Revised Pages Science Fiction in Argentina Revised Pages DIGITALCULTUREBOOKS, an imprint of the University of Michigan Press, is dedicated to publishing work in new media studies and the emerging field of digital humanities. Revised Pages Science Fiction in Argentina Technologies of the Text in a Material Multiverse Joanna Page University of Michigan Press Ann Arbor Revised Pages Copyright © 2016 by Joanna Page Some rights reserved This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial- No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. Published in the United States of America by the University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America c Printed on acid- free paper 2019 2018 2017 2016 4 3 2 1 A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Page, Joanna, 1974– author. Title: Science fiction in Argentina : technologies of the text in a material multiverse / Joanna Page. Description: Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015044531| ISBN 9780472073108 (hardback : acid- free paper) | ISBN 9780472053100 (paperback : acid- free paper) | ISBN 9780472121878 (e- book) Subjects: LCSH: Science fiction, Argentine— History and criticism. | Literature and technology— Argentina. | Fantasy fiction, Argentine— History and criticism. | BISAC: LITERARY CRITICISM / Science Fiction & Fantasy. | LITERARY CRITICISM / Caribbean & Latin American. Classification: LCC PQ7707.S34 P34 2016 | DDC 860.9/35882— dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015044531 http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/dcbooks.13607062.0001.001 Revised Pages To my brother, who came into this world to disrupt my neat ordering of it, a talent I now admire. Revised Pages The entire soul, then, must consist of tiny atoms, strung out through sinews, vitals, veins. — Lucretius, On the Nature of Things Revised Pages Acknowledgments Parts of this book were written during a period of extended research leave in 2012, funded by the British Academy, and I am extremely grateful for the peaceful and productive time this afforded me. Research trips to Argentina were also funded by Robinson College and the Centre of Latin American Studies. While working on this book I benefited enormously from the friend- ship and helpful advice of many colleagues in Argentina, including Cristina Reigadas, Clara Kriger, Sandra Gasparini, Carlos Gamerro, Federico Lorenz, and Pablo Piedras. Cecilia Gil Marino aided me in tracking down some of the more elusive materials that formed the basis of my research for the first chapter in particular. Closer to home, a symposium organized by Ian James in 2013 in Cam- bridge, “Science and Technology in Contemporary French Thought,” opened up some fruitful paths of research. Gerald Moore was very generous in sharing his expertise on Stiegler with me, and I am also grateful to Ed King for his feedback on a draft of the second chapter and for the inspiration of his own work on graphic fiction. Early versions of some of the material contained in this book have been published, or are forthcoming, in journals and edited volumes. The section on Holmberg formed the basis of an article in Spanish to be published with the title “Reflexividad en la obra de Eduardo Holmberg: El rol de la ciencia ficción y la fantasía en la modernización y el control de las masas” in a special issue of the Revista iberoamericana, “La ciencia ficción en América Latina: Aproximaciones teóricas al imaginario de la experimentación cultura.” The section on El Eternauta is drawn from an article entitled “Intellectuals, Rev- olution and Popular Culture: A New Reading of El Eternauta,” published Revised Pages in Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 19, no. 1 (March 2010). Part of chapter 6 appeared in Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 16 (2012) and another part in a compilation of essays edited by Jennifer Feeley and Sarah Wells with the title Simultaneous Worlds: Global Science Fiction Cinema (University of Minnesota Press, 2015). I am grateful to the publishers for their permission to reproduce this material. Revised Pages Contents Introduction 1 1. Fantasy and Science between Intellectuals and the Masses 15 Science, Fantasy, and the Masses in Holmberg’s Narrative Fiction 16 El Eternauta: The Intellectual in War and Revolution 31 Conclusion: Materialism, between Darwin and Marx 47 2. Mediation and Materiality in Graphic Fiction 51 Myth and Materiality in the Neoliberal City: Ricardo Barreiro’s Science Fiction Comics 54 Comics, the Archive, and Cognitive Practices 68 Conclusion: (Re)materialization in Graphic Fiction 79 3. Time, Technics, and the Transmission of Culture 81 Cultural Transmission, Apocalypse, and the End of History in Plop 84 Evolution in Reverse: Post- Darwinism and Mnemotechnics in El año del desierto 88 Cruz diablo: Technics, Psychopower, and the Cybernetic Gaucho 96 Conclusion: The ndE of (Universal) History 104 Revised Pages x / Contents 4. Projection, Prosthesis, Plasticity: Literature in the Age of the Image 106 Life beyond Death in the Cold Chemistry of Quiroga’s Celluloid Screens 108 The agicM of Machines: Anthropomorphic and Cosmomorphic Desire in La invención de Morel 114 El juego de los mundos: From Prosthesis to Plasticity 119 Conclusion: Plasticity and the “Dusk of Writing” 128 5. Beyond the Linguistic Turn: Mathematics and New Materialism in Contemporary Literature and Theater 131 The Mathematics of the Material Universe: The Science Fiction Theater of Javier Daulte and Rafael Spregelburd 133 New Subjectivities and New Materialisms in Marcelo Cohen’s Metafictions 142 Conclusion: The “Eternal Dance of Atoms” 152 6. Modernity and Cinematic Time in Science Fiction Film 154 Polytemporality in Estrellas and Cóndor Crux: A Critique of the Homogeneous Time of Historicism and Modernity 155 Retrofuturism and Reflexivity: The Construction of Cinematic Time in La antena and La sonámbula 171 Conclusion: (Post)Modernity and Cinematic Time 187 Conclusion 192 Notes 197 Bibliography 215 Index 229 Revised Pages Introduction “Argentine science fiction does not exist.” This claim, the opening statement of Elvio E. Gandolfo’s chapter on the subject in El libro de los géneros,1 has been repeatedly echoed by critics. At best, science fiction in Argentina has been relegated to a minor and poorly defined branch of the nation’s more celebrated tradition of fantastic literature. In this vein, Elsa Drucaroff asserts that Argentine texts may have adopted elements of science fiction, but none of them can really be said to belong to the genre.2 Pablo Capanna, perhaps the nation’s most established science fiction critic, dedicates only a brief epi- logue to Argentine examples in the updated (2007) version of his canonical El sentido de la ciencia ficción (1966), and observes the scant presence of tech- nology in the texts he surveys. He suggests that they should really be read as a nontraditional form of fantastic literature that borders on science fiction.3 The view that science fiction is insufficiently developed as a genre in Ar- gentina is perhaps an understandable response to the overwhelming domi- nance of generic models from the United States and Europe. The association of science fiction with foreign, imported literature is reinforced in the cat- egories used by publishers and booksellers in Argentina: the shelves dedi- cated to science fiction in bookshops are exclusively stocked with literature in translation, while even widely acknowledged Argentine practitioners of the genre, such as Angélica Gorodischer and Carlos Gandini, are relegated to the “literatura nacional” section. If science fiction has still to be recog- nized as a genre within national literature, this is partly because many of its most distinguished authors— Leopoldo Lugones and Adolfo Bioy Casares, for example—did not exclusively dedicate themselves to the genre, but also because they and other writers have not, unlike in the United States, become Revised Pages 2 / Science Fiction in Argentina the target of marketing campaigns that have relied on the strategic labeling (and retro-labeling) of texts as SF. Critics have followed suit in downplaying the presence of science fiction in Argentina and reinforcing an overly restrictive genre classification. This has led to a dearth of critical work on the subject that might create new and alternative genealogies within Argentine literature; among other omissions, it has also sidelined a very important flourishing of the genre in graphic fiction, for example, of which Oesterheld’s El Eternauta may be the most famous but certainly not the only example. I find sufficient the simple defi- nition of science fiction offered by Capanna (borrowing from Judith Merril) as “la literatura de la imaginación disciplinada” (literature of the disciplined imagination), which describes texts that apply a scientific logic to explore even the most fanciful of hypotheses, and scrupulously avoid supernatural explanation.4 This broad definition allows us to unshackle science fiction from any particular worldview or developmental context. Drucaroff’s un- ease stems from her observation that Argentine writers appropriate aspects of science fiction to serve a very different project: to address questions of