Fetishism and Conspiracy: Representations of Money in Ricardo Piglia’s Plata quemada and Blanco nocturno

Abstract

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 frame; the first one reconstructs a bank robbery in 1965, while the other revolves around with a homicide in a small Pampa town at the beginning of the following decade (around 1971). Both exhibit significant elements of money and crime (assault, homicide, money laundering, tax evasion, etc.), and at the same time they could be read as a critique of money and deconstruction of crime. Here we focus on the representations of money in these fictions, and its connection with two main elements: fetishism and conspiracy. On the one hand, when we consider the subject of fetishism, our starting point is Marx?s reflections in Capital; on the other, a link through cultural Marxism and Fredric Jameson?s formulations leads us to the notion of conspiracy, as 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 problem we propose.