'Punto de Vista' and the Argentine Intellectual Left

Description

This book is the first comprehensive account of the Argentine magazine Punto de Vista (1978–2008), a cultural review that gathered together prominent Argentine intellectuals throughout the last quarter of the twentieth century. Directed by cultural historian and public intellectual Beatriz Sarlo, the story of the magazine serves as a lens to study the evolution of Argentine intellectuals from the leftist mobilization of the 1960s through periods of military dictatorship and then the shifting politics of democratization in the 1980s and 1990s. The book argues that the way in which the Argentine intellectual left negotiated the political and cultural transformations of the late twentieth century can be understood as the history of two political defeats: that of the revolutionary utopias of the 1960s and 1970s and that of the social democrat project in the 1980s. By adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this book encompasses a wide range of debates taking place in Argentina, from the years prior to the dictatorship to the postdictatorship period. Acknowledgements Contents List of Figures 1 Introduction References 2 Formative Years The Culturally Flourishing 1960s The Politicised 1970s References 3 The Early Dictatorship Years Publishing a Magazine Under the Dictatorship The Construction of a Lineage: From Sarmiento to Borges The 1837 Generation Martín Fierro Twentieth-Century Intellectuals The Introduction of a New Criticism Pierre Bourdieu’s Sociology of Culture and Cultural Studies Latin American Criticism Punto De Vista, Revista De Cultura References 4 The Late Dictatorship Years The Exile Connection The Falklands/Malvinas War ‘Ustedes, los de Punto de Vista’ References 5 Past, Present, and Future Punto de Vista Renovates Itself The Crisis of Marxism and the Reformulation of a Socialist Stance Club de Cultura Socialista How to Reconstruct the Past? The Role of the Intellectual References 6 Crisis Modernism versus Postmodernism and the Question of Value Beatriz Sarlo and the Fight for Aesthetic and Political Values The Crisis of Intellectuals, the Club de Cultura Socialista in Crisis References 7 At the Turn of the Century The Era of Progresismo: 1994–2004 The Final Years References 8 Epilogue References Index