#79 = Volume 26, Part 3 = November 1999
Yolanda Molina Gavilán
Alternative Realities from Argentina: Angélica Gorodischer's "Los embriones del violeta"
Although science fiction has been produced and read both in Latin America and Spain since the nineteenth century, there has been very little scholarly criticism in any language on Spanish-language sf. The reason most often cited for this critical neglect is the highbrow attitude of literary critics in Spain and Latin America, who still consider science fiction a marginal form of literature. The Spanish-language sf enthusiast looking for critical analysis usually has to make do with brief prefaces to anthologies and modest chapters in books on the historical development of the genre.1 On the other hand, recent serious critical interest in detective fiction—which also once sported the label of “popular” or “subgenre” literature—could mean that high quality Spanish-language sf will soon be recognized by the academic establishment.Almost every country in Latin America has a few representative authors who cultivate the genre, but the major sf in the region has traditionally come from Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Cuba, and Brazil. Among these countries, Argentina occupies a central position in the “prehistory” and early development of the genre, creating a distinctive mode that has influenced other Latin American sf. The year 1875 is usually cited as the beginning of the genre in Latin America: in this year, the novel Viaje maravilloso del señor Nic Nac (The Marvelous Voyage of Mr. Nic Nac)2 by the Argentinian Eduardo Ladislao Holmberg was published. Another key Argentinian novel often cited as having influenced early Latin American sf is Leopoldo Lugones’ 1906 novel Las fuerzas extrañas (The Strange Forces). And Adolfo Bioy Casares’ 1940 novel La invención de Morel (Morel’s Invention) provided the impulse for Latin American sf to enter its golden age during the 1960s and 1970s. Jorge Luis Borges also provided momentum to the genre during the 1940s (and beyond) by infusing Argentinian science fiction with an idealistic and ironic quality and by incorporating elements of magic as well as science. This phenomenon may be best appreciated in Borges’ short story “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” (1940) and in “Utopía de un hombre cansado” (Utopia of a Tired Man) published in 1975 (Planells 104-105). Bernard Goorden has identified an influential Argentinian school of the genre, characterized by an emphasis on issues related to humanity rather than technology (16-19). Pablo Capanna, author of excellent critical works on sf, also singles out Argentinian science fiction, pointing out its connection to European fantasy, as opposed to other Latin American traditions more influenced by magical realism.
Today, Borges, Casares, and Julio Cortázar are the major authors that come to mind when one thinks of Argentinian fantasy or science fiction. Angélica Gorodischer’s science fiction works are of the same caliber, and her fiction has been compared with theirs (Lagmanovich 19-23) as well as with the works of Nathalie Henneberg and Ursula K. Le Guin (Sánchez 150). Even though she has recently stopped writing sf, the quality and quantity of her sf short stories and novels have made her one of the most prominent sf writers in Argentina and arguably in the Hispanic world today.3 In fact, Elvio E. Gandolfo, in the prologue to Jorge A. Sánchez’s Anthology of Argentinian Science Fiction (1978), refers both to Bioy Casares and Gorodischer as the two most original Argentinian sf writers (44-45). The latter’s short story “Los embriones del violeta” (The embryos of the violet), from her collection Bajo las jubeas en flor (Under the Flowering Jubeas, 1973), has been widely anthologized as a masterpiece of Argentinian science fiction (Gandolfo 45) and a story of national and international impact (Souto 15-19). Marcial Souto and Patricia Mosier point out that this short story—like the rest of Gorodischer’s sf works—does not conform to all the conventions of the genre. These critics have probably noticed the fantastic, magical elements that characterize Gorodischer’s narrative, making her work at times difficult to label either as fantasy or science fiction. Nevertheless, Gorodischer’s oeuvre is generally categorized as sf, as her 1994 Konex Award for Science Fiction—a prestigious Argentinian award—tends to corroborate.
Gorodischer’s “Los embriones del violeta” is typical of this author’s work. The Anglo-American New Wave and feminist sf of the 1960s and 1970s are obviously familiar to her.4I will consider Darko Suvin’s concept of alternate reality and Albert Wendland’s definition of “experimental science fiction” as they apply to Gorodischer’s “Los embriones del violeta.” Suvin speaks of sf’s ability to present an alternate reality, one that has a different historical time but corresponds to human relationships and sociocultural norms. He explains science fiction’s specific modality of existence as “a feedback oscillation that moves from the author’s and implied reader’s norm of reality to the narratively actualized novum in order to understand the plot-events, and back from those novelties to the author’s reality, in order to see it afresh from the new perspec-tive gained” (71). Wendland expresses a somewhat similar notion with his term “experimental science fiction”: narrative that asks the implied reader to become intellectually engaged because it will challenge the reader’s convictions, gender expectations, and social contexts, and ultimately invites self- reflection (51-52).
“Los embriones” speculates generally about the possibility of changing human nature and specifically about destroying gender division: she presents a world where homosexuality is the norm. Gorodischer joins authors such as Marion Zimmer Bradley, Suzy McKee Charnas, Diane Duane, Elizabeth Lynn, Joe Haldeman and Barry N. Malzberg, who have used homosexual characters and themes in their science fiction or fantasy works (Riemer 146). In this short story Gorodischer describes an alternate society where men can reproduce by sheer will power anything they desire. But they cannot leave the planet with their creations and, even more important to the story’s basic premise, they cannot create women. Same-sex encounters become the only possible means of sexual expression. By problematizing gender and sexual identity, the story enables the reader to question received ideas about gender issues; ultimately, it draws attention to sexism as it affects both sexes.5
Following a fairly typical opening—the rescue operation of a spaceship lost on an enigmatic planet—the story surprises the reader by the alternative reality it describes: a planet called Salari II where women, completely absent, are impersonated by transvestites. The story begins by presenting separate snap-shots of some of the men on the planet but soon directs the reader’s attention to the fifteen men from Earth traveling towards Salari II on the spaceship Niní Paume Uno. Their mission is to rescue possible survivors of an earlier expedition. Significantly, the crew members are described collectively, before any of them is personally identified: “Eleven of these men had been chosen because of their physical attributes, their courage and their ability to obey orders, while the other four had been chosen because of their knowledge” (152-53). This contrast divides the characters into two groups: one that exudes the typical military characteristics of soldiers, and another of more sensitive colleagues who are ruled by their ability to think.
From the beginning of the story, the reader finds clues about how the text will question preconceptions about gender distinctions. The strange planet toward which Niní Paume Uno’s crew travels is described by Leo Sessler, narrator of the story and communications officer of the spaceship: “From the other side of the sea, the Matrons were rocking Carita Dulce (Sweet Little Face)” (“Del otro Lado del mar, Los Matronas mecian a Carita Dulce,” 151). The author plays with definite articles here, which in Spanish serve as gender markers. The definite article used before the feminine word matrons is masculine, when by grammatical rules it should be feminine.6 Gorodischer elects to use the masculine definite article instead, a discrepancy that stands out even more because the noun matrons derives from the root matern-, which in turn generates maternal, maternity and mother, all words related to the feminine. The first part of the story’s title itself—the embryos, in English—uses the masculine definite article.7 This might lead the reader to speculate on the arbitrary nature of language, which classifies things according to an artificial gender scheme.
The second part of the title, of the violet, is echoed early in the story when one of the inhabitants of the mysterious world is described as stumbling towards a violet circle while wishing for a green velvet suit and whiskey served in a large beer mug. As the reader starts wondering about the relationship of the violet circle to the character’s wishes, the spaceship Niní Paume Uno descends into a semi-deserted area of Salari II. The Commander of the ship and a group of men disembark for their rescue mission. The relationship between the Commander and one of the crew members, Reidt el joven (Reidt the Young), is subtly established when the older man praises the knowledge of the younger one, who reacts in a manner that indicates an emotional attachment to the Commander that he seeks to hide: “Reidt el joven blushed, he dropped a glove so he could bend down and not have to show his face to the others” (154). Gorodischer places an emphasis on character development in this story that has been identified as more typical of sf written by women (Hoffman Baruch, xiii).
The explorers, who come from a supposedly “normal” world, find this new world to be an apparently happy one. The character who has been looking for the violet circle reappears, dressed in a green velvet suit, beer mug in hand, and he is described as “being at peace, happiness being so easy” (155). Then, suddenly, upon arriving at one end of the desert, the explorers find “a green and blue world spotted with violet dots” (157), as if “They were on Earth, on the first morning of a new age with two suns and horses, forests of oak and sycamore trees, cultivated land, sunflowers and trails” (157). But, how is it possible for such an Earth-like oasis to exist on a desolate planet? The connection between the violet circles and the fulfillment of wishes is explained later when the rescue team finds Commander Tardon and the rest of the crew members of Luz Dormida Tres, (Asleep Light Three) the lost spaceship.
Ex-commander Tardon is now Señor de Vantedour (Lord of Vantedour), and he lives in a feudal castle built according to his plan, with troubadours, stone fireplaces, servants, midgets, and pure-bred horses. The manner in which the other members of the crew live is no less exotic or incongruous. One of them—as we already have seen—dresses in green velvet and drinks whiskey from large beer mugs; another lives tied naked to a table, obtaining sexual pleasure by being tortured; another composes musical scores; another invents instruments of high technology; still another, Carita Dulce, has returned to the womb and sleeps protected as a gigantic embryo and lulled by “matrons.” These matrons talk to Carita Dulce, “cooing, in high-pitched, fluty voices that imitate babies’ babbling” (162).
The mystery of the matrons is clarified during a conversation between the two commanders that takes place around the table in the Great Hall of Señor de Vantedour’s castle after the “ladies had been excluded from the meeting” (162). This last detail would indicate that Salari II is a patriarchal society, one that the visitors from Earth could recognize as being similar to their own. The lord of the castle describes his former ship’s forced landing on the deserted planet and the hardships he and his teammates had to endure until, by chance, they discovered the powers of the violet circles scattered around the surface of the new planet. They realized that if they stood inside a violet circle and wished for a particular object with all their might, they would obtain it. In this way, each crew member of Luz Dormida Tres has obtained his own objects of desire, and it was in this fashion that the green and blue world that Niní Paume Uno’s crew encounter became a reality.The violet circles’ mighty powers in the text are generally accounted for in ways we might call unscientific. Señor de Vantedour, for example, only states that the violet dots are to be accepted in the same way that one accepts death because, like death, they are inevitable and unexplainable. And one of his crewmates tries to account for his situation by using a religious explanation, referring to the circles as gods. This lack of concern for explaining scientific details supports Capanna’s comment about the tendency in Gorodischer’s fiction (and Argentinian sf in general) to avoid scientific or technological issues and concentrate instead on human conflicts (El mundo 189). The violet circles—a central focus of this story—may be regarded, indeed, as one of the fantastic or magical elements of Gorodischer’s fiction that Souto and Mosier mention. On the other hand, some of the characters of the story attempt to decipher the origin of the circles in rational, logical terms. They make experiments and propose hypotheses in order to unravel this mystery, including the following: God disintegrated and some of the broken pieces fell down on the planet; each world has its own violet circles, though they are more evident in Salari II; the circles are alive and are gods; nothing exists and they are suffering from a hallucination; they are in Hell and “the violet” is their punishment. Señor de Vantedour adds: “And so on ad infinitum. You pick the hypothesis you like best” (171).
“Los embriones” stimulates the reader’s imagination and challenges his or her sense of the “normal.” The story speculates about a world that allows human beings to change their nature and be transformed into any entity, and it suggests the possible consequences of enjoying such a power, as Señor de Vantedour—ex-commander Tardon—recognizes: “It is something extremely subtle, and if it could exist in every world we would eliminate many superfluous things: religions, philosophical doctrines, superstitions ... because there wouldn’t be any questions for mankind” (170).
As we have seen, each inhabitant of Salari II lives in a self-created paradise, a situation that might seem enviable. Yet the members of the rescue team feel obliged to change the situation of the ex-crew members of Luz Dormida Tres. This in itself reflects on the nature of human beings, who define normalcy by the cultural practices of the mainstream. The rescue team’s mission is to “save” the men who had been lost on a strange outlying world and to return them to Earth, where they may once again assume a conventional existence. The possibility that these “lost men” may be happy in a separate world under different conditions does not occur to most of the rescuers. The commander of the rescue team observes: “Anyway, these men need treatment, it is simply a humanitarian issue” (178). Ironically, when the commander asks Señor de Vantedour what they should do to save him and his former crew, the Señor answers: “Before the problem was what we should do about you. Now it seems the question is, what should we do about ourselves” (169).
Aside from the general philosophical questions raised by the story, we must pay close attention to the strangest, most singular condition of the alternative reality portrayed on Salari II. This is a world where women are absent. And yet the members of the rescue team (as well as the reader who has not yet understood the foreshadowing clues) are surprised when they are informed of this by Señor de Vantedour:
“There are no women, Sessler. Because of the conditions, let’s say particular conditions, under which one may get something from the violet, not one of us has been able to obtain a woman.”
“But I have seen them.”
“They were not women.” (172)In fact—the reader learns—in order to obtain the object of desire from the violet circles, it is necessary to feel like the object itself, to become totally identified with it. Gorodischer plays with the obsessive division our own world maintains between the masculine and feminine. She toys with the popularly accepted belief that the two genders will never truly comprehend each other. One can suspect a teasing reference—one imposed by the logic of the story—to the Biblical tradition that explains the existence of women as begotten by God from man’s rib. In Salari II, men, even if they have become gods, are unable to create a woman, the (supposedly) quintessential object of desire for males.
As a consequence of the absence of women in this alternative reality, men who inhabit the new planet find sexual pleasure with other men. One of the castaway characters—acting as an informer to the newcomers—explains the nature of those beings who seem to be women in a discussion that shows the difficulty of escaping the binary sexual categories imposed by language:“The correct word for them is ephebi.”
“But those women in Leval’s house, those who were playing cards on the floor, they had breasts!”
“Of course they had breasts! They love to have them. And we can obtain hormones and scalpels and surgeons to use the scalpels ... But what we cannot get is a woman.” (180)The reaction of the Commander who has just arrived from Earth is swift: “That definitely changes things” (180). But Vantedour replies: “Really? The fact that at least four of us sleep with boys changes things?” (180)
To Vantedour, an individual’s sexual preference and/or practices clearly should not “change things.” But its controversial nature is made clear by the reaction it elicits from the representatives from Earth, who are uniformly outraged about the idea of dishonoring the military by returning home with five “homosexual” officers.
It should be noted that homosexuality is here defined in the terms David W. Foster calls the “Euro-American medico-criminal discourse,” where both insertor and insertee are considered sexually deviant. This challenges the specifically Latin American idea whereby the homosexual identity is reserved exclusively for the insertee while the insertor retains his masculine persona (3). Since works of fiction interpret the social text, the mores of the Earth crew of “Los embriones” clearly reflect an Argentinian society that has traditionally bestowed a privileged position to military authority, whose cultural paradigm of masculinity has traditionally been based on the figure of Juan Domingo Perón as “Father of the Nation” (Foster 118-19). And yet, at the same time, the text suggests a certain degree of homoeroticism existing among the rescue team members. In one scene, for example, Reidt el joven—whom we had seen earlier blushing because of Sessler’s compliments—learns that the “women” on Salari II are actually transformed men. He reacts violently to this news, and Sessler is forced to slap him.
“They cannot!,” Reidt el joven screamed, and the blood from the brutal hit he had received from Sessler ran from his nose to his mouth, dyeing and dragging the little drops of perspiration in their path. And he kept shouting, spraying Sessler’s face with a reddish rain.
“They cannot make me stand next to that garbage! Garbage! Garbage! Damned bastards! Dirty perverts! ... They have soiled me! I am dirty!” (181)To conclude that the young man is suppressing homosexual tendencies seems justified, since the rest of the characters in the story arrive at the same conclusion. Theophilus says to the Commander about Reidt el joven: “That guy’s nights must be an orgy of sex and repentance” (181).
As James D. Riemer points out, sf writers often create worlds in which sexual practices are liberated or free, while mainstream authors tend to depict the alienation the homosexual faces in contemporary society (146). Gorodischer has chosen here to expose prejudices characteristic of contemporary Argentinian society. Obviously, Reidt el joven comes from a society that condemns and represses homosexuality. Thus the homosexual, male in this case, must necessarily hide his true nature and masquerade as someone he is not. In “Los embriones” Gorodischer not only deals with the alienation of homosexuals in Argentinian society, but also with culturally inscribed stereotypical notions about masculinity. The cooing matrons—described as old, fat, and heavy— who seem to exist only to sing lullabies and rock the huge womb where Carita Dulce sleeps, are really men. Consequently, the text subverts the idea that men are not capable of having or exhibiting truly maternal feelings. Structural fabulation, says Thelma J. Shinn, allows the writer to reject or even destroy a dehumanizing society (188). This text invites the reader to do precisely that, to disavow a society that judges—and condemns—by stereotype, a society that does not offer power and a sense of humanity to all of its members. Insofar as the text presents an alternative reality that transforms patriarchal models and exposes the limitations of a masculinist society, it lends itself to a feminist reading.
The story also focuses on the individual’s freedom to find happiness, to fulfill desire. When one of the rescue team members reacts against the idea of finding happiness by hiding forever inside a gigantic uterus, Señor de Van-tedour—our loyal reporter on the customs of Salari II—makes the following comment:
Look at it this way ... a psychiatric treatment ... would make him suffer for years. And for what? Counting on the violet (circle) as we all do, he would start as a sane, cured person, by asking for a mother and that would change again until it would become a cradle-womb.... When one has access to everything, one ends up by giving in to one’s personal demons, which ... is another way of describing happiness. (186-87)
Of course the Commander of Niní Paume Uno (and possibly the reader), reacts according to what he thinks is pleasurable, and questions several of the “pleasure” scenes he has witnessed on Salari II, such as being imprisoned in a womb, being whipped and burned, or being in a constant state of inebriation. Yet this is precisely what the text defends, the legitimacy of every venue of pleasure and happiness: “What is the difference between shutting yourself inside an artificial uterus and sitting on the edge of the river to fish?” (187)
One of the members of the rescue team, Sessler the doctor,8 is tempted to stay on the newly found planet, to live in a modest house and write his memoirs in peace, but in the end he decides to go back to Earth. And it is also Sessler, identified as the most open and sensitive of the visitors, on whom the ex-crew members of Luz Dormida Tres will leave their mark by not altering his memory, as they do with the others. While the power of the violet circles is used to induce the rest of the crew into forgetting their recent experience, and they subsequently return to their original world convinced Salari II is a radioactive planet unable to support life, Sessler writes a journal about the incidents that have occurred there. Señor de Vantedour postulates a potentially humorous final episode: “Just imagine the scene: fourteen men talking about a radioactive world, and he describing medieval castles and gigantic wombs” (192).
As we have seen, “Los embriones del violeta” portrays an alternative reality, one that is different from its author’s empirical reality but which is located on the same ontological level. This allows a reader, who shares the author’s empirical reality, to understand the new reality and compare any of its innovative elements to his or her own world. Les-Van-Oos, one of the characters living on Salari II, sits on a king’s throne, his head crowned by a laurel wreath. While enjoying a lavish party, he makes the following observation about the visiting crew from Earth:
They come from a miserable world, there are no heroes there.... They come from a world where people watch television and eat on plastic tablecloths and place artificial flowers in ceramic vases; where salaries, life insurance, and sewer taxes are paid; where there are bank clerks, police sergeants, and gravediggers.... Give them wine! (176).
Obviously, both the characters on Salari II and the reader of the story come from that “miserable world” to which Les-Van-Oos refers. In this way the proposed alternative reality becomes associated with the author’s and the reader’s empirical reality, while maintaining its separateness and otherworldly quality.
The reality proposed by the text is one where women do not exist, a society composed entirely of godlike men intent on pursuing happiness by fulfilling their most intimate desires. Being a work of what Wendland calls experimental science fiction, “Los embriones del violeta” makes the reader an intellectual participant by inviting him or her to question the social structures of the “real” world. In this regard, a close parallel exists between Sessler’s transformation and the reader’s experience of the story. Like Sessler’s, the reader’s previously held convictions about gender and sexual identity are challenged in a very unique way. In the words of Beatriz Urraca:
Rather than placing women in traditional male roles, (Gorodischer) carries out an in-depth exploration of the male characters and their sexuality, and these become anti-heroes whose masculinity is questioned and who are forced to confront the existence of their feminine—or at least their “non-macho”—side. She pushes the boundaries of the predominantly masculine world of science fiction and even some of its feminist alternatives with narratives that challenge sexual roles in a different way, by exploring in depth the implications of the conventions and what they say about the world in which we live, rather than supplanting them with new conventions. (99)
Like the narrator, it is possible that the reader will ultimately discard what has been learned, but not before seriously considering the real-world implications of this alternative reality presented in Gorodischer’s provocative text.
NOTES
1. There are, however, major critical voices that deserve to be mentioned, such as the Argentinians Pablo Capanna and Elvio Gandolfo, the Spaniards Domingo Santos, Marcial Souto, and Carlos Saiz Cidoncha, the Mexican Gabriel Trujillo Muñoz, and the Belgian Bernard Goorden, among some others. And I should also note that Science Fiction Studies has published excellent articles about Chilean science fiction: see, for example, Andrea Bell, “Desde Júpiter: Chile’s Earliest Science-Fiction Novel.” SFS 22.2 (July 1995): 187-197, and Andrea Bell and Moisés Hassón, “Prelude to the Golden Age: Chilean Science Fiction 1900-1959.” SFS 25.2 (July 1998): 285-99.2. All translations are my own.
3. Other prominent Argentinian sf writers include: Juan Jacobo Bajarlía, Marco Denevi, Carlos Gardini, Alberto Grassi, Eduardo Goligorsky, Emilio Rodrigué, Dalmiro Sánchez, Ana María Shua, Osvaldo Soriano, Alberto Vanasco, Marcos Victoria, and Alejandro Vignati.
4. It would be dangerous to make too much of the author’s acquaintance with Anglo-American sf. For example, some readers familiar with Joanna Russ’s 1967 story “When it Changed” may think that “Los embriones del violeta” is a retelling of Russ’s with the genders switched. In fact, as Gorodischer has declared, this is a mere coincidence, since she had not read Russ’s story before writing “Los embriones” (Personal e-mail, Dec. 19, 1998).
5. Gorodischer herself says that in writing this story she was particularly interested in “the position of one gender set against the other when one of them is all-powerful” (Letter to the author, April 7, 1997).
6. Los Matronas in the Spanish text.
7. Los embriones in the Spanish text.
8. According to Gorodischer, Sessler is a sensitive, open character who is able to laugh at himself. He is therefore portrayed as the opposite of the Commander, a military man with all the despicable characteristics of the stereotypical Argentinian military, or “milicos” as they are popularly known (Letter to the author, April 7, 1997).
SF WORKS BY ANGéLICA GORODISCHER
1967 Cuentos para soldados (Short Stories for Soldiers)
1968 Las pelucas (The Wigs)
1973 Bajo las jubeas en flor (Under the Flowering Jubeas)
1977 Casta luna electrónica (Chaste Electronic Moon)
1979 Trafalgar (Trafalgar)
1983 Kalpa Imperial (Imperial Kalpa)
1984 Kalpa Imperial II (Imperial Kalpa II)
1990 Opus dos (Opus Two)
WORKS CITED
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Foster, David William. Sexual Textualities: Essays on Queer/ing Latin American Writing. Austin: U of Texas P, 1997.
Gandolfo, Elvio E. “La ciencia ficción argentina.” In Los universos vislumbrados: Antología de la ciencia ficción argentina, ed. Jorge A. Sánchez. Buenos Aires: Andrómeda, 1978. 13-50.
Goorden, Bernard and A.E. van Vogt, eds. Lo mejor de la ciencia ficción latino-americana. Barcelona: Martínez Roca, 1980.
Gorodischer, Angélica. Letter to the author. April 7, 1997.
─────.”Los embriones del violeta.” In Los universos vislumbrados. Antología de la ciencia ficción argentina, ed. Jorge A. Sánchez. Buenos Aires: Andrómeda, 1978. 151-93.
─────. Personal e-mail to the author. Dec. 19, 1998.
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Wendland, Albert. Science, Myth, and the Fictional Creation of Alien Worlds. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1985.
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