Heterodoxia critica: Ezequiel Martínez Estrada y Néstor Perlongher

Abstract

The dissertation explores how marginalized discourses of identity have been a central concern in Twentieth-Century Latin American literature. I am interested in writers that have been displaced, muted, ignored, or persecuted for one reason or another: race, sexual orientation, nationality, religious belief, and language. To combine these multiple reasons of marginalization, I advance the concept of heterodoxy. Two among the many representatives of heterodoxy are Ezequiel Martínez Estrada (1895-1964) and Néstor Perlongher (1949-1992). Thus, I argue, on the one hand, that Martínez Estrada inscribes in his Radiografía de la pampa (1933) a pioneer reading of the Frankfurt School’s critical theory to completely subvert the question on civilization and barbarism. On the other hand, I discuss the role played by Perlongher’s Prosa Plebeya (1997) in the dissemination of poststructural criticism in Latin America to rethink the dichotomy through his reappropriation and resignification of concepts like corporality and desire.