National Allegory and Metaphoric Gesture in Money to Burn

At the end of Money to Burn, Piglia quotes Berthold Brecht: “throughout the book I have attempted to maintain the stylistic register and ‘metaphoric gesture’ (as Brecht called it) of the social reports whose theme remains illegal violence.” Although Piglia’s quotation seems to indicate that the “metaphoric gesture” is already present in the “social reports”—“relatos sociales”—which, it appears, underlie the actual narrative of Money to Burn, the fact is that he admits that the novel attempts to be more than a straightforward narrative of events. (The “social reports” in question are, I believe, not only the narratives generated by the different media, but also by the population as a whole). If one remembers the epigraph which opens the book—“After all, what is robbing a bank compared to founding one?”—the “metaphoric gesture” seems to be an attempt at presenting the story as an illustration of the principle implicit in the epigraph, in addition to a fictionalizing a real event. In other words, if Brecht’s epigraph presents capitalism itself as theft in the grandest scale—represented by the founding of the bank—the narrative of the robbery and the brutal extermination of the criminals would be indicative of the ultimate criminality of the system under which, obviously, we live.

I cannot avoid associating ’s “metaphoric gesture” with Fredric Jameson’s notorious statement that “All third-world texts are necessarily . . . allegorical, and in a very specific way: they are to be read as what I will call national allegories.” However, while both Jameson’s national allegory and Brecht’s and Piglia’s “metaphoric gesture” imply the existence of a second meaning underlying the surface one, the fact is that Money to Burn takes great pains to break free from the ideological boundaries of the nation. In other words, Money to Burn is not a criticism of Argentine society or even primarily of capitalism in Argentina. Money to Burn is a criticism of capitalism per se.

The space depicted in the novel is, obviously, transnational: the robbery takes place in Buenos Aires (Argentina), but the shoot out is in Montevideo (Uruguay); the robbers aim to drive up the Pan American Highway all the way to Miami or New York, where some plan to invest their money in Tango joints; Giselle is an Uruguayan hippie, that is a local exemplar of an international type, and the music they listen to is rock; etc.

Perhaps the key moment that marks the “metaphoric gesture” as exceeding national boundaries, is the reaction to the burning of the money: “Burning money is ugly, it’s a sin.” As we know bills are not tied to any material object. They are signifiers without, in appearance, any signifieds. In fact, in appearance a rational response to the burning of the money would have been indifference. After all, one could assume, though it’s not mentioned in the novel, that the money could be insured and, therefore, its burning would have not affected anyone.

However, the response of the population to the burning of the money is one of extreme indignation, much greater than the reaction to the death of police, innocent bystanders, or criminals. It is seen as “an act of nihilism and an example of pure terrorism.” The reason underlying this moral indignation is precisely the emptiness of money as a signifier, which has permitted it to become the signifier of capitalism itself, of the possibility of acquisition of goods, services, and even more money. This moral indignation is, therefore, not culturally specific. It could just as well take place in Brooklyn as in Montevideo.