The moral subject during the XIX century in Argentina. A Reading about “Chacho” Peñaloza´s process from the ethical-critical point of view

Abstract

Our aim is to develop an analysis on F. Sarmiento´s narrations in Chacho, el último caudillo de la montonera de los llanos and on J. Hernandez´s Vida del Chacho about Ángel Peñaloza´s death, in light of the theoretical framework displayed by E. Dussel in chapter IV of Ética para la Liberación en la edad de la Globalización y la Exclusión. We try to demonstrate that the conceptual scheme presented by this author is pertinent to think the moral subject in the XIX century, although only if we introduce a few modifications. In order to do so, we will produce a critical analysis of the works already mentioned, starting from the following assertions: in the XIX century, the victims of the hegemonic system are not the poor but the ‘wild’ and ‘barbaric’; that is to say, the victims are not victims of the economic system, but of a system of cultural imposition instead. According to this, the murder of “Chacho” must be considered as a manifestation of the negative production of the victims in this system. While Sarmiento in his ‘Chacho’ presents the ‘(hi)story’ from the point of view of the victorious, Hernández in his narration of the death of “Chacho” presents the (hi)story from the victim´s point of view, what he does is “to brush history against the grain”. If this is true, and Hernández complies with the criteria established by Dussel to identificate the role of the ethical-critical theorist, then Don José is the one who assumes the ethical-critical principle, the role of the critical theorist.