Dada Poetics in Griselda Gambaro’s Works: toward a De(con)struction of the Argentinian State of Terror

Abstract

This paper tries to show the connections between the poetics of Dadaism, the theatre of the absurd and Griselda Gambaro’s works. Gambaro (born in 1928) is one the most prolific and renowned Argentinian writer (both novelist and playwright) from the last decades. Since her first plays she stood out as one of the most innovative artist of her country. Her dramatic style, far from following the Argentinian hegemonic realistic tone of the works of the time, is a personalization of less common foreign and local ones. Of the foreign ones, dada and the absurd were arguably the most important and the one most in tune with the socio political context in which her plays were inserted. However, with the pass of time Gambaro made a transition into a more transparent and realistic style which reflected a less illogical sociopolitical context without excluding elements from the absurd theater.