Portraits of a lady: Postmodern readings of Tomas Eloy Martinez's 'Santa Evita'

An important aspect of postmodern literary practice is the different meanin gs given to such concepts as 'truth,' 'essence,' and 'authenticity.' New Hi storical writing questions the validity of truth claims about the past, whi ch it seeks to reinvent as transient fiction rather than to recover as soli d fact. In Santa Evita, Thomas Eloy Martinez focuses on the 'unofficial' Ev ita who moves elusively through the realms of history, fiction, and myth, p ersonifying both eternity and transience, movement and stasis. Reconstructi on replaces reality as identity turns into myth, body into text, and histor y into fiction. Evita is evil and good, representative of both the temptres s Eve and the Holy Virgin Mary. Just as Evita perpetuates herself through a n unending series of images, so the text renews itself through its chaotic proliferation of narratives. Embalming and biography are linked. Eva's deat h continues the theatre of her life. Ther theatre of the text emerges in th e self-consciousness of its construction. At its centre is the unknowable E vita, the per(s)onification of shifting postmodern ideas and culture.