Content area
Full Text
In Escenas de la vida posmoderna (1994), Beatriz Sarlo, an Argentine intellectual and cultural critic, writes urgently about her concerns regarding changes that are occurring in late twentieth century Argentine culture. These changes, which she sees as symptomatic of all Western culture, can be broadly grouped into a preoccupation for the waning roles of art and "Ia cultura letrada," the increasing influence of the mass-mediated, consumist postmodern society, and the deleterious effects these changes have on society (10-11). Furthermore, the author states that "Ia cultura letrada está en crisis en el mundo," caused in large part by the hegemony of the culture of the mass media (122). In a later essay "Los estudios culturales y la crítica literaria en la encrucijada valorativa " (1997), Sarlo asserts that at the beginning of the twentieth century, literature was a crucial part of developing national culture, and literary criticism had an important impact on defining national identity, culture, education, and State policies. Indeed, she claims both literature and literary criticism "debieron ser tomadas en cuenta en el momento en que, desde el estado, se definían los patrones culturales que dibujaban el future del país" (33). Nevertheless, by the late 1970s and early 1980s, there were several changes in the Latin American public sphere, art, and literary criticism that deteriorated the social meaningfulness of literature, and all art: "un ala de la renovación estética fue condenada junto a la vanguardia política revolucionaria. Pero, más allá de la política, también culminó el proceso de reorganización de la dimensión cultural por parte de los mass-media con una hegemonía en ascenso de Io audiovisual. Así llegamos a un umbral que hoy ya hemos traspuesto" (33). Sarlo begins the cultural studies essay with an emphatic and enigmatic statement: "El lugar de la literatura está cambiando" (32). But from what 'place' has literature been dislodged? And why has it been 'displaced'? One can chart these changes and displacements in Escenas de la vida posmoderna where, according to Sarlo, this slipping away from "Ia cultura letrada" in Argentina began with the image of Evita on the tv screen, the first image broadcast in Argentina. Whereas lettered or high culture stands for aesthetic values and the depth of meaning and affect, 'Evita' and other female figures...