Inflections of reality. Debates around the novel, "commitment" and realism in the sixties

Abstract

This article analyzes the debates about realism in Argentine literature from two essays: Six novelists of the new promotion (1959) of Noé Jitrik and Realism and reality in the Argentine narrative (1961) by Juan Carlos Portantiero. From them, the concepts of “realism” and “reality” are studied; both became points of dispute of the cultural field during the change of decades. In this way, while Portantiero’s text, from the Marxist tradition, attacks literature of “commitment”, and points out, instead, the tradition of left-wing Argentine literature, Jitrik reveals areas of ambiguity and borders from which other dimensions of reality could be thought into the literature of that years.