Genetic editions, political affections and outdated writings: contributions to a reading from the archives

Abstract

This article brings together advances from three research projects on the archives of Latin American writers - Mario Bellatin, Julio Cortázar and Darío Canton - developed within the framework of the project "The archive as a politics of reading. Theoretical and methodological reformulations in Latin America around Writers' and Artists' Archives", based at the University of La Plata, Argentina. The common thread that runs through the three sections is the notion of "intervention", understood as a set of actions that involve researchers in the different stages of an archiving process and that responds to two needs: to safeguard documents and to make certain areas of writers' archives visible (and legible). The assignment of a methodological theoretical framework to a critical-genetic edition (Bellatin archive), the passage of a document from the private to the public sphere (Cortázar archive) and the relationship between archive and writer's images (Canton archive) constitute a brief sample of the interventions carried out as part of a long-term, individual, and collective work, which permanently reflects on the specificity of Latin American archives.