El trauma intergeneracional y las narrativas terapéuticas en A veinte años, luz de Elsa Osorio

This article suggests a hermeneutic and comparative approach that discusses the dual therapeutic function and effect of A veinte años, Luz (1998) of Elsa Osorio. The novel, a re-écriture of the classic identity model of Oedipus as stubborn seeking of the true origin understood as identity, is a literary work that appeals therapeutically to both sides of the national Argentinian tear. More generally as a case of « world literature », its narrative can serve as a therapeutic fantasy for descendants of victims as well as for descendants of perpetrators of every historical political crime. In a broader comparative context of the post-traumatic literary corpus, in which multiply affinities between individual and national traumata are imagined or discussed, the novel interestingly encompasses both extremes of the spectrum of post-traumatic discourse: the one comparable with the «Jewish » type of a post-traumatic discourse of inherited victimhood, and the other comparable with the « German » type of a problematic inheritance and intergenerational alienation.