Argentine Responses: César Aira and Ricardo Piglia

Abstract

A conception of the Argentine literary tradition as one built around creative misreading can be directly linked with Borges. Leading writers Cesar Aira and Ricardo Piglia engage with Borges in a similar manner both to modify and to write themselves into a new Argentine literary tradition. In essays including ’Homage to Roberto Arlt’ and ’Ideology and Fiction in Borges’, Piglia utilizes a reading of Borges in terms of ’erroneous attribution’ to politicize his work and situate himself as Borges’s true descendent. For his part, Aira’s rejection of Borges in his 1993 essay ’Exoticism’ is not as absolute as it appears; an earlier essay of 1981, ’Who is the Greatest Argentine Writer?’, marks him as Borges’s heir.