From Waste to Living Symbols: Bodies and Early Deaths in Two Short Stories and Two 21st-Century Argentine Novels

Abstract

This article briefly examines the process through which the notion of the body as waste is aesthetically transformed into a symbol To this end it examines a corpus of literary texts within the broad field of contemporary Argentine narrative linked by their thematization of early death Based on the methodological principles of contrastive comparative literature the article explores the centrality of the body its representations and functions in artistic expressions which encapsulate and transmit worldviews in each community and era in which they emerge