Yo, el Supremo as the Singular

This chapter is about the seminal Paraguayan allegory of dictatorship, Yo, el Supremo (1973), by Augusto Roa Bastos and the development through literature of dictatorship as a singular discourse. Through an allegorical connection of Paraguay’s eighteenth-century dictator Gáspar Rodríguez de Francia with Adolfo Stroessner, Roa Bastos’ novel articulates the unique capacity of dictatorship to singularize all the discursivity that it touches, through the creation of an autoimmanent speech. In Roa Bastos’ novel, dictatorship is the very source of meaning and all enemies, friends, and other political subjectivities emerge from the self-description and identity of the dictator himself. Consequently, I argue for the extraordinary prescience and vigor of Roa Bastos’ novel, citing it as an allegory that develops a theory of dictatorship, singular discourse, and singular individuation unmatched during its time.