The HIV-Aids concheperla: representation of HIV-Aids, hybridity, thanatography and neobarrosa drift in the essays and epistolary writing of Néstor Perlongher

Abstract

The work of Néstor Perlongher, as diverse as prolific, transcended the barriers of literary and discursive genres. It was influenced by his wide formation and varied passions, such as sociology, anthropology and poetry.  Here, I will focus on his texts classified as prose and will set aside his poetry. I will not cover it due to space constraints, as well as the objectives of this article. In 1997, Prosa Plebeya was published, a hard work of compilation of his essays carried out by Osvaldo Baigorria and Christian Ferrer.  I will here examine those that explore AIDS and gender.  On the other hand, I will work on the same themes and his letters compiled by Cecilia Palmeiro in 2016, under the title Néstor Perlongher, Correspondence to account for his theoretical reflection on the disease (in its pandemic stage),  consider its different forms of representation as well as to account for its thanatographic, hybrid and self-figurative character.. We will see how the prose is blended with a neobarrosa aesthetic, playing with words, sounds, tones, and even with identity and gender categories. The prosaic becomes poetic even in the roughest moments of intimate and private experience. Everyday life, politics, education, desire, sex and the craft of writing are all intermingled in a fusion that transforms those lines into a document of the time that intersects public and private affairs, producing a discursive practice that transcends the immediate goals of communication (Bajtín, 2013). The hypothesis that guides the work thus aims to problematize how aesthetics, representation, denunciation and autobiography are constructed as a powerful and particular rhizome whose peculiar characteristic consists of proposing a deconstructive look at the disease in question, a deconstruction that places Perlongher in a novel and anticipatory voice within the Argentine literary field.