Raimondi-Vignoli-Cristina. Poetic Activism in Contemporary Argentina

Bibliographic Data

ID2170144
AuthorsBen Bollig (0000-0002-1215-2349, corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume22
Issue1
Pages57-70
Publication date2013-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Latin American Cultural Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1356-9325 • E-ISSN: 1469-9575
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13569325.2013.768974
OpenAlexW2035241493
LanguageEN
References cited14

After the emergence in Argentine in the 1980s of neobarroco or neobaroque poetry, and in the 1990s of a contrasting objetivista or objectivist aesthetic, commentators have written of "Boom" in poetry in the 2000s, the emergence or successful re-launching of young writers, notable anthologies, and new independent publishers. Many groups and poets use poetry as an integral part of their political activism. However, the aesthetic effects of such activist positions have not, I feel, been studied closely. The question that seldom addressed is whether there is coherence between the aesthetics and politics of such activist projects. Sergio Raimondi's collection Poesía civil, published in 2001, in some respects, marked the culmination of objetivista poetry, but also set a marker for much poetry of the 2000s. Firstly, it was an eminently literary work, with references to Shelley, Keats, Dante, the English metaphysical poets, among others, and poems written in an epic form of long, measured lines with occasional rhyme. Secondly, it is metapoetic, reflecting on questions related to the status and role of poetry, in particular its social role; Gramsci, Brecht and Valèry are all referenced and engaged. Thirdly, it is closely linked to Raimondi's cultural and community work at the Museo del Puerto. As such, this paper sets out to use Raimondi's work as a case study of contemporary poetic activism, but also of the tasks and possibilities of today's Latin American Cultural Studies. Notes 1 I am grateful to Philip Derbyshire, Cornelia Gräbner, and David Wood, for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper. An edited version was presented at the University of Texas at Austin in March 2012, and I thank Lorraine Leu for the invitation to speak there. 2 Carta abierta is a left-of-centre grouping of intellectuals and cultural figures that emerged to support the democratically elected government in the face of what it perceived to be reactionary and anti-democratic protests. The group publishes periodical 'open letters' on political matters (hence the name) and has a website, http://www.cartaabierta.org.ar/nueva/. The 'campo' protests were a series of large organised demonstrations by landowners, agro-industry bosses, rural workers, and their supporters, against windfall taxes on export profits. 3 Very similar claims have been made over the years for Latin American Cultural Studies itself, as Carlos Aguirre (2009 Aguirre, Carlos. 2009. "Hegemonía". In Diccionario de estudios culturales latinoamericanos, Edited by: Szurmuk, Mónica and Irwin, Robert McKee. 124–30. Mexico City/Buenos Aires: Instituto Mora/Siglo XXI. [Google Scholar]: 129) observes in his entry on 'Hegemonía' in the Diccionario de estudios culturales latinoamericanos. 4 See Lewis (1983 Lewis, Colin M. 1983. British Railways in Argentina 1857–1914: A Case Study of Foreign Investment, London: Athlone Press. [Google Scholar]) or Stones (1993 Stones, H. R. 1993. British Railways in Argentina 1860-1948, Bromley: P.E. Waters. [Google Scholar]) on the history of British ownership of Argentine railways; the other side of this story of colonialist infrastructural development and agricultural export is told by Davis (2001 Davis, Mike. 2001. Late Victorian Holocausts. El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World, London: Verso. [Google Scholar]) in his history of el niño famines in the late Victorian era, 'the fate of tropical humanity at the precise moment (1870–1914) when its labor and products were being dynamically conscripted into a London-centered world economy' (9); as he states elsewhere, 'the use of force to configure a "liberal" world economy [...] was what Pax Britannica was really about' (295). 5 For a critique of Kant's account of autonomy, see Adorno (2000 Adorno, Theodor. 2000. Problems of Moral Philosophy, Trans. Rodney Livingstone Cambridge: Polity. [Google Scholar]), esp. pp. 80–81 and 118–20. 6 See, for example, Svampa and Antonelli (2009 Svampa, Maristella and Antonelli, Mirta A., eds. 2009. Minería transnacional, narrativas del desarrollo y resistencias sociales, Buenos Aires: Biblos. [Google Scholar]) for an analysis of the relationship between state, private companies, and local resistance, in the question of 'megaminería', or large-scale open-cast mining. 7 Or, put more simply, as Catherine Boyle would say to me when I was her student, we have to read closely, and we have to do something with our reading

Aesthetics · Art · Literature · Poetry · Political science · Politics · Rhyme · Comparative Literary Analysis and Criticism · Cultural and Social Studies in Latin America · Latin American Literature Studies · Law

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