Capitalism and its Discontents: Power and Accumulation in Latin-American Culture

246 Pages·2017·1.58 MB·English

by  John Kraniauskas

IBERIAN AND LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES
Capitalism and its Discontents
Series Editors
Professor David George (Swansea University) Professor Paul Garner (University
of Leeds)
Editorial Board
David Frier (University of Leeds) Lisa Shaw (University of Liverpool) Gareth
Walters (Swansea University) Rob Stone (University of Birmingham) David
Gies (University of Virginia) Catherine Davies (University of London) Richard
Cleminson (University of Leeds) Duncan Wheeler (University of Leeds) Jo
Labanyi (New York University)
Roger Bartra (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México)
Other titles in the series
Catalan Cartoons: A Cultural and Political History Rhiannon McGlade
Revolutionaries, Rebels and Robbers: The Golden Age of Banditry in Mexico,
Latin America and the Chicano American southwest, 1850–1950
Pascale Baker Teresa Margolles and the Aesthetics of Death Julia Banwell
Galicia, A Sentimental Nation
Helena Miguelez-Carballeira The Brazilian Road Movie
Sara Brandellero The Spanish Civil War
Anindya Raychaudhuri The Mexican Transition: Politics, Culture and
Democracy in the Twenty-first Century Roger Bartra
Adolfo Bioy Casares: Borges, Fiction and Art Karl Posso
The Spanish Golden Age Sonnet
John Rutherford
IBERIAN AND LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES
Capitalism and its Discontents
Power and Accumulation in Latin American
Culture
JOHN KRANIAUSKAS
© John Kraniauskas, 2017
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying
or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other
use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner. Applications for the
copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the
University of Wales Press, 10 Columbus Walk, Brigantine Place, Cardiff CF10 4UP.
www.uwp.co.uk
British Library CIP Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-
1-78316-954-2
eISBN 978-1-78316-956-6
The right of John Kraniauskas to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with
sections 77 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Cover image: Día de los Muertos, Ocotepec town cemetery, Morelos. © Carmen Fracchia.
To Carol and Harry
Contents
Acknowledgements
Prologue by Roger Bartra
Introduction
PART I: WALTER BENJAMIN AND/IN LATIN AMERICA
Chapter 1: Beware Mexican Ruins! One-Way Street and the Colonial
Unconscious
Chapter 2: Laughing at ‘Americanism’: Benjamin, Mariátegui, Chaplin
Chapter 3: A Small Andean History of Photography: Yawar fiesta
PART II: THE ‘MALDOBLESTAR’ OF LITERATURE
Chapter 4: The Politics of El Señor Presidente: Notes on Textual
‘Maldoblestar’
Chapter 5: From Ideology to Culture: Subalternization and Montage (Yo el
Supremo’s History)
Chapter 6: Return, Melancholy and the Crisis of the Future: El fiscal by
Augusto Roa Bastos
Chapter 7: The State is a Monkey: El apando by José Revueltas
Chapter 8: Porno-Revolution: El fiord and the Eva-Peronist State
Chapter 9: Critical Closeness: the Chronicle-Essays of Carlos Monsiváis
Chapter 10: Noir into History: James Ellroy’s Blood’s A Rover
PART III: FILM AND ACCUMULATION
Chapter 11: Cronos and the Political Economy of Vampirism: Notes on a
Historical Constellation
Chapter 12: Amores perros and the Monetarization of Art
Chapter 13: Elasticity of Demand: Reflections on The Wire
CONCLUSION
Chapter 14: To Govern is to Re-populate: On Neoliberal ‘Primitive’
Accumulation (A Reading of Rodolfo Walsh’s ‘Carta abierta de un
escritor a la Junta Militar’)
Notes
Bibliography
Series Editors’ Foreword
Over recent decades the traditional ‘languages and literatures’ model in Spanish
departments in universities in the United Kingdom has been superseded by a
contextual, interdisciplinary and ‘area studies’ approach to the study of the
culture, history, society and politics of the Hispanic and Lusophone worlds –
categories that extend far beyond the confines of the Iberian Peninsula, not only
in Latin America but also to Spanish-speaking and Lusophone Africa.
In response to these dynamic trends in research priorities and curriculum
development, this series is designed to present both disciplinary and
interdisciplinary research within the general field of Iberian and Latin American
Studies, particularly studies that explore all aspects of Cultural Production (inter
alia literature, film, music, dance, sport) in Spanish, Portuguese, Basque,
Catalan, Galician and indigenous languages of Latin America. The series also
aims to publish research in the History and Politics of the Hispanic and
Lusophone worlds, at the level of both the region and the nation-state, as well as
on Cultural Studies that explore the shifting terrains of gender, sexual, racial and
postcolonial identities in those same regions.
Acknowledgements
To begin with, I would like to thank Roger Bartra and Josefina Alcázar for
suggesting the idea for this book, originally published in Mexico in 2012 with
the title Políticas literarias: poder y acumulación en la literature y el cine
latinoamericanos. Over the years I have benefitted greatly from the intellectual
support and friendship of many colleagues in the UK, Europe and the Americas.
I would especially like to thank Gerry Martin, Alberto Moreiras, Gareth
Williams, Julio Ramos, Josefina Ludmer, Danny James, Margo Glanz, Brett
Levisnon, Patrick Dove, William Rowe, Catherine Boyle, Jon Beasley-Murray,
Jean Franco, Bruno Bosteels, Nelly Richard, Jens Andermann, Dan Balderston,
Mpalive Msiska, John Beverley, Mabel Moraña, Guillermo Zermeño, Carmen
Fracchia, Gabriela Nouzeilles, Tim Girven, Luis Trindade, Herman Herlinghaus,
Loraine Leu, Zoltan Biedermann, Horacio Legrás, Adriana Johnson, Sergio
Villalobos, Willy Thayer and the late Carlos Monsiváis and David Viñas.
Four people have accompanied me closely in the thinking through and
writing of this book, and I would like to thank them especially: Carol Watts,
Philip Derbyshire, Harry Kraniauskas and Peter Osborne.
Versions of the chapters of this book were first published in the following
publications:
‘Beware Mexican Ruins!’, ‘One-Way Street’ and the Colonial Unconscious’, in Andrew Benjamin and
Peter Osborne (eds), Walter Benjamin’s Philosophy: Destruction and Experience, Warwick Studies in
European Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1994).
‘Mariátegui, Benjamin, Chaplin’, in Mabel Moraña and Hermann Herlinghaus (eds), Fronteras de la
modernidad en América Latina (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003).
‘A Short Andean History of Photography: Yawar fiesta’, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 21, 3
(2012).
‘Para una lectura política de El Señor Presidente: notas sobre el “maldoblestar” cultural’, in Miguel Angel
Asturias, El Señor Presidente, ed. Gerald Martin (Nanterre: Archivos, 2001).
‘De la ideología a la cultura: subalternización y montaje. Yo el Supremo como libro de historia’, Historia y
Grafía, 12 (1999).
‘Retorno, melancolía y crisis de futuro: El fiscal de Augusto Roa Bastos’, in Josefina Ludmer (ed.), Las
culturas de fin de siglo en América Latina (Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo Editora, 1994).