CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Although thirteen years separate the original publications of Plata quemada (1997) and Blanco nocturno (2010) by Ricardo Piglia, the plots of both novels are situated in a closer time gap: the first one reconstructs a bank assault in 1965, while the other starts with a homicide in a Pampa s small town in the beginning of the following decade (around 1971). Both exhibit significant elements of money and crime (assault, homicide, money laundry, tax evasion, etc.), and at the same time they could be read as an exercise of money criticism and deconstruction of crime.Here we focus on representations of money in these fictions, and its connections with two main elements: fetishism and conspiracy. On the one hand, when we consider fetishism, of course, our starting point is Marx s reflections in Capital; on the other, a link through cultural Marxism and Fredric Jameson s formulations can take us to the conspiracy, theorized by Luc Boltanski and by Piglia in his own novels and essays. In this way, a close reading of fetishism in Plata quemada and conspiracy in Blanco nocturno could synthetize the itinerary we propose. [Este capítulo de libro fue sometido a revisión por referato doble ciego].