Monthly Archives: January 2017

Thoughts on the Rowe/Schelling reading

(N.B. I had an extremely busy week – including an essay I had to hand in for my home uni (Manchester) so my comments and thoughts are only really on the first half of the reading – sorry for it being a couple of hours late too Jon!)

Well firstly let me start by saying what struck me the most on the first page of this: ‘neither the colonial nor republican regime could expunge the memory of an Andean, Aztec, and a Mayan civilisation’. This automatically reveals to me the power of Latin American culture, and the longevity of it.

 

Arguedas suggests that ‘cosmic solitude’ has been the key characteristic of Queeha poetry during the colonial period of occupation – and this is a response to Spanish colonialism. This and other examples from the reading show that more recent Andean culture has been reactionary, and specifically fighting against something. (could this be linked in some form to Peronism?…)

Furthermore, what interested me is how parts of Andean culture have become entirely disconnected from traditional rituals (p59) – especially in terms of the music: for example, he goes on to note how the ‘chicha’ style combines traditional Andean melodic style fused with electric guitar and tropical rhythm. One might mention how this is also common in other types of Latin American music, for example in Mexico, where the narcocorridos movement developed the traditional ‘corrido’.

The discussion of development of musical practice and tradition is then continued on p61 where the notion is posed that updates in technology have created an increased conformity in tonality with Western music. However, I would argue that even though this might be somewhat true, the idea that there is an overlap in musical culture is probably far fetched, simply due to the distinct timbral qualities of Andean music, which are in large part extremely different to those of Western modern music. Yes, there has been a significant amount of fusion between different musical cultures, but there are still clear distinctions to be made – despite the influence of Western music/technology on Andean music.

Sorry for the focus on music but I can’t really help that (being a music student!)…finally, some unanswered questions of mine that I originally kept in the notes part of this but feel that they’re worth including (for discussion purposes!)…

the of Andean culture being the most alternative form of civilisation?

The idea that the past can be used to create an alternative future is very interesting.

Andeans don’t hold similar notions of time and motion that Western civilisation does?

Notion posed on p53 that it is very much a case of ‘their culture processing ours rather than vice versa’ – is this unfair/naive? It might well have been the other way round? And does this initial statement have immediate negative connotations? – ‘it would be wrong to assume that Andean Culture needed Western utopianism in order to create an idea of futurity’?

Reading Response #2

This reading was very different than the first two- longer (obviously) and also analytical of the processes of popular culture and how it came about in its many forms and expressions specifically situated in Latin America. I was excited to read this article to begin making sense of some of the concepts we’ve been tackling in class- what is ‘culture’, what is meant by ‘popular’, by ‘the people’ and finally what is ‘popular culture’. I  haven’t read the entire article yet but what I’ve read so far has been really interesting. Rowe and Shelling address the effects of modernization and capitalism on traditional Andean and Mesoamerican culture and the ways in which these cultures have survived and transformed under these conditions.

Latin America has been a peculiar case in post-colonial times with the advent of modernization and industrialization. While traditional practices and culture in some communities have remained somewhat untouched , in many places there is also an intermingling of the traditional with the modern, the European traditions with the indigenous. There’s an intermingling of cultures which has created unique hybrid forms of cultural expression, in religion, visual art, language, crafts, music, performing arts etc. Rowe and Shelling describe the Andean musical form, chicha, which combines Andean melodic style while using an ‘imported’ stringed instrument as its lead instrument, the electric guitar. The style of music is derived from a pre-Columbian form of music called wayno or wayñu and as the authors point out is one of the most popular forms of music in Peru. This ‘clashing’ of cultures has lead to forms of expression that are attune to the reality of many Latin American people who in many ways live between worlds or inhabit one of their own creation (or both).

One point of discussion that caught my particular interest was the idea of cosmic solitude in Quechua poetry “as a response to the partial destruction of the Andean universe by Spanish colonization.” This lead me to think of one of my favourite novels, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez and magic realism. Magic realism is a literary style that combines the ‘magical’ elements of fantasy and mysticism that surrounds Latin American folklore with real life events, and everyday mundanity. To me, this style of writing, which originated in Latin America, seems like a way to make sense of the disparity between the modern and traditional in Latin America- an attempt to understand and to make understood this position of simultaneously existing in a world of tradition and indigenous culture and a world of modernity, political conflict, capitalism and globalization. I think the cosmic solitude found in Quechua poetry reflects the solitude that an existence in multiple and conflicting realms can create and is also a theme that is reflected upon in magic realism.

Reaction to The Faces of Popular Culture

I will develop in this blog post my reaction to the text The Faces of Popular Culture, by William Rowe and Vivian Schelling.

The text describes exhaustively a large number of elements that the writer attributes to the popular culture of countries such as Mexico, Brasil, Chile, Argentina and those of the Andean region. Oral traditions (like duels of poets), literature (like the Literature of cordel), religion, carnivals, dances (like samba), television (with telenovelas) and sport (with football) are studied.

Though the exhaustiveness of this text allows us to have an idea of concrete examples of popular culture in Latin America, I think The Faces of Popular Culture is also useful in determining the ability of these elements to evolve and the factors of such change. The writers explain that, in a first time, it was a combination of native culture / African slaves’ culture and of the colons’ culture in some sort of equilibrium, with various interpretations sometimes possible at the same time. But regularly, William Rowe and Vivian Schelling elaborate on how urbanization and the rise of capitalist society disturbed the popular culture, in its form and in its goal.

I can develop the example of the folhetos studied in the text. Folhetos are books containing a story written in verse which were created in rural communities, having evolved from a tradition of oral poetry. In the past, they had a cheap, wooden cover and they never aimed at challenging the social order. But within a “modern” capitalistic culture, they are massively printed, with covers reminiscing of comic books, and criticize much more vigorously the conditions of the poor. Therefore, the folhetos are now “popular” because they are the product of a rural tradition and because they address the issues of the living condition of the working class or of the rural populations.

Finally, another point I found interesting was the relation between popular culture and mass culture / the culture industry. At one point, the writers explain there is a disagreement between scholars as to what this link is: are they opposed, are they the same thing, is one of them included in the other? I think Rowe and Schelling believe that mass culture is actually part of popular culture, without being its only form. Even if we find its products have less value compared to more traditional ones, they are consumed by millions and they can evolve to reflect the minds and the demands of the people.

Introduction

Hi,

My name is Keerat Gill. I was born and raised in North India but moved to Vancouver in high school. I attended the University of California, San Diego (located in one of the most breathtakingly beautiful cities!) for two years prior to transferring to McGill University in Montreal. I recently graduated from McGill with a Bachelors of Science in Biology (June 2016). I am now attending UBC as an unclassified student. I’m not Latin American, I don’t even understand the languages, but I find different cultures across the world fascinating! I greatly enjoy Latin American movies and music, and I’m thrilled to learn more about the people and culture of the South.

My goals (outside of academics) for this year include learning to play the piano, learning Spanish and taking visual arts courses at Emily Carr to nurture and hone my artistic skills!

Introduction

Hi,

My name is Keerat Gill. I was born and raised in North India but moved to Vancouver in high school. I attended the University of California, San Diego (located in one of the most breathtakingly beautiful cities!) for two years prior to transferring to McGill University in Montreal. I recently graduated from McGill with a Bachelors of Science in Biology (June 2016). I am now attending UBC as an unclassified student. I’m not Latin American, I don’t even understand the languages, but I find different cultures across the world fascinating! I greatly enjoy Latin American movies and music, and I’m thrilled to learn more about the people and culture of the South.

My goals (outside of academics) for this year include learning to play the piano, learning Spanish and taking visual arts courses at Emily Carr to nurture and hone my artistic skills!

Spectacle and Suspicion:

Spectacle and Suspicion:

A Brief Understanding of Evita Peróns My Message

&  Jorge Borges’s A Celebration of the Monster  

Evita Perón

Historical Context:

Wife of the Argentine President Juan Perón, served as the First Lady from 1946 until her early death in 1952.

  • Champion of labor rights
  • Women’s suffrage
  • Widely admired by the masses (not without critics)
  • My Message

 “Recently, in the hours of my illness, I have thought often of this message from heart. Perhaps because I didn’t manage to say all that I feel and think in My Mission in Life, I Have to write again…”

Perón’s My Message, reads as a sort of final provocation and political endorsement of her husband. She proclaims that she wants to, “incite the people” and “to ignite them with the fire of [her] heart”. (This brings into the forefront the “masses” Borges is critical or suspicious of). She speaks passionately from the perspective as someone who came from poverty but alludes to the contradictions of the government systems she participates in.  “Everything that the cliques of men with whom I happened to live – as the wife of an extraordinary president—wanted to offer me, I accepted, with a smile, using my face to guard my heart. But smiling, in the middle of the face, I learned the truth of all their lies.” She speaks openly about the support of her husband while describing the misgivings the “cliques of men,” which leaves readers with a strange set of contradictions. The duality of her writing continues. “I can now say how much they lie, all that they deceive, everything they pretend, because I know men in their greatness and in their misery.”

Her choice of words throughout the piece as particularly interesting as it works to both include herself amongst the masses and somehow distances and contradicts herself. In her conclusion she offers an end to class struggle: To avoid a class struggle, I do not believe, as the Communists do, that we must kill all the oligarchs of the world. No.

The path is to convert all the oligarchs of the world and turn them into the people of our class and our race. How? By making them work in order to join the only class that Perón recognizes: the class of men who work.

However, she concludes: “Every exploiter is the people’s enemy. Justice demands that they be destroyed. “Her rhetoric here works simultaneously to promote the politics of her husband, while offering inconsistencies. Despite this, My Message is clearly an impassioned, nuanced, and informed by the historical contexts and conflicts. She clearly is in favour of the the power and strength of the masses. She states that “The Nation belongs to the people.”

A Celebration of the Monster

Jorge Borges

 Historical Context:Borges was an Argentine writer who laid the foundation for magical realist literature. He was also a critic of Juan Perón and his political ideologies. Laura Podalsky author of Specular City: Culture, Consumption, and Space in Buenos Aires, helped me better understand the relationship and history between these two texts: “In the late 1940s and early 1950s, authors likes Jorge Luis Borges, Adolfo Bioy Casares, and Julio Cortazar, all penned short stories critiquing ‘unseemly’ public displays by the masses” (39). “One of the harshest anti-Peronist tracts was Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casare’s “La fiesta del monstruo”, which denounce the Peronists for their grotesque misappropriation of the capital city (40).

 

For the People or the Monster?

I found both of the readings genuinely interesting and particularly enjoyed viewing the same phenomenon from opposite perspectives.

I was particularly drawn to the personal account of Evita Peron, which was emotionally charged and highly enigmatic. Her wildly dramatic eulogy to her former husband was so moving it reminded me of religious writings or a heroic epic or something (probably because she viewed him as a demigod.) These sort of grand proclamations about the inherit greatness and incorruptibility of any mortal (especially a  political figure) generally come off as very artificial or feigned; but Evita’s passions (however misplaced they may be) were  moving and  surprisingly highly convincing . It is not hard to see that she is manifesting (or reinforcing) a cult of personality but the fervor with which she describes her own adoration of his character feels highly personal and so all the more believable.   That being said, she (consciously?) contradicts herself throughout all of her monologues in simultaneously glorifying and mistrusting and condemning her “people.” It seems to me that the  “people”  she refers to are Peron and those who follow him fanatically. I believe source of both her love and “venom of hatred” (which overtake her writing at many points) to be her fanaticism toward Peron, which she describes instead as a deep suffering for her “people” (by which I assume she means Argentinians.) Her boundless adoration for Peron shows the direct result of his artificial charisma being praised as a direct reflection or representation of his “people” while her closeness to the subject prove just how manipulative and calculated Peron’s public and private personas are.