Cultural Agency in the Americas , livre ebook
393
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English
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2006
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393
pages
English
Ebooks
2006
Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne En savoir plus
Publié par
Date de parution
19 janvier 2006
EAN13
9780822387480
Langue
English
Poids de l'ouvrage
1 Mo
"Cultural agency" refers to a range of creative activities that contribute to society, including pedagogy, research, activism, and the arts. Focusing on the connections between creativity and social change in the Americas, this collection encourages scholars to become cultural agents by reflecting on exemplary cases and thereby making them available as inspirations for more constructive theory and more innovative practice. Creativity supports democracy because artistic, administrative, and interpretive experiments need margins of freedom that defy monolithic or authoritarian regimes. The ingenious ways in which people pry open dead-ends of even apparently intractable structures suggest that cultural studies as we know it has too often gotten stuck in critique. Intellectual responsibility can get beyond denunciation by acknowledging and nurturing the resourcefulness of common and uncommon agents.Based in North and South America, scholars from fields including anthropology, performance studies, history, literature, and communications studies explore specific variations of cultural agency across Latin America. Contributors reflect, for example, on the paradoxical programming and reception of a state-controlled Cuban radio station that connects listeners at home and abroad; on the intricacies of indigenous protests in Brazil; and the formulation of cultural policies in cosmopolitan Mexico City. One contributor notes that trauma theory targets individual victims when it should address collective memory as it is worked through in performance and ritual; another examines how Mapuche leaders in Argentina perceived the pitfalls of ethnic essentialism and developed new ways to intervene in local government. Whether suggesting modes of cultural agency, tracking exemplary instances of it, or cautioning against potential missteps, the essays in this book encourage attentiveness to, and the multiplication of, the many extraordinary instantiations of cultural resourcefulness and creativity throughout Latin America and beyond.Contributors. Arturo Arias, Claudia Briones, Nestor Garcia Canclini, Denise Corte, Juan Carlos Godenzzi, Charles R. Hale, Ariana Hernandez-Reguant, Claudio Lomnitz, Jesus Martin Barbero, J. Lorand Matory, Rosamel Millaman, Diane M. Nelson, Mary Louise Pratt, Alcida Rita Ramos, Doris Sommer, Diana Taylor, Santiago Villaveces
Voir
Publié par
Date de parution
19 janvier 2006
EAN13
9780822387480
Langue
English
Poids de l'ouvrage
1 Mo
Cultural Agency in the Americas
Cultural Agency in the Americas
d o r i s s o m m e r , e d i t o r
Duke University Press DurhamandLondon 2006
∫2006 Duke University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper$
Designed by Erin Kirk New Typeset in Ehrhardt and Frutiger by Keystone Typesetting, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.
this book was organized by the social science research council with funds provided by the ford foundation.
diana taylor’s chapter was published previously inthe archive and the repertoire(duke, 2003).
Contents
Introduction: Wiggle Room 1 d o r i s s o m m e r
1. Media29
InterveningfromandthroughResearch Practice: Meditations on the Cuzco Workshop 31 j e s ú s m a r t í n b a r b e r o
Between Technology and Culture: Communication and Modernity in Latin America 37 j e s ú s m a r t í n b a r b e r o
dnaof Performance 52 d i a n a t a y l o r
A City that Improvises Its Globalization 82 n é s t o r g a r c í a c a n c l i n i
2. Maneuvers91
The Cultural Agency of Wounded Bodies Politic: Ethnicity and Gender as Prosthetic Support in Postwar Guatemala 93 d i a n e m . n e l s o n
Tradition, Transnationalism, and Gender in the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé 121 j . l o r a n d m a t o r y
The Discourses of Diversity: Language, Ethnicity, and Interculturality in Latin America 146 j u a n c a r l o s g o d e n z z i
Conspiracy on the Sidelines: How the Maya Won the War 167 a r t u r o a r i a s
Radio Taino and the Cuban Quest forIdtien...qéu? a r i a n a h e r n á n d e z - r e g u a n t
178
Olodum’s Transcultural Spaces: Community and Di√erence in Afro-Brazilian Contemporary Performance 203 d e n i s e c o r t e
Political Construction and Cultural Instrumentalities of Indigenism in Brazil, with Echoes from Latin America 229 a l c i d a r i t a r a m o s
Questioning State Geographies of Inclusion in Argentina: The Cultural Politics of Organizations with Mapuche Leadership and Philosophy 248 c l a u d i a b r i o n e s
3. Cautions279
Cultural Agency and Political Struggle in the Era of the IndioPermitido281 c h a r l e s r . h a l e a n d r o s a m e l m i l l a m á n
The Crossroads of Faith: Heroism and Melancholia in the Colombian ‘‘Violentologists’’ (1980–2000) 305 s a n t i a g o v i l l a v e c e s - i z q u i e r d o
Afterword: A Fax, TwoMoles, a Consul, and a Judge 326 m a r y l o u i s e p r a t t
Afterword: Spread It Around! 334 c l a u d i o l o m n i t z
References 341
Contributors 371
Index 375
Introduction: Wiggle Room
d o r i s s o m m e r
Culture is the area in which humanist values are created and established. . . . That is why we interpret it in the broadest possible way to include everything from cus-toms and traditions of distinct sectors that make up Chilean society to the most developed forms of creative and artistic expression: from mass entertainment and recreation to the most specialized manifestations of art. . . . In culture thus conceived tradition lives alongside novelty, historical memory alongside utopia, what we have been and what we can be. . . . Culture is, therefore, a dimension of life that involves all the inhabitants of the country, that which confers a sense of belonging, or a project, of community and nation, and that which spiritually binds them all with the rest of humanity.—Concertación de partidos por la democracia, ‘‘Programa de gobierno’’LoipÉaacoDocumentosdiar(Santiago, 1989)
Some years ago, Bogotá, Colombia, was the most dangerous city in Latin America, if you believed the U.S. State Department advisory not to go there. At airports, o≈cial warnings singled out Lagos, Nigeria, and Bogotá as places too troubled to tra≈c in tourism. On this count, Bogotanos them-selves didn’t doubt the North American advice to keep a safe distance from their own city. Many had lost confidence altogether, and those who were not emigrating tended to live very sheltered, private lives. The situation seemed hopeless, given the general level of corruption that could turn any invest-ment against itself. More money for economic recovery might deepen the pockets of drug dealers; more armed police would increase the number of guns and the level of violence. What intervention could possibly make sense in this stagnant and volatile situation? In 1995, the newly elected mayor of Bogotá, Antanas Mockus, proposed a bold program of cultural agency, a term this book proposes to name and recognize as a range of social contributions through creative practices. Sim-ply stated, Mockus put culture to work. If civic spirit had worn so thin it would not sustain a body politic that could take fiscal cures or demand
1
security, the first prescription was to revive the spirit through art, antics, and accountability. First a mathematician and philosopher, and then a public servant, the mayor made theory yield practices that would themselves yield to more reflection. He sidestepped conventional sites of struggle that stayed stuck between fear and opportunism. Like Antonio Gramsci, Mockus re-fused to wait for better conditions and instead promoted a ‘‘passive revolu-tion’’ through the power of culture. Gramsci’s response to unbeatable odds makes him something of a patron saint of cultural agency. Using culture as a wedge to open up the civil conditions necessary for decent politics and economic growth, workers would get beyond economistic deadlocks and move toward the goal of emancipation. For Mayor Mockus civility was goal enough, and getting there became an experiment that mixed fun with function (imagine combining Friedrich Schiller’s playful education for self-made subjects with Immanuel Kant’s appeal to intersubjective judgment inspired by aesthetics). For example, the municipality’s inspired sta√ hired pantomime artists to make spectacles of good and bad performances at tra≈c lights. Skeptical subjects suddenly be-came an interactive public of spectators. The mayor’s team printed thousands of laminated cards with a green thumbs-up on one side and red thumbs-down on the other, for drivers to flash in judgment of the safe (or reckless) actions of their fellow drivers. Vaccination against violence was one citywide perfor-mance therapy against the ‘‘epidemic’’ that had become a cliché for aggres-sion. Arts programs in schools, rock concerts in parks, a monthlyciclovíathat closed streets to tra≈c and opened them to bikers and walkers have, among other civic games and alongside rigorous educational programs, helped to revive the metropolis. Citizens now pay their taxes, often over and above what they owe in order to support a library, park, or senior program. Between 1993 and 2003, the end of Mockus’s second term, one stunning indicator of change was the rate of homicide, which fell by 65 percent. Today, Bogotá feels the strain of migrants who flee zones of conflict for this newfound haven. As they over-load the city’s systems, planners suggest that migration might slow down if cultural agency were stepped up in still-troubled areas of the country. Throughout the Americas, culture is a vehicle for agency. Photographers are teaching visual literacy and whetting young appetites for other arts and sciences. Nancy McGirr began with a few children from the city dump in
2Doris Sommer
Guatemala City and now counts one of them as a colleague with a college degree. João Kulcsar trains art students as facilitators of photography in the favelasof São Paolo. In theater, improvisations foster collaboration and find dramatic outlets for frustration while rehearsing roles that rise to daunt-ing challenges. Without the Teatro campesino, reports a labor organizer who worked with César Chávez, there would be no United Farm Workers’ ∞ Union. Perhaps the most far-reaching case is Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed. The multiplier e√ect of his lessons in listening to disadvantaged social actors and encouraging them to take the stage resulted, for example, in his two-term election to the city council of Rio de Janeiro. There, he pro-moted legislation suggested by audiences and actors in marginal neighbor-hoods; thirteen laws passed, and several were adopted at the national level. Alongside these artist-activists are many others. Musicians, dancers, poets, and painters past and present do not yet figure as subjects of academic studies perhaps, but they may well inspire the kind of creative reflection that amounts to a civic contribution. In Bogotá, no one asks whatcycluutarlganemeans. The concept resonates with a variety of public practices that link creativity with social contribu-tions. But elsewhere the term can beg definition. Maybe this shows a lack of activity, but I suspect that activity is almost everywhere. What we lack in-stead is perspective on the family resemblances among a variety of reper-toires and remixes. Recognizing these resemblances and giving them the nameculturalagency will, perhaps, make these arts and their e√ects more visible to scholarship and to activists who stay alive to inspiration. Culture enables agency. Where structures or conditions can seem intrac-table, creative practices add dangerous supplements that add angles for inter-vention and locate room for maneuver. Social movements have learned this and occasionally taught it to social scientists. Humanists might take a lesson from Sonia Alvarez, Evelina Dagnino, and Arturo Escobar, the editors of the ≤ important collectionfCucsoliti,PoitscoPilofruseltCurutlse. The editors welcome experiments in cultural studies because scholars who venture be-yond disciplinary limits can tell how a change of heart can lead to a change of mind. Strangely, students of creativity seem slower to study the material e√ects of art and interpretation. Changing cultures often cause conflict, but they can also o√er remedies. Yet culture can fall out of focus both for social scientists, who do not deal in
Introduction3
