Latin American Research Review· 2026Q1
Post-National Tangos: Exile and Cultural Legitimation in El pretexto de París (Jorge Asís, 1985) and Informe de París (Paula Wajsman, 1990)
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- 2026year
Short summary
Two novels, Asís's El pretexto de París (1985) and Wajsman's Informe de París (1990), used tango archetypes to depict Argentine exile in Paris and challenge the 1980s European paradigm of the Latin American author.
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Key points
- Examines Jorge Asís's El pretexto de París (1985) and Paula Wajsman's Informe de París (1990) as depictions of Argentine exile in Paris.
- Both novels utilize tango's themes and archetypes to represent the experience of exile.
- The authors challenged the 1980s European literary paradigm favoring politically committed Latin American authors associated with the Boom.
- Asís reinterpreted the compadrito to represent masculine ambition for literary prestige through sexualized language.
- Wajsman reimagined the milonguita to assert female independence and critique neocolonial cultural recognition.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
Abstract This article examines two novels that drew on the themes and tropes of tango to depict Argentine exile in Paris in the aftermath of the 1976–1983 dictatorship: Jorge Asís’s El pretexto de París (1985) and Paula Wajsman’s Informe de París (1990). These novels fictionalized Paris through the lens of Argentine culture to present controversial standpoints regarding issues that were heatedly debated at the time, such as the figure of the exiled intellectual and human rights activism. Moreover, both Asís and Wajsman designed their main characters and self-representations as authors by reimagining the gender archetypes of tango in the Parisian context. A cultural form particular to the Río de la Plata, tango allowed them to challenge the paradigm of the Latin American author favored in Europe during the 1980s, which was commonly associated with political commitment and the figures of the Boom. On the one hand, Asís reappropriated the opportunism and artfulness of the compadrito through a sexualized use of language that allegorized his masculine conquest of literary prestige. On the other hand, Wajsman reimagined the figure of the milonguita to reaffirm her independence as a woman and subvert gendered and neocolonial forms of cultural recognition.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Latin American Research Review, 2026 · DOI ↗
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Field: Literature and Literary Theory
Literature and Literary TheoryArts and Humanities