A History of Emotions in Spanish American Narrative (Novel and Film): Argentina And
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A History of Emotions in Spanish American Narrative (Novel and Film): Argentina and Chile 1960-21st Century by Erika Bondi A Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements of the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Approved April 2016 by the Graduate Supervisory Committee: Cynthia Tompkins, Chair David William Foster Juan Pablo Gil Oslé ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY MAY 2016 ABSTRACT Due to its interdisciplinary nature, the history of emotions has engaged much scholarly interest. This project draws from the historical, sociological and philosophical research on emotions to analyze the representation of emotions in narratives from Argentina and Chile. This historical investigation posits that socio-political, cultural and economic forces, which are represented in literature and film, shape emotions and emotional standards. The analysis of Rayuela (1963) by Julio Cortázar and Raúl Ruiz’s Tres Tristes Tigres (1968) is centered on the impact of Existentialism, capitalism and modernity on the construction of emotional standards in urban societies. The impact of militant groups in the shaping of collective emotions in Latin America during the 1960s and 70s is examined in Reina Roffé’s novel Monte de Venus (1973) and Aldo Francia’s film Ya no basta con rezar (1972). The analysis of Alberto Fuguet’s Las películas de mi vida (2002) and Pablo Larraín’s No (2012) sheds light on the paradigmatic shift in the construction of emotional standards resulting from the implementation of neoliberalism through dictatorships as well as the insertion into the globalized consumerist culture by way of technology and media. Finally, this project encourages future research of the emotions in literary and cultural studies of Latin America. i DEDICATION To my mother, who loved beyond reason. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without my committee. I would like to thank Dr. Cynthia Tompkins for her patience, dedication and guidance as my director. Her conscientious reading of my work, thorough comments, and insight were fundamental in this process. Thank you to Dr. David William Foster for his valuable feedback and ongoing support throughout the entirety of my time at ASU and to Dr. Juan Pablo Gil-Oslé for encouraging me to pursue my interest in emotions and to continue future research. Finally, I could not have done this without the love and emotional support of Katie, Sabrina and Cassie. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER Page 1. INTRODUCTION: EMOTIONAL TURN ..........................................................1 Emotional Goal Systems and Judgments .....................................................4 Emotions and Rationality .............................................................................6 Emotionology, Emotives, Emotional regimes and Communities ................7 Emotions and Narratives ............................................................................14 2. EMOTIONS AND THE MODERN SUBJECT ................................................17 Historical Context ......................................................................................20 Latin American New Narrative ..................................................................22 The Boom’s Not so New Narrative ...........................................................27 Existentialism in the River Plate ................................................................29 Nouveau Roman and the Beat Generation’s Emotional Rebellion ............32 Existential Emotions and the Modern Subject ...........................................36 Emotions as a Guide to the Game of Rayuela ...........................................41 New Chilean Cinema .................................................................................56 Aimless Emotions of the Tres Tristes Tigres .............................................59 Conclusion .................................................................................................66 3. MILITANT EMOTIONS ...................................................................................68 The Latin American Left of the 1960s and 70s .........................................69 Militant Organizations of Argentina and Chile .........................................70 The Intellectual Left ...................................................................................73 Passions of Revolution as Historical Scripts Re-inscribed ........................75 iv CHAPTER Page Emotional Tradition of Guevara’s Revolutionary Discourse ....................80 Emotional Structures of Social Movements ..............................................89 Militant Literature in Argentina .................................................................94 The Shaping of the Individual and the Collective in Monte de Venus .......96 Re-inscriptions of Militant Emotions in Ya no basta con rezar ..............108 Conclusion ...............................................................................................118 4. GLOBALIZED EMOTIONS ...........................................................................120 Paradigm Shift: Globalization in Latin America .....................................121 Globalized Market Emotions and Culture ...............................................126 Contemporary Latin American Literature and Cinema ...........................134 Chilean Cinema: 1990s – 21st Century ....................................................135 Literature: Post-dictatorship – 21st Century .............................................136 Emotional Commodity: Media and Identity in Las películas de mi vida 142 Emotional Discourse of No and the Rationality of the Market ................154 Conclusion ...............................................................................................166 5. CONCLUSION: OVERVIEW ........................................................................168 Future Projects .........................................................................................170 REFERENCES ....................................................................................................172 v INTRODUCTION “…narratives are essential to the process of practical reflection: not just because they happen to represent and also to evoke emotional activity, but also because their very forms are themselves the sources of emotional structure, the paradigms of what, for us, emotion is.” (Martha Nussbaum, “Narrative Emotions: Becket’s Genealogy of Love” 1988) Emotional turn The rapidly growing field of emotions has crossed disciplines from its original domain of psychology and philosophy into the social sciences. As a result, heterogeneous interdisciplinary approaches have emerged with the current “emotional turn.” Research has moved away from the Enlightenment tradition that dichotomized rationality (mind/reason) from the emotions (body/irrationality) and has come to a general consensus of emotions as a complex cognitive phenomenon. This has opened the field to a diverse perspective of emotions ranging from the universalism of the life sciences to the constructivism of social sciences. In Jan Plamper’s metacritical text History of Emotions: An Introduction (2015), he provides an in depth overview of the historical study of emotions. He also underscores the contributions from the aforementioned life and social sciences and concludes that the historical approach to the emotions has successfully borrowed from both schools to realize a comprehensive approach to the study of the emotions that will serve as the foundation of future research (6-7). There has been a substantial amount of scholarly interest in the history emotions due to its interdisciplinary nature and the possibility for innovative theories that fuse emotions to language, politics 1 and social behavior. For instance, the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions is dedicated specifically to the historical investigation of emotional behaviors and their role in the construction of individual, communal and national identities. They focus on European emotionology (1100-1800) to understand the current cultural and socio-political developments in Australian society. Emotion Review as well as numerous academic journals from various fields are dedicated to publishing research on the emotions. For example, the Publications of the Modern Languages Association’s October 2015 volume showcased the special topic of emotions.1 This project does not set out to prove any one approach to be more effective than another but rather, the intention is to reveal that the subject of the emotions is ever present in cultural production and that it merits scholarly attention. Rather than focusing exclusively on one aspect of the emotions or one specific emotion from one historical period, this study analyzes emotions in Latin American cultural production from a macro- perspective. That is, that the project draws from observations of large-scale patterns and trends and wide spread processes of the emotions in society. The theoretical framework intertwines history with sociology, politics, philosophy and cognitive studies. This historically based investigation is a platform from which more concrete emotional analysis can develop and lead to future research specifically in literary and cultural studies of Latin America.2 1 PMLA October 2015 Vol. 130 No. 5 2 The emotions are a fairly new topic in Latin American studies. Jerónimo Arellano is the most recent to publish Magical Realism and the History of Emotions in Latin