Hotel Argentina: Pasos hacia una construcción de la identidad provisional en la literatura argentina contemporánea (1991-2011)

Abstract

This dissertation proposes a theory of provisional identities conceptualized in the form of discourse innovations that operate as literary solutions to national identity crises and applies it to post-1990 works in Argentinean literature. It therefore focuses on how Argentinean contemporary texts diverge from the pre-1990 focus on explaining national identity and its crises by, instead, being productive of new identity materials —or mutations to the foundational identity themes— that can balance and renew national identity. Set with a focus on the present, the analysis resorts to dynamic articulations like parody, pollination, sedimentation, evolution, and “ad-migration”, to address the textual mobilizations of identity. It shifts the critical focus from the explanation of the conditions that make Argentinean identity ambiguous to the innovations that can make it adaptive. My approach builds on the work of theorists like Jürgen Habermas and Judith Butler, and to a longstanding critical tradition concerned with the ambiguities of Argentinean identity. The dissertation ultimately intends to contribute a theory of provisional identities that could explain discourse innovations emerging from the existence of deficits or conflicts of identity in a variety of settings and situations. It also contributes an interpretation of the thematic innovations to the hegemonic Argentinean foundational identities that emerge in recent literary texts.