Resumen

SANJINES C., Javier. Bolivian Arielism. Latinoamérica [online]. 2023, n.77, pp.19-48.  Epub 19-Abr-2024. ISSN 2448-6914.  https://doi.org/10.22201/cialc.24486914e.2023.77.57565.

We err in thinking of “costumbrismo” as an old literary current counterposed to the new techniques created by modern narratives. The objective of this essay is to debunk such a perception. By countering the supposed objectivity of “costumbrismo”, this article affirms the influence of the Uruguayan José Enrique Rodo’s Ariel in the Bolivian Carlos Medinaceli’s thought. La Chaskañawi, Medinaceli’s novel of manners, helps pinpoint something not addressed up until today: historical and sociological approaches to “costumbrismo” do not allow to detect the buried presence of figurative forms that question the apparent “objectivity” of this literary current. The method that rescues this surprising imagery (ancestral motifs, myths and silences) is not that of the nomothetic sciences, rooted in general laws as opposed to the study of an individual case. We think instead of an “archaeology of knowledge” that scratches in the past the mutant imaginative forms embedded in the present.

Palabras llave : Novel of manners; Social representation; Figuration; Mutant forms.