The Opaque Experience: Literature and Disenchantment (Iberian and Latin American Studies: The Arts, Literature, and Identity)

210 Pages·2018·2.019 MB·English

by  Florencia Garramuno

I B E R I A N A N D L AT I N A M E R I C A N S T U D I E S
T H E A R T S , L I T E R A T U R E A N D I D E N T I T Y
The Opaque Experience is a thorough investigation of the changes in
aesthetics that occurred in Argentina and Brazil during the 1970s and
1980s. It analyses a slow transformation of the status of the literary,
which has become increasingly manifest in writing practices against the F
l
o
backdrop of a wider aesthetic transformation that strongly questioned r
e
traditional conventions. Through readings of works by Silviano Santiago, n
c
Juan José Saer, Clarice Lispector, Néstor Perlongher and Ana Cristina Cesar ia
–among others – in relation to the works of artists such as Hélio Oiticica G
a
and Lygia Clark, the book seeks to understand the evolution of the notion rr
a
of art. Its central argument is that artistic works of the period traverse an m
u
experiential drive that transcends artistic form. Special importance is
n
given to historical context: when the frontiers between public and private o
are demolished by the authoritarian state; when “bare life” becomes •
the political category par excellence; and when art positions itself in an
T
h
“expanded field”. Exposed to the face of the world, these art forms combine
e
different and destabilizing logics that reveal a vulnerability of the subject, O
p
and of experience, that is not in harmony with the notion of autonomous a
q
subjects or work. It is not just a matter of a transformation of sensibilities, u
e The Opaque
but rather a transformation of the meaning of art in contemporary society. E
x
p
e
r
i Experience
e
n
c
e
Florencia Garramuño is Director of the Humanities Department at
Universidad de San Andrés in Argentina. She holds a PhD in Romance
Languages and Literatures from Princeton University, and degrees Literature and Disenchantment
in Literature from Universidad de Buenos Aires. She received a John
Guggenheim Fellowship in 1998.
Florencia Garramuño
Peter Lang
www.peterlang.com
I B E R I A N A N D L AT I N A M E R I C A N S T U D I E S
T H E A R T S , L I T E R A T U R E A N D I D E N T I T Y
The Opaque Experience is a thorough investigation of the changes in
aesthetics that occurred in Argentina and Brazil during the 1970s and
1980s. It analyses a slow transformation of the status of the literary,
which has become increasingly manifest in writing practices against the F
l
o
backdrop of a wider aesthetic transformation that strongly questioned r
e
traditional conventions. Through readings of works by Silviano Santiago, n
c
Juan José Saer, Clarice Lispector, Néstor Perlongher and Ana Cristina Cesar ia
–among others – in relation to the works of artists such as Hélio Oiticica G
a
and Lygia Clark, the book seeks to understand the evolution of the notion rr
a
of art. Its central argument is that artistic works of the period traverse an m
u
experiential drive that transcends artistic form. Special importance is
n
given to historical context: when the frontiers between public and private o
are demolished by the authoritarian state; when “bare life” becomes •
the political category par excellence; and when art positions itself in an
T
h
“expanded field”. Exposed to the face of the world, these art forms combine
e
different and destabilizing logics that reveal a vulnerability of the subject, O
p
and of experience, that is not in harmony with the notion of autonomous a
q
subjects or work. It is not just a matter of a transformation of sensibilities, u
e The Opaque
but rather a transformation of the meaning of art in contemporary society. E
x
p
e
r
i Experience
e
n
c
e
Florencia Garramuño is Director of the Humanities Department at
Universidad de San Andrés in Argentina. She holds a PhD in Romance
Languages and Literatures from Princeton University, and degrees Literature and Disenchantment
in Literature from Universidad de Buenos Aires. She received a John
Guggenheim Fellowship in 1998.
Florencia Garramuño
Peter Lang
www.peterlang.com
I B E R I A N A N D L AT I N A M E R I C A N S T U D I E S
T H E A R T S , L I T E R A T U R E A N D I D E N T I T Y
The Opaque Experience:
Literature and Disenchantment
The Opaque Experience is a thorough investigation of the changes in
aesthetics that occurred in Argentina and Brazil during the 1970s and
1980s. It analyses a slow transformation of the status of the literary,
which has become increasingly manifest in writing practices against the F
l
o
backdrop of a wider aesthetic transformation that strongly questioned r
e
traditional conventions. Through readings of works by Silviano Santiago, n
c
Juan José Saer, Clarice Lispector, Néstor Perlongher and Ana Cristina Cesar ia
–among others – in relation to the works of artists such as Hélio Oiticica G
a
and Lygia Clark, the book seeks to understand the evolution of the notion rr
a
of art. Its central argument is that artistic works of the period traverse an m
u
experiential drive that transcends artistic form. Special importance is
n
given to historical context: when the frontiers between public and private o
are demolished by the authoritarian state; when “bare life” becomes •
the political category par excellence; and when art positions itself in an
T
h
“expanded field”. Exposed to the face of the world, these art forms combine
e
different and destabilizing logics that reveal a vulnerability of the subject, O
p
and of experience, that is not in harmony with the notion of autonomous a
q
subjects or work. It is not just a matter of a transformation of sensibilities, u
e The Opaque
but rather a transformation of the meaning of art in contemporary society. E
x
p
e
r
i Experience
e
n
c
e
Florencia Garramuño is Director of the Humanities Department at
Universidad de San Andrés in Argentina. She holds a PhD in Romance
Languages and Literatures from Princeton University, and degrees Literature and Disenchantment
in Literature from Universidad de Buenos Aires. She received a John
Guggenheim Fellowship in 1998.
Florencia Garramuño
Peter Lang
www.peterlang.com
Iberian and Latin American Studies:
The Arts, Literature and Identity
8
Volume
Edited by Professor Francis Lough
Department of Modern Languages, University of Birmingham
PETER LANG
Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • New York • Wien
Florencia Garramuño
The Opaque Experience:
Literature and
Disenchantment
PETER LANG
Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • New York • Wien
Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche National-
bibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet
at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Florencia Garramuño, author.
Title: The Opaque Experience: Literature and Disenchantment
Description: Oxford ; New York : Peter Lang, [2018] | Series: Iberian and
Latin American Studies : the Arts, Literature and Identity ; Volume 8 |
Cover image: Paisaje (2010), ink on paper, 145 cm x 145 cm,
by Juan Pablo Fernández Bravo
issn 1662-1794
isbn 978-1-78707-366-1 (print) • isbn 978-1-78874-668-7 (ePDF)
isbn 978-1-78874-669-4 (ePub) • isbn 978-1-78874-670-0 (mobi)
© Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2018
Hochfeldstrasse 32, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland
[email protected], www.peterlang.com, www.peterlang.net
All rights reserved.
All parts of this publication are protected by copyright.
Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the
permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution.
This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming,
and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems.
This publication has been peer reviewed.
Contents ..........................................................................................v
Preface ......................................................................................... vii
Chapter 1 The Remains of the Real .............................................. 1
Chapter 2 A Context: The Disenchantment of the Modern ......... 29
Chapter 3 Culture as Margin ....................................................... 47
Chapter 4 The Narrative of Experience ...................................... 65
Chapter 5 Poetry, Life and History ........................................... 113
Contents
Chapter 6 Departures from Autonomy ...................................... 179
Index ......................................................................................... 197
Acknowledgements
Preface vii
Chapter 1
The Remains of the Real 1
Chapter 2
A Context: The Disenchantment of the Modern 29
Chapter 3
Culture as Margin 47
Chapter 4
The Narrative of Experience 65
Chapter 5
Poetry, Life and History 113
Chapter 6
Departures from Autonomy 179
Index 197

Preface
Preface
Preface
“As for writing, a live puppy is worth more”: this stark sentence by Brazilian
writer Clarice Lispector illustrates a transformation in the status of litera-
ture and art that became increasingly manifest in Brazil and Argentina
during the 1970s and 1980s. The violent authoritarian dictatorships that
stormed the two countries during those decades voided modernization of all
liberating and progressive illusions, leading artistic and cultural producers
to contest modernist notions of art, transgressing limits and questioning
aesthetics conventions.
The book reconstructs artists’ and writers’ positions against the back-
drop of the disenchantment with conventional forms of art and critique
through art. The transgression of boundaries, the demand for bodily par-
ticipation, the transformation of the spectator into a participant, were
all strategies that dissolved the separation between audience and artist,
transforming the relationship between culture and politics.
In particular, I examine a select corpus of texts from the 1970s and
1980s that offer invaluable insights on a new concept of experience. Artistic
works of the period are traversed by an experiential drive that exceeds artis-
tic form. Insisting obsessively on coming close to experience, experience
never assumes the form of knowledge; rather, it is conceived as the space of
ignorance and fantasy. By analyzing works by Silviano Santiago, Juan José
Saer, Clarice Lispector, Ana Cristina César, and Nestor Perlongher, among
others, the book analyzes the blossoming of subjectivity, the emergence of
marginal poetry, the abundance of hybrid forms and of amphibious texts
–within the gray area between reality and fiction.
When the frontiers between the public and private are demolished
by the authoritarian state, when bare life becomes the political category
par excellence, art seems to assume the indifferentiation of social space by
positing itself in an ‘expanded field’. In their openness and in their vul-
nerability in the face of the world, this type of art and writing combines
different and destabilizing logics that expose a vulnerability of the subject
viii Preface
and of experience that could never be matched to the notion of an autono-
mous subject or work. A strong challenge to the category of the work as
an autonomous form distanced from the real can be read in all these prac-
tices. Replaced by an idea of the work as an archive of the exterior whose
remains do not cast light but are the tenuous emanations of an equivocal
luminosity, a new notion of art emerges out of all these challenges. Art,
deprived of its aura of redemption and transformation, entered into a
conflict with politics.
Through readings of works by Silviano Santiago, Juan José Saer, Clarice
Lispector, Néstor Perlongher, Ana Cristina Cesar, among others, in relation
to the works of artists, such as Hélio Oiticica or Lygia Clark, and different
cultural changes, the book seeks to understand the larger transformation
in the notion of art and its strategies of resistance. More than just a trans-
formation in sensibilities, it is my contention that these works point to a
transformation in the meaning of art in contemporary society.