The Myth of the Mirror: Silviano Santiago and the Discomfort of the Space In-Between in Latin American Discourse

Abstract

This work is an attempt at a historical re-reading of an important debate raised by Silviano Santiago in the 1970s about the ideas of model and copy. It focuses on the problems of technical development and the role of the writer within its productive conditions. The study is based on considerations by Karl Marx and Walter Benjamin on the role of technical development in the structure of social relations. The text analyses the possible creation of the myth of the mirror as a paradigm of the supposed superiority of the colonizer in relation to the indigenous, symbolizing the dialectic of civilization/barbarism. To this end, the essay “Latin American discourse. The Space In-Between” (1971) and its search for alternatives to the dialectic between the “original model” of the colonizer and the “copy” of the Latin American writer are taken up as the focus of the discussion; the main proposal of this study is that the myth of the mirror is the archaic point of the problem and that it is from the mirror brought by the colonizer that the reflection of the New World can be seen.