Juan Padilla
Don DeLillo’s Libra (1988) and Tomas Eloy Martinez’s Santa Evita (1996) have received considerable scholarly attention for their postmodern treatment of history and facts. Skip Willman has contended that Libra challenges the official history set by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which remedied the repute of the Warren Commission’s findings on the Kennedy assassination, and James Rankin, who also connects the novel with pragmatist notions of history, has related Libra to postmodern conceptions of history by considering the work’s rejection of a dominant narrative. While questioning La pasion segun Eva’s relation to postmodernism, Kerstin Bowsher has agreed with scholarship that regards Santa Evita as an embodiment of postmodern ideas because of Martinez’s unsettling of the boundaries between history and fiction amongst other postmodern attributes found in the novel. Though scholarship focusing on these novels’ postmodern treatment of history and the creation of truth is instrumental in understanding how hegemonic narratives can be challenged, it has yet to examine the implications of the destabilization of these narratives for the formation of knowledge by institutions, such as psychiatry, which have created hierarchies of behavior and types in the past. Gwendolyn Diaz comes close to showing how Santa Evita does this. Diaz explores how Martinez’s novel undermines a dominant image of Eva Peron by presenting the various ways in which the image of Eva is created. These means include “the eyes of the common folk” (Diaz 183) and two books written by Eva, and they produce the effect of dismantling a dominant image and discrediting the image of Eva as the “Mare” that Peron’s opponents promoted. The undermining of the image of the “Mare,” however, is not connected to an institution’s knowledge.
In this paper, I plan to demonstrate the implications of postmodernism on the disciplines of psychology and criminology in the United States during the Cold War and in early to mid-twentieth-century Argentina. I argue that the novels Libra and Santa Evita undermine categories of deviancy created by the aforementioned disciplines with their postmodern presentations of history and truth. I intend to prove this by showing how the novels’ postmodern treatment of history and facts upsets stigmatizing classifications presented in the novels, which has consequences for the contemporaneous “science” that supported classifications of abnormality during the times the novels are set and the power relations that result from them. In order to better explain the relationship between hierarchies of categorization and power and how the novels destabilize them, I will introduce Michel Foucault’s concept of the panoptic mechanism and the relationship that it produces between power and knowledge.
In Discipline and Punish (1977), Foucault introduces the concept of the panoptic mechanism, a mechanism employed by institutions and states, which is described as having the function of observing people, recording behavior and information, and classifying individuals based on observations. The observation and classification of individuals can be used to create new forms of knowledge, such as psychiatry and criminology, which has the effect of creating more power. Foucault writes, “the formation of knowledge and the increase of power regularly reinforce one another…. It is a double process, then: an epistemological ‘thaw’ through a refinement of power relations; a multiplication of the effects of power through the formation and accumulation of new forms of knowledge” (224). Knowledge creates power and vice versa. One way that knowledge produces power is through its creation of hierarchies of individuals where some types are considered more valuable, and others are regarded as deviants. These hierarchies, developed by branches of knowledge like criminology, can propagate norms that then reinforce particular behaviors. Hierarchies of classification have influence because they are based on and backed by branches of knowledge. However, this can be undermined if the knowledge supporting a hierarchy of individuals is shown to be unstable and put into a position in which this knowledge loses its dominant status. The validity of a branch of knowledge and its influence can be challenged if it is portrayed as being created arbitrarily, and it can lose its dominant status if it is put into a context where its knowledge is shown to be unsound. The postmodern conceptions of history and truth in Libra and Santa Evita represent moments that depict this destabilization of a hierarchy’s supporting knowledge.
In DeLillo’s Libra, the rendering of a trustworthy history, which is necessary for a sound categorization of individuals, is negated by the arbitrary manner in which the character of Lee Harvey Oswald is presented by the group of conspirators who are planning a fake assassination on President Kennedy. The conspirators intend to use Oswald as a scapegoat and, in order to for their plan to work, they must create the image of a man who will fit the role of a communist assassin. Win Everett, one of the conspirators, is portrayed as “at work devising a general shape, a life…. They wanted a name, a face, a bodily frame they might use to extend their fiction into the world” (50). Everett’s task of “devising…a life” implies that the “life” is a fabrication and, consequently, so would the history of this life. The fabrication behind this life is further indicated in the narrator’s description of the conspirators using the life so they can “extend their fiction into the world.” They are creating a life that will help their political ends. The conspirators’ work signifies that a person’s history can be fashioned for the purposes of a particular group or political party. This, then, should cast doubt on the classification of individuals as deviants. The construction of a certain type of person as abnormal in order to promote political interests, as will be shown below, was something that existed during the United States’ Cold War. Libra, however, presents yet another way in which the writing of history can be questioned and, consequently, categories of deviancy.
The arbitrary nature of writing history is continued with the work of Nicholas Branch, a retired CIA analyst who has been hired to write the history of the JFK assassination. Though Branch does not appear to be motivated by any particular political motives while writing the history of the assassination, his experience attempting to write it nonetheless suggests the same arbitrariness displayed by the conspirators. This is particularly evident when Branch feels perplexed by the amount of information at his disposal. DeLillo writes, “Everything is here. Baptismal records, report cards, postcards, divorce petitions…thousands of pages of testimony…an incredible haul of human utterance. It lies so flat on the page, hangs so still in the lazy air, lost to syntax and other arrangement” (181). The arbitrary nature of writing history is represented in the seemingly endless information being “lost to syntax and other arrangement.” If this information is “lost to syntax and other arrangement,” then it does not inherently have any order or meaning. Therefore, putting this information into some sort of order signifies that one has manipulated a formless mass of details into a narrative that did not necessarily have to exist based on those details. The narrative created from the “incredible haul of human utterance” is then just as discretional as the life created by Everrett and the other conspirators. What the conspirators and Branch both show is that the writing of history—whether of an individual or an event—involves some sort of invention. The consequence of this for the categorization of individuals as deviants is that the category of abnormality should be questioned because details on their own do not belong to “syntax and other arrangement.” Like the conspirators and Branch, the creators of deviant types and hierarchies of types must manipulate senseless information to bring about a coherent history or life. Before continuing to show how Libra can subvert categories of deviancy, a specific account of the category of abnormality that it threatens is needed.
During the Cold War, psychology in the United States was employed to classify communists as deviants who were a danger to the nation. Morris Ernst and David Loth’s 1952 survey of former communists, for example, “offered a portrait of American Communists as psychologically wounded” (Friedman 31) and claimed that they were driven by “insecurities and emotional weaknesses” (Friedman 31). The origin of a communist’s abnormality was attributed to loneliness and a troubled childhood, which then led a distressed individual to the communist “party [who] offered a substitute family for its adherents” (Friedman 32). The work of psychologists was supplemented by former communists’ memoirs, such as The God That Failed (1950), Out of Bondage (1951), and Witness (1952). These utilized psychological language which also helped form an image of communists as abnormal. Elizabeth Bentley, the author of Out of Bondage, described communists as having an “‘impersonal and detached mind that refused to be bogged down in petty problems and personal emotions’” (qtd. in Friedman 26). The use of psychological characterizations by actual psychologists and by memoirs implementing psychological language has the effect of putting communists into a category of deviancy that is supported by power. Because psychology is a form of knowledge, it produces power. As Foucault puts it, “the formation of knowledge and the increase of power regularly reinforce one another.” Though these descriptions of communists are supported by knowledge, and therefore power, the link between knowledge and power is severed in the novel with contrasting representations.
Oswald is portrayed throughout the novel as a troubled loner who wishes to become a part of history through his involvement with communist struggles, but the novel also disrupts this image and, consequently, also disrupts the psychological classification of communists as abnormal types. Early on, passages that relate his childhood and adolescence confirm the psychological descriptions of communists during the Cold War. The teenage Oswald, after getting beat up in a fight, is described in the following manner: “He seemed to be grinning. It was just like Lee to grin when it made no sense, assuming it was a grin and not some squint-eyed tic or something. You couldn’t always tell with him” (33). The senseless grin, especially after losing a fight, appears strange and perhaps abnormal because of the grin’s inappropriateness for the given context. An image of Oswald as detached or abnormal is presented again a little later when the narrator describes “a smile not connected to things” (43) on the teenage Oswald’s face when he meets David Ferrie, an adult and stranger, in a hotel room to buy a gun. This depiction of Oswald corresponds with the image of communists as having a “detached mind that refused to be bogged down in petty problems and personal emotions.” The need for a sense of belonging that psychologists claimed drove troubled individuals to communism is also shown. DeLillo writes, “He would join a cell located in the old buildings near the docks. They would talk theory into the night. But they would act as well. Organize and agitate” (41). Despite these representations of Oswald, other portrayals emerge that combat the psychological characterization of communists as deviants. While Oswald is in Russia, an American aircraft is shot down, and Francis Gary Powers, the pilot, is taken into custody, where Oswald sees him. DeLillo writes, “He was the type Oswald could get along with in the barracks…. Paid to fly a plain and incidentally to kill himself if the mission failed…. He wanted to call to the prisoner…good for you; disobey” (196, emphasis in original). This passage demonstrates Oswald’s empathy, which is contrasted with the U.S. military’s lack thereof because it would have wanted Powers to “kill himself if the mission failed.” The empathy displayed is not something that communists, according to the psychological discourse, should have since they were not supposed to be “bogged down [by]…personal emotions.” The portrayal of Jack Ruby, a patriotic American and the man who murders Oswald, also serves to subvert the image of communists as deviants because he is represented as emotionally unstable. After learning of Kennedy’s assassination, Ruby is “alone and vomiting…. Crying for five minutes, vomiting for five minutes” (419). The intensity of his emotions and the murder that they lead to befit the image of a communist as “psychologically wounded” and emotionally weak. However, Ruby is strongly opposed to communism, and, therefore, this description of him impairs the psychological portrayal of communists. Because of these contrasting images of Oswald and the depiction of Ruby as emotionally unstable, the novel undermines the deviant classification of communists as deviants.
Martinez’s Santa Evita displaces the possibility of a dominant historical narrative in a similar way to Libra with its presentation of history as constantly being rewritten. Tomas Eloy Martinez, the novel’s protagonist and narrator, meets with Julio Alcaraz, Eva Peron’s former hairdresser, to gather information to write “an illustrated history of Argentine cinema” (68). They later reconnect, and Alcaraz recounts his time with Eva. After transcribing Alcaraz’s monologues on his time with Eva, Martinez realizes that “Every story is…unfaithful. Reality, as I’ve said, can’t be told or repeated. The only thing that can be done with reality is to invent it again” (83). The statement that “Every story is…unfaithful” after Martinez has presented the transcription of Alcaraz’s monologues suggests that any recording or documenting will never be entirely accurate. This, then, also applies to the construction of a dominant narrative, which is also undermined by Martinez’s assertion that the “only thing that can be done with reality is to invent it again.” If invention is behind the truth of a history, then a dominant historical narrative cannot remain unquestioned. Here, Santa Evita’s representation of history resembles Libra’s representation of history when Branch is dismayed by the massive amount of data that is “lost to syntax and other arrangement,” which signifies that Branch will have to organize this information, and thereby betraying the idea of one absolute historical truth, in order to present an articulate historical narrative on the JFK assassination. The invention behind reality is depicted later in Santa Evita when Martinez reads his film script based on newsreels and photographs. Martinez writes, “The camera climbs up his body, stops at his malevolent eyes….[Note: Such a shot exists. If the director wants to use it, he can look for it in one of the two editions of the Spanish newsreel” (emphasis in original 88). The note about the “shot [that] exists” exhibits the need for invention to depict reality because only “one of the two editions of the Spanish newsreel” contains the shot. This indicates that not all forms of documentation of the event present the same reality. So, the reality one sees depends on what edition or version of reality one is presented with. This presentation of history, like the one shown in Libra, should cast doubt on categories of deviancy, which, in regards to Santa Evita, the most relevant concerns prostitution.
In the early to mid-twentieth century, criminologists in Argentina equated prostitution, and women’s promiscuity by extension, with criminality despite the fact that prostitution was legal from 1875 to 1934. Many criminologists believed that a prostitute’s criminality was due to an individual’s asocial character. Eusebio Gomez, in La mala vida en Buenos Aires (1908), wrote, “se puede decir que la prostitución tiene el mismo origen que el crimen: prostitutas y criminales tienen por carácter común el ser improductivos y, por tanto, antisociales” (124, emphasis in original). Gomez states that prostitutes and criminals have personalities that are unproductive and antisocial, thereby identifying sex workers with criminality and deviancy. In addition to idleness and antisocial personalities, prostitution was also associated with immorality. Prostitutes were regarded as the “victims of their own moral weaknesses, which were most likely the result of irrationality and lack of intelligence” (Caimari 190). This stigmatizing characterization of sex workers was connected to the desire to keep women in their traditional roles as homemakers. Women whose sexuality transgressed norms were in danger of becoming criminals since “precocious sexuality… and ‘exaggerated sexuality’ (nymphomania) [were factors] leading to prostitution” (Salvatore 5) The intention to keep women in their traditional roles is evident in the work of the Patronato de Recluidas Y Liberadas, an organization established in 1933, which was dedicated to validating “the scientific study of female criminality” (Caimari 201) and rehabilitating incarcerated women. One way in which it attempted to rehabilitate these women was by ensuring “that the [newly released] woman had been re-integrated into a fulfilling home life, believing that for women, ‘normal life almost always means home life’” (qtd. in Caimari 203). This discourse surrounding prostitution and its relation to criminality becomes linked to the image of Eva Peron through the offensive names used by her opponents.
Considering the context of criminology in Argentina, many of the names that the military uses to refer to Eva in Libra carry a “scientific” backing that links Eva to the criminological depictions of sex workers. Colonel Moori Koenig thinks of Eva as “Mare…Bug, Cockroach…Estercita, Milonguita” (115) instead of referring to her as “Evita” or “Eva.” These names are all meant to degrade the image of Eva since they all have a derogatory connotation in Argentina relating to women’s sexuality. As Diaz has already noted, “Mare” refers to a woman that is “ridden,” “Cockroach” refers to the vagina, and “Estercita” and “Milonguita” associate Eva with a prostitute from an Argentine tango (184). These names could be particularly harmful for the image of Eva because she had first lived with Peron before they were married and, according to Alcaraz, “in those days virginity was sacred” (74, emphasis in original). The novel, however, negates the connection between Eva and the criminological classification of sex workers with images that upset those set by criminologists. Eva is depicted as tirelessly working to help her husband’s political party and to give back to the poor of Argentina. Though she faints “two or three times at public ceremonies…as soon as she came to, she insisted on going on” (79, emphasis in original). This portrayal of Eva contrasts with Gomez’s claim that sex workers (whom Eva is linked to through derogatory names and stories about her past) have personalities that are “improductivos y, por tanto, antisociales” (unproductive and antisocial). At the Foundation, a building designated for charity, Eva is described as giving “very long audiences, during which she quizzed those seeking favors about their lives and hard times” (204). This passage portrays Eva as hardworking and caring, thus contradicting any ideas of her as unproductive and antisocial. These portrayals of Eva then destabilize the categorization of sex workers and women whose sexuality does not conform to accepted norms (“precocious sexuality… and ‘exaggerated sexuality’”) because they show that the knowledge behind the categorization is not sound.
Libra and Santa Evita represent history and truth in a postmodern fashion that subverts notions of deviancy created with the use of psychology and criminology. They do this by presenting the arbitrariness and invention behind the writing of history and by exhibiting depictions of individuals that counter the categories of deviancy set by American psychologists during the Cold War and Argentinian criminologists during the first half of the twentieth century. Libra undermines the classification of communists as “psychologically wounded,” and Santa Evita unsettles the supposed pathology behind sex work and women whose sexuality does not align with tradition.
Works Cited
Caimari, Lila M. “Whose Criminals Are These? Church, State, and Patronatos and the Rehabilitation of Female Convicts (Buenos Aires, 1890-1940).” The Americas (Washington. 1944), vol. 54, no. 2, Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 185–208, https://doi.org/10.2307/1007741.
DeLillo, Don. Libra. Penguin Books, 2006.
Díaz, Gwendolyn. “Making the Myth of Evita Perón: Saint, Martyr, Prostitute.” Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, vol. 22, 2003, p. 181–192.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan, Random House, 1977.
Friedman, Andrea. Citizenship in Cold War America: The National Security State and the Possibilities of Dissent. University of Massachusetts Press, 2014.
Gómez, Eusebio. La mala vida en Buenos Aires. Prólogo de José Ingegnieros. Editor: J. Roldan, 1908.
Martinez, Tomas Eloy. Santa Evita. Translated by Helen Lane, Random House, 1997.
Salvatore, Ricardo D. “Criminology in Argentina, 1870–1960.” The Handbook of the History and Philosophy of Criminology, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2017, pp. 307–20, https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119011385.ch18.
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