DEATH FLIGHTS: VEILING AND OPACITY IN OS AFOGADOS

Abstract

Within the context of the last Argentine civic-military dictatorship (1976-1983), the book Os Afogados, which contains a short story by María Teresa Andruetto and illustrations by Daniel Rabanal, addresses the theme of state terrorism represented by the annihilation method known as the death flights. Considering the delicate nature of this theme, in this article, we seek to identify the ethical and aesthetic assumptions employed by Andruetto to convert it into an object of literary exploration. Subsequently, drawing on the theoretical perspective of social semiotics of Kress and van Leeuwen (2006), we analyze the articulation between verbal text, visual text, and graphic-editorial design with the aim of verifying to what extent the resulting organic whole encompasses the aforementioned assumptions. On the one hand, we argue that the organic whole contributes to intensifying the play of concealment and revelation that characterizes the poetics of the short story adopted by the author. On the other hand, we maintain that some choices, necessary to make the book more accessible to Brazilian readers, may compromise the conception of an open and polysemic work that is central to Andruetto's literary project.