Palimpsest of female writing: (de)construction of the word and racism in the nineteenth century work (Los) Misterios del Plata

Abstract

(Los) Misterios del Plata is the first novel by the Argentine writer, journalist and educator Juana Manso, originally published when she was exiled in Brazil, in 1852, in feuilleton format, in her periodical: O Jornal das Senhoras. The historical novel, set in rosista Argentina in the 1830s, had five editions published: two signed by Juana Manso, and three edited posthumously by different editors who, at the time, made changes and additions to the novel. Although it is accepted that only the historical dates were modified, and a last chapter was added to the work, we observe that the posthumous versions have the outcome changed, and the novel brings racist aspects in the descriptions of the characters and in the rural settings. As in a palimpsest, whose original text is scraped off to make way for another (SPINA, 1977), we use the term as a metaphor for the versions of Los Misterios del Plata, which, probably, has the best known and accepted as the only complete one, the posthumous version. In this sense, our objective is to verify passages of the 1924 edition, comparing with the 1852 version, with regard to the construction of racialized images of rural workers and villains.