Abstract

GULUMSER İLKER, Nur. Postmodernism and individual in Romina Paula’s Agosto. Iztapalapa. Rev. cienc. soc. humanid. [online]. 2023, vol.44, n.95, pp.293-317.  Epub Sep 11, 2023. ISSN 2007-9176.  https://doi.org/10.28928/ri/952023/aot7/gulumserilkern.

Romina Paula, one of the young authors of contemporary argentine literature, in her novel Agosto, tells the story of a woman in her short journey from Buenos Aires to Esquel, the town where she was born and raised. In this study, Paula’s novel, which can be considered experimental, has been analyzed as a postmodern work. The structure and style of the novel allows it to be thought within the context of postmodernism. In the novel, which consists of short texts in the style of letters, the sequence of sentences and word groups and the repetition of certain expressions in similar ways is considered as a postmodern feature. In addition, Emilia, the protagonist of the novel, has features in order to be examined as a postmodern individual. Leaving her little town and trying to find her own existence in the heterogeneous crowd of the cosmopolitan city Buenos Aires, the young woman sheds light on the unstable, slippery, variable and versatile aspect of the postmodern world with her hesitations and uncertainty. It is observed that there is a postmodern alienation towards both herself and her surroundings in the young woman who hesitates between leaving and staying. While Emilia is created by the author Romina Paula as a traveling individual with her disorganized, restless and volatile thoughts, it is seen that there is actually a tidal state in the spiritual sense. In the study, it is argued that this novel, in which it becomes clear that the individual cannot feel belonging and is alienated in this way, is a postmodern work in terms of both its structure, style and the way it handles the individual.

Keywords : contemporary Argentine literature; Romina Paula; postmodernism; postmodern individual.