The writing of disenchantment: a reading of the forms of dissent in the literary and cultural magazines of the 80s in Villa María (Córdoba, Argentina)

Abstract

In this paper, we aim to recover contributions from the field of studies on magazines, in connection with cultural criticism, to analyze the corpus of independent cultural and literary magazines published in Villa María in the 1980s. During the period of democratic transition – also referred to as the post-dictatorship era – magazines constitute a key space for analyzing the reconstruction of cultural frameworks and the genesis of authorial trajectories, which also attempt to transform the “strong authoritarian pattern” (Patiño, 2007) that had fractured and left its marks on Argentine society. In this sense, cultural criticism provides tools to analyze the modes of aesthetic interpellation, intervention strategies, and forms of dissent that can be read in the publications. The analysis does not intend to be exhaustive, but rather to explore, through a mixed reading (panoramic and symptomatic), the features of the cultural framework during the transition period. Thus, we ask: what are the emerging aesthetic experiences of the time? What aspects of the publications reveal forms of cultural criticism? How are forms of dissent expressed during the period of democratic transition? To conclude, at the end of the decade there was a move towards a second transition, which explains certain writings of disenchantment.