New Historicism is a literary theory that emerged in the late 1970’s/early 1980’s as a reaction and challenge to its predecessor, Traditional Historicism. The theory of Traditional Historicism sought to “find out what really happened at a given time and place” (Dobie 181). Traditional Historicists worked to gather information about a particular event with as much “accuracy” and “certainty” as possible, while remaining unbiased and objective. With their method of research, Traditional Historicists also believed that they could “capture the sense of an entire age” (Dobie 181). However, New Historicism challenges all of these notions. A new historicist acknowledges that one can never be completely unbiased (the interpreter is biased, the original reporter is biased), so one can never know with certainty what exactly happened at a given moment. In other words, somewhere along the lines, a report of an event is skewed in someway that in effect no longer reflects the event truthfully. And this bias is normally towards the majority or the dominant point of view, so New Historicists look to see an event from the less dominant point of view. Since the New Historicist acknowledges that no one can be objective, they must acknowledge their own biases in their interpretation of a text. This concept is called self-positioning. New Historicists believe there are many different sides or perspectives to seeing an event, so there may be more than one meaning in a text. Also, because of this, New Historicists say that one cannot “capture the sense of an entire age” (Dobie 181) because there are so many different ways of seeing the age.
En el cuento, “Desaparecerás, no importa lo que digas,” un niño está afuera después de toque de queda y es parado por la policía. La policía pidió su identificación, pero el niño tiene miedo y dice que no la tiene. La policía arresta al niño y el niño se encuentra sentado en una furgoneta policial con los “criminales”. Sin embargo, él dice, “…años después llegué a darme cuenta de que ninguno de los pasajeros que viajaban conmigo en la furgoneta de la policía eran criminales o peligrosos” (“Desaparecerás…” 270). Esto demuestra que la historia oficial de lo ocurrido en Buenos Aires no es cierto. La perspectiva del niño muestra las injusticias cometidas por la policía. La policía detuvo a los que no eran criminales. También la policía torturó a aquellos que no lo merecía. Esto cuento demuestra otro perspectivo de lo ocurrido y expone la verdad.