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ERIC Number: EJ1028220
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2013-Dec
Pages: 12
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0018-2133
EISSN: N/A
Writing "Che" Writing: Apocryphal Diaries and the Deconstruction of Guevara's Myth
Weiser, Frans
Hispania, v96 n4 p700-711 Dec 2013
Ernesto "Che" Guevara's iconic photograph has taken on mythical proportions since his death. Though his image has ironically been exploited by the apparatus of capitalism against which he fought, his translation into a symbol has assured that his foothold within popular culture remains largely unassailable. While recent films and biographies perpetuate the revolutionary myth, novelists Abel Posse in "Los cuadernos de Praga" (1998) and Jay Cantor in "The Death of Che Guevara" (1983) strategically subvert the other staple of Guevara's intellectual iconicity: his published diaries. Building upon Guevara's existing self-criticism and overt awareness of writing for an audience in these supposedly personal documents, Posse and Cantor construct apocryphal diaries under the guise of official archival additions. These false documents, or what I define as "con-scripts," allow the authors to deconstruct Guevara's iconic status through the inconsistencies in his personal writing, a space unique to fiction and its ability to confuse the border between mimetic representation and invention and to interrogate the textual conventions that define assumptions about the objectivity of historiography or biography.
American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, Inc. 900 Ladd Road, Walled Lake, MI 48390. Tel: 248-960-2180; Fax: 248-960-9570; e-mail: AATSPoffice@aatsp.org; Web site: http://www.aatsp.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A