Epilogue: the End of the Historia crítica de la literatura argentina by Noé Jitrik

Abstract

In times of 'scientistic' mandates, is there still room for criticism understood also as imagination, or as an essay, in the fullest sense of that discursive form of inquiry which is also a genre of literature? Captured by certain mandates of academic bureaucracy, critical essays seem to have lost their aesthetic drive. Therefore, instead of condemning it to an ancillary or vicarious relationship with the text that is the object of its inquiry, it is important to continue to value the possibility of its autonomous condition. Many of the most influential productions of Argentine criticism in the last fifty years that have worked on the 19th century (Molloy, Piglia, Viñas, Sarlo, Rosa, Schvartzman) allow us to reconsider how to reconnect new generations of literature students with the artistic, social, and political functions that academic writing should not lose. Focusing on the work plan of the Historia crítica de la literatura argentina (1999-2018), devised by Noé Jitrik, we propose to rethink some forms of responsibility that intellectual work continues to bear in this regard.