Against Paraguay.19th Century Latin-American Visual Culture and Literature during the War against Paraguay (1864-1870).

Abstract

Contrary to the conventional hypothesis that war in the nineteenth century allowed nation-states to enforce their hegemony over different forms of social groups and communities by crystallizing nationalism and homogenizing plurality, this dissertation argues that warfare imposes a technological velocity that frustrates the construction of epic narratives, disturbs any vision that tries to monumentalize the nation-state and destabilizes the lettered/visual culture, precisely by exposing the precarious nature of state sovereignty. The war between the Triple Alliance of Argentina, the Empire of Brazil and Uruguay against Paraguay lies at the juncture of two vectors: nation-building violence and technological changes in the means of representation and communication. It is a moment that reflects the nation-state’s appropriation and institutionalization of war as justified violence in the name of progress and civilization and one in which the production and reproduction of signifiers, through the linotype revolution and the photography proliferate. The first introductory chapter, then, aims to articulate a cultural critique of war as a fundamental condition in the production of representation in nineteenth-century Latin American literature and visual culture. The second chapter deals with the intersection of writing and wood engravings in the Paraguayan illustrated newspapers El Centinela and Cabichuí. These journals transformed the war chronicles into clusters of texts and engravings that fragmented the nation state’s rhythm of epic narration. In the third chapter, I analyze the range and influence of the massive photographic production contained in the Uruguayan Colonel Palleja’s Diario de la Campaña de las Fuerzas Armadas contra el Paraguay, in order to explore how the new medium of photography forced Palleja to renegotiate writing about both war and state violence. I use the Diario as a springboard to discuss how photography establishes a new balance of resemblances between writing and images and between the visible and the invisible in the discourse on war. In the fourth and final chapter, I explore the intersection of writing and painting in the work of the Argentinean lieutenant Cándido López and his Curupaytí series of chronicles and canvases that create a fragmented “negative epic” of the war.