Populism, Aesthetics, and Politics for Cortázar and for Us: Houses Taken OverAuthor(s): Brett LevinsonSource: Latin American Literary Review, Vol. 32, No. 63 (Jan. - Jun., 2004), pp. 99-112Published by: Latin American Literary ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20119919 .Accessed: 14/04/2011 00:37

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POPULISM, AESTHETICS, AND POLITICS FOR CORT?ZAR AND FOR US: HOUSES TAKEN OVER

BY BRETT LEVINSON

In this essay I want to analyze Julio Cort?zar's "Casa tomada"

[House Taken Over] as an extraordinary text that allows us to glimpse,

through the force of literature, the very conditions of our intellectual life, some fifty years after the work was written. I am betting on an amazing

possibility, whose door Cort?zar opens: if we?retrospectively?can discover what Cort?zar was doing back then, then he?proleptically? will reveal to us what we are doing right now. In the name of this

possibility, I will first conduct a political reading of "Casa tomada," then

an aesthetic one, and finally a third exegesis that examines the stakes of

casting literature as either aesthetic object or political vehicle: of reading in terms of the value of the political, the value of the aesthetic, or in terms

of the competition between such values, in terms of value itself.1

"Casa tomada" narrates the life of two middle-aged siblings, unmarried and childless, who dwell within a large Buenos Aires house

that they have inherited from the generations preceding them. The

brother, who is also the narrator, ventures from the residence only

occasionally, to shop and to visit bookstores in search of recent French

literature. The sister appears never to abandon the home. The hours of the

pair are consumed by cleaning chores?which, to judge from the

account, amount to a full time job?cooking, and hobbies.

The "action" of the narrative turns on the take-over of the house, which is a two part process. In the first, the back portion, which includes

the library and dining room, is usurped by unnamed, unseen, noiseless,

perhaps imagined figures. The siblings lock the door dividing the abode so as to impede further incursion. In the second, the front section is

appropriated: without putting up the slightest resistance, as if they were

100 latin American Literary Review

yielding not to trespassers but to new owners, the proprietors abandon the

dwelling. Onto the street with no possessions or currency, they bolt the

entrance and toss away the key as the tale closes.

Perhaps the easiest and most interesting entrance into the text is the

one taken by numerous previous critics: political context. I am of course

referring to the rise of Peronism in the 40s, the subsequent politicization of the Argentine working class, and the destablization of the bourgeoi sie.2 The narrator hints at the issue as he explains how it is possible to live

in great material comfort without an income-earning job: "We didn't

have to earn our living, there was plenty coming in from the farms each

month, even piling up" (12,108).3 The siblings are landlords; they do not

simply receive money but accumulate wealth. This accumulation, in fact, has numerous parallels within the narrative. The sister amasses, without

ever using, the sweaters and socks that she incessantly knits. The family accrues books and stamps. Also, the brother stockpiles cash, which

fittingly he fails to retrieve as he is shut out of the home in the final scene.

The protagonists, then, compile while barely exchanging or putting their gains into circulation. By circulation I refer not to monetary

expenditure. In fact, the siblings scarcely pass around the city; they have

ceased mixing among friends or family; and they have withdrawn from

any sexual economy?save, perhaps, from their own possible incestuous

relation. It is as if the narrator and his sister had fallen so far out of a public circulation that, as they were meticulously dusting the living room, they

missed a small detail, one which has only now come to their attention: a

populist overturning of the state's entire political structure had taken

place.

Now, these topoi of accumulation and circulation, at least when

situated within a narrative about a twosome which so obviously embod

ies the Argentine bourgeoisie, conjure the base of Marxist theory. And

in either gleaning or making this association a reader implicitly identifies the figure who takes over the house. He is the worker and/or the migrated

campesino, politicized by Peronism. The laborer's efforts, in some

fashion, yielded and have upheld the abode. Therefore this laborer, as he

takes over, does not actually do so from the outside. Already a fundamen

tal component of the residence, he has always dwelled by right within. Yet only now, with the advent of Peronism, is his "inhabitation" and/or

cohabitation experienced. These last points would explain an odd absence within the house:

that of a servant. The typical bourgeois Argentine family of the period

surely would not conduct, by itself, all the cleaning and cooking duties.

It would utilize an employee to perform some of these tasks. The fact that

Populism, Aesthetics, and Politics

for Cort?zar and for Us

101

the brother and sister do not make such a hire, choosing to occupy their

daily lives with chores?and the narrator makes sure to use the language of the workplace in his description of the toil: for instance, he emphasizes his sister's punctuality?points up a desire to keep paid workers outside

the household. For via the exclusion, the pair can present its household/

social status not as bound to other positions?for example, to other

classes?as relational or relative, hence as historical and mortal, but as

one that lies beyond such ties, indeed, which transcends every bond,

boundary, border, or contaminant, and which is invulnerable due to this

fact.

Hence, it is the resistance to circulation which breaks down when

the back part of the house is taken over, when the siblings find themselves

not in but as a relation: with others, within circulation itself. But why is

this significant? A not-yet-mentioned component of "Casa tomada"

permits us to answer. I am alluding to the story's intentional or uninten

tional deployment of Freud's notion of the uncanny.4 Freud, it is to be

recalled, commences his analysis of the "Unheimlich" by defining the

term as both the "familiar" and "unfamiliar," the "homely" and "for

eign." And just as the word signifies the opposite of itself, so too, for

Freud, can the essence of the ego be its very opponent. Herein, indeed, lies the essence of the uncanny. When the ego experiences an alien entity as its replica, and that double as its repressed essence or secret truth, it

encounters the uncanny. It is not then a particular odd image or foreign being that, for Freud,

is uncanny. No object is objectively uncanny?or any could be. For when

doubled the ego confronts the fact that, because it can be duplicated, because a perfect substitute exists, it is dispensable not necessary. The

true self, in fact, desires to endure as dissimilar from any copy. Only as

absolutely distinct from this contingent entity does he prevail, stand as

necessary, the inviolable itself. The uncanny dispels the illusion; ownmost

and most alien, the unheimlich is not the double as such but the self's

death, which doubling, repeatability, and encounter mark.

Thus, uncanny doppelgangers abound throughout "Casa tomada."

The rightful occupants are doubled by the outside entities that appropri ate this ownership, also by right. Idleness stands as the mimicry of work, the public as the fundament of the private, the bourgeois owners as clones

of servants, siblings as the copies of spouses, the campo as omnipres ent?in the form of dirt or tierra that, as the brother complains (13,108),

ceaselessly falls upon the furniture?within the metropolis. Death in

circulation and circulation as death haunt the house's?and the

bourgeoisie's?very foundation. The encounter with, and the subse

102 Latin American Literary Review

quent deployment, appropriation, and overcoming of the popular or

public, the withdrawal into a safe private home, is how the bourgeoisie came to be. And the same circulation among others, now recalled, announces in "Casa tomada" this class' dispossession: the end of a

childless family line, the mortality of a certain social structure.

This political reading, if satisfactory, nonetheless puts itself into

question as it presents "Casa tomada" as an allegory: of Peronism or

populism. For if Cort?zar's sole intention were to expose the vulnerabil

ity of the bourgeoisie within Peronist Argentina, and if, as we shall see, a main embodiment of this class is the high French literature that the

brother covets, it is unlikely that the author would deploy the most

literary or artificial of tropes, allegory, in order to carry out this disman

tling project. Or is it? The pre-capitalist nobility, we know, is defined by blood, by nature.

The nobleman is noble due to lineage, not culture, wealth, or even

character. The bourgeoisie's status, quite to the contrary, is not given. It

is gained and it therefore can be lost. In other words class, as modernity

emerges, is not fixed but earned and forfeited, constructed and transitory. The bourgeois may have obtained his position, as have the siblings in

"Casa tomada," through inheritance, ancestry, and prior social struc

tures; but neither pedigree nor assets can guarantee the sustenance of the

niche.

The bourgeoisie thereby attaches to itself certain public forms by means of which it seeks to preserve its standing. These, because set off

from others sorts of production?domains such fashion, popular forms

of expression, work itself?emerge as the site of "culture," ultimately of

a national culture: culture as in "being cultured." The bourgeois stands

as the elite, protracts his class, by appropriating this "high" domain. For

as appropriated, as public object turned private property, turned propri

ety, culture materializes as natural, as the essence and ground not only of

a class but of the State and even of Being. It thereby permits the

bourgeoisie, having claimed Being or essence, to situate itself in the same

place, albeit in a distinct manner, as the one occupied by the nobility: as

natural and as superior, as naturally superior, clear of any potential

plunge. But what distinguishes the high from low, culture from other

productions? The response appears to lie in permanence. "Casa tomada"

testifies to this possibility by positing books, in addition to the house

itself, as the representatives of the family ' s position. One of the brother's

statements speaks directly to the point: "One can reread a book but once

a pullover is finished you can't do it over again, it's some kind of

Populism, Aesthetics, and Politics

for Cort?zar and for Us

103

disgrace" (11-12, 108). The classic's value and utility, we see, do not

decrease as the book circulates, as it is read and reread.

This fact renders the brother's initial reference to books as crucial

as it is paradoxical: "I took advantage of these trips to make the rounds

of the bookstores, uselessly asking if they had anything new in French

literature. Nothing worthwhile had arrived in Argentina since 1939" ( 11, 107). The narrator desires both the new ("novedades") and the valuable

("valioso"). For him, the worth of the great work is tied to novedad?

to originality but also to modes and styles: to the novel. But unlike style, the tome must also persist, stand as other than a novedad, as everlasting

value.

The great book, over against a great painting or opera, circulates

widely throughout public space. It is fingered and passed down, dupli cated and discarded, cited and recited. Indeed, literature as the embodi

ment of "high culture" came into being precisely due to its public appearance, its publication: to the advent not of the printing press but of

literary salons and cafes. Yet because it circulates alongside and even

inside other forms, such as fashion, but then vanquishes them?fashion

dies off and is replaced; a novel, while also new and fashionable, can

subdue its own replaceability and mortality, take on as great book the

merit of culture as the modern rendering of classical art?the literary surfaces as the marker of the eternal merit of the bourgeoisie, as value

which goes public, profits from, but then surmounts its engagements so

as to stand as a worth beyond others and without opposition, as priceless

(in "Casa tomada," as an invaluable private collection)', as the true worth

that transcends, therefore founds, the crassness of money, of capital. The

loss of access to the library during the first take-over stage in "Casa

tomada" is therefore, for the bourgeois protagonists, the mark of the

forfeiture of this, their non-transient value.

However such claims, which smoothly suture the political and the

aesthetic, bypass the already-signaled contradiction. Allegorizing Peronism rather than addressing this political movement less obliquely,

through, say, a social realist text, Cort?zar in "Casa tomada" calls upon, seems to need, the literary as such. The political component conse

quently falls to something less than a necessity, less than essential.

Indeed, the form and/or style of "Casa tomada" raise the question as to

whether the narrative's main concern is Peronism at all. Could the story not just as well be one about allegory, about literature itself? Might not

the few Peronist allusions found in the tale represent an alibi or aside for

an account that is primarily a literary recitation: a ghost story, a yarn about perversion, an intertextual dialogue with Poe, Kafka, Borges, a

104 Latin American Literary Review

statement on the fantastic with little political inclination, one that stands

culpable, in need of an alibi, precisely due to this insufficient political

engagement?a deficiency, imagined or real, for which Cort?zar never

ceased to feel guilty, and about which he never ceased to write?

To respond, we do well to underscore still another metaliterary

component of the tale. Any reading of "Casa tomada" must base itself on

the brother's report. The reader seemingly has no other testimony to go on: the meaning of the text turns on this sole, nameless authority. Yet the

authority of this authority in fact dwindles as the story draws to a close.

Indeed, when the account ends?one might say, when its door is finally

slammed?meaning is entirely entrusted to the reception of the reader.

The narrator, as vehicle of the author, of his authority, forfeits control and

is "silenced" the instant the saga, the house, shuts down.

Reception theory might argue that this is true of any narrative. The

moment a text concludes, it yields rule to its receiver. The death of the

author is the birth of the reader. But in "Casa tomada" the idea seems

especially pertinent since the brother's deadpan narration "authorizes"

or empowers almost no reading at all. Or rather, the narrator offers hints

that might lead to numerous visions but no "solid information" that

would help us resolve once and for all the fundamental question of the

tale: who or what invades the home and why? This intruder in fact stands,

by the anecdote's finish, as a blurry figure that can be clarified by a dense

quantity of speculations and opinions, all of which are more or less

supported by the text?as is the Peronist reading put forth above?but

none which can be proved central.

Here, we return to the issue of reception. Perhaps we should say that

the house in "Casa tomada" is the story itself. The trespasser is thereby the reader. At the threshold of the text/home as he interprets, both proper and exterior to the house qua tale (as is any threshold), unheimlich, this

reader gradually assumes a mandate as the story develops. Eventually, the "old" authority is locked out and the reader is at liberty to take over:

to name the assailants and shed light on their obscurity. And said receiver

is free to perform the act not once but many times. Indeed, at the tale's

termination the narrator indicates where he has discarded the key: in the

sewer. The reader can retrieve it time and again so as to enter and reenter,

claim and reclaim proprietorship of the mystery: the truth.

The "death of the author," when first proclaimed, referred to a break

from authority on the part of the subject-reader, and therefore to a certain

notion, abstract or not, elitist or not, of liberty and transgression. Thus, as "Casa tomada" gives itself to the receiver, authority hands its power to the previously unlicensed or unauthorized. Here again, a possible

Populism, Aesthetics, and Politics

for Cort?zar and for Us

105

Peronist interpretation sneaks through the sealed entrance of the

metaliterary one: the reader's take-over of the dead authority figure

parallels the worker's or Peronism's subsumption of the dying bourgeoi

sie, of the class in power.

Yet, as "Casa tomada" illustrates, the "death of the author" is

actually about this sort of freedom only in a most complex manner. In the

account the reader is indeed freed the instant the text's speaker is closed

out. Yet in making a claim on or about the house's invader, in naming it, this interpreter does not actually exercise his self-determination. In fact, "Casa tomada" has interpellated the reader by extending to him a series

of choices?none thoroughly authorized but none that is uninvited

either?which, when selected, inscribe this reader precisely into the

discourses of authority from which he supposedly liberated himself. For

the sake of brevity, I have been emphasizing only three such slots, all

thoroughly institutionalized. One is the political interpretation, which

keys into the narrative through an appeal to Peronism. The second is the

metaliterary analysis, which unveils "Casa tomada" as an account about

the relation of writer and reader. A third exegesis views the story as

political allegory, concerned evenly with politics and allegory, historical

context and aesthetic principles. Meaning in the first perspective is

grounded in the value of politics; in the second, in the worth of the

aesthetic; in the third, in the merit of tolerance, neutrality, balance, and

rigor. Ascribing to different, yet equally traditional ideological, intellec

tual, and moral positions, each of these interpretations testifies to the

authority of that tradition by ascribing to its modern foundation, as

capitalist as it is metaphysical as it is aestheticist: the reduction of being to value and calculation.

The reader of "Casa tomada" is not compelled, by some autocratic

figure, to adopt his stance. He does so of his own desire, through his self

determination. Picking among meanings the reader in fact opts for none

of the above but for the highest value, the value of value, self-determi

nation itself: himself as a free subject, transcendental via this very right to select. The overt focus of the scholar or consumer may well be

structure, truth, theory, consciousness-raising, or simple enjoyment, not

value. Yet the choice of any of these materialize as value, maximum

value, because the individual selects among them, because choice

qua a subject position qua power is itself that very value.

The reader, we noted previously, is in "Casa tomada" one conceiv

able usurper as he moves from the text's threshold at the outset to an

authority or inside personage, one with the power and freedom to fill in

the story ' s blank. Yet now we see that the moment the reader locates the

106 Latin American Literary Review

key, enters the tale in this manner?as empowered but somewhat

grimy?he as liberating invader surfaces simultaneously as the sullied

invadee. For once he discloses the tale's truth as either/or political or

aesthetic, the reader exposes his subjectivity and will to power as that

truth. The certainty will thus be broken down by future readers and

readings?precisely because the interpreter, by averring authority, puts that authority in circulation where, one subjective speculation and

spectacle among others, it is consumed and perishes. One might therefore contend that the "winner" upon this ideologi

cal and literary field of horror that Cort?zar constructs in "Casa tomada"

is neither the reader nor the narrator, the worker nor the bourgeoisie,

politics nor aesthetics, balance nor bias, but absolute authority itself. For

this authorial position, in the last instance, is not embodied by the brother

who is tossed outside his domain; and it is not represented by the reader.

The power is held by Cort?zar who?as he so often does?has woven the

interpreter into his narrative net. The reader as transcendental subject who takes over in the wake of another authority's death ultimately succumbs to the author's scam, as he is blinded by his own will to

selfhood.

Among the most horrible of all of Cort?zar's ghost stories, "Casa

tomada" is therefore a ghastly ambush that induces each reader to enclose

or house himself within himself, to seek that self, via the tale as mere

medium, in a drive for an uninfringeable position, in a self-identification

with, and self-affirmation of a figure of absolutism that this reader seems

to displace and subvert but actually, in the end, constitutes.

The fall of a single and central authority, such as the author, does not

then inevitably liberate. Fundamental to a shift from one method of

domination and restraint to another, decentralization only obliges the

citizen or non-citizen, now turned consumer, to select: not automatically to select this or that but just to select. The subjectivity that is gained through such choice, by its own logic, sets up every relation to the other,

hence any politics or poetics, as unnecessary since what is here neces

sary, essential, is the subject himself, the absolute as embodied by reader

or author.

Across the author's demise, intra-active or readerly interpreta tion?not unlike intra-active TV talk shows?thereby easily backs non

commitment to any outside or alternative, to the world itself, as that

world's foundation and ideal. Indeed, it is the consumer/citizen's intra

activity, not his passivity, that stands in opposition to engagement:

soliciting the participation of the individual or collective I, intra-activism

constructs the value of non-engagement and non-engagement, unadul

Populism, Aesthetics, and Politics

for Cort?zar and for Us

107

terated might without potential praxis or poeisis, as this value. Stated in

contemporary Latin Americanist terms, the production of a variety of

meanings and the demand for preference, which surface in the wake of

the despotic authority's slippage, only reinforce the newest form of rule:

the neoliberal consensus qua the market, which induces every subject to

desire, therefore reproduce, the Same, the Subject himself.

Is "Casa tomada" in fact an allegory of Peronism? The base of

populism proper, of course, is a figure, such as Juan or Eva Peron. This

site lures the diverse sectors of the public into locating in the state their

own proper place. The state is good for many choices, many ideologies.

It, and only it, offers each a state position, a site of self-determination.

The populist thus materializes as the absolute power that authorizes also

alternative forces and freedoms. He/she appears, in short, as a totalizing field that precludes the very freedoms that he/she stimulates. Peronism, in "Casa tomada," thus emerges as the scene of the convergence of left

and right, of the reduction of the one to the other in the figure?the empty

territory to be populated, the imaginary free and exterior-to-capital space

upon which all capitalist enterprises call?in the figure, literary like all

figures, of power.

Drawing the reader into affirming the structures of authority through his liberty to fill in its vague invader with himself, "Casa tomada"

therefore less describes as performs populism. Populism or Peronism

names a political operation that is both too centered and decentered, and

that is therefore the logical precursor of its historical aftermath in

Argentina: the too strong state of dictatorship and/or the too weak state

of the neoliberal marketplace.

Indeed, like the figure of Peron, the figure of modern allegory

(Kafka's insect in "The Metamorphosis" is a prime example) stands as

the hazy core that extends an invitation to a multitude of identifications.

It is at once a given text's authorial center and the vacant, passive area

over which the spectator, the crowd, the reader, assumes dominion.

Perhaps, therefore, we should not discuss "Casa tomada" as an allegory of Peronism but posit Peronism as the literary performance of the

political, as itself an allegory. In the beginning of this essay it seemed that every aesthetic view of

"Casa tomada" would end up supporting a political interpretation. Now

it appears that every political take on the text will prop, via the notion of

the figure, an aesthetic or metaliterary analysis. The allegory of Peronism

switches, almost by itself, into an allegory of reading or a reading of

allegory. In truth the "more political" readers of "Casa tomada" appear, the more they affirm as necessary a trope, hence the more they fore

108 Latin American Literary Review

ground the aesthetic components of the tale. Likewise, the more the

scholar insists on the literary value of the text, the more he discloses

literature as the political tool of either class difference or its overturning, of the right or left.

Cort?zar desired his texts to be themselves, without historical

referent, literary precedent, or future followers. Cort?zar sought, in other

words, to be absolutely modern, to devise a total break, from history and

even from literature, well aware that he came too late, as do all Latin

American artists, forthat very modernity. Conversely, as loyal if anoma

lous leftist Cort?zar sought to address the historical positions and social

institutions into which the very act of writing and publishing flung him. His texts, struggling to stand as pure creations, devoid of aesthetic or

material history, and as historical testimonies and recitations, replete with an eerily unpretentious rather than arty mood?Cort?zar's short

texts are penned across the schism between these two. They take place

upon the fault between aesthetic drive and political aspiration, a split that

is neither: not politics and not aesthetics but the impossibility of their

conjunction and disjunction. The Cort?zar reader, then, cannot select either aesthetics or politics

without conjuring both and neither. The choice between the two, indeed,

is no choice since the claim to one, uncannily, must call upon its opposite as an alternative foundation that displaces and decenters it. This pick, in

other words, cannot be grounded in a reasonable assertion but only in

ideology since, by that reason, the selection of one overdetermines the

other: when the qualitative difference between aesthetics and politics surfaces as an unbearable demand, ideology and subject positions call

upon quantitative distinctions, value conflict, so as to break the tie and

affirm themselves as truth. "Casa tomada," in other words, will not tend

a ground for any (but it will for every) interpretation; each such exegesis is literally groundless, situated over a rift. The individual exposition of the tale is thus a willful assertion without support?not because "Casa

tomada" is meaningless but because its sense stretches across a divide,

takes in its other side, materializes as more than itself, as one truth too

many.

Yet if the scholar does in fact opt for aesthetics the instant he decides for politics, and vice-versa, if his choice is no choice (he cannot take one

without taking the other) and if the production and invitation to selection

are the means by which the transcendental subject emerges as the

consumer who backs a pure consensus?if this is all true, then the

reader's drive to authority is also an exposure to the limit of choice itself:

of a market that reduces meaning and sovereignty to free selection, and

Populism, Aesthetics, and Politics

for Cort?zar and for Us

109

of the transcendental ego who liberates and empowers himself merely by

reproducing and ascribing to these options. Because Cort?zar's own authority in "Casa tomada" could not

come about if not accompanied by a demand for the reader participation that the demand itself cannot dictate, the story exposes reception and

doxa, thereby mutability, exchange, and deauthorization as proper to

power's very essence, as literature's and culture's double: the very

double from which the bourgeoisie and literature as ruling sites?

striving to affirm their value as autonomous, as essentially unbound to

publication and the public, meager tastes, and subjective evaluations?

must withdraw in order to stand.

Now, one name for this boundary or liminal space that binds

authority to uncertified response, and by extension, culture to fashion,

the bourgeoisie to the public, the aesthetic to the political, is desire. For

one cannot control the force of desire; nor can one select, as would a

subject, the object of desire. One can certainly repress desire, substitute

the object of desire for an object choice, the pleasure for the reality

principle. Yet repression only displaces or compresses, in any case

proliferates, the desire itself. In maintaining one reading over another

when every such claim enjoys only itself as foundation, in asserting himself as subject, the reader exposes his interpretation as this very

exposure: of his own desire.

Interpretation, then, reflects not only the truth but the desire of

empowerment. The reader makes a determination across a limit that

"inseparates," renders "unselectable," politics and/or aesthetics. His

pick is the disclosure of his desire, of the manacle on authority which he

has had to disavow in order to emerge as a power, as chooser. Desire is

the frontier that opens Self to Other, to the ecstatic, incestuous eros that

pervades the entirety of "Casa tomada."

"Casa tomada" thereby represents not just an assault on but an

affirmation of power. The tale makes public its signs and representations, hence lends its hand to the taking of ideological positions. And it bears

responsibility for these appropriations, be they by the left or right. Yet the narrative also communicates the border on or between powers, the fix

between self and other that the drive for power renders not visible but

readable: desire as the rift that is the condition of politics and art, but that

cannot come forth in either a political claim or an aesthetic object. This

bind is in fact the partition that, while making categories conceivable, is

not one of them, is not itself a choice but an obligation, a responsibility. You cannot not have it. As interpreter you might opt for reading A over

reading B but, either way, you must decide for the interval, discontinuity,

110 Latin American Literary Review

the sharing that joins and disconnects the positions. Yes, the bond of

forces, the communication between author and reader, teacher and

student, colleague and colleague, politics and aesthetics, is also the hard

boundary or dis-joint that generates selection, hence the positioning of

subjects: the institutional empowerment, the consensus without negotia tion, contact, or contract, the market that erases in advance unions,

desires, engagements, communities, simple dialogue, indeed, plain

courtesy. However, this linkage is at the same time the communication

that hitches self to other, that casts strict separation as an impossibility that yields to possibility, to engagement as such.

"Casa tomada" conveys this double bind as the dual nature of

power, and as the two components of both literature and society. The

story is composed of signifiers that yield the subjects of representation and self-representation. Yet these signs also communicate the borders

and edges which thrust each subject into an intimate relation with an

Other: they communicate communication itself, encounter?ecstatic

and erotic like all genuine encounters?as the core of every commitment, artistic or political. Moreover, this communication of limits or limit of

communication is the condition of the transgression and freedom of

which Cort?zar remained forever capable, of any powerful engagement with or refusal of the institution, since without limits?limits to power? there is no such crossing, trespassing, or force: no liberation, break, or

break in, no strength or affirmation, but solely the resentiment of the will

to a boundless and ideal I, individual or collective (it makes no difference).

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT BINGHAMTON

NOTES

1 The original point of departure of this study was the extreme diversity of

previous critical readings of "Casa tomada." While the political component is marked in essays such as Claudio Cifuentes's "Un personaje ausente en la

fantasticidad de dos relatos de Julio Cort?zar: La ley de la propiedad privada" in

Coloquio internacional: Lo l?dico y lo fant?stico en la obra de Cort?zar, II

(Madrid: Fundamentos, 1986), 89-95, Maguelina Soif er treats the tale as a strictly metaliterary and aesthetic work in Revista letras 35 (1986): 173-184. Still others, such as Renato Mart?nez in "Fonema o grafema? El Boom y la deconstrucci?n de

Derrida," Torre de papel!, no. 1 (1992): 54-63, locate in "Casa tomada" a prototype for deconstructive reading practices. Other essays which spurred my work, given the remarkable difference of their points of view, are: Fernando Moreno Turner, "El

Populism, Aesthetics, and Politics 111

for Cort?zar and for Us

texto en movimiento y los movimentos del texto: Nuevo asalto a 'Casa tomada" de

Julio Cort?zar" in Acta literaria 23 (1988): 69-80; "La casa de los sue?os: sobre

'Casa tomada,' de Julio Cort?zar," Coloquio internacional: Lo l?dico y lo fant?stico en la obra de Cort?zar, //(Madrid: Fundamentos, 1986), 97-109; Mar?aRosenblat, "La nostalgia de la unidad en el cuento fant?stico: 'The Fall of the House of Usher'

y 'Casa tomada'" in Los ochenta mundos de Cort?zar, ensayos, ed. Femando

Burgos (Madrid: EDI, 1987), 199-209; Bernard Terramorsi, "Maison occupp?e de

Julio Cort?zar: Le demon de la solitude," CCERLI9 (1984): 33-41 ; Jose H. Brandt

Rojas, "Asedios a 'Casa tomada' de Julio Cort?zar," Revista de estudios hisp?nicos 7 (1980): 75-84.

2 Andres Avellanada, in his El habla de la ideolog?a (Buenos Aires: Editorial

Sudamericana, 1993), offers an excellent summary of (and contribution to) the field

of criticism that addresses "Casa tomada" as a political narrative about Peronism.

Other scholars that tackle the issue include Juan Jos? Sebrieli, Buenos Aires.

Vida contidiana y alienaci?n (Buenos Aires: Siglo Veinte, 1965), 102

105; An?bal Ford, "Los ?ltimos cuentos de Cort?zar" in Mundo Nuevo, no. 5

( 1966), 81-83; Nestor Garc?a Canclini, Cort?zar. Una antropolog?a po?tica (Buenos Aires: Editorial Nova, 1968); and Ant?n Arrufut, "Pr?logo," en Julio Cort?zar,

Cuentos (La Habana: Casa de las Americas, 1964), ix. While I am indebted to these

texts, I want to emphasize that my essay differs in focus from them. The above

studies are efforts to demonstrate that Cort?zar's politicization, above all his

critique of the bourgeoisie, emerges with his earliest tales. (This thesis contrasts

with those who argue that Cort?zar does not become "politicized" until after the

Cuban Revolution.) My essay?which, by the way, does not view "Casa tomada"

as solely a critique of the bourgeoisie; it is also a critique of that critique?is not

about this particular position but about the political ramifications of taking a

position at all when reading. What are the political ramifications, for us

today, of taking one position over the other, in particular a political or aesthetic

position, when analyzing? In short, the present essay does not investigate, much less

set out to "discover," the relation of Cort?zar's narratives to Peronism. It is only

marginally about Cort?zar and Peronism, and is therefore not actually a dialogue with the important criticism just cited.

3 All quotes are from the English Blow Up and Other Stories, trans. Paul

Blackburn (Pantheon Books, New York: 1967). Citations include first the page number from this translation and are followed by the page number from the Spanish: Julio Cort?zar, Cuentos completosll (Santanilla, S.A. Madrid, 1994).

4Sigmund Freud, "The Uncanny," in The Collected Papers of Sigmund Freud, vol. 4, trans. Joan Riviere (London: Hogarth, 1957), 152-170.

112 Latin American Literary Review

WORKS CITED

Avellanada, Andr?s. El habla de la ideolog?a. Buenos Aires: Editorial

Sudamericana, 1993. Brandt Rojas, Jos? H. "Asedios a 'Casa tomada' de Julio Cort?zar" in Revista de

estudios hisp?nicos 7 (1980): 75-84.

Cifuentes, Claudio. "Un personaje ausente en la fantasticidad de dos relatos de Julio Cort?zar: La ley de la propiedad privada" in Coloquio internacional: Lo l?dico y lo fant?stico en la obra de Cort?zar, II. Madrid: Fundamentos, 1986, 89-95.

Cort?zar, Julio. Blow Up and Other Stories. Trans. Paul Blackburn (Pantheon Books, New York: 1967).

Cort?zar, Julio. Cuentos completos/l (Santanilla, S.A. Madrid, 1994). Ford, An?bal. "Los ?ltimos cuentos de Cort?zar" in Mundo Nuevo, no. 5 (1966), 81

83; Garc?a Canclini, Nestor. Cort?zar. Una antropolog?a po?tica. Buenos

Aires: Editorial Nova, 1968.

Arrufut, Ant?n. "Pr?logo," en Julio Cort?zar, Cuentos. La Habana: Casa de las

Americas, 1964, i-x.

Freud, Sigmund. "The Uncanny," in The Collected Papers of Sigmund Freud, vol.

4, trans. Joan Riviere (London: Hogarth, 1957), 152-170.

Mart?nez, Renato. "Fonema o grafema? El Boom y la deconstrucci?n de Derrida" in Torre de papel 2, no. 1 (1992): 54-63.

Moreno Turner, Femando. "El texto en movimiento y los movimentos del texto: Nuevo asalto a 'Casa tomada" de Julio Cort?zar" in Acta literaria 23 (1988): 69-80;

Rosenblat, Mar?a. "La nostalgia de la unidad en el cuento fant?stico: 'The Fall of the House of Usher' y 'Casa tomada'" in Los ochenta mundos de Cort?zar,

ensayos, ed. Femando Burgos. Madrid: EDI, 1987, 199-209.

Sebrieli, Juan Jos?. Buenos Aires. Vida contidiana y alienaci?n. Buenos Aires:

Siglo Veinte, 1965, 102-105.

Soifer, Miguelina. "Cort?zar y la est?tica" in Revista letras 35 (1986): 173-184.

Terramorsi, Bernard. "Maison occupp?e de Julio Cort?zar: Le demon de la solitude" in CCERLI9 (1984): 33-41;