Bulletin of Latin American Research, Vol. 22, No. 4, pp. 401±419, 2003
One or Several Betrayals? or, When
is Betrayal Treason? Genet, Arlt
and the Argentine Liberal Project1
BEN BOLLIG
Department of Spanish and Spanish American Studies,
Kings College, University of London, UK
Betrayal is one of the key narrative tropes in the fiction of the
Argentine writer Roberto Arlt. The psychological and existential
implications of the betrayals found in novels such as El juguete rabioso
(1926) and El amor brujo (1933) have attracted much critical comment,
as have the links between the betrayals found in Arlt's fiction and the
work of Jean Genet. Arlt's oeuvre has been read in relation to the
turbulent political context of 1920s and 30s Argentina, in particular the
failure of the Liberal Project of economic development through
immigration that was introduced after the fall of the dictator Juan
Manuel de Rosas in 1852, the economic collapse of 1929 and the
ensuing military coup of 1930. Critics have suggested that betrayal in
Arlt represents an attack on bourgeois hypocrisy, a middle-class
attempt at transcending one's environment, or a reversal of dominant
social values. This paper however intends to deepen the understanding
of betrayal in Arlt's fiction by examining it as a political gesture, a
quality overlooked by many studies. A reading of the political nature of
betrayal in Genet's work and an engagement with Bersani's queer
reading of Funeral Rites alongside Said's analysis of Genet as an antiidentarian revolutionary, allows the reader of Arlt to reassess the
political gesture contained in betrayal, and to move towards a reading
of the development in Arlt's fiction either side of the military takeover
of 1930, moving from his critique of the rising petit-bourgeois classes in
El juguete rabioso (1926) to a clear realisation and encouragement of
class consciousness in the short stories of El criador de gorilas (1936).
Introduction
Betrayal is one of the key narrative tropes in the fiction of Roberto Arlt. The
psychological and existential implications of the betrayals found in novels such as
1 This paper was written while the author was in receipt of a grant from the Arts and
Humanities Research Board, to whom thanks are due.
ß 2003 Society for Latin American Studies. Published by Blackwell Publishing,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
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Ben Bollig
El juguete rabioso (1926) and El amor brujo (1933) have attracted much critical
comment, as have the links between the betrayals found in Arlt's fiction and the
work of Jean Genet. Arlt's oeuvre has been read in relation to the turbulent
political context of 1920s and 30s Argentina, in particular the failure of the liberal
project of economic development through immigration that was introduced after
the fall of the dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas in 1852, the economic collapse of
1929 and the ensuing military coup of 1930. Critics have suggested that betrayal
in Arlt represents an attack on bourgeois hypocrisy, a middle-class attempt at
transcending one's environment, or a reversal of hegemonic social values. This
paper however intends to deepen the understanding of betrayal in Arlt's fiction
by examining it as a political gesture, a quality overlooked by many studies. A
reading of the political nature of betrayal in Genet's work and an engagement
with Leo Bersani's queer reading of Genet's Funeral Rites, alongside Edward W.
Said's analysis of Genet as an anti-identarian revolutionary, allows the reader of
Arlt to reassess the political gesture contained in betrayal, and to move towards a
reading of the development in Arlt's fiction either side of the military takeover of
1930, moving from a critique of the rising petit-bourgeois classes in El juguete
rabioso (1926) to a clear realisation and encouragement of class consciousness in
the short stories of El criador de gorilas (1936).
It is important to examine some of the key linguistic differences between the
terms for `betrayal' in the different languages examined here. The Oxford English
Dictionary gives betrayal as `1a. to give up to, or place in the power of an enemy,
by treachery or disloyalty [. . .], 2b. to prove false to, to let go weakly or basely'
(Sampson & Weiner 1989 vol. II: 150), and `4b. to induce (a woman) to surrender
her chastity by means of false promises' (150). English offers the distinction
between `betrayal' and `treason, the act of betraying, 2a. violation by a subject of
his allegiance to his sovereign or to the state' (vol. XVII: 459).2 By contrast
distinction is found in Spanish, between `traicionar, cometer traicioÂn [falta que se
comete quebrantando la fidelidad o lealtad que se debe guardar o tener. 2. Delito
cometido por civil o militar que atenta contra la seguridad de la patria]' (REA
vol. I: 2207) and `delatar: 1. revelar a la autoridad al autor para que sea castigado,
y sin ser parte obligada del juicio el denunciador, sino por su voluntad' (vol. I:
741). What this lexicographical trawl reveals is a distinction between English and
Spanish. English distinguishes betrayal of the state (`treason') from that of the
individual, whereas Spanish does not. Similarly, English does not respect the
difference found in Spanish (and French) between being treacherous (`traicionar',
`trahir') and treacherously revealing someone (`delatar', `livrer'). Thus the latter
inscribe betrayal in a relationship to the state or sovereign. The question that can
be raised with Arlt and Genet, is when does `traicionar' or `trahir' include both
`betrayal' and `treason'?
2 French has a distinction not found in English, between `trahir: 1. livrer, ou abandoner,
2. manquer aÁ la foi donneÁe aÁ (qqn)' (Rey 2001 vol. VI: 1370) and, more specifically,
`livrer: to give up treacherously (person, secret)' (Duval & Marr 1995: 71).
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One or Several Betrayals? or, When is Betrayal Treason?
Betrayal in Arlt: Critical Interpretations
Diana Guerrero suggests that Arlt's fiction is held in a double bind, on the one
hand criticising the petit-bourgeois ideology of early twentieth-century
Argentina, and on the other drawing directly on this ideology (1972: 12).
Betrayal in Arlt, for Guerrero, represents the `descubrimiento y afirmacioÂn de la
interioridad' (38) [`the discovery and affirmation of interiority'].3 Thus El juguete
rabioso, a novel that charts the efforts of a young man of immigrant family to rise
socially through both legal and criminal means, follows a steady process of
integration for the bourgeois protagonist Silvio Astier. His work selling paper
teaches him the dissimulation required of the bourgeois individual, while his
betrayal of el Rengo, the picaresque old man who befriends him, represents an
attempt to avoid status as a neo-lumpen deÂclasse and to ascend to the status of a
successful member of the bourgeoisie through the unholy but lucrative alliance
with the engineer Vitri. This betrayal also draws on Astier's vulgar Nietzschean
philosophy, proving his superiority over those around him (44). Conversely,
Guerrero argues, there is a double betrayal at work, both of the lumpen stooge el
Rengo, and also of the middle classes, whose hypocritical secret is revealed in
Astier's confession to the engineer (44). According to Guerrero, Arlt's fiction
denounces the bourgeoisie en masse, but justifies the individual aspirations ± to
artistic creativity, status in society, or respect from others ± that its members
entertain, the `universo maÂgico' in each one's imagination (188±89). Nevertheless
Guerrero's reading suffers from a problematic and very rigid class-based Marxist
standpoint. Her notion of `magical universes' does not match the nightmare
visions found in many of Arlt's fictions. Furthermore, for a dialectical reading of
Arlt, Guerrero fails to engage with the context of writing, which we discuss
below. Similarly, the reduction of the many betrayals found in Arlt's novel to one
gesture seems to overlook the differences and development in his work.
Oscar Masotta offers a perhaps more subtle reading of betrayal in Arlt's
fiction. Masotta, heavily influenced by Jean-Paul Sartre's Saint Genet, comeÂdien
et martyr, sees Arlt as respecting Marx's insistence on man's determination by his
economic conditions, within which `el hombre sobrepasa ``en mucho'' esas
condiciones' (1965: 18) [`man surpasses those conditions ``in many cases'' ']; thus
man is paradoxically both completely free and completely constrained, a
situation in Arlt's fiction shown as a dialectic between individual man's
`profundidades' and the world. Masotta identifies humiliation as the dominant
characteristic of Arlt's protagonists, in particular Astier and Erdosain, the
antihero of Los siete locos and Los lanzallamas. The `humillados', the petitbourgeois par excelence, are incapable of relating to each other. They fall silent,
betray one another, and become `anarquistas al reveÂs' who throw bombs at each
other rather than at their enemies (32). Thus for Masotta, the silent and
humiliated individual, forced to see himself in the terms of the dominant classes,
3 All translations are my own unless listed in the bibliography, in which case they are
cited in the same way as other quotations.
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is left with nothing of his own except an identity based on qualities seen by that
class as negative:
La uÂnica salida entonces sera hablar, pero exagerando esos juicios que
la palabra hace pesar sobre sõÂ , convertir la verguÈenza en orgullo y
exasperar la conciencia de lo que se es, [by celebrating] el crimen, la
venalidad, el castigo, la traicioÂn, la ferocidad [. . .]. La traicioÂn, la
delacioÂn o el asesinato en que necesariamente se resuelve la relacioÂn
entre humillados, no es maÂs que el reverso de la moral social (38)
[The only way out then will be by speaking, but exaggerating those
judgements with which words burden one, converting shame into
pride and exasperating the conscience that forms one, [by celebrating]
crime, venality, betrayal, cruelty. The betrayal, denunciation or
murder in which the relationships between humiliated people
necessarily resolve themselves, are no more than the reverse of social
morals.]
Masotta's reading is tempting; however, there are a number of problems.
Firstly, Arlt's supposed reversal of values does not seem to include social
hypocrisy, universally denounced and condemned in his work, particularly in the
betrayal that allows Astier to fully assimilate himself within his class in El juguete
rabioso. Secondly, reversing dominant social values does not displace or abolish
them, and can in fact reinforce existing power structures, as revealed in Bersani's
reading of sadomasochistic sexual practices, or in the term he adopts, `S/M'.
Bersani insists that:
S/M lifts a social repression in laying bare the reality behind the
subterfuges, but in its open embrace of the structures themselves and
its undisguised appetite for the ecstasy they promise, it is fully
complicit with a culture of death (1995: 97)
Thus if Arlt is merely portraying characters who revel in the status dictated to
them by society, a status that is inscribed within social power relations, like the
`bottom' in an S/M relationship, then, particularly given characters' frequent
attempts to succeed socially, his fiction represents an ultimately conservative, if
mildly shocking, gesture.
One of Masotta's (1965: 32) most interesting suggestions is his highlighting of
the link between Arlt and Genet, also implied by Stewart and McGregor's (1989:
89) revelation that Genet, like Astier in El juguete rabioso, was a great admirer of
Rocambole's Ponson du Terrail stories of petty criminality and betrayal. While I
would suggest that Masotta's reading of Genet, in particular the plays Les neÁgres
[The Blacks] and Les bonnes [The Maids], suffers the same fixation with the
adoption of ruling class mores by subaltern classes (33±37) as his reading of Arlt,
Masotta's pinpointing of betrayal as a key trait in the work of both authors
points towards an analysis of Genet that can provide key tools to allow us to
assess politically and historically the betrayal in Arlt.
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One or Several Betrayals? or, When is Betrayal Treason?
Genet and Revolutionary Betrayal
Much of Jean Genet's fiction reads as a manifesto for betrayal. For Edmund
White, his biographer, the constant treachery, dishonesty and selfishness in
Genet's work is impossible to explain, in particular the writer's `purported
admiration for treachery' (1992: xiii). White continues, `I can recognize that a
prisoner might be forced to betray his friends, but how can one be proud of such
a failing?' (xiii, italics in original). But in Journal du Voleur [The Thief's Journal]
(1949), Genet's semi-autobiographical account of his time as a petty thief and
male prostitute, he does exactly that, highlighting betrayal as one of three key
`virtues':
La Gestapo FrancËaise contenait ces deux eÂleÂments fascinants: la
trahison et le vol. Qu'on y ajoutaÃt l'homosexualiteÂ, elle serait
eÂticelante, inattaquable. Elle posseÂdait ces trois vertus j'eÂrige
teologales [. . .]. Elle eÂtait hors du monde. (Genet 1949: 162)
[The French Gestapo contained the following two fascinating
elements: treason and theft. With homosexuality added it would be
sparkling, unassailable. It would possess the three virtues which I had
set up as theological [. . .]. It was outside the world. (1954: 62)]
Genet4 mixes the withdrawal from good ± `hors du monde' ± with the reversal
of values discussed above. The latter is found in Genet's discussion of ascesis to
saintliness, which he calls `faire servir la douleur. C'est forcer la diable aÁ eÃtre
Dieu. C'est obtenir la reconnaisance du mal' (1949: 217) [`turning pain to good
account. It means forcing the devil to be God. It means obtaining the recognition
of evil' (1954: 222)]. Thus there is a curious confusion in Genet's work, on the
one hand turning away from good, in the fashion of Lucifer, whereby through
betrayal one achieves pride, `l'orgueil est la plus audacieuse liberte ' (1949: 257)
[`the boldest freedom' (1954: 263)], and earns one's solitude, and on the other,
where the bad ± betrayal, theft and homosexuality ± is presented as good and
virtuous.
In Pompes FuneÁbres [Funeral Rites] (1947), another semi-autobiographical
account, this time of Genet's affair with a French communist resistance fighter,
Jean Decarnin, to whom the novel is dedicated, and Genet's relationship with the
collaborating French militia, Genet dedicates significant attention to the
relationship between the veneration of the dead `la pompe que lui refusaient
4 While Genet and his narrator are not strictly interchangeable, the use of Genet's own
name, details drawn largely from his own life, and other real characters, means that it
is almost impossible to distinguish between Genet the author and Genet the narrator.
For ease of reading I refer to `Genet' or `Jean Genet'. The reader should be aware of
the difficulties inherent in such a construction, as Genet's work problematises any
easy distinction between fact and fiction or author and narrator. For an eloquent
dissection of the Genet myth, in particular that perhaps unknowingly constructed by
Sartre, and an analysis of how much of Genet's novels are fiction, see Stewart and
McGregor (1989).
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les hommes' (Genet 1953: 19) [`the pomp that men refused him' (1990: 22)] ± and
their betrayal. This is frequently seen through a focus on his past sexual
encounters. For recounting his relationship with Decarnin ± overtly a
heterosexual according to White ± and highlighting the allegedly invented sexual
exchanges, Genet's contemporaries accused him of betrayal. Despite his
concerns, Genet's incessant focus on insalubrious sexual scenes, in particular
rimming, creates a memorial destined to offend a broad variety of sensibilities.
This involves a distinctly questionable relationship to any notion of truth:
Non que je craigne de me souvenir mal et de trahir Jean, mais parce
qu'au contraire, je suis suÃr de le rappeler avec une telle fideÂlite qu'il
est posible qu'il accoure aÁ mon appel. (1953: 39)
[I'm not afraid of remembering incorrectly and betraying Jean, but,
on the contrary, because I'm sure I'll recall him so accurately that he
may come rushing in, to answer my call. (1990: 42)]
Emotions in Genet's work become increasingly convoluted, in particular with
regard to the militia men, commonly seen as traitors of France: `Ma haine pour le
milicien [who had killed Decarnin] eÂtait si forte, si belle, qu'elle eÂquivalait au plus
solide amour' (1953: 36) [`my hatred of the militiamen was so intense, so beautiful,
that it was equivalent to love' (1990: 39)]. Genet, in his attempts to exalt his feelings
for Decarnin, degrades them. This process involves making himself suffer by
degrading Jean, and also by loving the militiamen who killed him.
In his assessment of Genet's work, Bersani suggests that betrayal can offer a
unique withdrawal from society that is not simply a reversal of social morals.
Instead `the reversal of value obscures the original term of the reversal' (1995:
153). Betrayal then would erase faithfulness or loyalty. This for Bersani has
revolutionary potential:
More boldly than any other of Genet's works, Funeral Rites raises the
possibility of an escape from the spectacular transgression itself, and
in so doing it also sketches an anti-monumental, anti-redemptive
aesthetics at odds with the apparent pursuit of gestural beauty (161±
62)
This then offers a process of radical withdrawal, `a kind of nonrelational
betrayal' (162). Rather than offending common sensibilities, a kitsch gesture
designed to eÂpater les bourgeois, Genet goes further in his anti-social behaviour
according to Bersani:
A new possibility emerges: evil [sic] (to continue using Genet's term)
not as a crime against socially defined good, but as a turning way
from the entire theater of good, that is a kind of meta-transgressive
deÂpassement of the field of transgressive possibility itself. (163)
Genet's attitude to society then is not that of the surrealist or the political
revolutionary, but instead is perhaps not even an attitude at all, and constitutes a
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refusal to participate in any sociality at all (166), a movement out of everything
(167), whereby instead of a revolt, potentially replacing masters and slaves with
new masters and slaves, there is a new attempt to imagine how to structure
human relations (174).
These insights provided by Bersani's psychoanalytically-inspired reading can
be deepened if we consider the circumstances of Genet's writing; as Read and
Birchall suggest, `Genet [is] more politically aware and committed than had
commonly been thought' (1997: 1). Edmund White's biography of Genet (1994)
provides intriguing details about the background to his work. 1930s France was
racked by painful struggles between LeÂon Blum's leftist Popular Front and
violent, undemocratic authoritarian parties of the extreme right. The declaration
of war on 1 September 1939, after the German invasion of Poland, represented a
partial healing of these differences, united against the common enemy of Hitler's
Germany. Between September 1939 and May 1940 a `phoney war' (186) took
place between the inactive and under-prepared forces of England and France and
the German war machine. By May 1940, German tanks were in Holland and
Belgium. EÂduard Daladier, leader of the French Council, was deposed, and the
French government planned the evacuation of Paris. In June 300,000 soldiers
evacuated Dunkirk, and on 23 June Hitler paid a `cultural visit' to Paris. Paris
was soon a near-ghost town, almost completely under German control, according
to White a city `undergoing a period of penury, social chaos and fear' (202). What
many histories do not record however is the importance that collaboration and
cultural acquiescence played, perhaps understandably, in the everyday lives of
Parisians. White records:
On 5 September 1941 an anti-Jewish exhibition opened in the Palais
Berlitz in the boulevard des Italiens; more than a million people
attended. On 27 March 1942 the first transport of Jews for Auschwitz
left from Paris. Synagogues were burned, Jews were confined to the
neighbourhoods where they resided. Anonymous denunciations of
Jews who attempted to conceal their racial identities poured into the
offices of the anti-Jewish police. On 16 July 1942 the Great Raid (`La
Grande Rafle') took place: thousands of French policemen sealed off
five neighbourhoods and rounded up 15,000 Jews. (203)
The collaboration also included artists, for example figures such as Paul
Morand, or the rabidly anti-Semitic CeÂline, while others such as Camus were
active in the resistance. Genet distanced himself from both collaboration and
resistance. His relationship to the left, despite his friendship with the communist
Decarnin, was strained. In jail in Tourelles in 1944, Genet had expected to
encounter solidarity with political prisoners. However many were offended by
being associated with those like Genet whom they regarded as common criminals
(280). Meanwhile Genet, through the influence of Cocteau, was becoming
increasingly esteemed by right-wing aesthetes and collaborators (280). In his life
there were two reactions to this situation. Firstly after the liberation of Paris
Genet reported two of his former friends, Roland Laudenbach and FrancËois
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Sentein, for collaborating. At the same time, Genet distanced himself from the
organised left, often through scandalous postures such as praising the militia in
front of the likes of Sartre (289). Genet's position in Pompes FuneÁbres is about as
far as one could get from the triumphalism of post-War France. As he wrote:
Les journaux qui parurent aÁ la LiberaÂtion de Paris, en aouÃt 1944,
dirent assez ce que furent ces journeÂes d'heroõÈsme pueril, quand le
corps fumait de bravoure et d'audace. (Genet 1953: 9)
[The newspapers that appeared at the time of the liberation of Paris,
in August 1944, give a fair idea of what those days of childish
heroism, when the body was steaming with bravura and boldness,
were really like. (1990: 7)]
Genet seems singularly distanced from France in Pompes FuneÁbres, incapable of
taking the nation seriously. His approach is a mixture of self-preservation,
deception and the kind of low cowardice he espoused in his relationships with
individuals:
Si l'on me disait que je risque la mort en refusant de crier: `Vive la
France', je le crierais pour sauver ma peau, mais je le crierais
doucement. S'il le fallait crier treÁs fort, je le ferais, mais en riant, sans
y croire. (1953: 22)
[If I were told that I was risking death in refusing to cry `Vive la
France', I would cry it in order to save my life, but I would cry it
softly. If I had to cry it very loudly, I would do so, but laughingly,
without believing it. (1990: 22±23)]
In part it is this distinct distaste for the French nation that leads Genet to his
love and lust for the militiamen. The young hoodlum-traitors share with the
protagonist a loathing for those who have previously imprisoned and
marginalized them; Riton, for example had joined the militia `par haine pour
la France (qu'il confondait avec raison avec la Socie teÂ' (1953: 75) [`out of hatred
for France (which he rightly confused with society)' (1990: 75)]. This notion of a
correct or reasonable confusion needs examining; Riton hates France, which is
not, rightly speaking, society. However, Genet highlights the liberationary
discourse whereby the organisation of resistance to the Germans and the
reconstitution of social organisation after the German occupation are framed
discursively within the nation and nationalism. Thus `France' comes to represent
the only option for belonging to society, and the militiamen and other traitors are
involved in a withdrawal from that discourse. Genet's attitude thus predates the
work of Deleuze and Guattari, and their anti-platonic assessment of the state and
fascism in a work that emerged from another turbulent eruption in French
politics ± the events of May 1968:
Unlike the totalitarian State, which does its utmost to seal all possible
lines of flight, fascism is constructed on an intense line of flight,
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One or Several Betrayals? or, When is Betrayal Treason?
which it transforms into a line of pure destruction and abolition. It is
curious that from the very beginning the Nazis announced to
Germany what they were bringing: at once wedding bells and death.
(1999: 230)
Genet's assessment of fascism, as Hitler sends his finest-looking men to death
so as to possess them all (`Le FuÈhrer envoyait aÁ la mort ses hommes les plus
beaux. C'eÂtait la seule facËon qu'il eut de les posseÂder tous' [Genet 1953: 100]) is
echoed in Deleuze and Guattari's depiction of the fascist state as the pure line of
flight of desire turned to abolition. Genet also identifies in the rabid triumphalism
of post-War, still colonial France, something of the segmented and stratifying
totalitarian state. Thus Genet detects the violence in the heart of the dominant
attitude to Hitler, later signalled by Guattari:
Radek defined Nazism as something external to the bourgeoisie; he
compared it to a series of iron hoops used by the bourgeoisie to try to
reinforce `the battered cask of capitalism'. But the image is altogether
too reassuring: fascism remained only partly external to them, and
the bourgeoisie decided to throw it over only from the moment they
became convinced that, because of its instability and the overwhelming desire it stirred up among the masses, it was threatening to
explode the regimes of bourgeois democracy from within [. . .]. As
well as the fascism of concentration camps (and these still exist in
many countries), new forms of molecular fascism are developing: the
crematoria of Belsen can be satisfactorily replaced with the small
furnaces of the family, the school, racism, ghettos of all sorts.
(Guattari 1984: 225, 228)
Genet, Deleuze and Guattari are all drawing attention to what they see as the
falsity of a post-Hitler social organisation that presents itself as fascism's
opposite; as Bersani and Ulisses Dutoit observe in their analysis of Alain
Resnais's film Night and Fog, `we cannot escape our complicity in that past by
claiming that we would not build these camps, for Night and Fog teaches us how
easy it is to circulate within images of terror [. . .]. The monstrous is not too
difficult a move for humans to make' (1993: 187).
In interviews, Genet later defended his most socially despicable attitudes by
drawing on his experiences of imprisonment during the Second World War. In an
interview with the German writer and anthropologist Hubert Fichte, Genet
observed:
The fact that the French army, the most renowned one in the world
thirty years ago, capitulated before the troops of an Austrian
corporal, made me absolutely ecstatic. I could only adore the man
who had brought about the downfall of France. Subsequently I could
only join all those suppressed coloured people who revolted against
the whites. (Fichte 1979: 180)
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It is important then that we do not underestimate the political gesture
contained in Genet's betrayal. More precisely, his betrayal is politically based
rather than a purely metaphysical or existential gesture. As Edmund White
observed, `while most writers who emerge from obscure origins are quick to
disown them, Genet became the apostle of the wretched of the earth' (1994: xl).
Genet's rejection of France represents the first stage of his later overtly political
and revolutionary writing and activity, as in his support of anti-French national
liberation movements, the Black Panther movements and the cause of Palestinian
liberation.
What is intriguing is that Genet's commitment is always provisional and
shadowed by the possibility of future betrayal. As Said observes:
Much more important than commitment to a cause, much more
beautiful and true, [Genet] says, is betraying it, which I have read as
another version of his unceasing search for the freedom of the
negative identity that reduces all language to empty posturing, all
action to the theatrics of a society he abhors (1995: 233).
In Genet's relationship to the Algerians, Black Panthers and Palestinians
whose causes he supported there was always a possibility of betrayal. `To betray
them is not to abandon them exactly', argues Said, `but to retain for himself the
right not to belong, not to be accountable, not to be tied down' (235). What
attracts Genet to these revolutionary movements is the fact that they have not
hardened into a state or organisation, that they still exist as a movement. Perhaps
ironically this is the same Nietzschean quality of Fascism that he highlighted, and
perhaps was seduced by, during the war years. Thus Genet's potential betrayal
allows him to withdraw in case the movement `hardens', in Said's words, and
represents a radically anti-identitarian approach to political activity and social
organisation that questions them both as concepts.
Reading Betrayal in Arlt: Lessons from Interpreting Genet
Such a reading of Genet's work reveals that a full consideration of how betrayal
develops in his work must include an assessment of how it interacts with its
political context. This I feel presents a key pointer towards a more considered
assessment of betrayal in the fiction of Roberto Arlt, where the political
implications of the gesture inform its literary significance. As AÂngel NunÄez
observes:
Es la realidad social contemporaÂnea la que brinda los haÂbitos de la
sensibilidad, las costumbres y valores de los personajes, los tipos de
opresioÂn y de conflicto [. . .]. Esta presencia de cuestiones sociales
candentes para el lector, problemas que son la base de la situacioÂn de
los personajes, nos permite definir la narrativa de Arlt como una
indagacioÂn de la vida social de los Argentinos. (1968: 36±38)
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One or Several Betrayals? or, When is Betrayal Treason?
[It is contemporary social reality that provides the habits of
sensibility, the customs and values of characters, the types of
oppression and conflict [. . .]. This presence of readers' burning social
issues, problems that are the basis of the situation of the characters,
allows us to define Arlt's narrative as an investigation of the social life
of Argentines.]
El juguete rabioso (1926), Arlt's first novel, perhaps his most renowned for
the prevalence of the theme of betrayal, is clearly set against the immigration and
resulting social change that occurred as part of the Argentine liberal project of
economic development and population increase. Carmelina de Castellanos
details the characteristic changes that occurred from the 1870s onwards,
especially the rise of the middle class, largely recruited from the children of
immigrants from Europe (1967: 7). Economic development was accompanied by
increased political participation, for example the promulgation of compulsory
adult male suffrage with the SaÂenz PenÄa Law (1912). The first free general
elections took place soon afterwards and resulted in the election of HipoÂlito
Yrigoyen's Radical Party, largely representing middle-class interests. Part of the
image of progress included the Radical's expansion of the bureaucratic sector,
allowing the children of immigrants to aspire to social advancement through
education and insertion into the state apparatus. As Masotta observes, Yrigoyen
was accused by his detractors of overloading the bureaucracy's budget and
disguising underlying economic structural problems through inflated state
employment. Indeed the early years of the twentieth century in Argentina were
marked by notable anomalies that belied notions of progress, in particular the
violent repression of strikes and social protest that occurred in 1919 during the
so-called `Tragic Week'.
El juguete rabioso details similar aesthetics to Genet's early work ± theft,
murder and betrayal ± and exhibits a similar Nietzschean world-view. The
betrayal is not only that of individuals ± the `delacioÂn' of el Rengo by Astier ± but
also of society's values. The young thieves of Astier's gang pretend to be school
children in order to rob a library, an ironic reversal of the liberal promotion of
education (1969c: 38). Similarly, Astier belittles marriage and the family (64, 78±
79), and the grey jobs required of the bourgeoisie (95±96). Alongside this
superficial social criticism the novel presents the practical effects of the liberal
project. Don Gaetano is called a `napolitano ladroÂn' (81) by his wife, thus
highlighting the presence of many Italian immigrants in Buenos Aires. The calle
Lavalle is described in its `babiloÂnico esplendor' (88). Astier's key motivation,
after the failure of his attempts as a thief, is to integrate and rise socially. As
Astier observes a beautiful, rich bourgeois couple, he ponders the possibilities
society offers him:
PenseÂ.
Pense que yo nunca serõ a como ellos. . ., nunca vivirõ a en una casa
hermosa y tendrõÂ a una novia de la aristocracia. (90)
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[I thought.
I thought that I would never be like them. . ., that I would never live in
a beautiful house or have a girlfriend from the aristocracy.]
Despite his failings in the book-trade, army, and paper-business, Astier's trajectory
reveals that eventually he can achieve these aims, but only through betraying his
friend el Rengo. The betrayal of el Rengo is intriguing in its mixture of `traicioÂn' and
`delacioÂn', but also in the way in which betrayal can be loyalty within a class
background. The `delacioÂn' of el Rengo is on the one hand revealed as despicable
betrayal: `Si hago eso me condeno para siempre. Y estare solo, y sere como Judas
Iscariote [sic]. Toda la vida llevare una pena' (176) [`If I do this I'm condemning
myself for ever. And I will be alone, and I'll be like Judas Iscariot. For the rest of my
life I will be shamed']. The betrayal is couched in literary terms, as Astier compares
himself to his literary heroes in Rocambole. Furthermore, the betrayal becomes
Astier's identity. Whereas previously humiliation had dominated his character,
betrayal of el Rengo, `el hombre maÂs noble que he conocido' (176) [`the most noble
man I've ever known'] becomes a unique secret that sets Astier apart from others. In
Nietzschean terms, Astier becomes an uÈber-mensch. Problematically though the effort
of will-to-betray is also an act of fidelity to the engineer Vitri, whose Italian surname
reveals his status as a liberal-project success-story. The positive result of betraying el
Rengo, not mentioned by Masotta or Guerrero, is that Astier gains a respectable job
in the south (191). In answer to Astier's earlier, despairing question, `¿SaldrõÂ a yo
alguna vez de mi õÂ nfima condicioÂn social, podrõÂ a convertirme alguÂn dõÂ a en un senÄor?'
(115) [`Would I ever get out of my odious social position, would I ever be able one day
to become a gentleman?'], we see the ironic truth that he can, but at the cost of a low
and unworthy act. Thus Arlt's novel functions around a curious paradox: the
protagonist can climb socially and be accepted as a decent citizen, but in a society that
is based hypocritically on treachery, class betrayal, and lies. Thus the liberal project is
essentially hypocritical ± witness Astier's blushes when Vitri asks if he is a friend of el
Rengo (182) ± but offers possibilities for social progress. Arlt's work provides a social
critique, but a guarded and paradoxical one.
Los siete locos, published in 1929, Arlt's novel recording anarchist plots and
the downfall of its antihero, the aggressive loner Remo Erdosain, differs from El
juguete rabioso in its portrayal of betrayal. Whereas Astier, despite his
protestations in favour if evil, clearly aspires to social acceptance and adulation
from his peers and superiors, the key characters in the second novel, especially
Erdosain and the Astrologer, aspire to nothing of the sort. Betrayal is again a key
element of the novel: Erdosain betrays his employers (traicioÂn), Barsut betrays
Erdosain by informing about the theft (traicioÂn and delacioÂn), Erdosain's wife
leaves him (traicioÂn), while Erdosain has already cheated on her with a prostitute
(likewise), before betraying Barsut in the plot with the Astrologer (ibid). All of
these events however are framed by the revolutionary plots of the Astrologer, for
example the `Academia para Revolucionarios' (1998: 110) funded by brothels.
More than in El juguete rabioso, betrayal is also the betrayal of society, whereby
the outrage is an act of will carried out for its own sake:
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One or Several Betrayals? or, When is Betrayal Treason?
Yo soy la nada para todos. Y sin embargo, si manÄana tiro una
bomba, o asesino a Barsut, me convierto en el todo, en el hombre
para quien infõÂ nitas generaciones de jurisconsultos preparan castigos,
caÂrceles y teorõÂ as. (1998: 110)
[To everyone else, I'm nothing. But nevertheless, if tomorrow I chuck
a bomb, or I murder Barsut, I become everything, the man for whom
infinite generations of legal experts think up punishments, jails and
theories.]
This betrayal, unlike that committed by Astier, is not part of a process of
gaining social acceptance, but rather a crime for its own sake. Erdosain's
involvement with the revolutionary projects of the Astrologer seems to inscribe
these betrayals within the framework of organised revolution against the
bourgeois order. This order is satirised in the domestic scenes in Los
lanzallamas, the sequel to Los Siete Locos where the anarchist plots become
increasingly dangerous and Erdosain seduces and then murders a young woman,
la Bizca. However the subsequent betrayal by the Astrologer and HipoÂlita of
Barsut and the others involved in the plot reveals instead the pattern of
`anarquismo al reveÂs' identified by Masotta, whereby the humiliated petitbourgeois characters throw bombs at each other, and also, in the inevitable end
of Erdosain, the death-complicity that Bersani mentions in his discussion of
Genet.
Arlt inscribes the betrayals in Los siete locos and Los lanzallamas against a
background of political turmoil, a mixture of anarchist projects and fascist
militarism. The Astrologer has anarchist colleagues, while the pseudo-major
suggests a transitory military dictatorship to defend the interests of `patria, el
capital y la familia' (226) [`Fatherland, capital and family']. His rhetoric chillingly
predicts the language of Uriburu's military takeover of 1930. This functions
alongside a relentless satire of bourgeois values, in the shape of DonÄa Ignacia and
her squint-eyed daughter la Bizca, whereby Los lanzallamas domesticates the
betrayals of Los siete locos. Erdosain betrays ± delatar ± la Bizca, revealing her
`trapisondas braguetiles' (2001: 40) [`zipper fiddling'] to her mother in order to
force the young girl into a relationship. Erdosain's mocking but successful entry
into the bourgeois classes is based in lies, hypocrisy and deceit.
As well as the revelation of bourgeois hypocrisy, and the apparent dead-end of
death-complicit reverse anarchism, Los lanzallamas also reveals a curious form of
picaresque betrayal amongst the lumpen-proletariat classes. The Espila brothers,
Eustaquio and Emilio turn to begging, based on scientific principles, in order to
overcome their distinctly straitened circumstances. As they beg, Emilio lies about
the amount of money they have gained in order to cheat his brother (Arlt 2001:
222). Thus Masotta's suggestion of a reverse-anarchism limited to the middle
classes must be extended to the lower classes too. Arlt's two novels then reveal a
curious mix of anarchism, marxism and Nietzschean ideas, and furthermore
show characters significantly alienated from their class and position in relations
of production. The only escape is death (Erdosain) or flight (the Astrologer and
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Ben Bollig
HipoÂlita). But vitally, in an environment whereby the structural weaknesses of
the liberal project were being cruelly revealed by the effects of the Wall Street
Crash, no sense of class unity or consciousness is present.
El amor brujo (1933) recounts a love affair between a married man, Balder,
and a beautiful teenage girl, Irene, and continues the critique of middle-class
values that prevails in Arlt's earlier novels. The main focus of the novel is a
critique of the institution of marriage. Much of the relationship between Balder
and Irene follows the melodramatic conventions of the bourgeois courtship ±
sighs, declarations and anguished separations. Arlt's damning twist is a medical
focus on sexual intercourse: the white stain on a sofa after an encounter between
Irene and Balder, or the details of the `tejido', a surgical bandage Irene uses
apparently to feign virginity. The bourgeois marriage and courtship become a lie,
a hypocritical means to sexual gratification and social advancement. This is
framed by accumulative and showy capitalism, for example the promised grand
tour of Europe with which Balder charms Irene's family. Balder's manoeuvres to
deflower Irene represent a betrayal of the fourth kind (above), dishonestly
depriving a woman of her virginity. At the same time Irene betrays Balder
through her feigned virginity. However Balder's speeches and thoughts criticising
the hypocrisy of bourgeois mores, his justification for the final betrayal of leaving
Irene, are firmly inscribed within these very mores. Balder accuses Irene and her
family of having no shame, of being hypocrites (242), but the trigger for this
accusation is the discovery of Irene's `comedia'. Balder's anger is not so much
directed at society's rules but at those who do not follow them correctly. The
conversation between Balder and Alberto reveals the paradoxical and confused
values of the resentful petit-bourgeoisie:
[Alberto:] Veo que tiene el prejuicio de la virginidad.
[Balder:] Exactamente como ellas tienen el prejuicio del divorcio, y
despueÂs del divorcio el del matrimonio legal [. . .]. Me repugna ese
tendal de mentiras dosificadas, la complicidad de una madre
desalmada y de una muchacha hipoÂcrita, y el trabajo de farsa que
ambas realizaron [. . .]. No puedo tener relaciones con una mujer cuya
conducta interna es fundamentalmente distintiva a la mõÂ a [. . .]. Y
para mi desgracia sigo querieÂndola.' (242±45)
[(Alberto:) I see you're prejudiced about virginity.
(Balder:) Just like they're prejudiced about divorce, and after divorce
legal marriage. I'm disgusted by that heap of lies they dish out, the
complicity of a soulless mother and a hypocritical girl, and the piece
of farce they both put on [. . .]. I can't have a relationship with a
woman whose personal conduct is fundamentally different from my
own [. . .]. And to my misfortune I still love her.]
Balder's betrayal of Irene is a sign of a crisis in middle-class values, while his
attempt at withdrawal and distinction reveals at the same time his complicity
with those values. He leaves Irene, but returns to his wife; and he leaves Irene for
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One or Several Betrayals? or, When is Betrayal Treason?
pretending to be a virgin. In accusing Irene he reveals himself as sharing all the
mores of the petit-bourgeoisie, for a virginal Irene would in fact have cemented
the relationship. Balder's desperate discovery is that he is just as much of a
hypocrite as Irene, and that the cock that crows in Arlt's novel crows at least as
much for him as for her. The perverse double bind in which this leaves him is
revealed in the unresolved tension on which the novel ends, as Balder is
interrogated by his conscience. `He terminado para siempre' [`I've finished
forever'] he declares. `VolveraÂs' [`You'll be back'], replies his conscience (246).
The novel reveals a class, and a society, in deep crisis. By 1933, when the novel
was published, the Irigoyen government had been violently deposed by the
Uriburu takeover, the results of the 1930 election being overturned by the military
in September of that year. Uriburu's coup represented a return to power of the
oligarchy, foreign business interests, and the conservative sector. Uriburu
sponsored a purge of the government and bureaucracy, and by 1936 the state
apparatus, once dominated by immigrant sectors, was sixty six per cent drawn
from traditional (criollo) families (Castellanos 1967: 9-10). No united opposition
party emerged, and violent repression of opposition groups occurred, for
example the execution of the anarchist de Giovanni, an event covered by Arlt as a
journalist. The events of 1930 and their immediate aftermath represent the end of
the myth of progress that had fed the liberal project. As Victoria MartõÂ nez writes
in her analysis of Arlt's Aguafuertes portenÄas, the newspaper sketches and stories
Arlt wrote in the 1930s, the upward mobility of immigrants was directed towards
the professions and the bureaucracy through education (1978: 3). The Uriburu
government was accompanied by the exclusion of the Radical Party from
elections and a decline in the economic prosperity and political power of the
immigrant middle class. Arlt attacked the myth of the liberal project in his
Aguafuertes and novels, as MartõÂ nez suggests:
The myth created by the bourgeoisie offers to everyone the
possibilities of material comfort, marriage between handsome and
socially correct people (according to bourgeois standards of
behaviour), and everlasting happiness. Capitalism dangles the lures
of material goods before the public, creating the desire to possess
those goods. It is the surrender to those lures that Arlt ridicules, and
by means of his ridicule he attacks and attempts to destroy the myth.
(120)
Against this background, the short story `La factorõÂ a de Farjalla Bill Ali', the
tale of a white man's humiliation and subsequent vengeance while working for a
menagerie owner in North Africa, taken from the collection El criador de gorilas
(1936±37), represents a significant change in Arlt's work. The story, as one might
expect, is framed by degradation, as the narrator describes coming to work for
the Farjalla as the nadir of degradation for a white man (Arlt 1969b: 15). After
the narrator falls out with the animal trader, he sees himself degraded in his
boss's gaze:
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Desde entonces mis relaciones con el mercader fueron odiosas. EÂl me
consideraba un esclavo despreciable; yo un hombre a quien mi
venganza alguÂn dõÂ a harõÂ a rechinar los dientes. (17)
[From then on my relationship with the merchant was odious. He
considered me a despicable slave; I saw him as someone on whom one
day I would take my revenge, when I'd smash his face in.]
The narrator's revenge is a betrayal of the boss's trust but also an opportunity
for the narrator to revel in his debased status as an incompetent and deÂclasseÂ. It is
chillingly recounted at the tale's end, and differs from other betrayals as it
involves an alliance, in this case with another of Farjalla's enemies. After a fight
between the narrator and Farjalla in which the latter is knocked unconscious, the
narrator calls on the assistance of a black woman slave who is accompanying
them:
¡AyuÂdeme! ± le grite a la negra. La esclava comprendioÂ. Levantando al
gorila muerto amarrado al traficante [Farjalla], empujamos los dos
cuerpos sobre la termitera. [. . .] Yo monte a caballo y regrese a la
factorõÂ a para probar la coartada. Mientras que allõÂ , bajo el sol, se
quedo Farjalla Bill Ali. Las hormigas se lo comõ an vivo. (21±22)
[`Help me!' I shouted at the black woman. The slave understood.
Lifting up the dead gorilla that was tied to the trader, we pushed the
two bodies onto the anthill [. . .]. I mounted the horse and returned to
the factory to verify my alibi. Meanwhile there, under the sun, stayed
Farjalla Bill Ali. The ants ate him alive.]
If the tone of El juguete rabioso's ending is critical but ironically optimistic,
while the ending of Los siete locos/Los lanzallamas is pessimistic and that of El
amor brujo is unsure and paradoxical, here the ending is singularly optimistic as
the narrator and his accomplice escape scot-free. The revenge is not just that, but
also a betrayal of the narrator's class peers ± those who are not black slaves.
Furthermore, this represents an identification with the black woman slave against
their boss, despite the racial and linguistic separation between the narrator and
the woman. The narrator takes sides with the oppressed, realising that in terms
of economic relations and their own pragmatic aims (revenge, freedom) they have
more in common than they do with their boss. Unlike Astier and Balder, they do
not aspire to his position. The realisation is practical and pragmatic. Both act on
their status as slaves, legal in the cage of the slave, implicit in the narrator. In fact
the slave, in her subsequent kidnapping of a baby chimp also in the party, very
literally seizes the means of production, with the complicity of the narrator. This
gesture represents a clear move towards the increasingly Marxist content of Arlt's
later work.
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Conclusion: When Are Writers Useful?
In a discussion of twentieth-century writing, Susan Sontag suggests that a key
change occurred to the role of the writer sometime in the twentieth century:
Being an `author' has been unmasked as a role that, whether
conformist or not, remains inescapably responsible to the social
order. One of the author's most ancient roles is to call the community
to account for its hypocrisies and bad faith [. . .]. But the range of
alienation available to the pre-modern authors was still limited ±
whether they know it or not ± to castigating the values of one class or
milieu on behalf of another class or milieu. The modern authors are
those who, seeking to escape this limitation, have joined in the
grandiose task [of] the transvaluation of all values [which was]
redefined [. . .] in the twentieth century as the general devaluation of
values. (Sontag 1998: xvii±xviii)
Genet's writing radically challenges the notion of writing being useful to
society, instead questioning the position of writing in society and often suggesting
a complete withdrawal. This gesture reworks BuÈrger's (1984) suggestion that the
avant-garde realises the independence of bourgeois art and attempts to re-attach
art and social praxis, thus redefining the boundaries between art and artist, while
questioning the detachment that the artists of aestheticism or l'art pour l'art
enjoyed. In Genet's writing betrayal, despite appearing to be treason, cannot be,
for it does not even recognise the existence of the social relationship betrayed in
treason. To the charge of treason, Genet's writing pleads ignorance. For Genet,
betrayal is a radical withdrawal from orthodox political commitment and a way
of questioning individual identity.
Arlt's writing, on the contrary, is always useful, in that it directly addresses
social values and political movements. Arlt's writing finds itself on the cusp of
the change detected by Sontag above, still `castigating the values of one class or
milieu on behalf of another class or milieu' (Sontag 1998: xvii). It also
represents a movement from a form of anarchist individualism in El juguete
rabioso, Los siete locos/Los lanzallamas and El amor brujo to a more Marxist
position in `La factorõÂ a de Farjalla Bill Ali', a movement from withdrawal to
solidarity. What separates these works is an increasing consciousness of the
structural failure of the liberal project, of the real exclusion of members of
society in the process of capitalist seduction at work in the uneven economic
development of the pre-Uriburu era, and the revelation with the military coup
of the powerful means that the ruling classes and foreign interests have at their
hands for protecting their position, means that belie the overtly egalitarian
aims that had dominated developmental political projects. Arlt's betrayal
differs significantly from Genet's; the former's betrayal starts as not being
treason because it is ± an overt violation of social rules that paradoxically
respects and reinforces them ± but becomes treason because it is not ± moving
away from Argentina and comment on Argentine society in `La factorõÂ a', but
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Ben Bollig
suggesting class struggle directed firmly and violently against the economic
bases of society.
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