ABSTRACT
This chapter explores several Gothic novels and short stories published in Argentina. It argues that dichotomy can be read from the critical perspective of the Gothic as a means of highlighting the presence and significance of the literary mode in contemporary writing. The chapter analyzes the novels and short stories that inscribe these binaries into a modern production of literature of terror informed by a "self-consciousness about its own nature" that characterizes contemporary Gothic texts. The short story reproduces the Argentinean archetypal fear that barbarism causes in civilization. The presence of violence in Argentina's historical identity has, of course, been insinuated before: in Facundo, Sarmiento also considered the concept of terror as key to understanding the politics of barbarism in the nineteenth century. In 2007, the author published Berazachussetts, a zombie novel which won the Indio Rico award in 2007. Zombies are perhaps one of the most interesting Gothic monsters to be analyzed from a binary perspective.
