Artificial Respiration

Photo - Escuela de Mecanica de la Armada, 2009
Headquarter of the military Junta where thousands of desaparecidos were tortured.

Owing to the dictatorship’s restrictions on political activity and public debate, the risks of speaking out were enormous. Although ever present, repression could be acknowledged only in private, far from watchful eyes and untrustworthy ears. Thus, resistance was practiced from behind the protective cover of silence. In 1980, Ricardo Piglia published Artificial Respiration – a novel that metaphorically discussed state violence and censorship through allegory. The book immediately became a channel through which a community of survivors could tacitly shed light on the possible causes of a shared national ordeal.
The novel tells the story of a writer, Renzi, who sets out in search of his uncle, professor Marcelo Maggi – a nonconformist historian with un-orthodox ideas – who has mysteriously “disappeared”. Piglia uses this central anecdote as a pretext for digression into a discussion of national cultural traditions and the history of violence that has haunted Argentina from its inception. In the following passage, Renzi converse with Vladimir Tardewsky, a Polish intellectual who may or may not have the key to Marcelo Maggi’s location. What begins, as an enquiry rapidly becomes a long and erudite debate on the role of Europeanism in Argentina literary self-perception. Like Piglia, his characters believe that the explanation and possible redemption of an age intolerant of intellectual freedom are encrypted in the politics of literature.