Literature and heteronomy. Myth and archive

Abstract

The present essay makes a critical reading about Roberto Gonzalez Echevarría's master book: Myth and Archive: A Theory of Latin American Narrative, whose first edition was published in 1990. Our aim is to read it carefully paying attention on Michel Foucault's definition of archive so that we can confront the notion of this term adopted in Myth and Archive, because the author indicates that his work has a strong relationship with the notion of archive elaborated by the French thinker. Our conclusion lead us to indicate that Gonzalez Echevarría -probably without perceiving it-, confused library with archive, and this fact allowed him to make statements that here we put under discussion.