Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature Commons^™

Visualizing A State Of Debt: Sergio Chejfec’S Art Of Landscapes And Loans, Stephen Buttes

Stephen M Buttes

This paper examines two novels by the Argentine author Sergio Chejfec: Boca de lobo (2000) and La experiencia dramática (2012). By examining their relationship to Jorge Luis Borges' short story "El Zahir," I examine the ways in which the structures and obligations of loans and debt (or contemporary forms of abstract money more generally) are materialized into understandable and interpretable aesthetic forms in the novel. I suggest that Chejfec's interest in literary form and economic form in these novels present key complications to the concept of posthegemony as it is elaborated by John Beasley-Murray.