A Precipitate of Collective Dreams: Piglia, Stern, and Jacoby on a New Art of the Media

ABSTRACT: Whereas Ricardo Piglia's work has often been read through the literary traditions he so neatly sketched out, this article situates Ricardo Piglia's La ciudad ausente in the artistic avant-garde of the mid-twentieth century in Buenos Aires. We focus on two significant moments in Argentine cultural history that appear within the novel that, we argue, suggest an approach to resistance as informed by a technique of infiltration: Grete Stern's Sueños photomontages (1948-1952, 1968) and the Happening por un jabalí difunto (1966) by the group Arte de los medios de comunicación. The strains of utopia that appear throughout La ciudad ausente are considered in light of the possible utopianism present as well in these artistic initiatives, which undermine and reveal hegemonic narratives transmitted through mass media with a parodic and dissenting appropriation of these forms of communication.