Towards a politics of friendship in 45 días y 30 marineros (1933) by Norah Lange: from the critique of fraternity to liberty, equality, and cordiality.

• William J. Ryan ^[1]
  1. [1] Temple University

     Temple University

     City of Philadelphia, Estados Unidos

     
• Localización: Chasqui: revista de literatura latinoamericana, ISSN 0145-8973, Vol. 51, Nº. 2, 2021, págs. 175-194
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In this study, I theorize the political stakes of the narrative by engaging Jacques Derrida's critique of fraternity, a notion that entails the recurrence and idealization of the metaphorized brother as a structuring pattern of political association that excludes the sister and the feminine, thereby founding a community of fictitious brothers, who may or may not be friends, but are united by ties of blood and nation. [...]researcher Camilla Sutherland identifies as a trope "a repeated evocation of the notion of fraternity and narratives of women artists' acceptance into an artistic brotherhood" (401), in her evaluation of the reception of Latin American women's writing and art, studying, as paradigmatic cases, the reviews of the aesthetic work of Norah Lange and Norah Borges (1901-1998) from 1920 to 1930 (399). In consideration of this generalized pattern, we should emphasize Lange's remarkable participation in Argentine vanguardism- including her publications in the magazines Martín Fierro, Proa, and Síntesis in the 1920s-, alongside her enduring relationships with many artists.3 Nevertheless, as Sylvia Molloy reminds us, in light of other male-dominated avant-gardes of the period, "El status excepcional de Lange, mujer dentro del grupo ultraísta, no borra la marca del género; antes bien la exagera" (13). Offering another reading that complicates the relationship between biography and literature, María Elena Legaz sees 45 díasy 30 marineros as "autoficcional," for the fact that, while sharing certain aspects of the author's life during her trip, the novel also includes fictional elements (13). [...]in a discussion of gender in the plot, Vanessa Fernández Greene observes that the main character "employs a girl-woman persona to negotiate gendered power dynamics with the ship's captain and crew" (88), functioning "as a survival mechanism" (92).