Resumen de Roberto Arlt and the Subversive Gaucho: reframing meaning in early twentieth century Buenos Aires
Furthermore, it becomes a way in which the people of the periphery contribute to the act of writing and representation in the modern city. [...]through his aguafuertes porteñas, Arlt transforms the city into a bricolage of sorts, unfolding the cityscape and opening it up to a multitude of individual voices and particular experiences that endow it with a newly discovered sense of dynamism and fluidity. Rather, he opens the door to intercultural dialogue in Buenos Aires, and as a result, is able to "elaborate this implicit [subaltern] philosophy into a coherent explicit philosophy" (Crehan 76). [...]it should come as no surprise that Arlt's mobility-his strategy of moving about with little regard for arbitrary borders and limits-has profound effects on perceptions of the city, leading him to conclude in one of his more renowned aguafuertes "El placer de vagabundear," that "[l]a ciudad desaparece. Similar to the organic intełłectuał, by simply making visible the experience of subaltern communities, Arlt transforms "the incoherent experience of a social group or class [...] into a coherent narrative, or set of narratives" (Crehan 31). [...]the Aguafuertes porteñas serve as a platform through which fragments of marginalized cultures came together to evince the urban experiences of the city's "other," while simultaneously offering representations of the city that both resisted and countered those of dominant discourse. Arlt is not looking to create a movement, so to speak, as much as he struggles to break from the myth of a criollo origin, and raise an awareness of the social and cultural diversity of the city.
