Everyday life in the McOndo World: consumption and politics in Claudia Piñeiro's "Las viudas de los jueves"
2012; CIESPAL; Volume: 41; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2327-4247
Autores Tópico(s)Comparative Literary Analysis and Criticism
ResumoMaeondo and McOndo In 1995, when editors Alberto Fuguet and Sergio Gomez released their short-story collection McOndo, they affirmed that one of main questions that brought book into being was el gran tema de la identidad latinoamericana (?quienes somos?) [que] parecio dejar paso al tema de la identidad personal (?quien soy?) (13). In order to find answers, they started by questioning image of Latin America emphasized by so-called Boom writers that preceded them, represented by Macondo village of Garcia Marquez's Cien anos de soledad (first published in 1967), where exotic people living in middle of jungle can fly. Instead, they advocated a view of Latin America as McOndo land, a space which is not only populated by the indigenous, folkloric or leftist, but also with Macintoshes, McDonald's, condos, cable TV, malls and Ricky Martin. A Latin America inhabited by individuals immersed in a world of mass culture and consumerism, but who apparently see nothing wrong with it, had a rather negative reception by some critics, such as Diana Palaversich, to whom McOndo writers, mas que como hijos rebeldes y desencantados de Garcia Marquez, deben ser vistos como hijos obedientes del neoliberalismo (70). The reception of their work has encountered much controversy, raising suspicion that these writers have sold out to capitalism and that their stories portray characters who, instead of rejecting mass culture, incorporate it anal pursue it; instead of rebelling against it, they do not see anything wrong with it. In contrast, critics such as Ana Maria Amar Sanchez argue that this literature's approach to mass culture is culmination of a literary tradition that initially incorporated low, maintaining an ironic distance from it. What makes McOndo literary expression different is that it exhibits, rather than uses mass culture. Their politicized position, according to her, consists of this very permission for mass culture to be depicted not as tension or difference, but as primary mode of access to (217). Fifteen years after McOndo, writers involved in project have turned to their own projects and have reflected about their initial visceral reaction to Garcia Marquez and their position in Latin American literary discourse. Some of same issues dealt with in McOndo, however, remain relevant not only for those writers who have explicitly identified themselves with this aesthetic, but also for other Latin American writers, such as Argentine Claudia Pineiro. One of issues in question addressed in these novels is presence of mass culture as perspective through which upper-middle-class characters primarily experience everyday life. This is case of Pineiro's Las viudas de los jueves (2005). I will turn to this novel in order to pursue following issues in this article: (1) to explore novel's assessment of mass culture in context of a post-McOndo Latin American literature, determining whether or not Las viudas proposes a critique of everyday life, in sense that French philosopher Henri Lefebvre proposed in Critique of Everyday Life (2002); (2) to investigate which possibilities of political engagement with and through mass culture, if any, novel suggests for contemporary Latin American literature; and (3) to inquire what novel's approach to mass culture and everyday life tells us about role of literature as a potential agent of change today. I argue that novel presents a critique of everyday life grounded in questioning of certain assumptions about mass culture's role in present phase of capitalism. These assumptions are challenged specifically in Pineiro's approach to mass culture's presence in everyday life of Argentine economic crisis of turn of century. The author's questioning, in turn, points to how reframing of opposition between grand literature and mass culture, under conditions of production marked by power of publishing market, may contribute to literature's political engagement today. …
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