Readings of Surrealism in contemporary argentine literature

Abstract

A century after the historical avant-gardes, Surrealism persists as a ghost that continues to operate in contemporary literature. This article examines the work of César Aira as a sophisticated operation of appropriation and deviation of Surrealist postulates. Far from seeking an orthodox affiliation, Aira identifies the original contradictions of the movement –particularly in automatic writing– to propose a renewed reading. His central concept, the "flight forward" (huida hacia adelante), radicalizes and aestheticizes this procedure, emptying it of its ideological and psychoanalytic program to turn it into a pure engine of narrative invention, which privileges advancement, improvisation, and mutation over correction and revealed meaning. This poetics of procedure does not mean the death of Surrealism but rather its spectral survival as a creative attitude and a repertoire of formal possibilities. Furthermore, the article demonstrates how this Aira-inspired logic functions as a productive lens for analyzing the narrative of contemporary Argentine authors such as Pablo Katchadjian and Fernanda Laguna, in whose works a de-dogmatized Surrealism is reactivated, centered on chance, speed, and imaginative openness as constructive principles.