Spaces of Madness

Insane Asylums in Argentine Narrative

By (author) Eunice Rojas

Publication date:

17 December 2014

Length of book:

230 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9780739190869

Spaces of Madness examines the role of the insane asylum in Argentine prose works published between 1889 and 2011. From a place of existential exile at the turn of the twentieth century to a symbolic representation of Argentine society during and immediately subsequent to the Dirty War, the figure of the asylum in Argentine literature has evolved along with the institution itself. The authors studied in Spaces of Madness include Manuel T. Podestá, Roberto Arlt, Leopoldo Marechal, Julio Cortázar, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Juan José Saer, Abelardo Castillo, Ricardo Piglia, and Luisa Valenzuela.

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: Early Asylums: Manuel Podestá, Horacio Quiroga, and Roberto Arlt
Chapter 2: The Asylum in the Works of Julio Cortázar and Adolfo Bioy Casares
Chapter 3: The Schizophrenic Machine in Ricardo Piglia’s Asylum
Chapter 4: Luisa Valenzuela's Passage through the Asylum
Chapter 5: Juan José Saer's Committed Detective
Chapter 6: The Asylum as Juan José Saer's Argentine Founding Myth
Chapter 7: The Poet as Patient: The Literary Life of Jacobo Fijman
Conclusion
Works Cited
About the Author

Rojas explores the function of medical madness, as a theme, in some Argentine prose works published between 1889 and 2011. She engages with Manuel T. Podestá, Roberto Artl, Leopoldo Marechal, Julio Cortázar, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Juan José Saer, Aberlardo Castillo, Ricardo Piglia, and Luisa Valenzuela to dislocate reason, sanity, and rationality in opposition to madness as an artistic metaphor of resistance to oppressive military dictatorships. Even though the study covers more than a century, it focuses on works dealing with Argentina's Dirty War—also known as Process of National Reorganization, the name used by the Argentine military government for a period of state terrorism from roughly 1974 to 1983. Building on Foucault and Derrida, Rojas looks at concepts of heterotopia, cure, and poison in studying how insanity functioned within Argentine society and literature. In addition, using as a model the Borda Hospital, the oldest and most important national psychiatric institute (which is located Buenos Aires), the book examines psychiatric hospitals and asylums and depicts them as alternative spaces of resistance against pseudo rational forces of violence and repression. Of particular value to those interested in Argentine prose. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.