Privilege in Parentheses: A Reader's Renovated Place in Ricardo Piglia's 'Plata quemada'

As the newspaper continues to lose ground to a multitude of internet discourses, the role of intellectuals as a voice of opposition to hegemonic sources receives ever more intense scrutiny. In particular, the novel "Plata quemada" (1997) by the Argentine novelist Ricardo Piglia presents this intellectual dilemma and its newfound opportunities in fictional terms. Indeed, Piglia's text underlines a formidable critical agency in the consumers of this criminal discourse by way of the seemingly innocent parenthetical form. My essay proposes that these designated breathers in Piglia's novel succeed in preserving a key discursive site for readers to conceal themselves metaphorically as well as contest the book's shared journalistic "truths." Moreover, "Plata quemada" affirms that intellectuals are obliged to transform themselves into veritable urban chroniclers to fit within their increasingly debated role in Latin America's "lettered city." (Contains 15 notes.)