Cracking the welds of Argentine culture. El mataderoof Esteban Echeverría and its commented rewriting by Emilio García Whebi

Abstract

According to Ricardo Piglia, El mataderoby Esteban Echeverría is the first inaugural fiction in the history of Argentine violence. There, the people are represented in that barbaric space under the political power of Juan Manuel de Rosas (1829-1852). For his part, Gabo Ferro observes the literary representations of blood to define it as an essential metaphor that makes up the figure of barbarism in the opposition discourses, to permeate -to these days- in Argentine culture. Based on these proposals, this research proposes to study the displacements that the current scene shows in relation to this founding text. In this article, we will analyze El matadero. Un comentario(2009) by Emilio García Whebi; a tragic opera composed fragmentarily from the staging, the music and the text. Here, the characters live together in a slaughterhouse where blood turns into mud. This passage connotes the end of the civilization/barbarism dichotomy and of the great stories of Western civilization that, in line with Lyotard's philosophical approaches, promised societies prosperity. On the contrary, this work exposes civilization and barbarism as poorly coexisting entities in the muddy space of an Argentina marked by social tragedy.