Literary texts on Eva Perón. Appropriations, representations and displacements of popular imagery

Abstract

In general terms, texts concerned with Eva Perón’s figure have established a tradition that repeated the lineaments of a phallic-centered cultural logic, which grants pathological sources to feminine potentiality. Most of male writers cannot grasp the love-hate phenomenon inspired by Evita; it has compelled them to represent her in a sanctified or a devilish portrait. Authors have made appropriations and representations of popular imagery and transferred them into their literary texts. Every work that approaches Evita offers diverse versions of the myth that she incarnates and that are supported, in their turn, by diverse visions of the world, framed by ideology.Besides, we are intrigued by the special attraction that her figure exerts on some homosexual writers, like Copi and Perlongher. They make converge in Eva the junction of saintprostitute oppositions. They build an anomalous category, using Manichean assessments that have been brought to her image and playing with them. By manipulating assessments that do not satisfy them, they change meanings that enthroned established myths, resisting their power. Finally, we conclude that, after these diverse representations, the authors have been apparently released both from the justicialistic mythology and the scatological celebration.