The Belsunce Case: Judgment, Uptake, Genre

Abstract

This article refers to the coverage of 'el caso Belsunce', a controversial homicide case begun in Argentina in 2002. My interest is in the rhetorical compensation afforded by the case's uptake in the press in terms of a murder mystery. Reading Lyotard in relation to genre theory, I signal the generative power and limitations of Lyotard's notion of the 'differend' and his construal of subjectivity in order to point to some ways in which a rhetorical postulate of genre allows talk of a type of compensation which is foreclosed by the 'differend'.