Plot and paranoia in La maestra rural and Distancia de rescate

Authors

Abstract

This article explores paranoid narrative strategies and figurations of the conspiracy in two contemporary Argentine novels. La maestra rural (2017), by Luciano Lamberti, narrates a conspiracy with aliens through various historical periods, a network of hallucinated voices builds this fiction. Distancia de rescate (2015), written by Samanta Schweblin, is a story outlined as an interrogation where a transmigrated character –that shows the consequences of the agro-export business– guides the plot. These fictions restructure historical temporality and show alliances between the ruling classes and the State. Our hermeneutical perspective follows Fredric Jameson’s proposal to read the historical-political meanings throughout two ideologemes. In this case, conspiracy and paranoia are the devices that allow us to articulate the intersection between fantasy, police genre, science fiction, and horror, and to integrate these meanings into a rewriting of the fractured social totality.

Keywords:

Lamberti, Schweblin, conspiration, paranoia, Argentine literature