El Ojo de Jade

Mexico: Premia ́Editora, 1980. 1st Edition. Octavo in wraps; 86 pp; 21 cm. About very good; mild discoloration to wraps, slight wrinkle to front wrap; pages clean, binding tight. Paperback. ISBN: 9684341407

In Spanish 1,000 ejemplares. Jitrik (1928–2022) stands as a central figure in Argentine criticism for having fused theoretical rigor with an acute sense of literature’s historical and political embeddedness, a synthesis exemplified by El ojo de jade, in which he advances a reflective, almost allegorical meditation on the act of seeing and reading, using the image of the “jade eye” to explore how criticism observes, selects, and constructs its object rather than merely describing it. The book departs from linear literary history in favor of a self-conscious inquiry into perception, distance, and intellectual responsibility, marking a decisive moment in his trajectory toward a criticism that is simultaneously analytical and ethical, alert to the conditions under which meaning is produced and to the critic’s own implication in that process.