peripheral (post) modernity · 2020. 1. 17. · “ricardo piglia and the syncretist machine:...

Peripheral (Post) Modernity

PETER LANG New York ! Washington, D.C./Baltimore ! Bern

Frankfurt am Main ! Berlin ! Brussels ! Vienna ! Oxford

Eleni Kefala

Peripheral (Post) Modernity

The Syncretist Aesthetics of Borges, Piglia, Kalokyris and Kyriakidis

PETER LANG New York ! Washington, D.C./Baltimore ! Bern

Frankfurt am Main ! Berlin ! Brussels ! Vienna ! Oxford

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kefala, Eleni. Peripheral (post) modernity: the syncretist aesthetics of Borges,

Piglia, Kalokyris and Kyriakidis / Eleni Kefala. p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. 1. Borges, Jorge Luis, 1899– —Influence. 2. Borges, Jorge Luis, 1899– —-Aesthetics.

3. Postmodernism (Literature). 4. Argentine literature—20th century— History and criticism. 5. Greek literature, Modern—20th century—History

and criticism. 6. Piglia, Ricardo--Aesthetics. 7. Kalokyres, Demetres, 1948– —Aesthetics. 8. Kyriakides, Achilleas—Aesthetics. I. Title.

PQ7797.B635Z768 809'.9113—dc22 2006012706 ISBN-13: 978-0-8204-8639-0

ISBN-10: 0-8204-8639-6

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek. Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data is available

on the Internet at http://dnb.ddb.de/.

Cover design by Lisa Barfield based on a concept by Nazish Zaidi

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity

of the Council of Library Resources.

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Printed in Germany

for Michalis who opened up the world for me and for Ioanna who always wanted to travel it but left early

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments........................................................................................... ix

Introduction ........................................................................................ 1

General ........................................................................................................ 1Argentina and Greece: Parallel Historical, Political and Socio-Economic Trajectories in Modernity ............................................... 4

Chapter 1

Peripheral (Post) Modernity and Syncretist Aesthetics: The Case of Argentina and Greece .................................................... 19

Modernity and Periphery............................................................................ 19Cultural Reactions to Modernity: The Historical Avant-Garde, Modernism, Postmodernism....................................................................... 27Postmodernity and Periphery: Syncretism, Hybridity and Amphi-Models............................................................................................. 33Argentina and Greece: Parallel Ideological and Cultural Trajectories in (Post) Modernity .................................................. 48

Chapter 2

Jorge Luis Borges: El Delta, or, The Alchemy of Syncretism ........................................................................................... 65

Borges and the Alchemist’s Cell.................................................................. 65The Alchemy of Syncretism: Fantasy, Irony, Short Story.......................... 72Lost in Translation ..................................................................................... 101

Chapter 3

Ricardo Piglia: The Syncretist Machine............................................ 113

Buenos Aires and the Experience of (Post) Modernity ............................. 113The Syncretist Machine of Irreverent Peripheries: Moral Stories in the Contemporary Wor(l)d ............................................ 118The Poet on his Island: Impossible Geographies/Possible Stories........... 132

Chapter 4

Dimitris Kalokyris: A Craftsman of Syncretist Craters .................... 157

Kalokyris, Borges and (Post) Modern Greece ........................................... 157Making (Hi)Stories: Irreverence on the Sidewalks.................................... 167A Craftsman of Syncretist Craters ............................................................. 189

Chapter 5

Achilleas Kyriakidis: False Testimonies ............................................ 205

Kyriakidis and Borges: Encounter, Politicising Readings, Turning Points............................................................................................ 205A (Hi)Story of Perversion .......................................................................... 220Thick as Thieves: Conspiratorial Games in the Jerusalem of Borgesian Labyrinths ............................................................................. 247

Conclusion.......................................................................................... 255

Periphery and Post(?)Modernity: A Contribution to the Ideological Debates of Latin Americanists and Neohellenists.................. 255

Notes ............................................................................................................ 263Bibliography.................................................................................................. 269Index ............................................................................................................ 285

viii | Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The evolution of this book owes a great personal and intellectual debt to Elias Geoffrey Kantaris and Dimitris Tziovas, whose thoughtful suggestions,endless patience and goodwill supported me during my graduate years atCambridge.

I need to acknowledge Alison Sinclair’s, Paul Julian Smith’s and StevenBoldy’s role in my initiation into Hispanic literature during my early years inCambridge as well as David Holton’s and Anthony Close’s valuable assistance.

The work of Piglia, Kalokyris and Kyriakidis has been formative in mythinking on peripheral postmodernity and syncretist aesthetics. I am deeplyindebted to them for numerous warm and inspirational conversations and fortheir trust in me. Special thanks to Kyriakidis for permission to reproduceunpublished material.

My Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania provided me with the time I needed to complete this work. I would like toexpress my great appreciation to the people of the Penn Humanities Forum:Wendy Steiner, Peter Stallybrass, Jennifer Conway and Sara Sherger as wellas to Carlos Alonso for his advice.

Special thanks to Dimitris Angelatos and Sylvia Valdés for their enduringsupport and to Carlos Spinedi for sharing with me his memories of Borges. I must acknowledge my gratefulness to Stephanos Stephanidis and DjelalKadir for their constant encouragement and to Rakhee Balaram and Rory O’Brien for several constructive discussions. My sincere regards to Ana-MaríaBarrenechea, Cristina Piña and Ivonne Bordelois for providing bibliographicguidance, and to Francine Masiello for her welcoming comments. Manythanks to the staff of the libraries of the University of Buenos Aires and theUniversity of Athens for infrastructural support.

For scholarships, travel and conference grants, which contributed in vari-ous ways to the successful completion of this book, I am grateful to theAlexandros S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation, the ORS, the CambridgeCommonwealth Trust, the Spanish Gibson Fund, Lucy Cavendish Collegeand the Centre of Latin American Studies of the University of Cambridge.For publication grants, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to TheCarnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, the Department of Spanishand the School of Modern Languages of the University of St Andrews.

I have enjoyed a most cooperative relationship with my colleagues in theSpanish Department at St Andrews (Kormi Anipa, Bernard Bentley, NigelDennis, Leticia Eyheragaray, Will Fowler, Carmen García del Río, MariCarmen Gil Ortega, Javier Letrán, María Soledad Montañez and GustavoSan Román). Their friendly and cheering approach has meant an enormousamount to me. It gives me a particular pleasure to acknowledge the invaluablecontribution of Nigel Dennis, who has been generous with his time and adviceand helped prepare the manuscript for publication.

Last but no least I must thank my family. Although our lives are now livedin different countries, my father has been a source of the deepest sustenance.It is to him and the beloved memory of my mother that I dedicate this book.My friend, Nazish Zaidi, and her family have made me feel at home in thiscountry. I offer them my heartfelt thanks.

Eleni KefalaSt Andrews, 2006

The author and publisher would like to thank the following for permission toreproduce copyrighted material:

“Aristotle, Borges, Kalokyris: The Universe of the Poetics and the Poetics ofthe Universe”. Variaciones Borges: Journal of Philosophy, Semiotics and Literature16 (2003). © Variaciones Borges.

“H (��)��́ �� ́��: ��́��, ��́��, ��́�”[“The (Hi)story of the Universe”: Aristotle, Borges, Kalokyris”]. ��́��[Porphyras] 109 (2003). © ��́��.

“Borges and Narrative Economy: Conservative Formalism or Subversion ofSignification?”. Variaciones Borges: Journal of Philosophy, Semiotics and Literature18 (2004). © Variaciones Borges.

“Mouseion: The Counter-Institutional Agent of the Literary Utopias of RicardoPiglia and Dimitris Kalokyris”. Modern Language Review 99:3 (2004). © ModernLanguage Review.

x | Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments | xi“Borges and Greece: Syncretism, Hybridity and Irreverence in the Periphery”.Antes y después del Quijote. Valencia: Publicaciones de la Biblioteca Valenciana,2005. © Biblioteca Valenciana.

“Falsification, Robberies and Irreverence in the Periphery: The Case ofBorges and Kyriakidis”. Gramma: Journal of Theory and Criticism 13 (2005). ©Gramma: Journal of Theory and Criticism.

“ ‘Formas breves’ y ‘nudos blancos’: espacios poscontemporáneos de conden-sación”. La Pecera 9 (2005). © La Pecera.

“Kalokyris and Borges: A Study of their Syncretist Aesthetics”. Journal ofModern Greek Studies 23:1 (2005). © The Johns Hopkins University Press.Reprinted with permission of The Johns Hopkins University Press.

“Ricardo Piglia and the Syncretist Machine: ‘Moral Stories’ in the Post-contemporary Wor(l)d”. Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 29:3 (2005).© Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos.

“Hybrid Modernisms in Greece and Argentina: The Case of Borges, Cavafy,Kalokyris and Kyriakidis”. Comparative Literature 58:2 (2006). © University ofOregon Press.

INTRODUCTION

General

Is there such a thing as peripheral modernity or postmodernity? If the answeris yes, then how do we define their condition? How do we trace the bordersbetween them? And how does the study of these peripheral formations changethe way we understand culture? This work studies the notions of modernityand postmodernity in two countries which I describe as “peripheral” to theWest: Argentina and Greece. It examines theories of the postmodern and theproblems involved in applying them to the hybrid and sui generis cultural phe-nomena of the “periphery”, drawing on contemporary theories of syncretism,hybridity, transculturation, nation/narration and cultural translation. Thoughgeographically remote from each other, Greece and Argentina have followedparallel political, socio-economic and cultural trajectories in (post)modernity.I use the term (post)modernity to indicate the blurring of limits between modern-ity and postmodernity in contemporary societies of the “periphery”. My mainaim is to show that in such “peripheral” countries the diversity of traditionsproduces hybrid phenomena in many social and cultural spheres, which essen-tially contest central notions of purity and cultural authenticity. What theprocess of cultural formation in these “peripheral” countries proves is that cre-olisation and hybridisation lie at the heart of every culture, whether “central”or “peripheral”, thus calling into question modernity’s geopolitics of culture.1

This book offers an insight into the work of four “peripheral” writers,Jorge Luis Borges, Ricardo Piglia (Argentina), Dimitris Kalokyris andAchilleas Kyriakidis (Greece), whose syncretist aesthetics are symptomatic of themixing up of different and often opposed aesthetic principles and traditionsthat occur in peripheral countries. These four cases constitute paradigmatic

2 | Peripheral (Post) Modernityexamples of the syncretising processes which have been intrinsically presentin the cultures of the periphery since the advent of modernity and which bringtogether heterogeneous and often contradictory philosophical and aesthetictenets of modernity and postmodernity. Borges constitutes the major linkbetween the three contemporary writers since his syncretist aesthetics haveprofoundly influenced their writing. Furthermore, Kalokyris and Kyriakidisare the major translators of Borges’ work in Greece. I make use of the epithet“syncretist” rather than the more common “syncretic” because the formerindicates both the syncretic condition and the syncretising nature of the phenomena I study. Additionally, with the term “syncretising”, I refer to thetendency of the Borgesian, Piglian, Kalokyrian and Kyriakidean discourse tobring together different and often opposed elements, narratives, traditionsand so forth.

Chapter one constitutes the theoretical pillar of the book and focuses onthe experience of cultural modernity and postmodernity in both the “centre”and the “periphery”. In section one, first I examine the relation between theperiphery and modernity, concentrating on the bipolar opposition centre-periphery as the outcome of the dialectics of modernity and subsequently I showhow nationalism has been a symptomatic reaction of the periphery’s encounterwith modernity. In section two, I give an outline of the cultural reactions tomodernity—i.e. historical avant-garde, modernism, postmodernism—alwaysin relation to the formation of the syncretist aesthetics of the four writersunder consideration. In section three, I examine the relation between theperiphery and postmodernity, arguing that through the spectrum of post-modernity the relations between the centre and the periphery acquire newdimensions. This is due to the fact that the postmodern perspective focuseson the syncretic and hybrid condition of cultures, undermining in this waymodernity’s bipolar models. Here I dwell on the notion of “syncretism” andon my concept of “syncretist aesthetics” in relation to our writers whilst I explainhow I use the terms syncretism and hybridity interchangeably. In the last sec-tion of the chapter, I focus on the parallel ideological and cultural trajectoriesof Argentina and Greece throughout (post)modernity. I look at how Argentina’sand Greece’s encounter with modernity has launched the two countries intoideological debates as regards the definition of “argentinidad” [“Argentineness”]and “��́��” [“Greekness”] respectively, which prevailed in all socialstrata in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Finally, I focus on theArgentine and Greek avant-gardist and modernist movements in the first half of the twentieth century and demonstrate how these ideological debateshave been responsible for the formation of moderate, yet highly hybrid modernisms in the two countries. Within this historical context, I study how

and why Borgesian syncretist aesthetics were shaped in that specific time andplace, offering at once a foretaste to chapter two where I extensively refer toBorgesian syncretism.

Chapter two is entirely engaged with Borges’ aesthetics and his alchemy ofsyncretism: the blend of fantasy, irony and the short story. Borges, as it were,is the Paracelsus of syncretist aesthetics who managed to construct a literaryspace where disparate discourses, genres, traditions and cultures coexist in ten-sion. Thus, Borges created a literary microcosm of his (but also our) contem-porary Argentine (and Greek) macrocosm, which is situated at the crossroadsof a remarkably wide range of traditions and civilisations. I consider fantasy,irony and the short story as the three formative elements in the constructionof Borges’ syncretist aesthetics which, each one in their own way, undermineReason and its limited and limiting disposition in order to give space to mul-tiple co-existing realities. I argue that the concept of translation as transfer/transformation constitutes a key term in the understanding of Borges’ aesthetics,which ultimately emerge as an effective response to the ideological debates in his contemporary Argentina, virtually transcending the inseparable dyad“culture-nation” (in countries of the periphery). Borgesian literature managesto free itself from national and often nationalist inquisitions by capturing andsubsequently accommodating the tensions immanent in peripheral spaces. Thisis precisely why Borges’ aesthetics have had a profound impact on Piglia,Kalokyris and Kyriakidis who elaborate Borgesian syncretism in order to regis-ter and express the hybrid and syncretic condition of contemporary Argentineand Greek cultures.

Chapters three, four and five examine in depth the formation of the syn-cretist aesthetics of Piglia, Kalokyris and Kyriakidis respectively. I draw on therelation between these contemporary writers and Borges as well as other writers,philosophical and aesthetic movements and cultural trends. Also, in the chapter on Piglia, the first section looks into the experience of postmodernityin Argentina, focusing on the multiple socio-political and cultural realities of the country with which Piglian work is strongly engaged. In the chapter onKalokyris, there is an extended section on the reception of Borges in Greecein the 1980s and 1990s. Throughout the chapters on the four writers, the sametopics and issues appear and reappear, creating a compulsive narrative, whichreflects the respective compulsive and incestuous verbal universes that the fourwriters construct. Within this compulsive literary universe, all four writerseventually emerge as one and the same figure: that of the archetypal counter-feiter (Borges called him Hákim de Merv) who irreverently plunders the mostdiverse and heteroclite genres, discourses and traditions, writing and rewrit-ing one and the same Text. This counterfeiter, alias Borges, Piglia, Kalokyris

Introduction | 3

4 | Peripheral (Post) Modernityor Kyriakidis, naturally is the inhabitant of the syncretic and syncretist banksof the periphery.

Argentina and Greece: Parallel Historical, Political and Socio-Economic Trajectories in Modernity

Culture is not only in dialogue with the social, political and economic spheresof a given country but is also their product in so far as its formation and trans-formations are to a certain degree reactions to the socio-political and eco-nomic realities of a particular time. Here follows a brief historical survey, whichoutlines the political and socio-economic conditions that Greece and Argentinashared in the last two centuries. The aim is not simply to strengthen my choiceof the two countries by showing that apart from parallel cultural trajectoriesGreece and Argentina share common socio-political and economic features inmodernity. More important, this account is necessary in order to understandwhy certain cultural reactions occurred in the two countries like, for instance, thenotion of duality in terms of national identity, the debates on “civilisation” and“barbarism”, the role of culture and literature in the definition of “Greekness”and “Argentineness”, to mention but a few. This concise historical account,on the one hand, elucidates why Modern Greek and Argentine literatures havealways been highly engaged with the historical and political realities of theircountries; on the other hand, it helps us comprehend why and how Borges’syncretist aesthetics emerged in the multicultural locality of Argentina as areaction to the political, intellectual and literary debates of that time as well asrealise the degree of his influence on the work of the Greek writers. The lat-ter elaborate Borgesian syncretist aesthetics in order to create (in the sameway as Borges) a current in the history of Modern Greek literature, which isdistinct from the politically engaged fiction of the mainstream and which, ofcourse, again is a reaction to the long-standing debates on Greek identity.Finally, this brief historical review contributes to the better understanding ofPiglia’s work, which is very much engaged with the contemporary history andpolitics of Argentina.

Prior to their independence in the early nineteenth century, Greece andArgentina were parts of two Empires, the Ottoman and the Spanish respect-ively. The wars for American Independence in the years 1776–1783 and theFrench Revolution in 1789 along with the many early-nineteenth-centuryrebellions against the Spanish crown that occurred in different areas of LatinAmerica leading to the formation of independent regions inspired both Greeksand Argentines. Chief figures like Adamantios Korais and Simón Bolívar werestimulated by the intellectuals of the Enlightenment and oriented their

aspirations toward Europe and particularly France and England whom theysaw as allies in their struggle for independence.

In the period 1776–1816, Argentina was part of the “Virreinato del Río de laPlata” [“Viceroyalty of the River Plate”] under Spanish rule. The Viceroyaltyconsisted of territories which now belong to Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguayand Bolivia. In 1810, a rebellion against Spain broke out in Buenos Aires andsix years later the forerunner of modern Argentina, the “Provincias Unidasdel Río de la Plata” [“United Provinces of the River Plate”] were formed. TheProvinces declared independence from the Spanish crown and in 1829 becameknown as the Argentine Confederation administered by the powerful caudilloand governor of Buenos Aires, Juan Manuel de Rosas. In the following years,violent and turbulent power struggles took place and civil wars in and amongthe Provinces were the predominant feature of the period. The dictatorialregime of Rosas, which many have compared with the “Guerra Sucia” [“DirtyWar”] initiated in 1976 by the military coup of Videla, systematically perse-cuted its opponents by sending them into exile or executing them. Besides,during Rosas’ governance, Argentina was repeatedly involved in territorialwars with neighbouring countries (i.e. Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil).One of the most known die-hard opponents of the Federalist Rosas, who wasinvolved in the latter’s removal in 1852, was Domingo Faustino Sarmientowho was also one of the most influential thinkers of nineteenth-century LatinAmerica. During his exile in Chile, Sarmiento wrote his famous essay, Facundo:civilización y barbarie (1845), a passionate denunciation of Rosas’ dictatorshipand a fundamental text on the fierce debate on the duality of “argentinidad”.As the child of Enlightenment, Sarmiento saw the tension between the “European”and the “indigenous”,2 the “urban” (Buenos Aires) and the “rural” (the Pampa)as a struggle between “civilisation” and “barbarism”. Francine Masiello arguesthat in Argentina “the paradigm of civilisation versus savagery defined thenineteenth century political tensions” (1992: 18) and adds:

The unitarians, defined as the liberal group that opposed Rosas’ program ofprovincial consolidation and advocated a mercantilist strategy for buildingthe wealth of the nation, sustained a legend of “civilisation and barbarism”whereby they identified themselves with a civilised Europe and their oppon-ents with the primitivism of nature. (21)

Let us note in passing that Borges resolved this ideological dichotomy of“civilisation-barbarism” by placing his work in the very centre of this tension,constructing his aesthetic edifice on the edge of both the European literarynarratives and the Argentine tradition of the “gauchesca” [“gauchesque poetry”].Borges creates a space where the two antagonistic lineages, roughly represented

Introduction | 5

by Sarmiento’s Facundo and José Hernández’s Martín Fierro, coexist not inharmony but in constant dialogue—and in conflict. Borgesian syncretist aes-thetics do not annihilate but sustain the tension between the two fundamen-tal traditions, stressing the hybrid nature of Argentine culture.

For Sarmiento, the dictatorial regime of the Pampean caudillo, Rosas, was amanifestation of “barbarism”, which imprisoned Argentina in her “uncivilised”past. Sarmiento was involved in the 1852 revolt organised by General JustoUrquiza, which overthrew the autocratic regime of Rosas. A year later, thecountry adopted her first federal constitution with Urquiza as the first presi-dent of the Argentine Republic while Buenos Aires, which joined the feder-ation six years later, became the capital of the Argentine Republic in 1862,growing steadily into the wealthiest and most populated city of the federation.

Meanwhile, British interests in Latin America in general and in Argentina inparticular were manifested in various ways in the late nineteenth and the open-ing decades of the twentieth centuries. For example, in the 1910s and 1920s,Argentina was more or less considered as an adjunct of the British Empire. Theeconomic growth of the country in the years 1880–1920, David Rock argues,was due to the fact that her development “coincided with the interests of theworld’s dominant industrial, commercial and imperial power. Britain […] waslargely responsible for making Argentina what she was” (1975: 1–2).

Turning to the case of Greece, the successful outcome of the Greek War ofIndependence in 1821 was the constitution of the Hellenic Kingdom, whichowed much to the interests of England, France and Russia in the EasternMediterranean. The involvement of European countries, in particular of Englandand France, in the domestic affairs of the new state was in fact of critical import-ance for the formation of the political character of Modern Greece. Thoughthe economic influence of England in Greece was never as crucial as it was inArgentina, that of the Great Powers as a whole was remarkably importantespecially due to the foreign loans of Greece, which resulted in a fairly strongpaternalism on the part of the Powers; the latter introduced monarchy inGreece and appointed the young Otto, Prince of Bavaria, as its king (Leggand Roberts 1997: 28–9). The first government of the Hellenic Kingdom wasappointed in April 1827 with Ioannis Kapodistrias as the first governor. Sevenyears later, the capital of the kingdom moved from Nafplion to Athens, whichby the end of the century was unquestionably the political and economic centre of Greece.

In so far as the nation state is a modern socio-political form, the establish-ment of the Greek and Argentine independent states inaugurated proceduresof change, which introduced Greek and Argentine societies into modernity.In both countries processes of state, market and urban expansion took placerapidly. Argentina and Greece adopted Western parliamentary systems as

6 | Peripheral (Post) Modernity

early as 1853 and 1864 respectively and launched a project of modernisation,which aimed at promoting education, building infrastructure and modernisingurban centres.

Notwithstanding that Greece and Argentina failed to achieve industrialisa-tion levels comparable to those of Western Europe even in the first threedecades of the twentieth century, they were by far the most industrialisedcountries of the Balkans and Latin America respectively during the interwarperiod. According to Nikos Mouzelis, Argentina and Greece belong to thegroup of semi-peripheral countries which, like other countries of the periph-ery, experienced a belated industrialisation, yet, in contrast to other periph-eral countries, had early and persistent parliamentary politics (1986: 5); this,as we shall see below, would be a decisive factor in the formation of theirdemocracies throughout the twentieth century.

The project of modernisation of political, economic and social spheres andthe expansion of urban centres profoundly affected Greek and Argentine soci-eties since they put the main structures of social organisation such as religionand local traditions to the test. The tensions that modernisation caused becameparticularly visible in the cities, and especially in Athens and Buenos Aires.Here the ruptures with the past were notably evident as the newly shapedsocial groups adopted Western-like models of fashion, residence, nutrition,hygiene, entertainment and social events in their everyday life.

In particular, in the years 1880–1920, the period of great social and eco-nomic prosperity of Argentina, hundreds of thousands of immigrants arrivedmainly from Europe, altering Argentine demography, culture and ideology.This influx of immigrants had a great impact on the social structure ofArgentina, especially on its large urban areas. The cities of Buenos Aires andSanta Fe soon developed into real cosmopolitan centres where people of dif-ferent cultures and nationalities were blended together (Bethell 1993: 92).Beatriz Sarlo affirms that “Buenos Aires era una ciudad cosmopolita desde elpunto de vista de su población. […] Ya en 1890 se había quebrado la imagende una ciudad homogénea” [“with respect to its population, Buenos Aires wasa cosmopolitan city. (…) In 1890, the image of a homogeneous city hadalready been broken”] (1988: 17). However, during the first two decades ofthe twentieth century, when Buenos Aires received a new influx of immi-grants, questions about national identity inevitably emerged. In these earlyyears of Argentine modernity, the country found itself launched into a terrainof ideological oppositions. Buenos Aires, Sarlo notes, was situated in the centreof this ideological debate:

Modernidad europea y diferencia rioplatense, aceleración y angustia, tradicionalismo y espíritu renovador; criollismo y vanguardia. Buenos

Introduction | 7

Aires: el gran escenario latinoamericano de una cultura de mezcla. (1988: 15;my emphasis)

European modernity and the differences of the River Plate region, acceler-ation and anguish, traditionalism and the spirit of renovation; criollismo andthe avant-garde. Buenos Aires: the great Latin-American setting of a cultureof mixture.3

Likewise, in the first two decades of the twentieth century the population oflarge cities in Greece increased by more than fifty per cent as the rural massesmoved to the urban centres while the trend would culminate with the arrivalof over a million refugees after the Asia Minor Catastrophe, some of whomsettled in urban areas (Clogg 2002: 4). Athens, like Buenos Aires, received agreat number of people during this period, even though in the case of Athensthere was much less heterogeneity within its people as the great majority ofthem were Greeks—either from the Greek State or Asia Minor. Also, in con-trast to Argentina, Greece exported thousands of immigrants mainly to Europeand the USA throughout the twentieth century.4 However, as in the case ofArgentina, the encounter of Greek society with modernity as well as thedefeat of the Greek forces in Asia Minor, which put an end to the territorialwars and cancelled the ideology of Greek irredentism widely known as theM��́� I��́� (“Great Idea”), accentuated the questions about national iden-tity. The disaster in Asia Minor “made the dream policy of militarily expand-ing the state to fit the Hellenic nation effectively moribund” (Leontis 1995: 89);at the same time, the debates on Neohellenism were about to occupy the politicaland cultural arena in forthcoming years.

Roughly speaking, in the late nineteenth and the first part of the twentiethcenturies, the processes of state, market and urban expansion converted Greekand Argentine societies into paradoxes, which accommodated the old and thenew, the local and the foreign, the traditional and the modern. In both cases, theprocess of modernisation took the form of a struggle, in Sarmiento’s terms,between “civilisation” and “barbarism”—the civilised European and the indigen-ous barbarian.

Referring to Western Europe, Mouzelis argues that “capitalist industrial-isation was one of the main processes leading to the transition from a restrict-ive/oligarchic system of government […] to one based on broadly organisedpolitical parties” (1986: 4). However, in the countries of the parliamentarysemi-periphery we encounter a reverse model inasmuch as “the demise of oli-garchic politics and the transition from political ‘clubs’ to parties occurredbefore these countries experienced large-scale industrialisation” (5). Hencethe absence of such a large-scale industrialisation and therefore of a powerfulindustrial class (both working and middle class) gave way, in the case of Greece,


to the old aristocratic families (��́��) and, in the case of Argentina, to thePampean landowners, allowing them to gain political control and develop anincorporative/clientelistic system. That is, because of the absence of an indus-trial class the demise of traditional oligarchic politics (i.e. the autocratic regimeof Rosas in Argentina, the pre-Constitutional Monarchy in Greece) gave wayto oligarchic parliamentarianism. This system remained powerful even in thepost-oligarchic era since modernisation (in terms of politics and economy) wasenacted and controlled not by a powerful industrial working and middle class,as happened in Western societies, but by the conservative Greek and Argentinegovernments, which controlled political, economic and social institutions.

The transition from the oligarchic parliamentarianism to the post-oligarchicpolitics occurred in the two countries in the early twentieth century. Despitethe modernisation of Greek infrastructures enacted in the 1870s–1880s by thegovernment of Harilaos Trikoupis who set the ground for the development ofindustrial capitalism, Greece underwent a social, political and economic cri-sis, especially after the defeat in the Greco-Turkish war of 1897. The sense ofdefeat and shame resulted from the national crisis along with the economiccrisis that accompanied it caused social and political unrest, which reached itspeak in 1909 with the “Military Coup of Goudi”. The military revolutionmarked the transition from restrictive parliamentarianism to post-oligarchicpolitics since the Generals appointed the Liberal Eleftherios Venizelos as thePrime Minister of the new government. During the interwar period, the cre-ation and rise of the Liberal Party of Venizelos, which was mainly supportedby the rising urban middle class—whose formation started with Greece’s inte-gration into the world market during the second half of the nineteenth cen-tury and especially with the reforms of Trikoupis in the 1880s—challengedthe monopoly of political and economic power of the oligarchic families(Mouzelis 1986: 43). However, notwithstanding that the 1909 military inter-vention marked the end of the oligarchic parliamentarianism (Mouzelis 43)—the so-called “��́”—the incorporative/clientelistic systempersisted during the interwar period inasmuch as the expansion of the polit-ical system as well as “the inclusion of new strata in the political game was noteffectuated through autonomous and massive trade unions and working-classparties but clientelistic means” (45).

In Argentina, the transition from oligarchic parliamentarianism to post-oligarchic politics took place in 1912 when the president Roque Sáenz Peñasupported electoral reform, including the secret ballot and universal male suf-frage. The transition was subsequently boosted by the rise to power of theRadical Party of Hipólito Yrigoyen in 1916, which was mainly supported bythe middle class (Mouzelis 4) whereas the urban working class and the mil-lions of marginalised immigrants who, in their majority, were employed in the

Introduction | 9

big urban centres and especially in the city of Buenos Aires, did not haveeffective political power. It is with the rise of Peronism some thirty years laterthat urban populism acquired real power. Now, as far as Greece is concerned,urban populism was even less powerful since there was neither a “margin-alised” urban population nor a powerful group of landowners against whompotential Greek populism had to turn (Mouzelis 45). Hence, it is quite evidentthat during the early formative years of the post-oligarchic period neither inArgentina nor in Greece were the trade unions of the working classes able “todevelop an autonomous power base and to put effective checks to the state’sincorporative tendencies” (70).

Though there were a few earlier periods of economic crisis in Argentina,the world economic crisis in 1929 had a decisive impact on the development ofArgentine industry. In both Greece and Argentina this crisis marked “a drasticreduction of their capacity to import industrial products”, which forced themto follow a rapid industrialisation programme and develop their own industries(Mouzelis 52). Yet the expansion of technologically advanced industries in Greeceand Argentina takes place mainly in the second part of the century when, asNéstor García Canclini mentions referring to Latin American countries (butwhich also applies to Greece), the experts detect signs of socio-economic mod-ernisation (2001: 95). Besides, in the case of Greece, late industrialisation wasalso a result of the country’s participation in World War II and subsequently ofthe four-year German occupation, which totally destroyed her infrastructureand caused complete decline of her economy.

In the years following the economic crisis of 1929, the absence of an indus-trial working and middle class left the foreign-led industrialisation under thefull control of the conservative governments. As a result, there was a verticaldistribution of economic and political power, which accentuated the alreadyexisting political, economic and social inequalities between the dominant andthe dominated and made the conservative civilian forces even more unable toacquire a popular base. The failure of these civilian forces to do so either beforeor after 1930 made them “rely on the army’s role as the ultimate guarantor ofa restrictive system based on institutionalised fraud and other incorporativemechanisms of domination” (Mouzelis 1986: 52). The degree of military domin-ance in Greek and Argentine politics is in fact “inversely related to the capacity of the oligarchic forces to organise themselves politically and com-pete in the post-oligarchic political arena” (Mouzelis 105). However, the dif-ference between the period before and the one after 1930 lies in the fact thatin the first three decades of the twentieth century, “it was the civilians whocalled the tune, even when they were seeking the support of the military”whereas in the period after 1930, it was the military who had ultimate polit-ical control in the two countries (Mouzelis 100). Yet we should bear in mind


that the military was much more powerful in Argentina than in Greece because,as I mentioned above, during restrictive parliamentarianism in Greece therewas no strong oligarchy of the sort of the Pampean landowners. Argentinawas a country “whose conservative political forces experienced a very abruptand dramatic collapse of their electoral base after the introduction of theSáenz Peña electoral reforms” (Mouzelis 105–6) and thus the army had amajor role in the defence of the interests of these conservative forces.

In the case of Argentina, the world economic crisis provoked various sortsof adversities including unemployment, which caused profound social andpolitical unrest; this gave way to the military coup headed by General JoséUriburu (30 September 1930), which forced Yrigoyen to retreat. Leslie Bethellobserves that

the year 1930 opens the gateway into modern Argentina. The military coupof September 1930 brought the collapse of constitutional government andinitiated the long sequence of weak democracies, punctuated by coups d’étatand military dictatorships that remained the cardinal feature of Argentinepolitics into the 1980s. The plunge into depression in 1930 permanentlyshifted the path of economic development. (1993: 173)

From 1930 to 1943, widely known as the “Década Infame” [“Infamous Decade”],the Conservatives had control of the country while, in the period preceding thepresidential elections of 1937, Fascist groups also became increasingly active. Inparticular, since 1930 the Nationalists created a general sentiment of xenophobiaaccusing the immigrants of poisoning Argentine society with foreign ideologies(Federico Ibarguren 1969: 398). They gradually turned toward “the idea that innational history lay a ‘core’ or ‘essence’ that had to be rediscovered and restoredand that in history lay the threads that pointed the correct course into the future”(Rock 1993: 117–8). In 1943, a Fascist military group removed the conservativepresident Castillo from office and gave the presidency to General Pedro Ramírezwho eliminated all political parties and suppressed any democratic activity inArgentina. A year later, Ramírez was removed by the military junta of the so-called Colonels whose most important figure was Juan Domingo Perón; thelatter soon became the government’s dominant figure as Minister of Labour.

By the end of World War II, the junta had already gaoled Perón, but wereforced to release him after popular demonstrations. Political activity thus revivedin Argentina and the labour party of the Peronistas won the elections of 1946.The party, which was led by Perón and his wife, Eva Duarte, promised expan-sion of the economy and improvement of the living conditions of agriculturaland industrial working classes and drew on the already existing urban populism.Perón, who followed the model of Mussolini’s National Socialism, pursuedpolicies aimed at offering political and economic power to the working class

Introduction | 11

and strengthened the working-class unions. In the years 1949–1952, many ofPerón’s opponents were jailed and the anti-Peronista parties were suppressed.Perón remained in power until September 1955 when, after successive mili-tary uprisings against him, he resigned.

In addition to the world economic crisis in 1929, Greece was afflicted bythe Asia Minor Catastrophe, which had occurred only seven years before andwhich changed dramatically the geographic, demographic and ideological mapof Greece. The interwar period, in particular, is one of contradictions and retrospection, which shaped the socio-political, economic and cultural fieldsof the Greek State to this day. The influx of Asia Minor refugees to urban centres like Athens, Piraeus, Thessaloniki, Kavala and Volos transformedthem into densely populated industrial cities. The presence of refugees alongwith the rise of the working class almost inevitably created social clashes. Inthe following years (1932–1936), this social, economic and political agitationput the democratic constitution into crisis and steadily led to Ioannis Metaxas’dictatorship of 4 August 1936. Metaxas was strongly supported by the throneand the British though he had very little popular support. As in the case of themilitary governments in Argentina in the period 1930–1946, with his rise tooffice Metaxas dissolved parliament, suppressed the activities of the politicalparties and persecuted his opponents. During his four-year dictatorship, everykind of public or private activity was systematically suppressed and every sortof representative body was abolished. The dictatorial regime of Metaxas, likethe conservative Argentine governments of the same period initiated by themilitary coup of Uriburu, emerged as extremely xenophobic and nationalisticwith its “high ideal” of the “New Third Hellenic Civilisation”, a blend of ancientantiquity, Byzantium and Christianity. According to Metaxas, Greek civilisa-tion was superior to any other civilisation and therefore Greeks should bereluctant and aggressive toward any foreign element as it necessarily origin-ated from an inferior civilisation. Dimitris Tziovas reports that,

��́�� M��́, �́�� ́ �� ́�� ́ �� ́��́�� ́�� ́�� ́ �� ́,�́�� ́�� ́ �� ́ ��́�� ́ �� ́�� ́��. � ��́� ��́�� ́ ��́�� ́ ��́�� ́�� ́� �� ́��

�� ́��́ �� ́ ��́ ��́�� ́ ��́[Metaxas 1969: 197, 285–6]. A��́ ��́�� “��́� ��́��” �� ́��́��, �� ́�� ́�� ́, ��́�� ́� ��́�� ́

. (1989: 140)

according to Metaxas, every race which has its own conscience ought to cre-ate and express its own civilisation, a fact that is imperative for the Greek


race because of its superiority toward other races. The third Hellenic civil-isation that will be created must be a blend of the intellect of Ancient Greekcivilisation and the profound religious faith of Medieval civilisation [Metaxas1969: 197, 285–6]. This is the “high ideal” of Metaxas’ regime, which triedto inspire young people, along with a preaching of aggressiveness toward theforeign.

Also, like the military coup of Uriburu in Argentina, Metaxas’ dictatorshiplaunched the long sequence of weak democracies, conservative governmentsand the army’s involvement in politics, which would constitute the funda-mental traits of the Greek political arena up to the 1970s. The truth is thatthroughout the twentieth century, “the Greek officer corps has been heavilyinvolved in domestic politics, directly or indirectly” (Legg and Roberts 1997: 52).Political instability inevitably delayed the processes of modernisation andeconomic development in both countries.

In the post-war period and within the framework of the Truman Doctrine,the North Americans took over from the British the task of “defending” Greeceand Argentina against Communism and left-leaning ideologies in general.North American intervention in the domestic affairs of the two countries hadan immense impact on the formation of their politics and on their economicdevelopment. This was achieved through the large amount of economic andmilitary aid, and through the ideology of “new professionalism”, which theUnited States introduced to the Greek and Argentine armies. This new ideol-ogy intentionally “inculcated the need for the military to go beyond their traditional concern with martial skills and know-how and to move into thelarger sphere of the over-all economic development” (Mouzelis 1986: 174).According to the doctrine of “new professionalism”, the military was in a betterposition to resolve the nation’s problems since they were “free from clien-telistic ties” and had a professional and new training, which helped them dealwith complex issues (Mouzelis 174–5). In order to create these influential ideo-logical and organisational links with the Greek and Argentine military, NorthAmerica exposed the latter to US military missions and training programmesin American schools outside the USA such as the Army School of theAmericas established in the Panama Canal Zone from where many Argentineofficers graduated (Mouzelis 174, 261 [f. 162]).

The North American influence in Greek politics is extraordinarily strong inthe 1940s and 1950s whereas in Argentina this influence becomes more evi-dent after the fall of Perón in the mid-1950s. In Greece, the USA supportedthe forces of the right wing during the civil war which followed World War IIas well as the numerous unstable centre and centre-right governments in thefirst half of the 1950s, thus shaping Greece’s guided democracy in the post-war

Introduction | 13

period (Mouzelis 135). However, in 1952, North America shifted its support tothe right-wing Greek Rally of Marshal Papagos who put an end to the moder-ate government of the old Liberal General Plastiras—the latter tried to healthe wounds of the civil war by giving amnesty. In the period that followed, theCommunist Party was banned, its members were persecuted, a large part ofthe Greek population in urban and rural areas suffered strong political andsocial discrimination and the interwar clientelistic networks were revived infavour of the conservatives (Mouzelis 136). In the year 1952, Greece became amember of NATO and less than a decade later it signed an AssociationAgreement with the European Common Market (Treaty of Athens, 1961).

In Argentina, the anti-Peronist government of General Lonardi in 1955adopted the same conciliatory policies as Plastiras in an attempt to eventuallybridge the gap between Peronists and anti-Peronists (Mouzelis 146). However,the die-hard anti-Peronist officers “demanded a much more drastic purge ofPeronists than Lonardi was willing to make” (Mouzelis 146) and replaced himwith the much less moderate General Aramburu. Like Papagos and his anti-Communist policies, Aramburu “pursued the de-Peronisation course rigor-ously” and “brought Argentina fully back to the ‘inter-American family’ bypromoting close co-operation with the North Americans in both the politicaland military fields” (Mouzelis 147).

Mouzelis notes that in the 1960s there was a “mass mobilisation/radicalisa-tion of both urban and rural populations” (221) in Greece and Argentina. InGreece, in 1964 the leader of the Centre Union, George Papandreou, won theelections after enjoying support from liberal and left-leaning citizens who weredissatisfied with the totalitarian regimes of the previous years. His son, AndreasPapandreou, became the leader of the anti-American, anti-NATO left wing of Centre Union, which forced George Papandreou to tackle the economicinequalities “by allocating larger state funds to social welfare and education”and “liberalise the regime by loosening the repressive system of controls stilloperating in the countryside” (Mouzelis 140).

In Argentina, in the late 1950s and 1960s there was a reactivation and rad-icalisation of Peronism resulting from the incorporative/exclusionist systemexercised by the so-called “Liberating Revolution” of the military govern-ments. According to Alain Rouquié, instead of de-Peronising the workers, theLiberating Revolution “actually re-Peronised large sectors of the population,which had been disappointed with Perón’s second presidency” (481). The tri-umph of Peronism, which managed to unite diverse left-wing forces, wasmanifested in the early 1970s with the return of Perón to office. In 1972, thenational economy was headed for a new crisis and violence prevailed in thecountry as strikes, student riots and terrorist activities spread everywhere.The Peronistas nominated Perón for the presidency and won the elections of


1973. Nonetheless, Perón’s presidency proved to be very short, as he died tenmonths after his election (September 1974).

In Greece, George Papandreou’s stay in office was also short. Despite theparliamentary majority, illegal power groups, which were under royal control,disturbed the recent political stability and led to the ferocious dictatorship ofthe Colonels in 1967, who arrested, tortured or sent into exile politicians andopponents of the military regime. The power of the military junta was now inthe hands of Colonel George Papadopoulos who became the Prime Minister.The regime of the Colonels, which lacked internal support, was under theprotection of the United States who considered Greece as a loyal ally and partof the “inter-American family”. Apart from the political instability that the dic-tatorship of Papadopoulos brought to the country, his authoritarian regime isalso known for its backwardness with respect to socio-political and culturalpolicies. Papadopoulos’ government persecuted the Communists and tried toadvance a “healthy political life” more or less like Videla’s “Proceso” [“Process”]in Argentina. His regime sought to “purify” morals and closely control edu-cation and culture by giving emphasis to the instruction of “��́��”(katharevousa � the purist version of the Greek language), the great histor-ical past as well as the notion of historical continuity. Legg and Roberts com-ment that

the regime itself sought to fashion an ideology linking it to both ancientHellenic and Christian values, continuing the tradition of viewing Greece asthe contemporary embodiment of an unbroken civilisation. Presumably, aperiod of “military” discipline, one that attempted to impose “puritan” socialmores along with close control of cultural and educational institutions, wouldtransform Greece into a modern democratic and prosperous society. (1997: 53)

However, instead of producing economic, social and cultural prosperity, themilitary regime did exactly the opposite. Popular unrest and student demon-strations climaxed in November 1973 with the student occupation of the AthensPolytechnic. Papadopoulos called in the army to “restore” order but the lossof more than forty lives in the events that followed exasperated public opin-ion, turning it openly against his regime. Yet it was not until the Turkish inva-sion in Cyprus resulting from the catastrophic interference of the Colonels in1974 that the military junta withdrew and democracy was reinstated againwith the return of Konstantinos Karamanlis to office—he had been self-exiledin Paris since 1963 after a disagreement with King Paul and his defeat byPapandreou’s Centre Union in the 1963 elections. The national disastercaused by the military regime led to the establishment of a civilian govern-ment in Greece. The Monarchy and all the extreme right-wing powers thatwere closely identified with the former and which had dominated Greek society

Introduction | 15

since 1935 were finally disempowered by the so-called “Third HellenicRepublic”. The latter, initiated in 1974, put on trial and subsequently imprisonedthe dictators. After a nationwide referendum in 1974, the monarchy was abol-ished and the constitution took its present form.

Whereas in Greece the year 1974 marked the end of the most ferociousdictatorship that the country had ever experienced, the same year in Argentinasignalled the beginning of political and socio-economic adversities, whichwould soon open the way to the fiercest dictatorship that the country wouldever experience. Perón’s death in 1974 led his third wife, the vice-presidentIsabel Perón, into office. However, her ineffective administration caused a rapiddeterioration of political and economic conditions in the country and finallyled to Videla’s dictatorship. Specifically, in March 1976 a military junta led by the army commander, Lieutenant General Jorge Rafael Videla, removedIsabel Perón from office and imposed martial law in the country. The Videlaregime put forward a multinational “free-market” economy project, which“demanded the complete destruction of the images of social utopia to whichPeronism (of the right and the left) and socialism had appealed” (Kantaris1996: 222). Videla’s modernising project to transform the ideological and cul-tural foundations of Argentina, which was accompanied by severe forms ofsocial repression and an open war against the Communists, was euphemis-tically called “Proceso de Reorganización Nacional” [“Process of National Re-Organisation”] or, simply, “El Proceso”. The period of “El Proceso”, alsoknown as the “Dirty War”, accounts for 2,300 political murders, some 10,000political arrests and about 30,000 disappearances. Videla was succeeded byField Marshal Roberto Viola in March 1981 who in turn was replaced ninemonths later by the commander of the army, General Leopoldo Galtieri. InApril 1982, Galtieri’s government occupied the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas),which were under British rule. After a brief war, Britain regained control ofthe islands in June 1982 and Galtieri was replaced by Major General ReynaldoBignone. As in the case of Papadopoulos’ dictatorship and the Turkish invasionin Cyprus, the national disaster of the Falkland Islands led to the fall of thedictatorial regime in Argentina.

Under severe economic crisis, Argentina held its presidential elections inOctober 1983. Raúl Alfonsín, the candidate of the Radical party who won theelections, reorganised the army, restructured the foreign debt and introducedfiscal reforms. Subsequently, in May 1989, the Peronist candidate, CarlosSaúl Menem was elected president and imposed an austerity programme toprevent the increasing decline of the economy. In the early 1990s, Menempromoted “free-market” policies and a radical liberalisation programme in aneffort to transform the Argentine economy and offer the country political sta-bility. However, according to Bethell,


neither Argentina’s decline nor its tendencies toward political praetorianismappeared to have changed during the years of restoration of democracy. Asthe 1990s began, the search for an alternative to the economic and politicalorder born in 1946 [Peronism] continued amid the recurrent but failedattempts to change it. (1993: 363)

In the last five years, Argentina has experienced severe turmoil; the economiccrisis of the country led to the collapse of the Argentine economy in 2002.The Peronist Governor of Santa Cruz, Néstor Kirchner, who won the elec-tions of May 2003 and became the new president of Argentina, is now calledto lead the country out of the economic stagnation and social agitation of therecent years.

One could say that Argentina is a country which strove to “forget” “laguerra sucia” by “forgiving” those who were responsible. Neither Alfonsínnor Menem (for different reasons) were able to deal decisively with the role ofthe army in human rights abuses and, unlike in Greece, those responsiblewere set free. After the “Ley de Punto Final” [“Law of Full Stop”] introducedin 1986 by the government of Alfonsín, “perdón y olvido” [“forgiveness andforgetfulness”] became the political discourse of both the latter’s and Menem’spresidencies. Within two consecutive years (1989–1990), as a part of hisappeasement policy toward the army members of the repression era, presidentMenem signed a series of amnesty decrees, which set free all the top officersresponsible for the Dirty War including Videla, whereas Greece still keepsher political convicts in prison.

In a country where war criminals like Jorge Varando, a graduate of theSchool of the Americas and a member of Videla’s regime, are not only free butalso employed as security guards in major banks, history is bound to repeatitself: in the demonstrations resulting from the collapse of the Argentineeconomy in 2002, Varando shot and killed a young boy named Benedetto whowas accidentally passing outside the building of the Bank where the demon-stration was taking place. As the Canadian journalist and activist Naomi Kleinreports, in an interview Varando “is quoted as admitting to firing his gun, say-ing that he did so ‘in total tranquillity’ and ‘to stop those trying to enter thebuilding’ ” (2003). It is likely that the past of Argentina will keep returningand haunting her present as long as the country uses the law of forgetting as ameans for recovering from her past, that is, as long as she uses amnesty as the signifier for amnesia and thus authors like Piglia will keep writing about“ciudades ausentes” [“absent cities”]—cities absent from memory but alsocities where memory is absent.

In September 2003, Kirchner opened the classified material of Argentina’sSecretary of State Intelligence to allow testimony at the trial of twenty

Introduction | 17

suspected accomplices of “El Proceso”. Two years later ( June 2005), theArgentine Supreme Court revoked the amnesty laws protecting hundreds offormer and serving military officers involved in the Dirty War. It seems thatArgentina might finally be called to recover her memory and deal with herdark past.

In contrast to Argentina, post-dictatorial Greece managed to achieve politicalstability and economic growth. During his two periods in office (1974–1980),Konstantinos Karamanlis consolidated democracy by ending discriminationagainst parties of the left and making legal the Communist party. Karamanlis’government promoted the economic development of Greece and resolved thelong-standing dispute over the “language question” by legalising the use of“��́ ��́��” (dimotiki � popular language) in educational and admin-istrative institutions. Andreas Papandreou, the leader of the socialist party ofPASOK, who succeeded Karamanlis in office in 1981, accomplished the mod-ernisation of the educational system, eliminating many forms of social andpolitical discrimination and forming a welfare state. During Papandreou’spresidency, Greece became a full member of the European Union (1981), afact that contributed to the socio-political and economic stability of the coun-try. In 1989, Papandreou was defeated by a coalition between the conservativeparty of Nea Demokratia and the Communist Party but he returned to officein 1993, after winning the parliamentary elections. Papandreou’s project ofmodernisation was embraced by the socialist government of Kostas Simitis,who succeeded Papandreou in office after his death in 1996. The socialisthegemony came to an end in March 2004, when Nea Demokratia and itsleader Kostas Karamanlis won the elections.

Having imprisoned the dictators and dealt with her “dirty past”, Greecehas not only achieved a non-guided democracy but also, as a full member ofthe European Union, she has gained a new role in the struggle for stability inthe Balkans. After a long and painful period of political, economic and socialcrisis, Greece has built a free and stable political system responding to thedemands of democracy and has set forward a “free-market” society. The rapideconomic progress of the country, especially since the mid-1990s, has enhancedGreece’s international status and allowed her to join the European MonetaryUnion in January 2002 as well as to undertake and carry out successfully suchchallenging projects as the Games of the XXVIII Olympiad in 2004. At thesame time, Greece has converted into a country of both legal and clandestineimmigration, offering shelter to political and economic refugees. For the firsttime in its modern history, Greece does not export but imports immigrantsand therefore Greeks in general and Karamanlis’ government in particular arecalled upon to deal with xenophobic attitudes, thus adapting to the new era.


.1 .

PERIPHERAL (POST) MODERNITY

AND SYNCRETIST AESTHETICSThe Case of Argentina and Greece

Well, we’re nearly there, Hermippos. / Day after tomorrow, it seems—that’swhat the captain said. / At least we’re sailing our seas; / the waters of our owncountries—Cyprus, Syria, Egypt— / waters we know and love. // […] It’s timewe admitted the truth: / we’re Greeks also—what else are we?— / but withAsiatic tastes and feelings, / tastes and feelings / sometimes alien to Hellenism.

(C. P. Cavafy, “Returning From Greece”)

Modernity and Periphery

General

It is virtually impossible for us to comprehend why and how Borgesian syn-cretist aesthetics have developed in a “peripheral” country like Argentina andsubsequently been received and elaborated with such remarkable enthusiasmin Greece—a country which geographically belongs to a totally different“periphery” of the globe—without first setting the ground for the under-standing of the notions of modernity, modernism and the historical avant-garde along with those of postmodernity and postmodernism as conceivedand practised in both “central” and “peripheral” countries. Here I argue thatsince and because of their encounter with modernity, the cultural and ideo-logical practices of “peripheral” countries in general and of Argentina and

20 | Peripheral (Post) ModernityGreece in particular are closely associated with those of the nation. In such“peripheral” localities, the notions of culture and nation are inseparable whilstliterature frequently undertakes the task to define, defend or even challengenational identities such as Greekness and Argentineness. In countries likeGreece and Argentina, nationalism is blended with Western modernist,avant-gardist and postmodernist aesthetics producing highly hybridised andsyncretic narratives, which mix up heterogeneous, multitemporal and quiteoften conflicting discourses and traditions. We must remember that in thesesyncretic and syncretist spaces the diversity of traditions, cultures and dis-courses by no means ends up in a “melting pot”. Instead, it is understood andpractised in terms of tensions and conflicts that are inherent in what Homi K.Bhabha calls “interstices” of culture (1994) where hybridity goes hand in handwith ambiguity, ambivalence and contradiction. The complex and compli-cated modernity and postmodernity of Greece and Argentina naturally derivefrom the hybridity and syncretism immanent in “peripheral” countries, whichby definition are situated at the crossroads of cultures and are thus permeatedby the most diverse traditions and ideologies. Hence, in order to understandthe notion of syncretism in Borges, Piglia, Kalokyris and Kyriakidis and valuethe literary and ideological alternatives that their aesthetics have offered intwo countries where a politically engaged literature prevailed for the mostpart of the twentieth century, first we need to consider the complexity ofArgentina’s and Greece’s “peripheral” modernities and postmodernities.

Centre and Periphery

For Jürgen Habermas, the project of modernity has been founded on theEnlightenment belief that the exercise of critical reason and scientific methodcan lead to a greater understanding and control of nature, society and humanpsyche. The philosophers of the Enlightenment, he says, “wanted to utilisethis accumulation of specialised culture for the enrichment of everyday life—that is to say, for the rational organisation of everyday social life” (1993: 104).1

Whereas initially the project of Enlightenment aimed at human emancipationfrom the powers of nature, superstition and myth, its practice actually demon-strated its implication in the dialectics of mastery and slavery. In the earlytwentieth century, faith in the idea of rational progress was severely under-mined. Marxism and subsequent socialist movements problematised theideals of rationality and progress by revealing the suffering, poverty and injust-ice which accompanied the process of capitalist accumulation. The destruc-tiveness of the two World Wars and the Holocaust has disclosed the dark side

of the project of modernity, exposing its mastering aspirations. As ThomasDocherty observes,

in political terms, Enlightenment proposed a demarcation between the“advanced” and the “underdeveloped”; and in this distinction the advancedfeels itself to be legitimised in its activities of mastering, controlling, dom-inating and colonising what it stigmatises as the underdeveloped. (1993: 18)

The dialectics of the “advanced” and the “underdeveloped” inherent in theproject of modernity recall the fundamental argument of Theodor Adorno andMax Horkheimer, according to which “Enlightenment behaves toward thingsas a dictator toward man. He knows them as so far he can manipulate them”(1986: 9). Commenting on this specific quotation, Docherty notes that “know-ledge is reduced to technology”, which gives “a power over the consciousness ofothers who may be less fluent in the language of reason. […] From now on, toknow is to be in a position to enslave” (1993: 6).

If modernisation is achieved through the exercise of knowledge obtained bythe practice of critical reason and if knowledge, as Adorno and Horkheimerargue, is reduced to technology, then the master of technology becomes at oncethe (self-)legitimised moderniser. The modern centre—where technologicaland financial means are accumulated—turns toward the pre-modern peripheryin order to modernise and consequently command it. As a result, modernityappears to divide the world into zones according to their involvement in itsproject: modern/pre-modern, advanced/underdeveloped, major/minor, proto-type/copy, First World/Third World, centre/periphery and so on.

The term “periphery”, in Greek ��́��, means “circumference”, “outersurface”. ��́�� originates from the verb ��́�� which means “carryor move around” (��́ around � ��́�� to carry). Periphery, then, signifies the“boundary” of an area as well as the “outer”, “surrounding” region of this area,which is considered as the “centre”; that is, the notions of periphery and centreare interrelated and interdependent. The centre is the location of power; periph-ery is the circumference of this location, its borders and its margins. The centrethus needs the periphery (the other) in order to define its borders (same).

The relationship between centre and periphery is a dynamic one as it isdrawn according to various notions of power: technological, economic, mili-tary, scientific and cultural power. Alfonso de Toro gives a sketch of the con-temporary geopolitical global scene in his book Borders and Margins; accordingto him, Argentina and Greece belong to the same technological, economic andscientific periphery:

All the Latin American countries would be designated as belonging to theperiphery, along with all the Western European countries which are not

The Case of Argentina and Greece | 21

masters of the power of technological, scientific and information discourses.Also included in this category would be those countries, which have a dele-gated power, including Turkey, Greece, Portugal, Spain […]. In the centre, Iwould locate the United States at the forefront on the basis of technological, eco-nomic, military, scientific and cultural power, followed by Japan and Germany.(1995: 12; my emphasis)

As knowledge has become synonymous with technology, science and informa-tion, modernity in turn has become synonymous with the West, which hasbeen the master of technological and scientific power since the Renaissance.Modernity creates a norm, a model to be followed by societies outside theWest in order for them to become modern and in doing so it evidently developsa totalising, universalising discourse. The fact that the project of modernity hasbecome closely connected to the project of colonialism in the nineteenth andearly twentieth centuries is symptomatic of modernity’s universalising dis-course, which allowed imperialism to found its ground of legitimation in theprocess of modernisation. In so far as the modern centre conceives of the pre-modern periphery as being out of step and belated, the European experience ofmodernity is extrapolated to non-Western societies in the belief that the his-tory of the West could be repeated and that any country could go throughcomparable stages of development (de Souza 1974: 9). The Western centrethus superimposes on the periphery its own historical paradigm. This way,however, the centre overlooks the periphery’s own spatiotemporal specificities,expecting it to follow its own technological, socio-political, economic and cul-tural development. In other words, the centre disregards the fact that theperiphery never shared with the West the precise pre-modern conditionswhich let the latter develop in the specific direction. When the periphery failsto faithfully reproduce Western prototypes—and it always does fail at leastpartially—then its modernisation is both considered and stigmatised as“imperfect” for it deviates from the Western model. For theorists like GregoryJusdanis, peripheral modernity is by definition belated and incomplete “notbecause it deviates from the supposedly correct path but because it cannot cul-minate in a faithful duplication of Western prototypes. […] This is why it ispossible to speak of many modernities” (1991: xiii).

The fact that “belated” modernisation initiates different developments ofmodernity, which diverge from the European prototype, does not necessarilymean that these developments are deficient or inferior with respect to themodel. Peripheral modernisation follows the historical specificities of individ-ual societies, producing versions of modernity that are as legitimate as those ofthe West. These multiple modernities, which have developed in different times,in different places and at different speeds, as Docherty says, force us to acceptthat “there is not one world (nor even three), but rather many; all being lived at


different rhythms, none of which need ever converge into harmony” (1993: 18).Referring to the processes of industrialisation and urbanisation in LatinAmerican countries, Néstor García Canclini makes a similar observation: “Sibien ocurrieron después que en Europa, fueron más aceleradas” (2001: 86)[“Although they occurred after those of Europe, they were more accelerated”(1997: 47)]. Industrialisation and urbanisation as expected caused profound rup-tures in the societies of the countries that evolved in alternative ways due to theirdifferent spatiotemporal specificities before, during and after modernisation.García Canclini acutely argues that

los países latinoamericanos son actualmente resultado de la sedimentación,yuxtaposición y entrecruzamiento de tradiciones indígenas, […] del hispanismocolonial católico y de las acciones políticas, educativas y comunicacionalesmodernas. (2001: 86)

Latin American countries are currently the result of sedimentation, juxta-position and interweaving of indigenous traditions, […] of Catholic colonialHispanism and of modern political, educational and communicationalactions. (1997: 46)

This diversity of traditions and times, he says, “ha generado formaciones híbridasen todos los estratos sociales” (2001: 86) [“has generated hybrid formations inall social strata” (1997: 46)] and produced what he calls “[una] heterogeneidadmultitemporal” (2001: 86) [“(a) multitemporal heterogeneity” (1997: 47)],which is by far the most predominant feature of contemporary Latin Americansocieties.

Besides, different speeds, times and places as well as different experiences ofmodernity are the concern not only of non-Western countries but also ofEurope itself. That is because all projects of modernisation after theNetherlands, England and France are by definition belated (Jusdanis 1991: xv).Jusdanis, for instance, refers to the German case, which he considers to bequite similar to the Greek one as both European countries had more or less anearly experience of modernity that did not result from their internal conditionsbut rather from an externally imposed process of modernisation. In the case ofGermany, he argues that modernity was less a product of domestic conditionsthan a response to French domination (1991: xiv–xv). In this sense, “periph-eral” (alternative) modernities—that is, different reactions to the process ofmodernisation—can be found within the European borders. Vivian Schelling,for example, emphasises that “the expansion of capitalism within Europe wasitself an uneven process” (2000: 8). Periphery, inside and outside Europe(periphery as the “circumference” but also “the outer space” of Europe), founditself forced to copy a universal pattern, which was supposed to offer a one-steptransition to modernity.


Precisely because of the existence of manifold economic, social and culturalpractices within and outside Europe, though I agree with much of whatJusdanis argues in Belated Modernity, I would rather not use the word “belated”as a key term to refer to alternative modernities. This is because I believe thatthe term still runs the risk of implying that different versions of modernity areinferior to—incapable of catching up with—the “centre”. However, I shallkeep the distinction “centre-periphery” only in order to constantly call intoquestion its legitimacy. Let me explain: first, if we were to perceive the “centre”as consisting of those countries that initiated modernity and industrialisation,in particular, then in terms of early industrialisation, the “centre” should bereduced to three countries (England, France and the Netherlands), thus virtu-ally rendering the rest of the world “peripheral”. Secondly, human history sofar has proved that there is not one but many centres, always variable and underrevision since they are each time (re)placed wherever technological, economic,military and scientific power is accumulated—we can think, for instance, of theshift of power from Europe to the USA occurring roughly between the firstand the second halves of the twentieth century. Finally, the syncretist aesthet-ics of Borges, Piglia, Kalokyris and Kyriakidis underpin the idea that culturallythe world is a sphere whose periphery is everywhere and whose centre isnowhere. Culture is multilateral, multitemporal and multifarious and thus bydefinition it is illegitimate, improper and it is ultimately impossible to considerit in terms of centres and peripheries. My use of the terms “central” and“peripheral” is thus a convention which I employ in order to indicate the cur-rent geopolitical but not the cultural status of the world and to which, preciselybecause of the three reasons stated above, I always attribute—in a quiteBorgesian way—a certain amount of irony.

Nationalism: Periphery’s Encounter with and Reaction to Modernity

Nationalism, like any ideology in general, suppresses the fact that the out-come of the syncretist process in the construction of the nation is not naturalbut invented; equally, nationalism hides the fact that the outcome of thisprocess is not a synthesis of opposites but a tension between diverse elements.Nationalism silences all those cultural elements that do not fit in its narrative,that contradict and contest it, in order to give purity, homogeneity and con-tinuity to the narrative of the nation.

As far as modernity is concerned, culture has always been the dominantmode of its socio-political organisation (Jusdanis 1991: xi). During the seven-teenth and eighteenth centuries, the social, political and economic transform-ations of European societies necessitated the emergence of an autonomouscultural identity that would represent the new social status. The national


myth provided by the concept of a homogeneous “national” culture actuallyreplaced older tales like those of empire, aristocracy or, in other cases, of thetribe. National culture was invented in order to give bourgeois society a nar-rative of continuity and affinity. Literature understandably played a majorrole in the construction of this narrative. As Jusdanis argues:

national culture is assigned the task of homogenising differences, ultimatelyby aestheticising them into a transcendental fraternity. […] Its culture […] isportrayed as a univocal, homogeneous organism inspired by national interestand common purpose. This collective vision is, of course, a fabrication.Literature’s original role in the nationalist enterprise was […] to relate per-sonal and regional narratives to the national one. (1991: 162)

In the same way, Terry Eagleton refers to “the role played by culture in cement-ing the bonds of the nation-state, as well as in providing an increasingly agnos-tic ruling class with a suitably edifying alternative religious faith” (2000: 130).

Many European countries developed their national narratives in the courseof the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, that is, during British and Frenchcolonialism, which is bound up with Enlightenment projects. In many cases,colonialism occurs at the height of consolidating national narratives and is partof that projection of national narrative. Nicolas Shumway, for instance, affirmsthat “Argentina’s path to nationhood begins with Spanish conquest and colon-isation” (1991: 1). Yet Spanish colonialism, which dates back to an earlier periodsince it resulted from Spain’s national unification in the fifteenth century, resistsEnlightenment ideas strongly. Nineteenth-century Spain was suffering a majorcrisis in its national narratives as Britain took over from Spain as the worldimperial power, Spain was invaded by France and lost its first colonies, culmin-ating in total loss of Empire by 1898. As a result, Spain’s national/colonial nar-rative disintegrated and was peripheralised. At the same time, Enlightenmentideas (from the French Revolution) and British Imperial designs in LatinAmerica coincided with nineteenth-century Romanticism and ideas aboutmodernisation in Argentine Independence. The major task of the men of theGeneration of 1837, which consisted of young intellectuals such as DomingoFaustino Sarmiento, Esteban Echeverría, Juan Bautista Alberdi and BartoloméMitre, was “to devise a programme that would make Argentina a modernnation” and in doing so “they borrow[ed] heavily from their European contem-poraries” (Shumway 1991: 112). In particular, the Generation of 1837, whichwas very pro-British/German and strongly anti-Spain, was greatly influencedby European intellectuals such as Goethe, Schiller, Hugo and Byron.

Turning to the case of Greece, during the eighteenth century Greek intel-lectuals, mainly coming from the mercantile bourgeoisie of Greek Diaspora like


Adamantios Korais, were influenced by the doctrines of Enlightenment andsought the formation of an independent Greek nation-state, orienting at thesame time their aspirations toward Europe, which they saw as an ally in theirstruggles against the Ottoman Empire. Since their colonisation in the secondhalf of the fifteenth century and up to the late eighteenth century, the Greekswere under Ottoman rule whose central distinction was not national but reli-gious. Therefore, the “modernisers”, who were “a small but cohesive group ofyoung intellectuals with first-hand knowledge of the Western-European experi-ence” (Legg, Roberts 1997: 12), laid emphasis on the distinction between eth-nic (rather than religious) groups within the Empire and “entertain[ed] severalvisions of a Greece that would include all Greek-speaking Christians” (12).Greek Independence, which largely resulted from the interests of Europeanimperial powers in the Eastern Mediterranean, underscored the need for aGreek national narrative and “modernisation”. As in the case of Argentina,British and French Imperial designs strongly affected Greek Independencewhile German Romanticism and intellectuals such as Hugo and Byron werehighly influential on Greek letters. The project of “westernisation” of Greeceand the European Imperial interests soon became apparent in both the place-ment of the Bavarian Otto as the King of Greece and the English and Frenchparties led by Alexandros Mavrokordatos and Ioannis Kolettis respectively.

As Renato Ortiz succinctly puts it: “modernity, modernism, modernisationare terms which are associated with the national question” (2000: 142). Duringthe last two centuries, the West projected the creation of nation-states based onthe concept of cultural homogeneity and purity essentially as the periphery’sunique way to modernisation. Greece and Argentina then inevitably foundthemselves caught up in a series of oppositions and contradictions: how couldthey follow a Eurocentric pattern of modernisation when they had a differenthistorical experience from that of Europe? Was it possible to fit into the samenational narrative the foreign elements extrapolated by the centre and the exist-ing diversity of local elements, keeping at the same time a continuous, homoge-neous and pure culture as demanded by modernity? To what extent should theygive up on their own cultural legacy in order to catch up with modernity? It istrue that modernity, as Marshall Berman argues, “pours us all into a maelstromof perpetual disintegration and renewal, of struggle and contradiction, of ambi-guity and anguish” (1982: 15). It is therefore expected that the periphery’s reac-tion to modernity would regularly be engaged with nationalist discourse as wellas its literary and cultural practices would largely be concerned with issues ofnationalism. Besides, the fact that even today nationalism has not been entirelydissociated from cultural practices in Greece and Argentina demonstrates thattheir encounter with modernisation has given not only different accounts ofmodernities but also diverse examples of postmodernities. If the distinction


between modernity and postmodernity in the West is still troublesome, in theperiphery the experience of postmodernity is, in fact, even more intricate.

Cultural Reactions to Modernity: The Historical Avant-Garde, Modernism, Postmodernism

Modernism and the Historical Avant-Garde

The hegemonic discourse of modernity and its belief in rational progresscome under attack during the emergence of modernism at the turn of thetwentieth century as well as of the historical avant-gardist movements of the1920s, both of which have powerful repercussions in Greece and Argentina.Modernism is a cultural reaction to modernity (roughly, the economic, tech-nological and social structures of high capitalism) and is both engaged with anddistanced from the experience of modernity. Geoffrey Kantaris detects thisdouble disposition of modernism which

might try to engage, for example, with heightened experiences of speed andturnover within the urban environment, or it might withdraw from theshocks and jolts of an alienated and alienating social environment into anaesthetic world nostalgic for the lost myths governing an ordered andorganic sense of community. Or it might partake of both of these

peripheral (post) modernity · 2020. 1. 17. · “ricardo piglia and the syncretist machine:...

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