Spaces of Madness examines the role of the insane asylum in Argentine prose works published between 1889 and 2011. From a place of existential exile at the turn of the twentieth century to a symbolic representation of Argentine society during and immediately subsequent to the Dirty War, the figure of the asylum in Argentine literature has evolved along with the institution itself. The authors studied in Spaces of Madness include Manuel T. Podestá, Roberto Arlt, Leopoldo Marechal, Julio Cortázar, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Juan José Saer, Abelardo Castillo, Ricardo Piglia, and Luisa Valenzuela.

Spaces of Madness: Insane Asylums in Argentine Narrative

Literature & Fiction

Rojas, Eunice

History & Criticism

Lexington Books

Gringos Get Rich: Anti-Americanism in Chilean Music

Arts & Photography

Music

University Alabama Press

Gringos Get Rich

Tuscaloosa : The University of Alabama Press

Spaces of Madness examines the role of madness and irrationality in the works of four key Argentine novelists: Julio Cortázar, Ricardo Piglia, Juan José Saer, and Luisa Valenzuela. Situating these works within the deconstructivist framework provided by Michel Foucault’s History of Madness, Spaces of Madness demonstrates the ways in which the perceived superiority of reason to madness is called into question in light of the challenges posed by the atrocities of Argentina’s Dirty War (1976-83). The works of the authors studied in Spaces of Madness reflect at times a wave of glorification of the irrational as a consequence of a growing distrust of rationalism, and often use the concept of madness as a metaphorical representation of an artistic type of irrationality as a means of resistance against supposedly rational forces of violence and repression. The works of the four authors studied here seek to dislodge reason, sanity and rationality from their pedestal by proposing madness as a metaphor for the often artistic efforts of resistance against the violent and repressive consequences of purported rationality taken to irrational extremes.

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Books by Rojas, Eunice