11
For one reviewer of Black Novel, Valenzuela’s «descriptions of New York seem patronizing to an American ear, especially her use of gay life as proof of the city as theatre; Roberta and Agustín’s night in a homeless shelter is an awkward attempt on North America’s own political perversities» (Phillips, 21).
12
I realize that a more just comparison would involve the Louvre and the Centre Pompidou, or the Metropolitan and the MOMA, but I am following this example here as a useful contrast.
13
My translation. The two articles from which García Canclini takes this information are: Carol Duncan and Alan Wallach, «The Universal Survey Museum», Art History, 3:4 (December 1980); and «Le musée d’art modern de New York: Un rite du capitalism tardif», Histoire et Critique des Arts, 7-8 (December 1978).
14
Cortázar comments on his readings and conceptions in an interview with Sara Castro-Klarén (54 and passim), «Julio Cortázar, lector: Conversación con Julio Cortázar».
15
Agustín tells Roberta that as a young man he read Steppenwolf, just as he reads Cortázar or Bataille (NN, 47; BN, 50).
16
This position, which Valenzuela has been espousing for many years, has been developed theoretically by feminist critics. See, for example, Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism.
17
Beatríz Sarlo discusses the disappearance of the traditional institutions as value-making organizations (110), as well as the demise of the «cultura letrada».
18
In her perspective analysis of the role of the media in today’s Argentina, Beatríz Sarlo states that «la sociedad vive en estado de televisión» (87): «A algunas horas del día o de la noche, millones estamos mirando televisión en una misma ciudad o en un mismo país. Esta coincidencia de visión produce algo más que puntos de rating. Produce, a no dudarlo, un sistema retórico cuyas figuras pasan al discurso cotidiano: si la televisión habla como nosotros, también nosotros hablamos como la televisión» (86).
19
Translations of Sarlo’s texts are my own.
20
I am grateful for comments and discussions of earlier versions of this essay. I would like to mention in particular Sara Castro-Klarén’s queries at a symposium on postmodernism and postcolonialism held at Carleton University in Ottawa (October 1994), and the participants of a faculty seminar on feminist approaches to the disciplines at Washington University in St. Louis (Spring 1995). Special thanks to go to Ethan S. Bumas for his invaluable stylistic suggestions. An early draft, «Laberinto urbano e identidad en NovelaNegra con argentinos de Luisa Valenzuela», was read at the XI Symposium of the «Instituto Literario y Cultural Hispánico» in Montevideo, August 1993.