STORIES FEEDING HISTORY IN THE RÍO DE LA PLATA: NEOLIBERAL CULTURAL APPROPRIATION IN ESPINOSA’S CARLOTA PODRIDA (2009) AND COHN AND DUPRAT’S EL CIUDADANO ILUSTRE (2016)

This thesis analyzes how neoliberalism appropriates the cultural production of the Río de la Plata (Uruguay and Argentina) in order to feed its narrative and neutralize the minor stories that emerges from this South American region. These stories allow one to visualize other possible futures, and by appropriating them neoliberalism presents itself as the natural way to organize the world and as the only political option available. In order to explore how the neoliberal cultural appropriation works, this thesis examines two cultural artifacts: Gustavo Espinosa 2009 short novel Carlota podrida and Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn 2016 film El ciudadano ilustre. Both are works of fiction that are explored following the concept of posthegemony, which helps readers to understand the political conjuncture from the limits of the Marxist dialectical model that describes the reality in a binary way. This thesis takes off from the assumption that the Marxist dialectical model might show some signs of exhaustion, and therefore there is a need for other theoretical frameworks—such as the one proposed by posthegemony—to understand the new political context