Street level: Intersections of modernity in the Czech, Argentine, and French feuilleton.

Abstract

This dissertation does three things: It explores the feuilleton comparatively, showing how it serves as an alternative to universalist discourses. It compares Czech and Argentine literature, showing how the importance and persistence of the feuilleton in both traditions arises from similar political and economic conditions. It places the theory of Gilles Deleuze in dialogue with the discussion of the feuilleton as a way to illuminate both. The introduction provides a framework for comparing Czech and Argentine literature, explains reasons for examining the feuilleton more generally, then shows how Deleuze's theory provides an appropriate way to discuss the feuilleton. The first chapter examines Eugene Sue's <italic>Les Mysteres de Paris</italic>, showing how, contrary to both contemporary and more recent claims, it helped foster an alternative public sphere. The second chapter uses the figure of Napoleon to explore the feuilleton's relationship with modern universalist politics. First, it explains the feuilleton's rise in response to Napoleonic censorship. Then, it shows how the Napoleonic figures in <italic>Les Mysteres de Paris</italic> and <italic>Le Comte de Monte-Cristo</italic> embody a desire for a universal figure that will bring justice to society. It then examines a Czech and an Argentine text, Karel Capek's <italic>Tovarna na Absolutno</italic> and Tomas Eloy Martinez' <italic>La novela de Peron</italic>, in which such Napoleonic identification fails. The chapter concludes by showing that these latter texts invoke historical events in which such identification fails more generally in the Czech lands and Argentina. The third chapter begins by comparing the Czech <italic>Petlice</italic> feuilletons and Rodolfo Walsh's ANCLA, showing how each attempted to serve as an alternative public sphere. It argues that <italic>Petlice</italic> succeeded by integrating bodies into the public sphere. The chapter then examines Manuel Puig's <italic>Boquitas pintadas</italic> as a way to identify the limits to claims of the feuilleton's public nature. The final chapter proposes a general aesthetic of the feuilleton. It argues that the texts treated here approximate an alternative public sphere aesthetically, ceding the role of author and integrating the diverse voices of an entire community, thereby presenting a perspectival expression of that community.