Law or Desire: Politics of the Erotic in Argentina's Art and Literature (1959- 1989)

Abstract

This essay studies three cases of fictional works accused of obscenity in Argentina: the banning of the first Spanish-language edition of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita (1959), the trial surrounding Germán García’s novel Nanina (1969), and the lawsuit against Jorge Polaco’s never-premiered film Kindergarten (1989). The debates triggered by these three cases evidence how the discourse surrounding censorship took shape in Argentina.In light of questions posed later by technological advances that have expanded the limits of what can be represented, it becomes clear that at stake in the judicialization of those earlier cases was the state and civil society’s determination to regulate the imagery of certain desires.