Identity Reconstructions in El espíritu de mis padres sigue subiendo en la lluvia

Abstract

The children of the disappeared and survivors of the last Argentine dictatorship, who are no longer responsible for testifying, and whose motivation is to express their difficulties in assuming their own identity, have chosen to formally explore the literary possibilities of the self-writing from a space of enunciation different than that of his parents. In this case is El espíritu de mis padres sigue subiendo en la lluvia (2011) of Patricio Pron, a novel that, to achieve this purpose, uses as main strategies: the fictionalization of the self, the memory and the photography. This paper discusses that with the use of these devices, the text configures the identity as a process of deconstruction and re-construction that goes from self-alienated to self-recognition as another. Firstly, we developed a brief genealogy of the self-writing in Argentina and its relationship with memory in order to offer elements that allow the literature of children to be located. Secondly, we analyze the staging of the authorial self. Finally, we examine the development of the interpretation of photographs, which, at the same time, reveals the process of memory and the constitution of identity.