The importation of theories in Argentinean literary criticism (1960-1970): political derivations of some theoretical appropriations

GERBAUDO, ANALÍA

Río de Janeiro

Congreso; XVIII Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association; 2007

International Comparative Literature Association

This work intends to communicate the results of an ongoing research project (post-PhD grant, CONICET), which centers around the study of the importations of theories carried out by Argentinean literary criticism in the 1960-1970 decade.  We circumscribe literary criticism to  the written critical production of university researchers and practicing teachers, which allows us to analyze the practices promoted by teachers of literature and by literary critics.  In this presentation we compare the written production of critics who worked as professors in three Argentinean universities.  For reasons we will later explain, we chose the following institutions: Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA) and Universidad Nacional del Litoral (UNL).  We will try to elaborate on how the redeployment of theories involved in the way in which professors Barrenechea (UBA), Prieto (UNL) and Viñas (UNL) import categories borrowed from French structuralism, sociology, hermeneutics, etc., promote different practices of literary interpretation.  These practices lay bare not only the different theories involved in their axiological, political, ethical and aesthetic presuppositions, but also the way in which these critics, from their own theoretical beliefs, recreate those theories at the moment of making them work within their writing.  Their writing, together with their teaching, which can be partly re-construed from the reading of their syllabi and from interviews with key informants —colleagues and students—, define distinctive profiles for intellectual work.