Incarnations of the political sinister. Diminishment of the space and the subject on the walls (1963) of Griselda Gambaro

Abstract

The metaphoricity of the first years of the production of Griselda Gambaro is indicated as the fundamental characteristic of its textuality, so the implementation of the absurdist universe in its version of threat requires an active reader who is willing to work on a hermeneutical task that originates in the indeterminacies of the text. The everyday and at the same time sinister universe constitutes the hard core on which are structured the dominant theme around the power games and the organization of the victim-perpetrator dyad.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze Las Paredes (1963), Gambaro's first theatrical text, based on the figure of the sinister as an anticipatory mechanism of the totalitarian regime in Argentina from 1962 until the definitive advent of democracy, and whose textual functioning appears organized on the progressive diminishment of the real space represented, as well as on the referential opacity of the characters' language, both procedures which contribute to the exercise of a sovereign power that strips the subjects of their identity while reserving the right to life and death.