THE POST-DICTATORSHIP LITERATURE IN ARGENTINA:

SETTING INTERSECTIONS IN SOY UN BRAVO PILOTO DE LA NUEVA CHINA

Abstract

There are many ways of thinking about the aesthetic and critical possibilities which focus on the boundaries between reality and fiction, history and literature. In this research, I present an analysis of Ernesto Semán’s novel, Soy un bravo piloto de la Nueva China (2011), by making use of concepts such as realidadficción and literatura en sicro y en fusión theorized by Josefina Ludmer (2010). These concepts help to understand some artifices used in contemporary literature which subvert a traditional view of the setting (space and time), given that the aforementioned book is structured in three parts with specific treatments for each of the narrative spheres and with distinct points of view and setting (spaces and times). It then presents how individual and collective memories unfold in the last Argentine civic-military dictatorship, in which the conflicts of the narrator-protagonist stand out in their similarity and difference with the author (both sons of militants of the dictatorship) and how this autofictional feature adds value to the novel within the Argentine literary system. The theoretical line is developed in the light of Elizabeth Jelin (2002), Pilar Calveiro (2013) and Marienne Hirsch (2015). It is observed in the study how Semán updates the theme of the Argentine dictatorship from the standpoint of children of disappeared/detained parents, cultivating the work of constant memory from both the perspective of a new generation and the ethical/aesthetic needs of the contemporary.