"But what if God himself can be simulated, that is to say, reduced to the signs which attest his existence? Then the whole system becomes weightless; it is no longer anything but a gigantic simulacrum: not unreal, but a simulacrum, never again exchanging for what is real, but exchanging in itself, in an uninterrupted circuit without reference or circumference".

-- Jean Baudrillard, Simulations

"God is an Italian" read the headline of the Spanish newspaper El Periódico "The Newspaper" after Italy won over Spain in the quarter-finals of the 1994 World Cup Soccer Championship; "God is Brazilian" appeared in Journal do Brazil /Brazil Daily/ after Brazil beat Sweden in the semifinals; "God is a Bulgarian" said player Hristo Stoichkov after Bulgaria eliminated Mexico from the tournament; and Mario Benedetti, a famous Latin American writer and a Marxist declared in the Spanish daily El País /The Nation/, "I believe that the goal he /Maradona/ scored against England with the help of a divine hand is at this moment the only credible proof that God exists".²

Isn't God being Balkanized here? Translated from one national tongue to another? If so, was Jean Baudrillard right when he identified Postmodernism with the apocalyptic erasure of the "real"? Or maybe there was never any "real"; the emperor was naked from the beginning and powers - such as God - need to be questioned, problematized and consequently "democratized" instead of being taken for granted. How do we explain the Spanish accusatory rejection of God, Brazilian victorious appropriation and the substitution of a political commissar for God that happened after the 45-year-communist regime in Bulgaria? Why did Maradona transmogrify into "la mano de Dios" /"The Hand of God"/ after he fooled the referees during the 1986 finals of the World Cup in Mexico and scored the winning goal for Argentina against England with his (God's!) hand? And why is he being celebrated for it? Is this fragmentation and nationalization of the Omnipotent, Omnipresent and Omniscient One actually a symptom of the postmodern condition?

I will approach these questions by examining factes of contemporary Argentine society and culture, especially writings by progressive intellectuals, such as Osvaldo Soriano and Mempo Giardinelli. I will look at their writing about the case of Maradona, and more specifically, into their (quite postmodern) construction of Argentine cultural identity through the popular icon named Maradona.

The editorial page of the weekly magazine Noticias de la semana /Weekly News/ claims that Maradona is Argentina's alter ego.³ This statement suggests that Maradona embodies Argentina and translates all his individual successes and wrongdoings to the larger screen of the nation. After all, in the minds of many Argentines he is the one who symbolically avenged the nation after the Falklands/Malvinas debacle by scoring the "divine" goal against England. The fact that the TV replay revealed the irregularity of the goal did not alter the ecstatic pride of Argentine fans: "In his own way, Diego revenged us all", explains the editorial page of Noticias /The News/. Not playing by the rules seems to be part of Argentine identity. "We just don't know if we are capable of stability and of maintaining order", wrote Jorge Lanata from Página 12 /Page 12/. "Can we really be a modern society that plays by the rules of modern countries, or are we just a boy from the poor barrio always thinking he can play by other rules, thinking he won't get caught?"⁴ The old dichotomy of Argentine identity - civilization versus barbarism - seems to be the central focus of this modern debate: Are we as civilized as the Others (the United States, for example) or do we have our own rules that may appear barbarous to the outsider, but they are ours and they allow us to get what we want? Echoing Domingo Faustino Sarmiento's enchantment with the "gaucho malo" /the outlaw gaucho/, the ultimate outlaw who had his own code that rarely coincided with the code of the rest, Argentine society seems to identify with the transgressor.

Diego Armando Maradona was born in Villa Fiorito, a suburb of Buenos Aires, thirty-three years ago, in the historical moment most critics identify as the passage to the Postmodern era. He is emotional, rebellious, non-conformist, shocking, intuitive and he does not recognize most of the laws - an exemplar of how many Argentines see themselves. He is a prototype of the Argentine that Jorge Luis Borges depicted in 1946 in his famous essay "Nuestro pobre individualismo" /"Our Sad Individualism"/, where he described Argentines as those who "unlike North Americans and almost all Europeans, do not identify with the state".⁵ He continues, suggesting that the state is too impersonal and "an Argentine only conceives of a personal relationship". Consequently, The Argentine is an individual, concludes Borges, and not a citizen. What Borges did not account for is the way certain popular spectacles like soccer are capable of uniting a citizen and an individual into a single entity. How else can we explain the national pride that twenty-three million Argentina, during the worst years of the military regime and human rights abuses, when their dictator, General Jorge Rafael Videla awarded the trophy to the national team?⁶

Maradona was not a member of that team, but he certainly was a protagonist on every consecutive one. His transformation into the national symbol has been uncontested and the omnipresent eye of the television camera recorded it all. Actually, the technological refinement and the power of the electronic media is what stimulated Maradona's charisma. Argentines regularly saw him as a master of the game of soccer, but they also witnessed his crimes: two live broadcasts of the drug busts in which Maradona was the main its soap-opera like coverage of the Italian son he did not want to recognize and then his wedding and the birth of "legal" daughters. They admired Maradona's political savvy while watching him play soccer with President Carlos Menem and then criticize his politics. They, more than ever, identified with him as he tried to lose weight in preparation for the 1994 World Cup. And then, after the ephedrine was found in his urine and he was banned from playing on the Argentine national team, they saw Maradona as media expert in his role as commentator on national TV during the match against Romania. He came to people's homes via the TV set and democratically showed his weaknesses so that the majority could identify with him. But then, what he was able to do on the soccer field was what most Argentines could only dream about. He was at once the imaginary and the symbolic, he was marginal and he was central, he was strong and he was weak, he was popular and he was the elite. Maradona, I would argue, is the product, the consumer, and the embodiment of the postmodern. Nevertheless, he also gets consumed by it.

In saying this I am absolutely aware that the realm of Latin America is marked by its own, neither singular nor homogeneous, very particular and contradictory version of postmodernity. On the other hand, the multinationals and the global world economy make it impossible to consider Latin America separately from the so-called First World. In that sense, the argument that Modernism and Postmodernism are European and North American symptoms (if not ills) collapses. Consequently, what critics who recognize the specificities of Latin America cultures identify with Postmodernism varies.⁷ In "Reply to Vidal (from Chile)", to take but one example, Chilean cultural theorist Nelly Richard defines it as

a horizon of problems in relation to which we can discuss local significations that are (unevenly) affected by the political, social and cultural mutations of the contemporary world: for example, the transnationalization of capital and the globalization of information, the supersaturation of images and the hypermediatization of the real, the fragmentation of subjectivity and the pluralization of social identity, and the dissemination of power and the transversal character of lines of antagonism.⁸

Richard sees postmodernity as a welcome force that exposes Latin American dependence on and marginalization by Europe; through irony, parody and the ever-present doubt, through mass-mediated carnivalesque representation, it allows for the multiple, previously marginalized voices to be heard. Nevertheless, Latin America, like most of Europe and North America, has been polarized in its responses to the culture of postmodernism. The left has been especially divided over the political and aesthetic acceptance/rejection of postmodernism.

In recently published study of postmodernism in Argentina, Escenas de la vida postmoderna: Intelectuales, arte y videocultura en la Argentina /Scenes of Postmodern Life: Intellectuals, Art and Video Culture in Argentina/, Beatriz Sarlo sees Argentina as a "fractured and impoverished society" whose intellectuals give way to an ever-growing number of specialized and apolitical experts.⁹ Furthermore, she analyses the proliferation of the mass media and the political and cultural impact of a remote-control video and television over consumers. While Sarlo seems to be mor in line with Richard's visions of postmodernism, other intellectuals such as writer and journalist Osvaldo Soriano are more inclined to condemn every notion of postmodernism.

Soriano is well-known novelist whose popularity is not confined to specialized, academic literary circles. The majority of his books have enjoyed the status of national best sellers. His fresh treatments of most recent Argentine history, Peronist totalitarianism, the years of military dictatorship (1976-1983) - the so called Dirty War - and the consequent massive exile of Argentines, have been extremely popular, and four novels have already been "translated" into successful motion pictures.¹⁰

As a journalist, Soriano published a collection of articles entitled: Artistas locos y criminales /Artists, Lunatics and Criminals/ in 1983. Most of them previously appeared in the Jacobo Timerman's newspaper La Opinión /Opinion/. In 1987, another collection followed, Rebeldes, soñadores y fugitvos /Rebels, Dreamers and Fugitives/, which joined articles published in foreign newspapers between 1983 and 1987. Currently Soriano writes a regular sports column for the Argentine newspaper Página 12 that is considered to be leftist, (especially by the right wing).

In June 1994, Soriano published daily articles about soccer culture in Argentina.¹¹ His identification of the World Cup with postmodernism appeared several times: first, on June 19, in an article in Página 12 entitled "A Postmodern World Cup" /"El mundial posmoderno"/,¹² and later, on July 3, after Argentina did not qualify, as "An Empty World Cup" /"Un Mudial vacío"/.¹³ The same weekend a journal Noticias de la semana /Weekly News/ (and Argentine equivalent of Newsweek), published an interview with Soriano entitled "It is a Postmodern World Cup" ("Es un Mundial posmoderno").¹⁴ The question becomes, then, how does Soriano construct the postmodern?

As being indifferent, plain and tenuous, without passions or patriotic feelings, stupid and frivolous, empty and pacified - these are the terms that Soriano uses to describe the ills of the epoch in which, he grudgingly admits, North America and Argentina (among others) live. The World Cup was played in the country that epitomizes the image of the postmodern with the "ontological" existence of the media as the mirror of "reality". The vast majority of Argentines was not able to travel to the United States, but they received "the image" via several TV networks. On of them, Channel 13, actually printed a billboard that appeared on the streets of Buenos Aires in late May with a very postmodern nationalist call: "En Junio somos todos Argentinos" /"In June we are all Argentines"/. It was the ultimate call for erasure of all social, economic and ethnic differences under the tutelage of the television set and the World Cup.

In addition, the immense distances of over two thousand miles between any two stadiums (Boston-Los Angeles, for example) and the need to be in constant motion - most likely flying - for those who saw it without the mediation of the screen, emphasized timelessness and frontierlessness. French cultural critic and philosopher Jean Baudrillard once described the United States as a country "rotten with wealth, power, senility, indifference, puritanism and mental hygiene, poverty and waste, technological futility and aimless violence".¹⁵ I believe that Soriano would wholeheartedly agree with this characterization. For him, the postmodernity of the World Cup is also depicted through images of gangster referees, "pistoleros" /"gunmen"/, who go against the marginalized, small and meek (Argentina!?) in order to help the real powers, such as Germany and Spain.¹⁶ Ironically for an Argentine, Soriano finds it disturbing that schedules in the host country were not respected. While on the one hand he criticizes the rigidity of the United States, he at the same time demands punctuality. To this individuality - effacing, totalitarian "postmodernity" - Soriano juxtaposes a passionate and patriotic Maradona. "Didn't you see how he sang the national anthem?" Soriano asked the interviewer rhetorically without actually having any doubt that someone may have missed that moment. "Dare touching his sky blue, with jersey and he will kill you", he concluded emphatically. Evoking the humble origins of the "hero", "a foolish young man who wanted to eat the world and its rules" /"insensato muchacho que quiso comerse el mundo y sus reglas"/, Soriano portrays Maradona as if he were the sole fighter against the multinationals.¹⁷ Soriano writes the hagiography of a hero who "did everything in reverse: he did not marry a princess, nor did he bow in front of the powerful; neither did he open the bank with the money he earned, but he stood on Fidel's side while the others abandoned him".¹⁸

To depict Maradona as a "free" soul who goes against all odds (read: capitalism in Soriano's case) is a very romantic idea, especially if one remembers that all along he has been profiting from the system. He did, for example, sell the "rights" to advertise to one of the TV networks. As far as I can see, the only other way that Maradona undermined the capitalists system was by not fulfilling the terms of various contacts he signed, as, for example, when he played in Seville. Soriano is desperately trying to make him a figure with an historical conscience and yet he remains irrational, appearing daily in the rooms of millions of viewers as two-dimensional and flat. His image has been depersonalized and then reconstructed by the media, his words cut, pasted and placed in headlines, his acts reformulated. In Maradona, Soriano is looking for some mythical Argentina that has been displaced by the new nation of which Soriano does not feel completely a part. It appears that this "new" Argentina lacks patriotism and hard work, but then, whether or not Maradona embodies those particular values is eminently questionable.

As Soriano is nostalgically lamenting some unspecified good old times of which Maradona is supposedly a remnant, another Argentine writer associated with the left, Mempo Giardinelli, portrays himself, in true postmodern fashion, sitting in front of the video screen with a remote control in his hand and a word-processor in front of him.¹⁹ He is reviewing the end of the last game Maradona played, especially the moment when he is taken by an American nurse to give a urine sample. Giardinelli is "writing" "El video del adiós" /"The Farewell Video"/ and meditating about the idea of law in Argentine and American society.²⁰ The TV still that accompanies the article "speaks" for itself: the camera situated behind the blurred images of ecstatic fans after the victory over Nigeria centers on a smiling Maradona holding hands with a blond nurse who is leading him out of the scope of the camera. In the background, but still very much in focus is the image of the two pokerfaced United States policemen. Their gloved hands are identically crossed and their legs are spread enough to look very stable and securely positioned. Only Maradona is looking at us, and only his face shows emotions.

"Did he know it?" is the question that Giardinelli poses in his article as a link to a much more ontological inquest into the Argentine identity: why is it that we Argentines don't assume our responsibilities, and why do we disobey the laws?

Respetar la ley es algo que no tiene prestigio en este país... Es un modo de ser, se diría, muy argentino. Creer que la felicidad es eterna, que no es tan importante cumplir con las reglas ni asumir las responsabilidades. Es más cómodo echar la culpa a otros, imaginar las conspiraciones, creer que cuando uno se equivoca es víctima de los demás y no de sus propias acciones. (79)

/Respecting the law does not have any prestige in this country... One could even say that it is an Argentine way of life. Believing that happiness is eternal, that it is not so important to follow the rules nor assume responsibilities. It is easier to blame the others, imagine conspiracies, believe that when one makes a mistake he becomes the victim of the other and not of his own actions./

Later on Giardinelli gives an example of one nation, the United States, in which "the guilty ones are not pardoned". This unmistakable allusion to the trials of the military and the ultimate presidential pardon of those responsible for the disappearance of thousands of Argentines in the seventies and early eighties, is followed by the conclusion that, over there, "the criminals usually pay for their actions" and "rules exist to be followed". He admits that sometimes the rules are too strict and exaggerated, but "if they exist, they need to be obeyed". Although Giardinelli is talking about the non-consensual law described by Baudrillard where "you are supposed to know it and obey it ... /and/ ... there is no honour in breaking laws, not prestige in transgression or being exceptional" (92), his statement is dangerous insofar as it seems to disallow the possibility of resistance to unjust laws. Moreover, it is particularly hazardous to use the example of the United States, the self-proclaimed policeman of the "New World Order".

Through Giardinelli's reading of the "Farewell Video" we can detect several hallmarks of Argentine culture. First, in their relationship towards the body: Maradona's immediate past before the World Cup is described as the "hell of drugs and fatness" (78) he overcame successfully. However, the North American nurse whose identity is so irrelevant that she is arbitrarily addressed as Lucy-Mary-Judy is constantly being characterized as "la gordita rubia" /"the chubby blond"/. Ultimately, her smile becomes twisted and paradoxical, and like a mythical angel of death who impeccably obeys the orders of her superiors, she leads Maradona away from eternity.

Second, Giardinelli criticizes the Argentine belief that "everything can be arranged". But he does not blame Maradona for his acts. He is just the victim of the society, writes Giardinelli, without pausing for a moment and thinking that Maradona is (should be) also a responsible and conscious member of the society who can and must decide and determinate his acts and their consequences. Maradona is not lonely, concludes Giardinelli, and we should not judge him but feel sorry for him, because the only thing he knew how to do was play soccer.

Here, Giardinelli seems to contradict himself: if earlier in the article he was criticizing Argentine society for pardoning the guilty, now, as a true Argentine, he is asking the reader to do exactly that in the case of Maradona.

There is, however, reality behind the video image of the World Cup. It does not only appear as a "friendly" multicultural encounter in which The United Colors of Benetton will make every nation feel equal, but is a "real" simulation of the politics and nationalisms that are dividing the world: Yugoslavia was banned from participating in the Cup because of the fratricide war, players from Cameroon did not have money to buy food, a member of the Colombian team was assassinated for scoring an autogoal, the house of a Nigerian player was burned after the team lost. The banner of truth on which the polisemic word "God" has been inscribed seems to be part of The United Colors of Benetton's carnival. It can be Spanish, Italian, Brazilian or Maradona's/Argentina's. Behind it, however, there is the real; Postmodernism splits it open for those who want to see it. Maybe before condemning and dismissing Postmodernism, those who identify with the left ought to look carefully into those cracks.

Webmaster: Slobodan Markovic (twiddle@eunet.yu)

All rights reserved. Belgrade Circle Journal encourages the reproduction of material appearing on its pages, provided that the source and the author are cited, except in cases where this would constitute violation of copyright held by other organisations or individuals.