poem ends with a brusque than interlocutor. But the prior intimacy, the image, blending nature and the feminine— distant sensuality behind the present of writ- “tus senos pesan en mis manos / como un ing, is not totally effaced. Established here fruto en la rama” (14). Nature as a term, is the growing indistinction between nature as category, does not escape the poetry, of and the lover that will reign throughout this course, given its (de)establishment through book-ritual: distance’s intimacy bound to the the nation-state’s language and culture. This present’s force, confusion between subject/ writing wants to contain everything while it object, active/passive. Within this so-called also recognizes that impossibility. Beginning “nature” one also finds the female body that in this poem, there is a slippage in terms that makes poetry possible, without being pres- determines and highlights the impossibil- ent for it—in the territory where the poetic I ity that we extract any single meaning from affirms “hurgo sus mitos con mis armas más this book. Moreover, as writing, the book re- salvajes / sables que matan según las mareas / affirms a duty to problematize instantiating soles que se apagan después de haber amado” hierarchies and divisions. A duty to presume (15). Poetry is situated alongside the femi- neither the validity nor consistency of terms nine, close enough to touch it, or harm it, on arising from the subjugation of what would the page where it is written. However, instead be called nature; to erase the slippery distinc- of harming her, it brings violence against tions that the Sarmiento-esque artistic-na- myths and presumptions, always imposed in tional discourse establishes between things. and with a name. Not against nature (nor the These destabilizing lexical slippages seep feminine) as such, if those even exist in them- through the book, such that distinctions fold selves, but everything that covers her upon one over the other and the terms and figures, uncovering her, so that together “desgarrados imposed to from them erect a patriarchal na- por una libertad terrible / vamos a vivir a un tionality, become confused—although Ceselli país donde siempre es de día” (15). achieves this from within those same terms But poetry will only ever be beside what and figures. is here called feminine, never hitting the All of this becomes clear in continua- mark, only the page that rises as the pen is tion, in numbered fragments laying out the lowered to write. By (tres)passing along the 110 Letras Hispanas Volume 15 page, poetry’s word games remain a step re- pretend some return to the primitive, nor moved from whatever might be the full pres- does it pose itself as alone capable of com- ence of nature, the feminine, the body, behind plete self-destruction and (re)entry to the its words. Yet, another of the fragments says natural before logos. No—it’s hidden amidst that “su presencia convulsiona la naturaleza,” all of man’s artifices, all the constructs form- being a part apart from it (16). Chiasmatic ing humanity’s creative will, re-appropriated ambiguity in the fragment allows this pres- for something more expansive than its con- ence, already described as made only of parts text, Argentina’s national territory. Ceselli (taken) from nature, to both shake and be seeks to unearth paradise with the collapse shaken by nature. This writing and the pres- of hierarchies that subjugate reality by sepa- ence that is its object will always only be im- rating the “human” from the “natural.” With positions, but ones composed from the very every line, the text intends to undermine material upon which they are imposed— these presumptions’ primacy and highlight “nature” never obtains what it describes but the alterity of a present way: an extant para- nor does it prevent glimpses of that that it dise, immanent to human reality, wrought struggles to subject. The word nature (and of both human and natural in as much as its signifying chain woman/other/presence/ those two terms define, without exhaust- lover) is unveiled in these fragments as both ing, one another. A presence still human, polysemic interlocutor and object of this because “¿quién es Dios si no yo mismo / book-ritual. cuando la poseo?” (20); that is, when writ- And from the re-velation of the desired ing, when marking a page with seeds of a object, love’s words ascend vertiginously, de- new world, dreaming with nature a world lirious with immediacy veiled by the pres- neither exclusive nor restricted. The book’s ent and past wings of this secret (of) desire. introduction, and thus our introduction to He, it’s always and only ever a he that speaks the group’s dominant thematics, closes with these things, pronounces of the two figures a motto for another you, more obviously the (speaker and desired), “acostados sobre el you that you are, reader—“serás Dios / cuan- delirio / nosotros justificamos a Dios” (17). do seas más loco que Dios” (20). This will be He suggests here the end of the great myth, the guiding motto of Ceselli’s book and my the axle of all hierarchies and every structure reading of the other poets. Poets that desire that presumes to tear us from immediacy a nature, a lover, an unobtainable presence— and cast us out into time. This poetry, then, their writing’s shadow, grounding them as it further assumes what Bataille identifies as escapes. surrealism’s primordial condition—the ab- sence of myth converted into a myth of ab- sence. By assuming it, it intends to generate Juan Antonio Vasco, new terms from a world dreamed of within Counter-Borders whatever we are offered by the nation-state, for the world sin qua non, the world before The second poet, Juan Antonio Vasco, law. That is, as the poem affirms, “no es -ver rather than simply approach presences, traces dad que nos han expulsado del Paraíso / muy and celebrates the liberatory potential of the lejos pasa un tren con ruido al campo” (18). marks it leaves in writing, poetry, and civi- This Paradise was never far from us, neither lization. Efforts to destabilize man’s limited as readers nor from the book’s two, but was consignatory structures underpin his works, rather veiled in its inexhaustible plenitude beginning with the book Cambio de horario— by poetry, literature, all writing’s inadequate tentative efforts to find himself somewhere terms—in brief, the words of the state’s cul- between feminine, natural, poetry and anti- ture and law. This poetry does not, however, national freedom. Conor Craig Harris 111

From “En la casa de postas,” dedicated we might watch as “Adán y Eva liberados por to Enrique Molina, we read— fin de su injusta condena / domestican aves del paraíso y las sueltan en la / asamblea del [e]l pájaro que se quita sus plumas de hierro pueblo,” disseminating amongst those unjust- para marcar los rostros de las muchachas ly limited as the people by the law, tools for the [con un (re)construction of the world (105). signo que reluce más allá de los días que The book’s lexicon makes it clear that habitamos (103) this “bird” occupies, and therefore realizes as liberatory, the space beyond which any termi- Poetic writing is a force never entirely split nological distinction corralling the mother is from nature, incorporating the natural by lost. Theirs are the nests concealing the moth- writing it, granting it a body with a name and er’s nest, the natal land. In “El vuelo de los pá- locating it within speech. In Vasco, erotism jaros,” this bird-agitator “augura mejores días is united and confused with nature’s aspects, / mañanas con los senos descubiertos / con la the one for the other as subject and object of blusa de agua de instinto / la mujer desnuda desire, insofar as they are coetaneous in po- que huye entre los barcos y las calles,” showing etry. This bond is “una inagotable corriente us the way, the traces that crisscross all civi- de caricias” from “esa presencia de hombre lizations perched upon the real (107). Again, partido en dos;” again, we see the ambigu- there is a slippage between terms: woman and ous “tú,” and “[e]res el agua negra donde nature are combined and confused by plum- toda blasfemia alcanza / la transparencia del age that marks the vital plenitude awaiting in deseo” (103). Sensuality hangs suspended be- the eternity of reality’s uncovering. However, tween nature and civilization: based in one, this also signals the impossibility of a total facing another, spinning endlessly. It exists in uncovering and, thus, any uncovering—am- the space opened by the cleavage produced in bivalence is the most one can expect from humanity’s being cast out of nature, unable to erase that leap’s traces. The feminine body La bella destrucción del vino del ocaso de las subjugated and marked through writing is historias edificantes here also the space and moment of humanity’s los telones perforados por los cabezazos de la liberatory possibility; the space behind “na- realidad ture” to which one tries constantly to return, la libertad ardiendo por los cuatros costados only to spring anew towards, and from, death. (107) If this wish be, necessarily, blasphemous, it is due to the rigid structures that reign amongst Poetry’s revelation of woman-nature’s des- the people as established in the nation-state’s perate flight will always only ever be partial, writing. But as “Noticias del paraíso” affirms, never clear nor total. Hers is a flight always the subjects most able to approach nature beyond national language’s determinations, are the poets; that is, “cada pájaro tiene un unreachable within logos; and, moreover, ig- nido detrás de su nido para / construir con nored within surrealist discourses and their paciencia el infinitio” (105). The bird-poets treatment of the feminine, never but veiled by in Vasco possess all the necessary tools for a the constitutive illusion that surrealism un- literary construction at once constant, eternal veils—the illusion of the feminine body and and, as ambivalent, liberatory. A construction its passivity. of ruins ruined in and by its own processu- Vasco avers that this incomplete poetic ality—eternal and therefore unstable and de- liberation is decidedly American, a trace of stabilizing any presumption of settling mean- both the conquest and the law’s violent impo- ing or archiving it—acts decisive for the law’s scription (inscription is never but imposi- territorial demarcation. Through this process tion, yet not exhausted in it) on the land and 112 Letras Hispanas Volume 15 people. But he never retreats from what has all ambivalent, human, full of potential—they happened: he doesn’t presume to erase his- are actions and thereby affirm a voice, coopt- tory and instead continues with what good ed and distorted as it may be. All that remains remains or might be extracted from it. With- to us is that in this terrain of constant reconstructions, he strives to weave something from the ruins. In Abracemos el destino de América suelta para “América tiene hijos” [vivir sobre las llanuras y el mar plantando una pierna en la tierra podrida América se mete la mano en el seno y saca los porque su salvaje autonomía construye cada piojos de la conquista reducidos a polvo de mañana la selva y el océano y el asiento de cabeza de jíbaro eficientes como una biblioteca nuestra costumbre que estalla en mitad de cada un arco de alambre de echar a rodar cabezas país (119) de tamaño natural cabezas de garrote vil y de horca y de amor indígena con palmas de sosiego a la hora de la ola del The nature and liberatory customs of a poetry mar de la arena de la selva de la mala palabra attempting to perforate a national mythol- de los pájaros con cola de nácar marina y de ogy’s veil don’t appear but explode, violently pluma de sueño (118) and rudely within the nation-state’s order. An eruption always incomplete, more than could He denounces, in torrential enjamb- be contained by, and thus always opposed ment unimpeded by orthography, the con- to, the borders of a pestilent law. Always to structions bound by conquest’s remains to come, always fated, always on the other side render violence unto those with “cabezas de of the said and sayable. […],” diminished by neither historical obses- This is Vasco’s motto in “La insurreción” sion nor mythology of violence. However, from Destino común: “la eterna voluntad / a syntactic indeterminacy forged in this a- insurgente de América” (156 my emphasis). orthographic enjambment also allows these This poetry, as in Ceselli’s anti-hierarchical same poets to realize violence against them- style, directs itself against the mere idea of selves, backed by libraries’ terrible efficiency. a unique and univocal nation, erected on the They are, rhetorically and formally, at the earth and making it “nature,” feminine. It asks, center of this construction, because poetry “¿quién puede fusilar al pan? / ¿Quién sitiará is also a construction, ambivalent and await- a la gaviota en su nido?” recognizing that ing “la hora de […] los pájaros.” Of course, these bird-poets with “pluma de sueño,” that el padre de los hermanitos sonríe sin dejar exist to liberate our minds of ambivalences, [por eso are the surrealists. They are striving to perfo- de dar rienda suelta a sus lágrimas que bebe rate the mythological skein extended above a [bajo la mesa el perro de la bondad del hombre nature made “feminine” by history’s violently el perro de la familia foundational double movement of naming el magnífico perro de la Ciencia hijo de la perra the natural to establish the historical. Supple- del Poder menting this poem, “América desuella a sus el perro fiel del destino hijos” emphasizes that there are no libera- el bello perro innato de la muerte (156-57) tory niceties “porque la única verdad está en nuestra garganta / en esa mujer que pone un This poetry projects the strong sense that pie a cada lado del / precipicio / y orina sobre this reality sliding behind the chain nature/ América” (119). The niceties of colonial pests, woman/liberty is society’s original liberty, still worshipping national mythology, could the unobtainable “mother” figure, and that never, and yet will always, be the bird-poets’ “esa mujer desnuda despierta en el estanque tools. Nature, woman, poetry and liberty are de / sábanas blancas / la libertad el sudor de Conor Craig Harris 113 su sueño” (157). Without rejecting human the same word that erects the patriarchal na- progress, we glimpse from between these tion-state. Terrible for Madariaga, infancy’s words an exit from the colonialist national land possesses a constant presence; it is pres- lie, an escape from the father’s dogs—from ence itself. Although, whenever it appears it law and from borders. Again, enjambment is as the limit to which the trains crisscross- links goodness, family and science to Power, ing this poetry might arrive without cross- fate and finally, death—a submissive dog, ing. The interlocutor is always arriving to various submissive dogs, confused in the fini- this land but never enters it, standing and tude beneath the Father’s table. That is, on the staring in front of her, trapped by and in a ground, invisible to Father, closer to mother language of arrival. This love will always be than Him but, in the end, his—illusions that a means and measure of arrival, demanding bring only death. Only in the future, when a constant translation of where one wishes to our brothers flee father’s home, will it make arrive and displacing that arrival toward the sense to say that “La libertad su tumba / su future. But it will never reach the point of botella en el mar / Una ciudad de América arrival nor ever anything that can be fixed respira en su laberinto / ¡beber el ron ardiente or stopped. de la fraternindad!” (157). “El amor es continuo y el viento lo de- spierta y lo adora / con sus hombres hasta la tierra de la salvación / y el infinito” (49). Francisco Madariaga, Love, like all words, is simultaneously said of Trains and the Mother and done. Existing alongside humanity, it guides and takes us there but never beyond, The third poet, Francisco Madariaga’s it leaves us at the entrance to salvation’s poetry carries the land’s traces beyond rebel- lands, before the mother and the infinite for- lion, taking up anew an idealized return to ever on the other side of the “hasta.” As soon the mother-woman-earth figure as a unify- as we’re born from love we are subjugated ing theme. For him, it renders slippery and by language and the being-cast-out that is inconstant the underlying delimitations of imposed upon us, preventing our regress to man, sense and poetry. natal lands. As in, for example, “El hechizo His book Las jaulas del sol portrays natal,” birth’s effects appear in this poetry as the path to the ground as illuminated by the “¡Tu tren descarrilado entre las brujas!” (52). light of an ambiguous love, one without an The moment of birth is always also deboard- object, in “El amor es continuo.” In tender ing the train, love, such that humanity ends action, another indefinite “tú,” another in- spellbound in the gears of life, language and terlocutor of indeterminable visage, is car- the nation-state. In the poem’s words life, ried along “hasta la Piedra loca de la her- at “[u]na estación pequeña te ofrece el ho- mandad del amor / que adorabas en la tierra tel de sus ocios, / y tú para siempre entre las de tu infancia” (49). Infancy’s homeland, the pócimas y los filtros.” Barely born you enter mother that watches over and protects us magic, the illusion of language—constructs before language makes space for the imma- that strive to trap us at a real distance from nent love that sustains a limitrophe broth- the mother’s lands. An ideal for us always erhood beyond borders and nations. Yet, this already unobtainable, always already alien- group is still a brotherhood, still a masculine ated in and by the nation’s word. This poem’s association at language’s limit, protected by vision of the human condition is of insur- the mother yet still distant from her. A group mountable internal division—a vision of forever there with her; bordering childhood’s Heideggerian dasein cast into the clearing, land and love’s insanity, but unable to reach it paralyzed by the spells of the absolute. Fol- because, as a brotherhood, it is articulated in lowing the poetic voice 114 Letras Hispanas Volume 15

[y]o siento que en su caja de caudales está re-inter paradise, but is rather joyful in its [llorando presence, although that presence is always un pobre niño: el cálido doncel del absoluto, covered by the joyful words. que a los pobres animales y a los hombres a veces Madariaga’s work yearns to be eternally paraliza en el claro de un bosque. about to give in to nature’s force. No longer shirking it off, no longer evaporating in the Madariaga’s poetry pretends to take up and sunlight, it avails itself fully of the surreal ma- make audible, although not accessible, the teriality of dreams. However, he complicates voice of that poor child paralyzed in a clear- this dynamic and division and, as in “El alba ing barely on this side of speech, caught by cálida,” sleep is revealed as man’s world de- the patriarch’s intelligibility. It aims to remind feated by the dawn. With dawn’s light, people where their being rests, a base always already repressed by the nomos and never [l]a ciudad ha sido invadida por el mar, quite so stable a foundation. He’s highlight- [pero conserva ing, then, the insubstantiality and inaccessi- todos sus ruidos, su tráfico. bility of the terms that the nation depends on Todos los rumores se han transformado (land-mother-woman, the feminine), which [en cánticos de pájaros (61) can never be as passive as it wants them. Madariaga openly opposes official po- The city/nature dialectic reaches its peak and etics, those of the “poetas oficiales” in one collapses with the dawn; the distinctions we of this book’s poems, the spokesmen for erect between nature and civilization cease the good word “nation.” He directs himself to hold and we can glimpse the “natural” at derisively to all that hang on a patriotic po- the core of the human. The metal cages that etry, ironically adopting a formal “vosotros” we erect, petty pretenders to the absolute and to link the said to the pretensions of those the definitive, melt with the coming of the poets—“Perros enanos entecos, tenéis a sun; names evaporate in the light. As “[l]os vuestro servicio / los escribientes naciona- ferrocarriles penetran en la arena,” percep- les, pajarracos de / la patria” (54). Unlike tion is confused with the perceived. Real- the dream-birds that populate Vasco’s and ity’s force assumes, contingently, the task of Madariaga’s poetry, these official poets are belying the word as striving to tear humanity the least respectable sort of bird, for hav- from nature, albeit by naming it on our behalf. ing employed their plumes in service of the The real unveils as it veils, it (be)lies, it brings fatherland. By writing the nation Montaldo us to its own limit and vanishes. The poem’s describes above, those poets can only sing voice speaks from where of state dogs, caged while, and because, they sing the state’s song. Nonetheless, it is worth [se] emphasizing the persistence of the avian [encuentra] bajo el mar, en una estanca community. They are all birds, but there are [de calor those who dream of flying free through the Esmeralda. De entre ola y ola brotan cage of sun (the good, divine, absolute) and [los pájaros those that are accustomed to a metal cage como balas de sol y saltan velozmente hacia (the profane, human, contingent). The lat- infierno. ter are “[c]anasteros de los frutos del odio,” [...] ¡El alba cálida es el infierno, la iniciadora whereas this poet tells us that “no estoy / ar- [de todos repentido de tener a mi servicio las joyas / los amores! y los frutos del deseo.” Loving poetry must be one of desire, passion for the land and Poetry itself springs from nature’s heart, a voice for nature—a poetry that does not seek to laying alongside and within the human. It is Conor Craig Harris 115 a maternal force that, while always removed Enrique Molina from the mother-figure, marks the trace in masculine society of what is (un)veiled be- and Passion’s Exile tween the links of the chain woman/mother/ To conclude, I turn to Enrique Molina, nature. of whose poetry Julio Ortega has said that This wish to give in before the sun is “se propone como visión de un primer día fleetingly inscribed in the poem “Cartas de de la realidad” (531). Maternal space sinks invierno,” as a momentary confusion between to the level of the presumed in Molina, the the poem’s and the poet’s voices. level of the unsaid structuring the poet’s ex- ile throughout America. At one and the same Hace veinte años que quiero relatar perdidas time, it reproduces the structural position- [cosas. ing of the feminine figure as grounding the No puedo iniciar nada que no sea el torpe nation-state and reveals the impossibility of [vicio de totalizing that grounding, which appears with mi alma de grabarse y retorcerse, o si no balas, tajos de deseo, guaridas repentinas de la vida the imposition of the repressive, yet elevating, (64) name nature (/woman/land/mother/…). As Enrique Pezzoni says, “como en una traduc- Madariaga’s poetry is the useless and pre- ción verbal de un posible cuadro de Magritte, emptively frustrated bandage for the wounds la mujer es el ropaje que oculta al fantasma desire opens on the body incorporated to the del deseo desnudo” (779). Or again, in Orte- nation-state. Throughout this book and an- ga’s words, “el lenguaje aquí figura la vecindad other, El delito natal, the desire to reach lost del paraíso perseguido” (538). If on the poetry’s things through and behind the word marks surface this underlying current is not appar- this poetry, and it is clumsy and vicious be- ent, the figures of woman, mother, the prior cause of it. Its own limits are (un)veiled as and freedom will serve as clues to the unifying a hand extended towards natal lands, the thread that cuts through Molina’s work, much mother, liberty—limits from which poetry like that of the others. itself springs, being also its central fount. A I’ll begin with Pasiones terrestres, a poetry of book that traces a universal exile begun on the first day of life. “A Vahíne” is directed to the titular figure, a female subject in a paint- [c]ohetes a la luz de la luna, cohetes ing by Gauguin, or rather subject to his paint- [de la infancia, pero ing—captured in and distanced by the man’s surgiendo de los pantanos, de los ojos paints, only present as absented by his brush. [de los gatos monteses hundidos en el agua. So, for all that it pretends to speak to her, the distance multiplied in re-presentation is never overcome, a fate seemingly reserved for Or as that same poem closes, closing the women—always objects of representation, book that shares its name, a poetry that exposed to the melancholiacs’ writing. As the screams poem indicates, she

[o]h madre de todos los amores, ven a mí, [yace] ahora, inmóvil como el cielo, [adórame con mientras [sostiene] una flor sin nombre, tus hijas. Tiernísima del bosque, ven a mí, yo un testimonio de la desamparada primavera [tengo [en que [mora] (78) una bolsa de fuego cautivado por los gatos monteses pegada sobre el labio, The poem doesn’t dialogue with the woman, ¡reviéntame en tu olor! (74) a life always impossibly distanced from and 116 Letras Hispanas Volume 15 by masculinist representative apparatuses, consignation, fount and finality of its lan- including all forms of writing. Rather, it dia- guage. A mansion that will remain the place logues with writing itself, the objectifying of the laws and customs of men who found concretion of Vahíne by the hand of a male nations, writing to submit “nature’s body” artist. Represented here are both painting and to the nomos, naming and accounting for poetry, against their wills, as human edifices it. Laws that construct houses over women’s constructed over and with the woman’s body, bodies to later settle, stagnate and rot. This converted into a base only through bodily poem does not ask of life the calm, bland nor representation—mediums within which the boring; rather, actual body refuses to be housed. The wom- an, here Vahíne, in her representation signals ¡Racimo de pasiones! Pon aquí tu sentencia, a paradise interred beyond writing on the disputa en mi corazón ruidosamente, sopla blank page, one unobtainable through any [en el humo pigment. As visible as it may seem, it is always de un lugar apacible como una rama seca acariciada por veiled on the page and by the canvas. She will [la turbia sonrisa always be a reference to the fact that de la muerte.

una ley furiosa, una radiante ofensa al peso Exile becomes an opening to the world and [de los días era lo que él buscaba, junto a tu piel, the unnamed natural, substrate of the very entre los grandes árboles, word “nature.” The poet is always impelled cuando la soledad, la rebeldía, beyond the silent national mansion by desire. azuzaban en su alma He seeks a place with “el rostro enjuto del de- la apasionada fuga de las cosas. seo sonriendo en cada puerta,” where father’s Porque, ¿qué ansía un hombre rot has yet to settle on mother’s body—an al- sino sobrepujar una costumbre llena ways impossible place, of course. This desire [de polvo y tedio? (79) is the condemnation of the Stranger in the following poem, “Dice adiós el Pánuco”—a By reflecting, implicitly, on poetry’s stranger that is the poet but, moreover and hopes, through a reflection on another artist’s more importantly, every poet and every man desires, the poem reveals as a compositional that comes to hate “el plato de [su] casa / — presupposition the same vision of woman/na- pan y vino y silencio entre cortinas” (84). ture/unobtainable that extends itself through Re-presented in this text is the mourning the group’s works. Just like the others, trapped of he who realizes the insuperable hiatus sepa- in metal cages yearning for sun, he is anxious rating him from the land/nature/feminine, to see the nation-state’s language fall and to without ceasing to seek it out. “Un país, unas take pleasure in its ruins, although he may be sombras” lays out the immanence of a nature ruined, himself. that, simultaneously, will always be beyond the Molina’s poetry is, then, opposite that of reach of man, despite any insistence that the “[h]ombre paciente, compilador de em- bustes […] cuando despierta el Pródigo, con he sido siempre, tierra mía, un escalofría, / en la mansion callada” (“¿No entre tus arenales hay gracia para mí?” 82). It strives to signal […] the coming, interminable exile; the path that algún vago quejido de tablones leads the poet far from the “agrias galerías de bajo cuerpos que trotan en la sombra familia,” toward where his “verdadera alcoba algún grito animal en las hierbas (103) se abre allá lejos.” It is set against the customs of this quiet mansion, symbol for the ascen- Now and always, he hears in the sands of the sion of the nation-state as location of national earth, Conor Craig Harris 117

algo de mi ser que me reclama of the artificiality of man’s edifices, instead of sonando tiernamente, tristemente, having that artificiality hidden beneath the a través de los muros false image of a submissive nature. This is the como el materno acento de unos llanos task that the Argentine group, perhaps unwit- el implacable canto del amor y la lejanía tingly, took up in the face of their national poetic history. Or, said in another voice, as and will remain listening “porque así son las it always has been, “Tierra mía, / sé que me venas / en el hombre. / Ligadas para siempre a estás llamando / donde nada es más cruel que algún lugar / de cuyo polvo nacen” (103-104). tu propia belleza” (Molina 106). This is the state (of man) always divided in itself: cleaved from nature, while cleaving to the nature possessing it. A tension that itself Conclusions hangs on the tension between being and be- ing here, the permanence of movement be- While conclusions are preemptively pro- tween the lines “[y]o era aquella tierra / Yo scribed for the destabilization of a language era su canción empedernida” and “[y] ahora within which we could speak of them, I would mismo / ligado estoy a ella. / Ligado a su ceni- like to revisit the above briefly. Molina propos- za y a su fuego.” As readers we are overcome es for the reader an exile on the ground, from by the constant hiatus between the once and the artifices of a national language forged upon now; a hiatus that is the there from which the presumed passivity of a subjected femi- spring both man and the where wherein he nine. Madariaga and Vasco offer two possible encounters himself. The blank page that will visions of that exile’s end. Madariaga sees a lov- always be the space of writing and the written ing return to the immediacy of the land and the page distanced from the void, the wound of a plenitude of presence awaiting the impossible desire marking the scene of a solitary writing arrival of those cast away in language. Vasco, distanced from what it believes its source. on the other hand, offers an imaginary of lib- The work recognizes that, for the man eration, of a land risen up against the deferred confronting the land on which he stands, all materiality of the law of man. Whether you fol- that can be said is written on the page—“Sólo low those paths or another into exile, they will hay morada en ti para el recuerdo. / Porque tú all offer you the possibility of that immersion eres / la última verdad. / Y tu nostalgia / es la in the indeterminacy of a sensual language única dádiva que entregas a tus hijos” (105). hesitating before any fixed identification, the Nothing of man is based, nor will it be, in thematic and stylistic thread that Ceselli offers nature, in the mother’s space, once and again us in the work I reflected on above. Teasing the ambiguous “tú”—because he constructs out this current of impossibility throughout his own fleeting and illusory grounding in the texts of these poets, I have highlighted how each moment of being himself constructed. these works’ freely associating language and This is the kernel, the unrecoverable secret, oneiric thematic reveal the inherent instabil- of the entire group’s work, presented here for ity of a national language’s attempts to ground our consideration—the mother, nature, the itself in the aesthetic and political delimitation origin, liberty from borders and nations, po- of a particular state’s territory. While the exile etry, and the word. All remain on the other proposed in Molina’s work may only carry us side of an insurmountable hiatus from which between slumping mansions, realizing the im- man’s edifices spring and above which they manence of that which is barred from and by are erected—a plenitude to which these poets language nonetheless offers up a project and strive to return. Unobtainable presence; nos- a thought of all that might be otherwise than talgia for the always only imagined pre-state the restrictions imposed on us, against which liberty; her representation… we are reminded these poets are positioned. 118 Letras Hispanas Volume 15

Notes this avant-garde still fails to liberate itself from the limitations placed by the bourgeois state. 5 1 While there are many other poets who I take this concept, of the national language might be included in a discussion of surreal- and its material effects of structuring both the ism’s influence in Argentina, for the purposes conceptual and physical spaces of the nation, di- of this article I am adhering to the commonly rectly from the work of Nicos Poulantzas State, recognized grouping around the journal A partir Power, Socialism, Trans. Patrick Camiller (Verso de cero, particularly as commented by Graciela 2014). See, in particular, Part 1 of that text. 6 Maturo in her book El surrealismo en la poesía As concerns the duty to respond in the face argentina and Gerald Langowski in his El sur- of a call, I refer to this problematic’s formulation realismo en la ficción hispanoamericana. Both in Jacques Derrida’s Pasiones, Trans. Horacio texts also include excellent appendices of fur- Pons (Amorrortu 2011). 7 ther reading, for the curious reader. Of particular Regarding this vacillation, see Jean Franco, note are Olga Orozco and Alejandra Pizarnik, The Modern Culture of Latin America: Society who both, in their own ways, engage with and and the Artist (Penguin 1970) pp. 103-20 & 140- yet problematize the language of the core sur- 47. 8 realist group—Orozco offering an experience of In this sense, they diverge from Octavio reality’s mediation by language that undercuts Paz’s poetics, that Jean Franco describes as a the lyrical positioning of the male poets, and method of opposing oneself to historicism and Pizarnik taking their rhetoric and imagery to an contradicting the historical. See Jean Franco, ironic extreme. But, given their distinct relations “From Modernization to Resistance,” Critical to the style and the depth of their oeuvres, I have Passions, Ed. Jean Franco, Mary Louise Pratt been forced to leave them aside in my commen- and Katherine Newman (Duke UP 1999) pp. 298. 9 tary. As regards the subordination of the woman th 2 Here and throughout, all references to the in all aspects of 19 century Latin American patriarchive and the consignatory functions poetry, see Mary Louise Pratt, “Genero y Ciu- proper to the law are explicitly referring to dadanía: las mujeres en diálogo con la nación,” Jacques Derrida’s Archive Fever: A Freudian Esplendores y miserias del siglo XIX: cultura Impression, Trans. Eric Prenowitz (U of Chicago y sociedad en América Latina, Comp. Beat- 1996). riz González Stephan, Javier Lasarte, Graciela 3 This project cleaves closely to that articu- Montaldo, and María Julia Daroqui (Monte Avi- lated by Reynaldo Jiménez in his immense work, la Editores Latinoamericana 1995) pp. 261-76. 10 El cóncavo. Imágenes irreductibles y super- As regards the absence of myth as the pri- realismos sudamericanos, wherein he does the mordial condition of surrealism, see the above extensive work of tracing certain destabilizing referenced text of George Bataille, ibid. 11 slippages within surrealist and other poetic lan- I am thinking here of the pharmakon in Der- guages, beginning with a reading of Aldo Pel- rida and writing as product of the father’s pen, legrini, founder of the Argentine group. His thus the sovereign’s. Rather, the chain of fathers/ work is equal parts surrealist reflection and criti- sovereigns that pretend to grant (or not) writing cal intervention, and a prolonged engagement access to the truth. See principally Jacques Der- would destabilize my own work overly much, rida, “Plato’s Pharmacy,” Dissemination, Trans. but it comes strongly recommended to any read- Barbara Johnson (U of Chicago 1981). 12 er interested in these themes. I would like to ex- Regarding the construction of politics, tend here a thanks to one of the reviewers of my brotherhood and fraternity and their role as fun- work, who recommended the book to me. damental presumptions for the law, see Jacques 4 I would argue that this assertion articulates, Derrida, The Politics of Friendship, Trans. differently, what Peter Bürger has called the George Collins (Verso 1997). avant-garde’s protest, in his book Theory of the Avant-Garde, Trans. Michael Shaw (U of Min- Works Cited nesota Press 1984). A protest against the sup- posed autonomy of Art as granted by the bour- Bataille, Georges. The Absence of Myth: Writings on geois order, in order to annul the critical potency Surrealism. Trans. Michael Richardson,Verso, of Art. As he says, and I will reaffirm, however, 1994. Conor Craig Harris 119

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