Cyborgs in Latin America

CYBORGS IN LATIN AMERICA 9780230103900_01_prexii.indd i 5/7/2010 12:14:52 PM This page intentionally left blank Cyborgs in Latin America J. Andrew Brown 9780230103900_01_prexii.indd iii 5/7/2010 12:14:52 PM CYBORGS IN LATIN AMERICA Copyright © J. Andrew Brown, 2010. All rights reserved. First published in 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–0–230–10390–0 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Brown, J. Andrew, 1970– Cyborgs in Latin America / J. Andrew Brown. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978–0–230–10390–0 (alk. paper) 1. Spanish American fiction—20th century—History and criticism. 2. Science fiction, Spanish American—History and criticism. 3. Cyborgs in literature. 4. Cyborgs in mass media. 5. Cyborgs in motion pictures. 6. Literature and technology—Latin America— History—20th century. 7. Mass media and technology—Latin America—History—20th century. 8. Human beings—Philosophy. I. Title. PQ7082.S34B76 2010 863Ј.087620998—dc22 2009047964 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: July 2010 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America. 99780230103900_01_prexii.indd780230103900_01_prexii.indd iivv 55/7/2010/7/2010 112:14:522:14:52 PPMM For Amy 9780230103900_01_prexii.indd v 5/7/2010 12:14:53 PM This page intentionally left blank Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Posthuman Porteños: Cyborg Survivors in Argentine Narrative and Film 9 Chapter 2 Missing Gender: The Posthuman Feminine in Alicia Borinsky, Carmen Boullosa, and Eugenia Prado 43 Chapter 3 Ripped Stitches: Mass Media and Televisual Imaginaries in Rafael Courtoisie’s Narrative 77 Chapter 4 Neoliberal Prosthetics in Postdictatorial Argentina and Bolivia: Carlos Gamerro and Edmundo Paz Soldán 113 Chapter 5 Video Heads and Rewound Bodies: Cyborg Memories in Rodrigo Fresán and Alberto Fuguet 145 Conclusion 175 Notes 179 Bibliography 185 Index 193 9780230103900_01_prexii.indd vii 5/7/2010 12:14:53 PM This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments This book would not exist without the contributions and support from many friends, mentors, colleagues, and family throughout the years. I am grateful to my current and former colleagues at Washington University in St. Louis who have read and commented on various chapters at different stages of writing. I especially thank Elzbieta Sklodowska for her unflag- ging support as chair of the department and as my colleague and friend. I also thank my colleagues in the Spanish section: William Acree, Joe Barcroft, Cindy Brantmeier, Nina Davis, John Garganigo, Stephanie Kirk, María Fernanda Lander, Mabel Moraña, Eloisa Palafox, Ignacio Sánchez Prado, Joseph Schraibman, Claire Solomon, and Akiko Tsuchiya; all of whom have been very helpful with suggestions and encouragement throughout the evolution of the book. Indeed, the faculty from all the language sections and a wonderful staff (Rita Kuehler, Kathy Loepker, and Helene Abrams) have been a great support just by making the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures such a pleasant place to work. My many students who have taken graduate and undergraduate seminars over the past several years at Washington University and at Middlebury College have also been of great help. Those courses served as a wonderful testing ground for most of these ideas and my students’ own excellent readings and comments on the various novels and films under discussion in the book have been very enriching. I also recognize the support of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences that has supported much of the research involved in the book with a series of grants over the years. There are many colleagues outside of my university who have also been extremely supportive and helpful over the years, 9780230103900_01_prexii.indd ix 5/7/2010 12:14:53 PM x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS sometimes reading pieces, sometimes with helpful comments at conferences and other places. Any list would be incomplete and I apologize in advance to anyone I neglect to mention, but I would like to recognize and thank especially Daniel Balderston, Alicia Borinsky, Catherine Boyle, Pablo Brescia, Raúl Bueno, Claudio Canaparo, Michelle Clayton, Rafael Courtoisie, Diamela Eltit, Genevieve Fabry, Alberto Fuguet, Libby Ginway, Jerry Hoeg, David Laraway, Rob Latham, Gastón Lillo, Dianna Niebylski, Patrick O’Connell, Edmundo Paz Soldán, Lois Parkinson Zamora, Gustavo Pellón, Eugenia Prado, Luis Rebaza Soraluz, Cristina Rivera Garza, and Mike Wilson Reginato for their comments and for the conversations that we have shared on this topic over the years. Adria, Colin, Eva, and Liam have tolerated my fixations on cyborgs these last few years and have been so gracious as to show interest in these obsessions and share insights that I would not otherwise have encountered. Amy is a constant source of support and I dedicate this book, as I do all my work, to her. I would also like to acknowledge that portions of this book have appeared in earlier forms in various articles. Sections of chapter 1 appeared as “Sobrevivientes y cyborgs: Cine argentino al final de la dictadura.” Cine, Historia y Sociedad: Cine argentino y brasileño desde los años 80. Ed. Gaston Lillo and Walter Moser. Ottawa: Legas, 2007, 37–46. “Life Signs: Ricardo Piglia’s Cyborgs.” Science, Literature, and Film in the Hispanic World. Ed. Jerry Hoeg and Kevin Larsen. New York: Palgrave, 2006, 87–107. In chapter 2, the section on Eugenia Prado appeared earlier as “Identidad poshumana en Lóbulo de Eugenia Prado.” Revista Iberoamericana 73.221 (October–December 2007): 801–12. Chapter 3 was expanded considerably from “Ripped Stitches: Consumerism, Technology, and Posthuman Identity in Rafael Courtoisie’s Tajos.” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 15.2 (August 2006): 127–42. 99780230103900_01_prexii.indd780230103900_01_prexii.indd x 55/7/2010/7/2010 112:14:532:14:53 PPMM ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi Elements of chapter 4 appeared earlier as “Hacking the Past: Edmundo Paz Soldán’s El delirio de Turing and Carlos Gamerro’s Las Islas.” Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 10 (December 2006): 115–29. I express gratitude to the journals and presses that have granted permission for these sections to appear in this book. 9780230103900_01_prexii.indd xi 5/7/2010 12:14:53 PM This page intentionally left blank Introduction From the late nineteenth century, robots and artificial humans have gathered at the periphery of Latin American cultural production. Eduardo Holmberg’s robots from his 1879 novella Horacio Kalibang o los autómatas took center stage in the work of an author who never arrived at the center of Argentina’s literary circles. A couple of decades later, Horacio Quiroga, an author whose production has an important place in the Latin American literary canon, kept his novella Hombre artificial (1909) at the edge of his own oeuvre, publishing it as a serial under a pseudonym. While writers and artists have returned to the idea of technological life in a variety of venues since then, from Ernesto Sabato’s scientific and technological paranoia (Hombre y engranajes 1951) to Julio Cortázar’s fear of a cybernetic revolution (Rayuela 1963), only recently has a consider- ation of corporeal identity at the encounter of the mechanical and the organic occupied a central space in Latin American culture. These earlier works presented the various robots, artificial life forms, and technophilia as harbingers of a failing civilization, of the effects of scientific hubris and the uncritical acceptance of new technologies. Holmberg’s robots were meta- phors for the dangers he saw in uncontrolled immigration in nineteenth-century Argentina; Quiroga’s artificial man was a retelling of the Frankenstein story. Even Sabato and Cortázar’s more recent works held fast to the idea that the embrace of new technologies resulted in the loss of an essential identity.1 Recent narratives from various countries in Latin America have simul- taneously extended and problematized this vision of technological life, and done so with much greater frequency than we have seen in the past, with both established and new artists 9780230103900_02_int.indd 1 5/7/2010 10:58:28 AM 2 CYBORGS IN LATIN AMERICA working through the implications of a culture increasingly impacted by new technology. Cyborgs in Latin America examines this meeting point in recent Latin American narrative, film, and cultural production where one increasingly finds cybernetic bodies and technological identity at the sociopolitical intersection of military dictatorship and neoliberal policy. These developments in Latin American cultural expression occur simultaneous to the development of a theoretical vision of the posthuman by critics such as Donna Haraway, N. Katherine Hayles, and Chris Gray. Embracing the revolutionary potential of the figure, especially as it challenges patriarchal and heter- onormative values, these theorizations often fail to transcend the North American and European contexts in which they are articulated. Cyborgs in Latin America theorizes a peculiarly Latin American vision of technological identity in the postdictatorial, neoliberal reality that is not the case in the situations where we find cyborg and posthuman theory most often cited. By including the narrative, cinematic, and cultural production of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Mexico, and Uruguay, this book examines an articulation of cultural identity that incorporates the technological and organic realities of cybernetic being in a way that extends and challenges current theories of cyborg life.

Load more