“She Exists Me”: An Ontology of Embodiment in Tomás Eloy Martínez’s Santa Evita

Abstract

I argue that Tomás Eloy Martínez’s Santa Evita develops an ontology of embodiment in which the gendered body is not a fixed biological entity awaiting representation but a generative force that produces the very relations, narratives, and language through which it persists. I trace this across encounters with Eva Perón’s corpse: the anatomist who embalms her; the military officers who seek to erase her; the girl who mistakes her body for a doll; the officer whose fixation on Eva leads him to kill his own wife; and the narrator himself. Each encounter transforms both the body’s meaning and the person who touches it. Embodiment persists not because the corpse resists biological decay but because it continues to generate encounters and meanings that exceed inherited categories of life, death, and language, culminating in a final narrative innovation that makes existence itself something enacted between beings rather than possessed individually. Drawing on Judith Butler, Karen Barad, Giorgio Agamben, Idelber Avelar, and recent studies of disappearance, I contend that writing is neither external to embodiment nor a substitute for it. Instead, it is one of the relations through which embodied existence continues to unfold beyond biological death.

Keywords

• Embodiment
• Santa Evita
• bare life
• biopolitics
• relational ontology
• Tomás Eloy Martínez

Supporting Institution

This research received no specific grant or financial support from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Thanks

An AI language model was used in the preparation of this manuscript in the following capacities: formatting the manuscript to the journal’s specifications (typography, spacing, citation style); converting in-text citations to the Chicago Manual of Style, 18th edition, Notes-Bibliography system; drafting English translations of primary-source quotations from the Spanish; and providing editing and revision across multiple rounds of author feedback. All interpretive claims, the selection and analysis of primary-source evidence, and the overall argument of the article are the author’s own. The author reviewed, verified, and takes full responsibility for all content in the manuscript.

“O Beni Var Eder”: Tomás Eloy Martínez’in Santa Evita Romanında Bedenselliğin Ontolojisi

Abstract

Bu makalede, Tomás Eloy Martínez’in Santa Evita romanının, toplumsal cinsiyetle belirlenmiş bedeni temsil edilmeyi bekleyen sabit bir biyolojik varlık olarak değil, varlığını sürdürmesini sağlayan ilişkileri, anlatıları ve dili bizzat üreten bir güç olarak kavrayan bir bedensellik ontolojisi geliştirdiğini ileri sürüyorum. Bu yaklaşımı, Eva Perón’un naaşıyla gerçekleşen bir dizi karşılaşma üzerinden izliyorum: Naaşı mumyalayan anatomistin, onu ortadan kaldırmaya çalışan askerî görevlilerin, bedeni oyuncak bebek sanan küçük kızın, Eva’ya duyduğu saplantı nedeniyle kendi karısını öldüren subayın ve nihayet anlatıcının karşılaşmaları. Bu karşılaşmaların her biri hem bedenin anlamını hem de ona dokunan kişiyi dönüştürür. Bedensel varoluşun sürekliliği, naaşın biyolojik çürümeye direnmesinden değil, yaşam, ölüm ve dile ilişkin yerleşik kategorileri aşan karşılaşmalar ve anlamlar üretmeye devam etmesinden kaynaklanır. Bu süreç, varoluşun bireylerin kendi başlarına sahip oldukları bir şey olmaktan ziyade, varlıklar arasındaki ilişkilerde gerçekleşen bir olgu hâline geldiği son bir anlatısal yenilikle doruk noktasına ulaşır. Judith Butler, Karen Barad, Giorgio Agamben, Idelber Avelar ve kaybedilme olgusuna ilişkin güncel çalışmalardan hareketle, yazının bedenselliğe dışsal olmadığını ve onun yerine geçen bir unsur olarak da görülemeyeceğini savunuyorum. Aksine yazı, bedensel varoluşun biyolojik ölümün ötesinde sürüp gelişmesini sağlayan ilişkilerden biridir.

Keywords

• Bedensellik
• Santa Evita
• çıplak hayat
• biyopolitika
• ilişkisel ontoloji
• Tomás Eloy Martínez

References

1. Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: El poder soberano y la nuda vida. Translated by Antonio Gimeno Cuspinera. Pre-Textos, 1998.
2. Avelar, Idelber. The Letter of Violence: Essays on Narrative, Ethics, and Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
3. Barad, Karen. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Duke University Press, 2007. Beverinotti, Matías. “Santa Evita de Tomás Eloy Martínez: la excritura del pasado para otra comunidad.” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 56, no. 3 (2022): 397–420. https://doi.org/10.1353/rvs.2022.0030.
4. Bishop, Karen Elizabeth. The Space of Disappearance: A Narrative Commons in the Ruins of Argentine State Terror. State University of New York Press, 2020.
5. Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” Routledge, 1993.
6. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. 1990. Routledge, 1999.
7. Coddou, Marcelo. “La novela de Perón y Santa Evita de Tomás Eloy Martínez como novelas históricas.” Crítica.cl, October 17, 2013. https://critica.cl/literatura/la-novela-de-peron-y-santa-evita-de-tomas-eloy-martinez-como-novelas-historicas.
8. Codebò, Agnese. “Volveré y seré millones: Los cuerpos de Evita en Tomás Eloy Martínez y Néstor Perlongher.” Latin American Literary Review 45, no. 90 (2018): 78–87.

9. Colaneri, Laura. “The Sinister Southern Cone: Mood, Affect, and Horror in the Cultural Imaginary of Argentine and Brazilian State Terror.” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2023.
10. Delacroix, Dorothée. “La presencia de la ausencia. Hacia una antropología de la vida póstuma de los desparecidos en el Perú.” Íconos. Revista de Ciencias Sociales 67 (2020): 61–74. https://doi.org/10.17141/iconos.67.2020.4141.
11. Ehrlich, Laura. “El ascenso de Eva Perón en la política peronista y la cultura argentina durante las décadas de 1950 y 1960.” Boletín del Instituto de Historia Argentina y Americana “Dr. Emilio Ravignani” 58 (2023): 58–84. https://doi.org/10.34096/bol.rav.n58.11810.
12. Flores, Norberto. “Desmitificación de la historia y recusación del poder en la nueva novela histórica hispanoamericana: el caso de la novela chilena.” Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana 20, no. 39 (1994): 53–59.
13. Foucault, Michel. “The Subject and Power.” Critical Inquiry 8, no. 4 (1982): 777–95.
14. Gatti, Gabriel. “Cartografía de las nuevas formas de desaparición (o de cómo se puede contar el abandono).” Disparidades. Revista de Antropología 77, no. 2 (2022): e021. https://doi.org/10.3989/dra.2022.021.
15. Gatti, Gabriel, and Jaume Peris Blanes. “The Deviated Mourning of the Disappeared: Reimagining Disappearance and Transcending Its Tropes.” Bulletin of Latin American Research 40, no. 1 (2021): 54–68.
16. González Ruibal, Alfredo. “Arqueología de la desaparición.” Papeles del CEIC 2020, no. 1 (2020): article 225. https://doi.org/10.1387/pceic.20764.
17. González Urrego, Alejandro. “En busca de las pistas sicoanalíticas de los sueños de Evita en la novela Santa Evita de Tomás Eloy Martínez.” Revista Alere 6, no. 2 (2012): 191–212. https://periodicos.unemat.br/index.php/alere/article/view/513/443.
18. Harford Vargas, Jennifer. Forms of Dictatorship: Power, Narrative, and Authoritarianism in the Latina/o Novel. Oxford University Press, 2018.
19. Hattori, Márcia Lika. “Undressing Corpses: An Archaeological Perspective on State Violence.” Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 7, no. 2 (2020): 151–68. https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.41494.
20. Intersimone, Luis Alfredo. La medusa, el mono y la marioneta: Teología política y erótica en el peronismo. University of North Carolina Press and A Contracorriente, 2021.
21. López Badano, Cecilia M. T. “Eva Perón: del cuerpo político al cadáver exquisito literario.” Letras 50, no. 77 (2008): 133–54. https://ve.scielo.org/scielo.php?pid=S0459-12832008000200005&script=sci_abstract.
22. Marcos Arteaga, Irene C. “¡Santa, oh Santa Evita! La mujer y el mito a través del audiovisual del siglo XXI.” Latente 21 (2023): 145–57. https://doi.org/10.25145/j.latente.2023.21.06.
23. Martin, Gerald. “Tomás Eloy Martínez, Biography and the Boom: La novela de Perón (1985) and Santa Evita (1995).” Bulletin of Latin American Research 31, no. 4 (2012): 460–72.
24. Martínez, Tomás Eloy. “La necrofilia es una enfermedad típica de los argentinos.” Interview by Redacción Perfil. Perfil, October 16, 2006. https://www.perfil.com/noticias/politica/la-necrofilia-es-una-enfermedad-tipica-de-los-argentinos-20061016-0016.phtml.
25. Martínez, Tomás Eloy. La novela de Perón. Planeta, 1991.
26. Martínez, Tomás Eloy. Santa Evita. Planeta, 1995.
27. Perkowska, Magdalena. Historias híbridas: la nueva novela histórica latinoamericana (1985–2000) ante las teorías posmodernas de la historia. Iberoamericana, 2008.
28. Rosano, Susana. Rostros y máscaras de Eva Perón: Imaginario populista y representación. Beatriz Viterbo, 2006.
29. Valenzuela, Luisa. Cola de lagartija. Bruguera, 1983.
30. Zuffi, María Griselda. Demasiado real: Los excesos de la historia en la escritura de Tomás Eloy Martínez (1973–1995). Corregidor, 2007.