Chapter 1 - Nazism as Allegory in Argentine Fiction: From Dictatorship to Neoliberalism in El comienzo de la primavera by Patricio Pron and Wakolda by Lucía Puenzo

Summary

Chapter 1 compares two contemporary Argentine novels that deal with Nazism in allegorical ways. Patricio Pron’s El comienzo de la primavera establishes a dialogue between the German and Argentine post-dictatorship contexts. In doing so, Pron highlights the inevitable insufficiency of justice in relation to dictatorship crimes, or that which Brett Levinson calls ‘radical injustice’. The novel’s melancholic register and parallels between two distinct historical moments lend themselves to an examination with reference to Walter Benjamin’s theory of allegory. In Wakolda, Lucía Puenzo examines the activities of Josef Mengele in Argentina but, contrary to Pron, rejects parallels with events related to the dictatorship or post-dictatorship. Instead, she foregrounds the foundational reliance of the Argentine nation on forms of ‘immunization’ (Esposito) and ‘necropolitics’ (Mbembe): the exploitative labour of a racialized mass that are rhetorically and materially excluded from the benefits of being ‘Argentine’ in both the past and the present.