Mouseion: The Counter-Institutional Agent of the Literary Utopias of Ricardo Piglia and Dimitris Kalokyris

• Published in: The Modern language review 2004-07, Vol.99 (3), p.711-726
• Main Author: Kefala, Eleni
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aesthetics; Argentine writers; Authors, Argentine; Authors, Greek; Criticism and interpretation; Cultural institutions; Greek writers; Kalokyris, Dimitris; Latin American culture; Literary criticism; Literary history; Literary postmodernism; Literature; Memory; Museums; Narratives; Piglia, Ricardo; Portrayals; Postmodernism; Utopian fiction; Works; Writers
• ISSN: 0026-7937; 2222-4319
• DOI: 10.2307/3738997

This article focuses on the function of the topos of the 'museum' in the work of Ricardo Piglia and Dimitris Kalokyris, who have both been greatly influenced by the aesthetic principles of Jorge Luis Borges. In the case of Piglia, the 'museum' is closely associated with the notion of the "memoria ajena," which he considers a fundamental feature of the political reality of twentieth-century Argentina, postmodern culture, and the cultural production of 'peripheral' countries like Argentina. In the case of Kalokyris, the 'museum', along with the notions of the dictionary and encyclopaedia, contests institutional narratives by employing a series of aestheticizing processes. Ultimately, in both cases paradoxically enough the (literary) museum emerges as a supreme deinstitutionalizing power.