First of all, I must admit that Canclini’s article was a bit difficult to follow. He really deals with numerous complex themes and he doesn’t really focus on the term ‘hybridity’ which gave me troubles to understand its meaning. I hope we’ll clarify this in class.
However the overall impression I get is that hybridity is fundamentally linked with modernity and the different processes that are linked to it such as urban growth, deteritorialisation, migrations and transnationalisation. The former cultural hierarchy that used to be the standard no longer exists because of the amount of interactions, exchanges, migrations that happen all the time between what was before considered as cultural territories. Power relationships are no longer concentric and become more and more complex. Sociopolitical relations are nowadays decentred and multidetermined which has completely changed the nature and the former exclusivity of cultures.
I also think that Canclini's reflexion is very much centred on the idea that territories have been transcended. "All cultures are border cultures". I found really interesting the passage concerning the different cities at the US/Mexico borders. The hybridization of people's cultures there is extremely emphasized. I find fascinating and very optimistic that these processes has helped to develop a much more tolerant and open interpretation of cultural identities. To be honest the reason why I was particularly interested by this topic is because I’ve done my review paper on the cultural identities of Central American immigrants in San Francisco focusing on the mural paintings of the Latin American district.
I think that what this article says is that it is practically impossible today for a culture to stay "authentic" and not to encounter others influences, which is the base for explaining the process of hybridization. The example of historical monuments integrated to the dynamics of the city was a really good example of hybridity; the interaction of memory (history) and change (modernity).
Basically the difference between hybridity and mestizaje for example would be that the way Canclini explains hybridization looks like a report on the state of cultural identities in our modern world, whereas mestizaje is an objective, an ideal to reach. Hybridity has also to do with the strong acceptation and emphasis of these cultural identities at the intersection of different worlds by the people who are directly concerned. Once again I think I’m gonna stop my ramblings here, before saying anything stupid. These concepts become more and more difficult to really understand.
Although football is not a fascinating topic for me, I found Alex Bellos's article interesting in its way of presenting futbol in Latin America and in Brazil in particular as one of the main component of the national culture. I guess here, mass culture could be understood as nationally spread. But of course mass culture also implies the major role of the Media in the romanticization and exaltation of sport's events. When I was reading the text, I have really seen an application of Benedict Anderson's view of nations as 'imagined communities'. Football in Latin America gather citizen's imaginations and emotions together towards a similar goal. As the author says, 'football gives Brazilians a feeling of national identity and citizenship'. I was both amused and surprised to read that the national football strip has a stronger national meaning that the national flag. Since the invention of the Olympic Games, it seems like sport has almost become a peaceful way of fighting other countries and to pit states's strenght against other's. A lot of references and terms in the text made me think that sport almost had the same purpose than military assertion for countries. The 1950 World Cup for Brazilians was a way of proving the state's modernity. And yet we know that a state and its army's modernity has always been crucial to the history of wars. For the Brazilian nation, losing the World Cup has been comparable to a military defeat and this historical event has stayed in Brazilians's memories until today while Uruguayans already forgot they won. It was like 'Hiroshima' (I can't believe they even dared making the comparison!. This defeat deserved a monument, like the one to the unknown soldier. This competition was supposed to become part of the national construction of Brazil by asserting the place of the country, as any myths in national histories. Instead it becames a myth of despair, exaggerated and romanticized by numerous books, narratives, movies, but still national. The ideological climat of this 1950 World Cup, both before and after, reminded me of every period of nationalist propaganda preceding wars.
I do have difficulties to decide whether or not national culture has to do with mass culture and popular culture. We usually explain the emergence of nation-states with the expansion of technologies of communication, which means a new ability of massive symbolic diffusion. However can national culture be considered as popular?
Nelson Hippolyte Ortega's article present Telenovelas as a important expression of Latin American popular culture, but he does precise than telenovelas have been highly nationalized and identified to each producing country's identity. So here, telenovelas are both popular and national, as well as being mass culture. The author describes telenovelas as a representation of the public's symbolic and affective world, showing reality and daily life. The producers emphasize people's identification and try to make of telenovelas a family ritual. The melodramatic aspect is supposed to emphasized the importance of the ordinary. To be honest after reading about the Brazilian Hiroshima, melodrama now seems to be a Latin American cultural trait. When we discussed it in class, I was wondering if this emotional exxageration about every events and drama in telenovelas could have an aim of catharsis. Make people living things that shouldn't happen in real life. My understanding of this article is that telenovelas make 'coexist commercial language and popular culture' and this is precisely where lies the tension. At some points, the danger is that telenovelas that are supposed to be an expression of popular culture are took over by commercial exigencies and become populist and demagogist. Mass Media, although they have positive outcomes, are also at the crossroads between commercial and political stakes which force to ask ourselves about the messages in these televisual emissions. Is resignification really possible, or have telenovelas a manipulating and alienating component?
This is always the downside of all our technologies of mass communication; knowing if it really serves as support for the diffusion of popular culture, or if it is used as a mean for shaping people's culture and attitudes, both by politics and commercials.
These week's readings discuss several complex academic terms all related to Latin American post colonial societies and there structures. I think that the real complexity raised by such concepts is the different understandings and interpretations of each writers...
The first short passage of Fernando Ortiz's book describes 'transculturation' as a constitutive historical feature of Cuban society. I liked the way he emphasizes the violence of these different phases of immigration for humans themselves: he gives to this historical account a powerful and tragic resonance. I found relevant his definition of transculturation as the transition to a new culture trigerring the painful loss of another; however I had troubles with his comparing of the oppression of African slaves in Cuba to the so-called 'terror' of European oppressors! To refer to his clever and meaningful metaphor, European immigrants have been a real 'hurricane'. To him, transculturation is more than the passage from one culture to another. Ortiz describes the culture acquired as something completely new which mixed both features of the place of origin and the place of arrival. To represent this process he alludes to human reproduction which reminded me of Vasconcelos words in the Cosmic race. His text was full of allusions to reproduction and love as the priviledged way to create a new race. Although Ortiz admits the positive aspect of transculturation, I though he emphasized quite more the dark and difficult side of Cuban cultural intercrossings.
Antonio Cornejo Polar's article concerns heterogeneous litterature and the concept of heterogeneity. I think he explains that contrary to the concept of national litterature, one has to understand that this so-called homogeneity is actually challenged by regional and global categories. Indigenismo is described as one of these heterogeneous litteratures reflecting the diversity of Andean societies. Indigenismo is heterogeneous because it is produced within a sociocultural structure that is different from the one indigenous belong to. He shows not only how indigenismo has been influenced by Western standards, but also that it is mainly the discourse of middle-class activists that 'internalized' the interests of indigenous. Polar explains that 'instead of imagining an impossible homogeneity' (as national ideology does), indigenismo realizes a sort of materialization of Latin American heterogeneity. Thus I understood that heterogeneous litterature were a representation of the Latin American reality of social fragmentation due to history. Indeed, Polar sees his concept of heterogeneity as including a notion of persistant conflict and contradictions whereas transculturation or mestizaje refer to the resolution of originating antagonisms into a synthesis. Heterogeneity is supposed to help understand how multiplicity within a whole social structure generates conflicts. He speaks of a 'contradictory totality'.
Millington's article, although complex as well, helps clarify some points. He also assumes that transculturation is a more neutral and peaceful term. Generally speaking he shares Ortiz's point of view about his concept of transculturation and its application to Cuba. He explains that these processes refered to as transculturals are unique to Latin America. However, I am not quite sure he shares Polar's point of view given that he ends his essay by defining transculturation as a search for resistance to local and international pressure since the emergence of Latin American new nation-states. If true, transculturation also includes conflictiveness.
I found very interesting the passage where he questions the efficiency of 'neoculturation' in Latin America saying that this search for a cultural identity needs to be more than a reaction/opposition to dominant forces. I found that these remarks were really interesting and relevant. His point is that the understanding and development of such concepts as transculturation, heterogeneity, hybridity and others are necessary in order to define 'emancipatory spaces' for Latin America. I have to say he succeeded at cheering me up with this idea, after I struggled to understand these concepts that are all so close to each other!
I really need to make this first remark after this week's readings and this could be taken as a reflection over the course. We had almost 200 pages to read this week, and I personally think it is far too much... It is too long to read each week, to understand and to analyse, and it is really altering my ability to focus on the same subject! Even though most of the articles Jon selected are passionating, a good thing for this class would be to work on passages less long. But this is only my humble opinion...
Campbell's article appeared first to me as quite difficult, but as soon as he started speaking of its very subject, 'Mexican muralism', everything became clearer. With his study of this original form of art, he exemplifies how modern-states shaped their national foundations through their ability to control cultural productions, especially art, and the symbols they are promoting. Indeed the new Mexican state after the revolution worked at redefining national culture in order to support the legitimity of the newly founded state. Muralism which was an high art has been used to consolidate political legitimacy and stability and to draw a new national identity guaranteeing national unity. Mural practice almost became the official carrier of the state's message. As it is the case for education, this article proves that cultural production has often been driven by a political purpose and led by the power. Campbell especially points out two aspects of this nationalist construction which is not unique to Latin America. He shows how the state tried to make of this new nationalism something common to the whole nation, overcoming social disparities. That is why they took mural art which was an 'high art' and tried to bring it to the masses. Campbell even suggests that provoking the audience was part of this purpose: controversies helped to display mural on a large public scene and to make it circulate. In the same universalist aim, nationalism also use to ally past and present, tradition and modernity and to confuse them. Nationalism often legitimizes a nation-state by drawing on so-called common historical events and traditions, which are myths most of the time. Mexican nationalism using mural art did not escaped to this rule. Vasconcelos called mural practice ' the deus ex machina of the Mexican renaissance' as if the Mexican nation had always existed. Mural art in general was constituted of different allusions to the past (indigenous cultures, colonization, independence...) while creating a completely new imagined nation (The Cosmic race ...)However, this article also shows how soon occurred a class dichotomisation around Mexican muralism. It took place between what was considered as an art belonging to a national culture dominated by an economical and cultural elite, supporting modernization, and a more popular/middle class contestation denoucing the lack of popular representation and resisting to modernization threathening tradition.
Thus, an art that was supposed to carry a new unique national culture ended facing 'popular frontism', which shows that popular culture did not identified completely with the modern state. This is easily demonstrable with the indigenous litterature we read for example.
Concerning The Magic af the state by Michael Taussig, I would first say how hard was this text to understand for me. I do not know about native speakers, but I barely understood completely one sentence out five. I know that the author is an anthropologist and a cultural theorist. In his book, he speak of the modern state in terms of spirit possession and state fetishism which is quite illustrating of the way nation-states built their legitimization through centuries. He puts in relation traditional magical rites with the working of the modern nation-state. The beginning of the passage is a conversation with the Spirit Queen which explains the nourishment of the state by the spirits of the dead. To me, this could be a metaphoric way of explaining how nationalism uses the past to strenghen national identity. This is a very poetic way of portraying the mystical foundations of authority in our modern states. I will stop there to avoid making too much stupid hypothesis. I prefer to wait for a complete explanation in class!
Before starting, I have to say that I found these two articles extremely interesting although they clearly arguing in favour of two very different opinions. Despite there are numerous points which I do not agree with, The Cosmic Race written by José Vasconcelos is a surprisingly impassioned and confident text. I was really stunned to see how confident is the author accumulating arguments that appear to me as highly controversial and contradictory. Actually, his text is full of strange and even shocking opinions for instance the so-called virtues of Christianity in terms of civilizing peoples (p5)!
The attractive theory of the author is that the four main races of our world are going to mix and create a 'fifth universal race, the fruit of all the previous ones and amelioration of everything past' (p 9). The destiny he sees for humanity is a pretty optimistic and brilliant one. However, the process he describes is especially focused on one race, his own. Latin America has to recover his unity and to lead the fusion 'of all peoples ethnically and spiritually' in a new assimilated human kind. He sees LA as an ethnically homogeneous region which sounds like an unusual conclusion. Thus this mission belongs to the Latin civilization which has proven a greater tolerance towards ethnic differences and a tradition of assimilating all peoples into the national construction rather than destroying dominated races. The mixture of races that became a fundamental characteristic of Latin America since the colonization is the example that should lead the creation of a new synthetic race and the reason why this mission has been given to Latin America.
Although he explains that Latin America does not have an aim of racial domination but a universal mission of racial mixture, there is a clear underlying assumption about a Latin superiority. The way he speaks fosters racial hierarchy. Only Latin people have been able to integrate every race (which is easily contestable). All the qualities necessary to the formation of the fifth race are possessed by 'the mestizo people of the Ibero-American continent' (p38). I really felt a constant glorification of his people and its qualities. I personally have trouble with the idea that a global mestizaje has to be led by a single ethnic group; it sounds really contradictory and dangerous to me especially when he starts speaking of selection within the reproduction process.
Apart from that, what really strikes me is the idealistic mysticism that characterises this text. The author sounds like if he was preaching and many allusions are made to religion. Latin America has a 'divine' mission and possess 'a fine aesthetic sensitivity and a profound love of beauty' necessary for the process. Christianity serves as a justification and the text is extremely messianic. One should also point out how much Vasconcelos is influenced by historical determinism. He thinks that History has an aim and that there is 'a law of history'. The problem I have with his speech, although the idea of a universal integrated race is really attractive, is that he is presenting a complete utopia as something inevitable, necessary and dictated by the law of History and divine providence. The first example of historical determinism that comes to my mind is socialism. This theory also predicts an end to History and an historical pre-determined drive. Preaching for something that we consider as a divine mission and an inevitable outcome, especially if the carrier of the change is a racial group in particular, is a dangerous prod to authoritarianism.
Finally he has a very curious way of interpreting History. 'Spanish colonization created mixed races, this signals its character, fixes its responsibility, and defines its future. The English kept on mixing only with the whites and annihilated the natives'. I believe that mixed race relations actually occurred in North America even if obviously the oppression he describes is true. But Spanish colons did not have a better behaviour towards indigenous. Moreover the following independent national construction that was glorifying mixed race identities has carried on raising questions of racial hierarchy and differentiation.
Rethinking Mestizaje is by contrast very academic and referenced. The reflexion presented by Peter Wade is highly complex and interesting. I think that it answers and contradicts some points made by Vasconcelos, but also goes further than that. The author explains that the concept of 'mestizaje' has many different meanings and possible interpretations. Basically, what Vasconcelos forgets is that a process such as mestizaje almost always contains tensions between spaces of homogenisation and differentiation.
Scholars have usually analyzed 'mestizaje' as an official discourse of nation formation, described as an 'all-inclusive ideology of exclusion' which is a very interesting formulation. This is precisely why I tried to say about Vasconcelos' idealist view of Latin American's mixture of races; a lot of people think that nationalist ideology of mixture perpetuated the marginalisation of racial minorities. The author explains the 'dependence of the ideology on its excluded others'. Indeed, ideology reconstructs racial categories supposed to disappear with mestizaje because ‘it is impossible to conceive processes of mixture without recourse to ideas about origins and roots’. One can also distinguish another face of mestizaje which is a 'resistant' one locating 'mestizo America within indigenousness'. I would personally tend to be more convinced by the first analysis focusing on the elite discourse and the use of the concept of mestizaje in order to serve white interests. That is why I criticized the glorification made in the first article about racial mixture in Latin America. I do agree with the author when he says that 'the discourse of national homogenisation includes within itself complementary discourses of differentiation'.
However, his analysis is much more complex and maybe more optimistic as well. He shows how the concept of mestizaje also has a reality in everyday lives. Through different examples he describes how origins combine and shape ‘embodied persons’. Ethnic/racial differences and crossbreeding are experienced by people and constitutive of their identities. According to the author this is what provides a process of inclusion, because people share this ‘sense of shared mixed-ness’. Thus he proves that there is more in the process of mestizaje in Latin America than an underlying exclusion.
Having said that, he does recognize that whiteness remains favoured and that hierarchies of power still exist, ‘which tend to limit the nature of the space blackness and indigenousness can occupy’. I think that this last sentence is a nice answer to the first article; ‘Mestizaje is a space of struggle and contest. It is not a reason for automatic optimism or for Latin Americans to feel benevolent about their societies simply because mestizaje can have inclusive effects’.
I do not know why but posting comments on your blog seems impossible. I don't know if someone succeeded already but you should check if there is any blocking option or something! Thanks
I really had the same difficulties than you while reading these legends my fellow citizen! However, I really like the way you described and analyzed what could be the function of these legends and myths. It is true that we usually recognize to ancient civilizations some knowledge and wisdom we might have lost with our insanely rapid modernization. I would personally say that indigenous people certainly have a lot of things to teach us. Because of that, the moral lesson hidden by these stories has even more a strong impact. It is enough to take the example of Inuit people who actually fight against effects of climate change in their Arctic territories and try to give us advice because they are the first concerned, although they have certainly been one of the most environmentally respectful and less damaging people. I also quite agree when you oppose folk culture and these legends to mass culture. Folk culture is definitely a part of popular culture which appears far more authentic and original. However, these texts have been printed and diffused. These legends have been recently rewritten. We could wonder again if this doesn't undermine their authenticity!
The authors of this week's readings were apparently both committed to Indian social protest and resistance. On the one hand we have Miguel Angel Asturias (1899-1974) who is described everywhere as a giant of Guatemalan Literature. He even won the Nobel Prize. He was very interested in Pre Colombian cultures, an interest that was celebrated when he died because he had been buried under a Mayan Totem. His writings were very tightly related to politics and impregnated of his opinions. Indeed he claimed openly his opposition to the dictatorial regime of Jorge Ubico and lived on exile for many years. He was also a fervent defender of the Indian cause and identity threatened by imperialism. On the other hand, we have Jose Maria Arguedas (1911-1966) who was a Peruvian novelist, poet, and anthropologist. He was originally Mestizo and learned Quechua before learning Spanish. The topic which seems to have obsessed him all his life was the clash between white "civilization" and the indigenous, "traditional" way of life. In this he was part of the Indigenista movement in South American literature and tried to show in his writings the violence of race relations in rural Peru. Being very pessimistic at the end of his career, he has been criticized by new generation for his romanticism when portraying the situation of indians.
Knowing a little bit more about these two writers really helped me to get the aim of their writings. I have to acknowledge that not being native English speaker did not help me to go through Asturias legends, although the Pongo's dream was far easier to understand.
With their own way, both these writers tried to protect Indigenous and Ancient Native cultures of their Latin American countries. Asturias rewrote Mayan mythological stories and his legends are very marked by indigenous beliefs. Arguedas wrote a large part of his novels in Quechua, the Peruvian Indian language. Moreover they both oriented their writings towards social and political contestation. Doing so they also tried to make their fiction looks like a possible and hopeful future. Arguedas’ writings are however far more realistic and explicit than Asturias’ prose impregnated of magic and complex undercurrents. Arguedas clearly hope for the day when Justice would come and destroy the feudal order, punishing the oppressor. By the way I really laughed when reading the fate of the tyrannical Master! Asturias makes allusions to exile, modernity and technological peril, religious fanaticism. We could also assume that the condemnation of Utuquel for his heretic speech or the immensity of the sacrifice done by the nun Clara of the Indians were examples of the Indians’ oppression. I will prevent myself to make any more assumptions about Asturias’s prose because I really need some explanation before being able to fully understand its deep meaning.
However, my final idea is that these readings answer to this week’s title – Popular Culture as Folk Culture – in the sense that they emphasize the importance of ancient, traditional and native cultures undermined by colonizers. We get one more time this idea that indigenous cultures are being threatened and that this is the whole identity of a people which is in danger and might disappear. Here again, popular culture is defined as the culture of an oppressed and authentic people, as it was similarly suggested in our former readings.
As a lot of you already said in your blogs, this text was amazingly long and dense! I am sorry to be late posting my comment but I have to say I really had a hard time this week trying to find time between my mid-terms and my medical appointments, in order to read this 100 pages article! However, although I think there was too much details in their analysis, William and Schelling really dealt with some interesting points and issues.
I would say that the authors tend to present the common perspective about popular culture as the idea that it is an entity in perpetual danger as well as in constant opposition to hegemonic forces. The danger for popular culture has to do with modernity and everything that disrupts and undermines traditions and authenticity. Once again, as it was the case in Eva Peron's text, we have this idea of the people (synonym of popular) systematically in opposition to dominant forces. However, this is not the point of view which is displayed by William and Schelling. Their idea is a far more optimistic analysis of popular culture. According to them, because popular culture always believes itself to be threatened, they have invented each times really efficient ways of resisting, adapting and asserting their identity in new environments in front of new competitors.
Actually, the similarities between this article and what I learned in another class called "Ethnic Relations" really striked me. According to Ericksen "Ethnicity is not a property of a group, but an aspect of a relationship". Relationships, encounters or confrontations of a group with other s is what creates cultural activity and a reinforcement of identity. Indeed, I think that this article really deals with the processes that trigger culture and ethnic vitality and identity politics. People usually hang on to traditionnal identities and to the past in order to overcome the new challenges of the present. Identities assert themselves in opposition to other identities, cultures, ethnicities, civilizations. They often know a revival of energy when they feel threaten and put in competition with others. Thus there is always a great issue of power in regards to ethnic and cultural phenomenons. Culture and identities arouse when they have to compete for controlling the production of cultural symbolism, especially when they have a subordinated position. in the society. I think that what William and Schelling tried to show is that popular culture has actually been stimulated by these processes, fighting for its continuity and adaptation. This natural action of resistance coupled with inevitable exchanges between cultures is actually what brings dynamism into cultural production. The authors seem to favour mobility and interactions rather than fixity and traditionalism regarding to popular culture.
I think we could finally try to separate these different 'faces of popular culture' described in the article which also corresponds to different historical phases. To start, native culture in Latin America has been confronted to European Imperialism and threatened by the assimilation that was expected from native people. While obviously being dominated, native culture would have also found ways of resisting to acculturation, ways of adapting European cultural features to indigenous culture. The authors seem to think that 'culture offers a symbolic universe that helps to transcend subordinate position'. Concerning these societies in Latin America that succeeded in maintaining their native cultures in parallel to the dominant ones, one could extend our reflexion and speak about the current resurgence of ethnicity and ethnic politics in the region. Popular culture has always been really tied to the idea of counter-hegemony. We actually can observe the political strategies of certain Latin American leftist leaders who capitalize on the indigenous oppressed culture and identity in order to symbolize a change.
The article also deals with rural/peasant culture facing modernity, industrialisation and urbanisation. The first reaction would be to predict the disappearance and degradation of popular culture. However the authors seem to think that modernity and new technologies have also played a positive role for the continuation of popular culture. At the beginning of industrialisation, new technologies of communication would have permitted to popularize and standardize both aspects of popular culture and other cultures and created a single common national culture. This process was actually really tied to a deliberate state initiative to 'construct' more or less artificially a nation-state sharing memories, historical myths and culture. Here, popular culture has been appropriated by the national culture in an enterprise of folklorisation, a concept that we kind of find in every national construction. Peasant culture has been used in Mexico as a national folklore, a fact that definitely questions the authenticity of popular culture and others kind of culture in every single nation. Again I would argue that culture is more an issue of social construction than anything else. I do not really agree with the positive side of this process because I really think the new national culture was framed by the social elite of the countries without any considerations about traditions people wanted to keep. At least, in a country as France, people speaking local dialects had been forced to abandon them and this was made in a very coercive way!
Finally I would say that the third aspect of popular culture in a context of resistance would be popular culture or even national culture (seen as popular) against globalisation and transnationalism. Rather than the spread idea of a destructive homogenisation of world's cultures around commercial culture, the authors argue for a more positive interpretation and again emphasize the resistance of popular culture. They do recognize that this new stage is particularly traumatic given that it reopens in Latin American popular memories the shock of the first invasion. Nevertheless, these memories and traditions are precisely what allow the public to resist in the sense that they still have the freedom of interpreting messages diffused by global mass Media. This is what they call the process of resignification which gives the people a margin of control and constitutes their main mean of resistance. They also explain than although industry culture has tried to eradicate popular culture, the latter have learned to use the same tools than its enemy, which means technologies and mass media. This allowed popular rural culture to remain significant and known, and to create alternative Media in order to counter the hegemonic force of mass communication. Thus from pre-capitalist period to late- twentieth century internationalism, native/rural popular culture have always found effective ways to resist. However, as we said in class, this point of view tends to hide the reality of power relationships.
Concerning Eva Perón's text, I would like to highlight three main points. First of all, to define what she calls "the people", "her people", she uses a specific lexical field choosing terms such as "race" of the people, or "blood" of the enemies. This gives us an idea of a bounded community, potentially defined by a racial criterion. More than anything else, the people is defined by opposition to a threatening other, and distinguished from its enemies, which would explain the racial reference. I would personally moderate the meaning of the racial aspects of her discourse in the sense that she also suggests that anyone could become an enemy of the people, implying that belonging to her people is mainly the fact of being committed to its cause and willing to be part of it. Another and more important element is the actual assimilation between the people and the working class (which also means the poor, the oppressed and so on). Her text does give the impression that the whole nation should become part of what is truly the Argentine People; the workers. There is her socialist trend, but she insists on distinguishing her from Marxist radicalism. Her Message is particularly impregnated with the social doctrine of the Church, given her concern for poverty and her will to share her people's pain.
She constantly emphasizes how much she loves her people and advocate for the convincing idea that everything should arise from the people and work for its well-being. She establishes the people as the primary source of power, an idea which constitutes my second point. Her rhetoric allows us to think of a democratic inspiration. She condemns any imperialism and stand up for the sovereignty of nations. Once a nation independent, she claims the importance of putting the people's will at the centre of every political decision. She asks for elections of leaders and accuses oligarchic powers, especially the hegemony of military and religious high circles in Argentina.
This leads us to my third point, her view of fanatism. According to her, fanatism should be living in anyone who embraces the people's cause. She condemns all declared enemies and all those that would be driven by selfish concerns rather than the people's well being. Rather than serving their own privileged interests, religion and the army should be executing the people's order. She completely despises anyone that would be indifferent to the people's future, and would neither be an opponent, nor a defender of the people. To her this question is fundamental! She has a very virulent, passionate, and emotional way of expressing her commitment. Her discourse is clearly radical. She uses strong and violent words. She is also a profound hoper concerning the good fate of her people and she is obviously deeply religious, a fact which is confirmed by Dominguez.
Of course, at the first glance, her text appears as full of good intentions! However it is important to have a critical mind and think about the historical reality of the social and political movement she supported. To me, My Message presents numerous ambiguities and contradictions. She seems to be entirely dedicating herself to her people and her discourse is obviously very populist (people versus elite). Unfortunately the World have often observed that populist leaders also often tend to be demagogue because they use the people's needs to win the power. I think that the distance between 'doing what the people wishes' and 'saying what the people wants to hear' is very thin. For instance, Eva Perón starts a kind of anti military speech or condemns very strongly every enemy of the people. However she also tries not to be too revolutionary in order to insure popular support. She seems to fear the consequences of her attacks against historical institutions of the country such as the army or the clergy. Similarly, she condemns ambition but her writings seem to describe her as an ambitious woman, very confident in the way she gives her life as an example.
All of this is particularly ironic coming from someone who evolved in the highest circles of the Argentine society. She wants to stand by her people but I really doubt she had never been one of them, despite what she said. The last thing that striken me was her deep admiration and unlimited devotion towards Perón. Although she was apparently really influent within the worker’s movement, all her fight and all her convictions were primarily coming from the man she loved and his own doctrine. Actually, it seems that she had the same profound faith in their charismatic leader as anybody else that supported Perónism. There is the huge contradiction of these regimes I try to criticize here. They claim the people’s power against the hegemony of the elite but everything lies on one man’s shoulders. This situation definitely put democracy in danger!
I am glad we had these two articles to compare because the second one is a fantastic denial and critic of Eva’s vision. Although I do share her socialist inclination, the generosity and the promises of her discourse have a blinding effect. Perón have been supported by the majority of the population during a long time, however populism often mask the reality of regimes that usually need a military order and a doctrinal homogeneity to survive. I would not dare to make such hypothesis concerning Perónism however the least we can say is that they was an opposition in Argentina. People such as Borges have known censure and political isolation. With his text he suggests that there was certainy an authoritarian and indoctrinating aspect of the regime. Indeed, Perón has been very controversial and also very harsh towards any kind of opposition. Borges helps us remind the downside of the regime. I am very sceptical towards populist discourses; I have always felt that they were speculating on the people misfortune, promising anything to reach the power. However, it is more the rhetoric than the famous Evita that I tried to criticize. I am sure she really was concerned with her people, however she was also really idealistic.
The main statement of Williams' article relies on the sentence ‘culture is ordinary’. Saying that, the author means that culture is produced, constructed, influenced, transformed and carried by ordinary people. In order to support and explain his idea, he criticizes and analyses two main theoretical trends. He first explains Marxism and the way it describes culture as dominated by upper-classes ruling the capitalist system and their values. Culture would be unavailable to 'ignorant masses'. On the contrary William asserts that culture is a product of these different layers of society and that culture is not only concerned with elite and high education; culture is ordinary. According to him this mistaken interpretation of culture has led Marxism to the idea that culture can be prescribed and predicted, which apparently played a role in the authoritarian drift (prescribed ways of learning, writing and so on). Then he quotes Leavis whose theory was that our good old and traditional culture has been replaced and even undermined by our modern and industrialized state, the only last rampart being education to keep culture alive. This theory is related to the idea of a modern ‘cultural vulgarity’ especially with the new commercial aspect of culture. However (and to make things short), William refuses the link which seems to be often made between this transformation and the so-called 'masses' believed to be responsible for this new bad commercial culture. He thinks this is reversible. He makes a point at the end arguing about the importance of a more liberal and broadly expanded education to avoid the 'polarization' of culture, which also means that culture might be changing through its necessary acceptance of sub-cultures' influences!
This allows us to make a link with Keesing's article through a point that appeared to me as the critical issue of these two articles. Williams ends his article saying that they are no masses to control and that culture is ordinary and driven by the whole society. However, speaking of 'masses', 'bourgeois culture', or capitalism, he does point out the ambivalent relation between power and culture. I agree with him in the sense that one should consider culture as a production of the whole society, however I do think there is also a question of power which might influences a society's culture at certain points of its history, as well as the interpretation of the concept of culture.
Indeed, he thinks that ‘cultural studies’ stressing on ‘the articulation of symbolic systems with class and power’ (such as Marxist or feminist theories) could help anthropology to challenge the reified and essentialist trend it has taken in regard to the concept of culture. Thus it is worth asking if there could be an important role played by dominant groups and powerful social circles in the production of culture and its transmission. William talked about the role of advertising in mass culture which could be seen as pursuing the interests of a capitalist system. Keesing alludes to the construction of European nation-states in the nineteenth century which precisely consisted in the creation of an ‘authentic culture’ by the elite in order to justify the concept of nation. Education was a crucial mean of cultural reproduction and national strengthening. We could also exemplify this peculiar relation between culture and power with the ‘cultural nationalist rhetoric’ of ‘third world elites’ used to trigger decolonisation and independence for these new states. I do think power and hegemony are important variables concerning culture and especially its essentialization. The relation to the other is crucial for the definition of a distinct culture and there is always a process of differentiation from the outsider. Keesing emphasizes on the concept of difference and ‘radical alterity’ and explains that anthropology has been focusing on seeing culture as ‘a bounded universe of shared ideas and customs’. Who defines who is in or out? Who has an interest in doing so? Most of the time political leaders or intellectual elites: the power. Labelling the other as radically different has always been a political tool at the international scale for instance. Advocating for a shared culture allows to hide potential conflicts and contradictions within a society.
That is why I think there is an ambivalent relation between culture and power. Our trend to essentialize cultures plays an important political role and fuels the misleading idea that the world is composed of inherently different cultures or civilizations (see The clash of civilizations – S. Huntington). Even though I do believe there are different cultural traditions and customs, I think it is dangerous to forget that culture is partly (at least) a social construction.
My name is Maite Fernandez. I am a French student in exchange here for one year. I study political and social sciences in France and i am especially interested in sociology and anthropology. Generally speaking I like the Latin American area and i would like to know more about it. I am also learning Spanish.
