Presumed Guilty: Bursting Judicial Processes in Nineteenth-Century´s argentinian Literature

Abstract

The repressive nature of the judicial system suggests that its imposition ins inescapable. Jacques Vergés' "rupture strategy" refutes this idea by proposing that the person who is being accused does not necessarily have to tolerate the imposition if he or she does not recognize the ligitimacy of the authority imposing it. This sutdy analyzes the prosecutions represented in Argentinean literature of the 19th Century as rupture scenes, in which the prosecuted reverses the accusation towards the authority and the values it embodies. Martin Fierro, Juan Moreira and "el unitario" from El matadero, all confront the law and its mechanisms. I study that confrontation as a dialectic process in chich the law is constituted by the interaction of what Benjamin called "conservative violence" and "foundational violence". In addition, I willl focus on these scenes as the arena where two systems contest the imposition of names, values, and rights. In order to do so I will take into consideration Derrida´s reflections on the foundations of authority as well as the consequences of the concealment of the historical and political construction of what is considered to be unlawful.