| Description |
Tango and the national narrative of Argentina are inextricably connected. Tango, which rose from its déclassé origins at the dawn of the twentieth century to become the nation's symbol, has mirrored the roller-coaster trajectory of Argentina, from political crisis to economic prosperity and cataclysms. Tango, hence, has become the well from which Argentine intellectuals and artists have sought for the meaning of argentinidad. Julio Cortázar, who left Argentina in a self-imposed exile in France in the 1950s, also takes part in this practice. What is more, for Cortázar, tango was intimately linked to the history of Argentina. My study examines the Trottoirs de Buenos Aires project, a term I employ to refer to a collection of tango songs written by Cortázar and released in 1980 in France and the eponymous tango salon that operated in the center of Paris. The study of this tango project, which was crucial in the genre's second renaissance in France, demonstrates that the relation between tango and Cortázar, two Argentine icons that are conventionally disconnected, is stronger and more profound than previously thought. Most importantly, the central argument of this thesis contends that the Trottoirs project constructs a space in diaspora where an alternate narrative of Argentina, which was suffering the ravages of the military junta and the Dirty War (1976-1983), can be articulated. In order to construct this space, the Trottoirs project defines tango in its own terms: by foregrounding the imperialist forces embedded in the genre, the project demystifies tango to establish a common ground between Paris and Buenos Aires; and Trottoirs exoticizes tango again in a mimicking gesture of the cultural empire. This double operation renders tango and Buenos Aires in excess (and therefore, invulnerable to appropriation) and establishes the dialectics of positioning (based on the triadic dance paradigm of tango) that allows Trottoirs to not only build an imagined community in diaspora but also to contest the notion of nation. The main achievements of the Trottoirs project is producing and ambivalent and elusive concept of identity as well as creating a heterotopic space where diasporic subjects can participate in the narrative of nation. |
