Uso, memoria, desorden: modalidades de los objetos en Santo oficio de la memoria de Mempo Giardinelli y en Mudanzas de Hebe Uhart

Reflection on objects has a long critical and literary tradition; according to their functions -or lack of function -we propose three main modalities that will help us to think about how they operate in novels that deal with Italian migration in Argentina: objects of use, objects of memory and objects of disorder. These modalities imply particular overlaps between the past and the present, between migrant generations and settled generations. In this paper we propose to approach two Argentinean works, Santo Oficio de la Memoria by Mempo Giardinelli and Mudanzas by Hebe Uhart, through the treatment that the characters give to objects. In the first case, one of the characters-the Fool of Good Memory-makes a permanent objectification of the memories, that is, he tries to endow them with a physicality that guarantees their permanence in time. In the case of Mudanzas, the new generation shows a bewilderment before the objects of memory, which tend to become objects of disorder.