Retracing Disappearance: Literary Responsibility and the Return of the Far Right: A review of Karen Elizabeth Bishop, The Space of Disappearance: A Narrative Commons in the Ruins of Argentine State Terror

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• Retracing Disappearance: Literary Responsibility and the Return of the Far RightA review of Karen Elizabeth Bishop, The Space of Disappearance: A Narrative Commons in the Ruins of Argentine State Terror
• Federico Pous (bio)

Bishop, Karen Elizabeth. The Space of Disappearance: A Narrative Commons in the Ruins of Argentine State Terror. SUNY P, 2020. SUNY Series in Latin American and Iberian Thought and Culture.

The Space of Disappearance offers a profound reflection on the figure of disappearance as a literary mode of depicting, unraveling, and subverting the modus operandi of political life in Argentina. Through detailed analyses of singular literary works by Rodolfo Walsh, Julio Cortázar, and Tomás Eloy Martínez, Karen Elizabeth Bishop outlines a very suggestive hypothesis that traces a collective literary construction of different modes of disappearance. Following Maurice Blanchot's idea that "the goal of literature is to disappear," Bishop identifies "dissimulation" (Walsh), "doubling and displacement" (Cortázar), as well as "suspension" and an "embodied superabundant" (Martínez) as literary modes of disappearance which are, at the same time, "symptoms and products" of the disappearance of literature itself. Ultimately, Bishops argues that there is a "narrative commons" in which disappearance operates, not only by denouncing the actual systematic killing and disappearance of dead bodies perpetrated by the state during the last dictatorship (1976-83), but also by putting to work an "ethical commons" that aims to dismantle, bear witness, and eventually cope with the profound terror generated during that historical period in Argentina. Bishop's interventions touch on multiple angles of the role of literature in the construction of political narratives with clever close-readings, relevant socio-political connections, and dense theoretical reflections that make the book worth reading. From my point of view, her most interesting reflections refer to the tensions between the role of the writer and the political interpellations at the time.

Grounding Disappearance

From a historical perspective, the desaparecidos have become a tragic imprint for recent Argentinean cultural and political history. The systematic production of enforced disappearance carried out during the last military and civic dictatorship included the political persecution of militants and political opponents, who were kidnapped, tortured, and assassinated, followed by the disappearance of their bodies. The proliferation of clandestine centers of detention and extermination (CCDE) was at the center of these repressive practices, leaving a profound wound in Argentinean society. A partial reconstruction of the events carried out by the CONADEP and published first in the book Nunca Más (1985), revealed that there were 340 CCDE, and it was calculated that 30,000 people disappeared at the time. Furthermore, the practice of disappearing bodies after killing political opponents by official repressive forces (or paramilitary groups) can be traced back at least to the beginning of the previous dictatorship (1966). However, the systematization of disappearance as the heart of the repressive system took place in the 1976–83 period, filling the whole society with fear and terror.

In this context, grounding disappearance becomes quite paradoxical: on one hand, it requires proper investigation to both unravel and reconstruct the modus operandi of the state and its repressive system; on the other hand, the literary imagination grows in the space of disappearance, as it is an intangible terrain that cannot ultimately be grasped. Walsh's short story, "Esa mujer" (1965) about the handling of a woman's dead body is so effective because he doesn't mention who she is, even as the reader assumes she is Eva Perón. In contrast, the effects of Eva Perón's body's journey fulfilling and overflowing the figure of the desaparecidos in Martínez's novel seems to overwhelm the hole left by the real desaparecidos in Argentinean society. Bishop mentions the impossibility of burying Evita's body [in the ground] and its symbolic derivations. In these instances, literature puts to ground, or grounds, these modes of disappearance that cannot otherwise be grasped. By abstention or by excess, each writer appeals to the reader to bear witness and process what is missing. Bishop mentions that her intervention goes along with the allegory of the crypt (Avelar) that pinpoints the impossibility to complete the mourning process, and, of course, with the...