Libertarian Robinson: Exit Fantasies, Randian Heroism, and Political Aesthetics in Argentine New-Right Literature

ABSTRACT This article begins with a literary-historical insight into the genre of the Robinsonade, emphasizing its function as a knowledge model for social philosophy and economic theory, particularly within the libertarian paradigm. This is followed by an analysis of Ricardo M. Rojas’s novel El señor Robinson (1998), which focuses on its literary-aesthetic aspects and its ideological functions as a socio-philosophical model. In the analysis of El señor Robinson, particular attention will be paid to the intertextual influence of the literary work of Ayn Rand, to whom Rojas has dedicated several writings and monographs, and who has a central influence on his literary work; the concept of the libertarian “novel of ideas” is of great importance here. A close reading of the novel and its contextualization within the literary-historical and intertextual framework leads to the concluding remarks, which in turn serve to examine the ideological function of literary aesthetics in the “cultural war” of the libertarian New Right in the contemporary political situation. This literary analysis provides an opportunity to reconstruct the political culture of (Argentine) right-wing libertarianism and its cultural imagination in relation to social aspects.