Post-Authoritarian Cultures

Luis Martin-Estudillo And Roberto Ampuero

Description

This volume explores the role played by culture in the transition to democracy in Latin America's Southern Cone (Argentina, Uruguay, Chile) and Spain, with a focus on opposing stances of acceptance and defiance by artists and intellectuals in post-authoritarian regimes.

Sujets

• Latin American Studies
• Political Science
• Literary Criticism
• Spanish
• Portuguese
• European

Informations

• Publié par: Vanderbilt University Press
• Date de parution: 29 septembre 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780826592477
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Post-Authoritarian
Spain and
Latin America’sCultures
Southern Cone
Edited by Luis Martín-Estudillo
and Roberto AmpueroPost-Authoritarian Cultures
Spain and Latin America’s
Southern Cone

hispanic issues • volume 35
Post-Authoritarian Cultures
Spain and Latin America’s
Southern Cone

Luis Martín-Estudillo
and
Roberto Ampuero
editors
Vanderbilt University Press
nashville, tennessee
2008© 2008 Vanderbilt University Press
All rights reserved
First Edition 2008
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Manufactured in the United States of America
The editors gratefully acknowledge assistance
from the College of Liberal Arts
and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies
at the University of Minnesota.
The complete list of volumes in the
Hispanic Issues series begins on page 275.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Post-authoritarian cultures : Spain and Latin America’s Southern Cone
/ Luis Martín-Estudillo and Roberto Ampuero, editors. — 1st ed.
p. cm. — (Hispanic issues ; 35)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8265-1604-6 (cloth : alk. paper)978-0-8265-1605-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Democratization—Southern Cone of South America.
2. Democratization—Spain. Art—Political 3. aspects—Southern Cone
of South America. 4A .rt—Political aspects—Spain P. o5l. itics and
literature—Southern Cone of South Amer Picoal. it6i.cs and
literature—Spain. Popular 7. culture—Southern Cone of South
America. 8. Popular culture—Spain. Latin 9. American literature—
20th century—History and criticism . S1p0a.nish literature—20th
century—History and criticism.
I. Martín-Estudillo, Luis. II. Ampuero, Roberto, 1953–
F2217.P67 2008
306.098—dc22
2008015544hispanic issues
Nicholas Spadaccini
Editor-in-Chief
Antonio Ramos-Gascón and Jenaro Talens
General Editors
Nelsy Echávez-Solano and Luis Martín-Estudillo
Associate Editors
Eric Dickey and Kelly McDonough
Assistant Editors
*Advisory Board/Editorial Board
Rolena Adorno (Yale University)
Román de la Campa (Unversity of Pennsylvania)
David Castillo (University at Buffalo)
Jaime Concha (University of California, San Diego)
Tom Conley (Harvard University)
William Eggington (Johns Hopkins University)
Brad Epps (Harvard
Eduardo Forastieri-Braschi (Universidad de Puerto Rico, Río Piedras)
*Ana Forcinito (University of Minnesota)
David W. Foster (Arizona State University)
Edward Friedman (Vanderbilt
Wlad Godzich (University of California, Santa Cruz)
Antonio Gómez-Moriana (Université de Montréal)
Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht (Stanford University)
*Carol A. Klee (University of Minnesota)
Eukene Lacarra Lanz (Universidad del País Vasco)
Tom Lewis of Iowa)
Jorge Lozano (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)
Walter D. Mignolo (Duke University)
*Louise Mirrer (The New-York Historical Society)
Mabel Moraña (Washington University in St. Louis)
Alberto Moreiras (University of Aberdeen)
Bradley Nelson (Concordia University)
Michael Nerlich (Université Blaise Pascal)
Miguel Tamen (Universidade de Lisboa)
Teresa Vilarós (University of Aberdeen)
Iris M. Zavala (UNESCO, Barcelona)
Santos Zunzunegui (Universidad del País Vasco)In memoriam
René Jara (1941–2007)
Scholar, mentor, friend.Contents
Introduction:
Consent and Its Discontents
Luis Martín-Estudillo and Roberto Ampuero xi
part i
Contesting Power, Forging Commitment
1 Democratic Culture and Transition in Chile
Jorge Edwards 3
2 Writing from the Margins of the Chilean Miracle:
Diamela Eltit and the Aesthetics and Politics of the
Transition
Juliet Lynd 12
3 The Riders Get off the Horse: David Viñas and the
Demise of the Authoritarian Argentine Military
Hans-Otto Dill 34
4 A Journey through the Desert: Trends of
Commitment in Contemporary Spanish Poetry
Luis Bagué Quílez 58
part ii
Interrogating Memories
5 Testimonial Narratives in the Argentine
PostDictatorship: Survivors, Witnesses, and the
Reconstruction of the Past
Ana Forcinito 77
6 Tejanos: The Uruguayan Transition Beyond
Gustavo A. Remedi 99x CONTENTS
7 Dancing with Destruction: Pop Music
during the Spanish Transition
Antonio Méndez-Rubio 122
8 Popular Filmic Narratives and the Spanish Transition
Germán Labrador Méndez 144
part iii
Looking In/Looking Out: Negotiating Identities
9 Staged Ethnicity, Acted Modernity: Identity and Gender
Representations in Spanish Visual Culture (1968–2005)
Estrella de Diego 175
10 Creating a New Cohesive National Discourse in Spain
after Franco
Carsten Humlebæk 196
11 Intellectuals, Queer Culture, and Post-Military Argentina
David William Foster 218
12 Some Notes on International Influences on Transition
Processes in the Southern Cone
Heinrich Sassenfeld 233
Afterword
David William Foster 249
Contributors 255
Index 261u Introduction:
Consensus and Its Discontents
Luis Martín-Estudillo and Roberto Ampuero
In Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Spain there is still a debate about whether
or not the complex processes that have been called “transitions to democracy”
have ended. The growing insistence on the elaboration of historical judgments
on those periods, as well as other recent relevant events—such as the death of
Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet or the trials of military offcials in
Argentina—may be a sign of their completion. But one could also mention elements
of continuity which point to the currency of social and political tensions
associated with the dictatorial heritage of those nations. Witness the Uruguayan
initiative to reinterpret a piece of legislation known as “impunity law,” or the
vibrant debates about so-called “historical memory” which are currently on
various nations’ agendas. This would indicate that they also face the
potential impossibility of completing the process, which would express itself in the
never-ending conficts between retelling the past and deleting it, or between
justice and impunity. It is equally diffcult to assign starting dates to
transitions, especially when they are not defned as strictly political events.
Operating with a relative autonomy from the government, cultural production in the
above-mentioned countries often anticipated the kind of change and opening
associated with the recovery (or reinvention) of democratic freedoms. Thus,
the cultural sphere has proven to be a signifcant locus of debate and agency,
xixii LUIS MARTÍN-ESTUDILLO AND ROBERTO AMPUERO
as proponents of different (and often conficting) ways of dealing with the past
and imagining the future contributed there to numerous civic projects. In this
sense, it might be productive to recall Erich Auerbach’s notion Retardierungof
as it helps to understand how art, and especially literature, allows for the
possibility to explore history in depth by “slowing down” events and focusing on
crucial aspects through aesthetic and intellectual lenses. This Hisvolume - of
panic Issues analyzes the role of intellectuals and artists in the creation of
postauthoritarian orders, while this Introduction tries to cast light on how opposing
stances of acceptance and defance of those orders were confgured. While the
scope of the problem (which articulates something as culturvast eas in four
different countries) prompts us to desist from the start from trying to reach
encompassing conclusions, we believe that it is possible to advance some notions
that are common to these processes.
One of the main differences between the genesis of the dictatorship in
Spain and those of the Southern Cone lies in the character of the conficts
which led to them. While in Spain there was a war involving a confrontation
mainly between two regular armies, supported by their respective international
allies, in the Southern Cone this situation was lacking, even if the military of
Argentina and Chile sought to impose their version of such a war. Southern
Cone regular armies operated within the Doctrine of National Security dictated
by the Pentagon within the political frame of the Cold War, launching
systematic repression against political parties, civic movements, and scattered armed
groups which had advocated armed struggle under the inspiration of the Cuban
Revolution, whose leaders offered moral and technical support. The
asymmetrical military clash between antagonistic forces signaled the dirtiest wars ever
directed against civilians in Latin America. Once in power, the armies closed
congress, exercised control over the police, the press and the judiciary, and
imposed a state of emergency to exert repression without legal limits. Hans-Otto
Dill’s essay in this volume deals with several novels by Argentine author David
Viñas and offers an analysis of an “insider’s” view of the military. Dill
elaborates on the worldview and resentment of the Argentinean military regarding
civil society, and also provides us a key for understanding the logic of its
repression of wide sectors of