Performance-Based Shape Shifters: Underground Resistance Theater in Argentina during the Cold War

This paper focuses on the mid-20th century deployment of Greek tragedy as a propaganda device in Argentina. In particular, I will explore how shifting far-right regimes sought to utilize the adaptation of Greek tragic theater as a means to situate themselves and Argentina within a framework of a Western imperial tradition extending historically to the imagined Greco-Roman world. From this point I consider how opposition movements within Argentina responded to the use of Western classicism through Greek tragedy by promoting their own subversive treatments of its stories and characters. I pay special attention to various presentations of the Minotaur in Argentinean literature, noting its treatment as a hybrid, explicitly postcolonial response to government propaganda delivered through the medium of Greek tragedy.