The Missing Knife in the Argentine Slaughterhouse: “Then El fiord (1969) Appeared”. Materiality of Language and the Autobiographical in Osvaldo Lamborghini’s El fiord (1969)

Abstract

This article examines the first literary work of Argentine artist Osvaldo Lamborghini from a materialist perspective, focusing on two key dimensions: the materiality of language and the materiality of autobiography. Published in 1969 by the elusive Ediciones Chinatown, El fiord —55 years after its release— continues to exert its unsettling effects on national literature. Through a literalist reading, the study explores its role as an initiatory text within Lamborghini’s oeuvre (and within a new wave of Argentine writing), situating it in dialogue with Esteban Echeverría’s El matadero (1871). The analysis interrogates El fiord’s connections to Lamborghini’s later works, with particular attention to Sebregondi retrocede (1973) —a disquieting text published in 1973 but composed contemporaneously with El fiord (1969). Finally, the article proposes how these linguistic and autobiographical materialities intertwine, a gesture that would become a defining feature of Lamborghini’s subsequent poetic, visual, and object-based production.