Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

5-2019

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Program

Latin American, Iberian and Latino Cultures

Advisor

Fernando Degiovanni

Committee Members

Silvia Dapía

Magdalena Perkowska

Subject Categories

Latin American Languages and Societies | Latin American Literature | Modern Languages | Modern Literature

Keywords

Peru, Cultural History, Intellectual Commitment, Revolution, 1960s, 1970s

Abstract

This dissertation examines the discourses and experiences of cultural work as a form of intellectual and artistic solidarity in Peru during the 1960s and 1970s. Amid the broader Latin American and global spirit of revolution, anti-imperialism and Third World liberation, in Peru these decades saw a radical transformation in society where rural and urban masses rose against a traditional political and socioeconomic system that maintained colonial structures of domination and oppression of marginalized populations. In an attempt to rein in this desborde popular, as it became known, the nationalist and populist Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces and a consolidating Left sought to include these masses into their hegemonic projects. In this context of revolution, a number of intellectuals and artists (writers, poetic collectives, filmmakers) looked for novel ways to demonstrate their solidarity with the masses, both by representing work and by performing as workers. In doing so, these cultural producers sought to close the gap between manual and intellectual labor, thus creating sites for identification and collaboration with the mobilizing rural and urban populations. For the likes of novelists José María Arguedas and Manuel Scorza, the poetic movement Hora Zero, filmmaker Nora de Izcue and peasant activist Saturnino Huillca, the realm of cultural work became an arena to demonstrate solidarity through physical presence and affective connections, and to enact the promise of a more just society and a better life.

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