The Impropriety of Pirates
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12957/matraga.2024.85316Keywords:
Pirates, Machado de Assis, Borges, MoguillanskyAbstract
There are few pirates in the Latin American cultural tradition even though piracy was a fundamental force shaping the trajectory of the colonial and post-colonial Americas. This essay traces the seeming impropriety of piracy in relation to a genealogy in which pirates are themselves figure of the improper, conduits for improper wars and markers of struggles over the proper relationship to property. Readings of a few key texts – Machado de Assis’ “Canção de Piratas” (1894), J. L. Borges’ “La viuda Ching, pirata” (1935), Alejo Moguillansky’s film El escarabajo de oro (2014), and Nuruddin Farrah’s Crossbones (2011) – take the textualizations of piracy as reflections on the carrying capacity of form.
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