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The Consumer Dictator: Theories and Representations of Agency in Neoliberal Argentina, 2001-2010 Jessica Cullen Dzaman Submitte

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The Consumer Dictator: Theories and Representations of Agency in Neoliberal Argentina, 2001-2010 Jessica Cullen Dzaman Submitte The Consumer Dictator: Theories and Representations of Agency in Neoliberal Argentina, 2001-2010 Jessica Cullen Dzaman Submitted in partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2015 © 2015 Jessica Cullen Dzaman All rights reserved ABSTRACT The Consumer Dictator: Theories and Representations of Agency in Neoliberal Argentina, 2001-2010 Jessica Cullen Dzaman This dissertation examines the co-evolution of consumption and production as competing models of agency in Argentine culture in the era of global consumer capitalism. Tracing the influence of several key political and intellectual developments in Latin America, the US, and Europe on the symbolic language of regional politics, I map out how participation in the global consumer market came to be understood as an expression of power and authority in the context of Argentina's disastrous experiment with neoliberalism in the last three decades of the 20th century. Then, using films and literary texts including works by Lisandro Alonso, Adrián Caetano, and Aníbal Jarkowski together with critical projects by George Yúdice and Josefina Ludmer, I examine how a model of subjectivity that exaggerates the economic, social, and cultural agency of consumers has managed to persist in Argentina's cultural imagination despite growing disillusionment with the neoliberal model and the disenfranchisement of the nation's consumers. Through close readings that reveal work as the site of a restored order that is ultimately incomplete, fantastical, and contradictory, I show how the myth of the consumer dictator perpetuates itself through a system of intellectual values, including abstract, absolutist visions freedom and tolerance, that isolate the subject and divert communication, inscribing an extreme version of consumer agency even upon production itself. Together, these instances of interrupted reform suggest that a model of agency suited to the era of global consumer capitalism must understand production and consumption not as alternative options, but as distinct, integral modes of creativity. CONTENTS Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………………….. ii Introduction……………………………………………..…………………………………………… 1 1. Utopias of Production and Consumption in Latin American Politics and Culture……….. 28 2. Global Citizenship and the Cultural Value of Labor in Lisandro Alonso’s La libertad and Adrián Caetano’s Bolivia……………………………………………………………... 68 3. Consumer power and social responsibility in Fabián Bielinsky’s Nueve reinas and Aníbal Jarkowski’s El trabajo.………………………………………………………………… 128 4. The critic as consumer: George Yúdice and Josefina Ludmer………………………..……. 163 Conclusion………………..……………………….…………………………………………………. 206 Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………………………... 214 i Acknowledgments I would like to thank my dissertation advisor, Carlos J. Alonso, for generously contributing his insight and experience at each step in the development of this project. Thank you also to Professor Graciela Montaldo for directing my first qualifying exam, and for her helpful bibliographic suggestions. I am very grateful to her and to Professors Orlando Bentacor, Ronald Briggs, and Karen Benezra for serving on my committee. I also owe thanks to the many professors, instructors, and informal advisors who offered encouragement, guidance, and inspiration over the course of my studies: Marta Peixoto, José Antonio Castellanos-Pazos, Alessandra Russo, Patricia Grieve, Marc Hertzman, Maite Conde, and of course the original and sin par Antonio Carreño. A heartfelt thank you as well to Professor Christia Mercer, for extending me the opportunity to teach in the Core, and for leading me through the first year with wise, kind, and frank advice. Taking part in "Lit Hum" was a singularly rich experience that helped me to develop the ideas about literary criticism explored in this thesis--and to recognize the value of voicing my own perspective. In that regard, too, I am grateful to Sheryl Kaskowitz for reading parts of this manuscript and contributing thoughtful suggestions that improved both the text and the sanity of its writer. Thanks to my New York family: BB, JL, DI, and GS. To Duane, for sustaining me and challenging me always. It's more fun than I thought possible. And finally, to my first family, especially Mom, Dad, Matthew, Lindsay, and Grandma. Thank you for all the ways in which you have shown your support, including but not limited to generously lending your faith, apartments, counsel, shoulders, ears, tech support, and even on one occasion shoes, so that I could see this project through. I love you. ii Introduction The rise of a monolithic global capitalism since the 1980s has made consumption an increasingly important and influential part of the cultural and political landscape. The technocratic political culture of global capitalism relocates politics from the public sphere of debate to the private realm of the subject’s innermost desires, introducing a new kind of utopia founded on the premise of the moral and intellectual inadequacy of the human subject. The new consumer utopia reimagines reason, discourse, tradition, and culture not as the building blocks of progress, but rather as obstacles to the realization of a natural social order. Eschewing inherently flawed collective endeavors, the subject of that utopia—the consumer dictator—rules with uncontested authority over his own unique system of social and cultural values. His power over his own jurisdiction is absolute, but beyond that, he cannot be sure of his impact on the social order. His duty is to himself alone; in pursuing his own interests, he rests assured that he is doing his part to contribute indirectly to the rightful order of things, inputting his own truths into the neutral aggregator of the market, which will eventually transform his individual desires into social outcomes that are right, natural, and fair—but whose logic eludes comprehension. The truth contained within his desires is a latent one; a coded, irreplaceable and authentic message that can only be “read” and translated into meaningful social outcomes by the market itself. In other words, there is always hope that what looks like an impending disaster might not be. This hope was the only kind left in Argentina in December of 2001 as the nation’s depressed economy careened toward total collapse. Over the past three years, the country’s productivity had slowed to a halt as foreign investors withdrew from the region and the national 1 unemployment rate crept toward 25 percent. It was with the last remaining scrap of unlikely, experience-denying hope that the government, under threat of imminent default, made a final effort to stabilize the shaky financial system by preventing citizens from withdrawing large sums of money from their personal accounts. While Argentina’s public default—the largest in world history—did not come until shortly after the banking freeze, the “corralito” itself served as the symbolic breaking point, marking the economy’s descent into full-scale collapse. It provoked an outpouring of public anger that threatened the political order as well, stoking ongoing demonstrations against wage cuts for public employees into an explosion of mass protests across the country. In the capital, protestors began to clash with police outside the seat of government, demanding the resignation of President Fernando de la Rúa until the disgraced leader escaped the outraged crowds with a sensational exit by helicopter. These dramatic events announced a crisis to the world—but a longer view reveals a more complicated truth. As the excitement faded, analytical accounts of the “crisis” emphasized continuity rather than rupture.1 The signs that increased participation in the global free market was a “bad deal” for Argentina were all around, in plain sight, carved into the changing cityscape of Buenos Aires. (In the city center, new luxury developments catering to the tastes of an international elite competed for space with improvised shantytowns known as villas miserias; in the surrounding suburbs, those lucky enough to have jobs passed abandoned factories on their commute to the international business district downtown.) Still, with the slow, painful unraveling of the Soviet Union finally complete and the information revolution in full swing, integration into the global free market seemed to be the only way forward. Authorities in the international economic community held that the inequality and austerity Latin America was suffering were merely growing pains—a kind of a temporary penance for years of protectionist policies that would pass as soon as the region fully embraced the true path of the free market. 2 In testament to this neoliberal theodicy was Milton Friedman’s “Miracle of Chile,” right next door. Thus, despite the demonstrations of outrage that captured the attention of the world media, most Argentines experienced the crisis less as a shock than as the culmination of frustrations that had been building up for years. The dominant trope that emerged in popular and journalistic narratives was that of “waking up” to reality.2 There was some wisdom to this common-sense view; besides reshuffling power at the top and inspiring a brief flurry of grassroots efforts,3 the crisis did not bring about significant, lasting economic or political reforms. Rather, as a political event, the crisis was largely received as a confirmation of people’s growing disillusionment with the promises of neoliberalism
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