Is Roland Barthes dreaming when he writes Camera Lucida? Does he think of his mother every day, or of the mother of whom he dreams every day (he tells us at one point that he only dreams of his mother), or of the mother that he both knew and did not know, saw and did not see, or of the mother that was never herself? Is he haunted by the ruin of all the memories of her that he wished to capture, in the writing of this book, for every day and always? Or by what happens, one day, between photographic technology and the light that helps bring to life a photograph of his mother when she was five years old-a photograph in which he claims to find the truth of the face he loved, and from which he seeks to "derive" all photography? Or * We would like to thank Hal Foster and Benjamin Buchloh for their encouragement and support, and Roger Bellin for his diligent research assistance. A longer version of this essay will appear in Palinodes, a collection of essays on Camera Lucida, edited by Geoffrey Batchen and Doug Nickel, and forthcoming from MIT Press and the Center for Creative Photography. When my gaze meets yours, I see both your gaze and your eyes, love in fascina-tion-and your eyes are not only seeing but also visible. And since they are visible (things or objects in the world) as much as seeing (at the origin of the world), I could precisely touch them, with my finger, lips, or even eyes, lashes and lids, by approaching you-if I dared come near to you in this way, if I one day dared. -Jacques Derrida, On Touching I desire you. I desire only you. . . . Where are you? I am playing hide and seek with ghosts. But I know I will end up finding you, and the whole world will be newly lit because we love each other, because a chain of illuminations passes through us. -André Breton, Mad LoveTo be on an island inhabited by artificial phantasms was the most insupportable of nightmares; to be in love with one of these images was worse than being in love with a phantasm (perhaps we always have wanted the person we love to have a phantasmatic existence).-Adolfo Bioy Casares, The Invention of Morel
The author fixes her gaze upon two Argentine novels to inquire on the nature of literature beyond the dissolution of categories such as “author” and “meaning” in what Ludmer has deemed a “post-autonomous universe.” Cortés-Roca delves into the space of a village in both novels to explore the transformations in political communities and the vocabulary needed to narrate these developments.
FICCIONES CIENTÍFICASEn 1940, la revista The Weekly Magazine publica un artículo periodístico fi rmado por Inez Wallace y titulado "I Walked with a Zombie".1 Utilizando la voz de la cronista que investiga e intenta ofrecer información, Wallace se propone confrontar a todos aquellos que -como antes le había ocurrido a ella misma-escuchan las historias sobre zombies con una sonrisa de incredulidad. "I Walked with a Zombie" es un artículo periodístico, una investigación sostenida en la lectura y en la recolección de testimonios y, fundamentalmente, un texto argumentativo que se propone demostrar que "the weird legend of the zombie is more than a legend" (Wallace 96). El artículo es, además, una crónica de viaje, no sólo en tanto da cuenta del desplazamiento de la cronista sino en tanto propone o refuerza diferencias territoriales y culturales ya existentes y explica, a los que están acá, lo que ocurre allá. Lo que está acá es "our highly civilized United States" y desde acá se origina el viaje de la cronista hacia allá, hacia el territorio del misterio y de la magia que es Haití. Es también acá, donde está la escritura y la lectura sobre ese espacio -"I have read of zombies in more books than one", aclara la cronista-; es también acá donde se consignan los relatos de las "indisputable sources": "weird tales from the lips of white men and women whose word I could not doubt", palabras blancas que explicarán las acciones mágicas y misteriosas de los negros.Si bien el artículo de Wallace pertenece al género de crónicas que se publican en los medios masivos, el texto ensaya todos los gestos del protocolo etnológico que hunde sus raíces en el siglo XIX: un yo que está acá, del lado de la civilización, 1 Desde 1911 y hasta la década del 60, la Hearst Corporation publica The American Weekly, una revista que se incluye como suplemento en el diario del domingo. Una suerte de precursora de National Enquirer, The American Weekly tenía aproximadamente 50.000.000 de lectores y presentaba historias de muerte y suspenso acompañadas de imágenes e ilustraciones de corte sensacionalista. El artículo de Inez Wallace fue tomado dos o tres años más tarde por como base del guión de la película de Jacques Tourneur que lleva el mismo título.
Positivism is both a program and a description of the end of the century's epistemological field – both an epistemological change accompanying specific political and social processes, and the transformation of the institutions which enable these processes. Its introduction and expansion in Latin America coincides with the processes of organization and centralization of the national states. Thus it becomes the master narrative that promotes regional modernization, normalizes the relationship between the population and the national states, and provides a new vocabulary for old dichotomies – such as civilization/barbarism, city/country, elite/people. Observing, controlling what exists, and using it through the scientific gaze is the equation that links positivism, perception, and visual technologies. Criminology adds the distress caused by concealment and camouflage among the crowd as a problem that also requires the use of an apparatus based on observation and control. The positivist genre, par excellence, is the essay, but positivism will also be present in the novel through naturalism.
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