UC Irvine FlashPoints Title Media Laboratories: Late Modernist Authorship in South America Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/06m573tf ISBN 9780810134560 Author Wells, Sarah Ann Publication Date 2017 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Media Laboratories The FlashPoints series is devoted to books that consider literature beyond strictly national and disciplinary frameworks, and that are distinguished both by their historical grounding and by their theoretical and conceptual strength. Our books engage theory without losing touch with history and work historically without falling into uncritical positivism. FlashPoints aims for a broad audience within the humanities and the social sciences concerned with moments of cultural emergence and transformation. In a Benjaminian mode, FlashPoints is interested in how literature contributes to forming new constellations of culture and history and in how such formations function critically and politically in the present. Series titles are available online at http://escholarship.org/uc/flashpoints. series editors: Ali Behdad (Comparative Literature and English, UCLA), Founding Editor; Judith Butler (Rhetoric and Comparative Literature, UC Berkeley), Founding Editor; Michelle Clayton (Hispanic Studies and Comparative Literature, Brown University); Edward Dimendberg (Film and Media Studies, Visual Studies, and European Languages and Studies, UC Irvine), Coordinator; Catherine Gallagher (English, UC Berkeley), Founding Editor; Nouri Gana (Comparative Literature and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, UCLA); Susan Gillman (Literature, UC Santa Cruz); Jody Greene (Literature, UC Santa Cruz); Richard Terdiman (Literature, UC Santa Cruz) A complete list of titles begins on page 235. Media Laboratories Late Modernist Authorship in South America Sarah Ann Wells northwestern university press ❘ evanston, illinois this book is made possible by a collaborative grant from the andrew w. mellon foundation. Northwestern University Press www.nupress.northwestern.edu Copyright © 2017 by Northwestern University Press. Published 2017. All rights reserved. Portions of Chapter 1 appeared in an earlier form in articles published in Modernism/ Modernity 18.2 (2011): 425– 41 and Luso- Brazilian Review 53.1 (2016). Copyright © 2011 Johns Hopkins University Press and © 2016 University of Wisconsin Press, respectively. Reprinted with permission by University of Wisconsin Press and Johns Hopkins University Press. Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Wells, Sarah Ann, 1979– author. Title: Media laboratories : late modernist authorship in South America / Sarah Ann Wells. Other titles: FlashPoints (Evanston, Ill.) Description: Evanston, Illinois : Northwestern University Press, 2017. | Series: Flashpoints Identifiers: LCCN 2016024107 | ISBN 9780810134546 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780810134553 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780810134560 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Latin American fiction—20th century—History and criticism. | Experimental fiction, Latin American—History and criticism. | Mass media in literature. | Senses and sensation in literature. Classification: LCC PQ7552.E97 W45 2017 | DDC 863.6209112—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016024107 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.4811992. Contents Acknowledgments vii Preface: Alternative Circuits xi Introduction. Media Laboratories 3 Authorship in the Media Laboratory 3 Late Modernism and Periodization 15 1. Conscripting Global Cinema 23 Jorge Luis Borges, Vernacular Late Modernism 25 Montage to the Left: Patrícia Galvão’s Alternative Global Vernacular 39 2. Tuning in: The Late Modernist Acousmêtre 53 Late Modernist Voices 53 Broadcast Radio: Inner Exteriority 56 Synchronized Sound Cinema: Old Novelties, Talking Dolls 64 Goat- Glanding and the Territories of Sound 68 Missed Encounters of the Populist Voice 73 3. Pounding Away at the Typewriter: Authorship and Proprioception 83 Anguish (1936): Graciliano Ramos’s Proletarian Modernism 86 The Hour of the Star (1977): Clarice Lispector’s Late Late Modernism 96 4. The Residual Haptic: Feelership in Felisberto Hernández 112 Hand- Writing (Pianist, Writer, User) 114 “Except Julia” 121 “The Daisy Dolls”: Showcasing the Haptic 125 “The Usher”: Haptic Visuality after Surrealism 128 5. Imaginary Media: Usership and the World’s Networks 136 The Black Box and the User 137 Media, Partial and Absolute 142 Plotting Late Modernist Authorship 148 Imaginary Media’s Global Networks 151 Epilogue 159 Notes 161 Bibliography 205 Index 229 Acknowledgments This book was written while shuttling back and forth among many cities, institutions, and homes. It was made possible by the people who helped transform these often transitory places into sites of connection. I first became interested in late modernism as a graduate student in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Califor- nia, Berkeley. I would like to thank Francine Masiello, Tony Cascardi, Miryam Sas, Carolyn Porter, and José Luiz Passos for their advice and influence, and for teaching me about Borges, Benjamin, literatura do Nordeste, and more. Francine and Zé Luiz deserve special thanks for continuing to support my career long after I had left the Bay Area for the Midwest. Between Oakland, Iowa City, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, South Bend, Indiana, Chicago, and, finally, Madison, Wiscon- sin, I have been lucky to find outstanding interlocutors. The following people took the time to help me think through this project in various ways: Michelle Clayton, Steve Choe, Paul Saint- Amour, Jason Borge, Diana Klinger, Florencia Garramuño, Jennifer Buckley, María Inés de Torres, Paul Ramírez, Sylvia Sellers- García, Teresa Villa- Ignacio, Jaime Ginzburg, Guadalupe Salomon, Allison Schachter, Tom McEnaney, Rielle Navitski, Jillian Porter, and, last but not least, Gonzalo Aguilar, whose own work has taught me much. I would like to give a special thanks to Matt Karush and Jesús Costantino for generously offering to read and comment on parts of the book in its late stages. vii viii ❘ Acknowledgments Support for this research was generously provided by the Univer- sity of Wisconsin– Madison Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education with funding from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. Additional support was provided by the Mod- ern Language Initiative of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Earlier, an International Dissertation Research Fellowship from the Social Sci- ence Research Council was fundamental in exposing me to the little magazines and periodicals that are an important voice in this study. Additional support from the Latin American Institute at the Univer- sity of California– Los Angeles and the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts at the University of Notre Dame allowed for follow- up trips to the archives. I would also like to thank all these institutions, along with the librarians and archivists who helped me, in particular those from the Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros, Centro de Document- ación e Investigación de la Cultura de las Izquierdas en Argentina, the Biblioteca Nacional in Buenos Aires (especially Juan Pablo Canala), the Felisberto Hernández Special Collection at American University, and the University of Wisconsin– Madison. For their assistance in tracking down citations, I thank graduate students Ingrid Luna and Javier Mocarquer at Notre Dame and Alec Schumacher, Marin Laufen- berg, and Joelle Tybon at UW– Madison. For furnishing me a screen- ing copy of the Quay Brothers’ Unmistaken Hands: Ex- Voto F.H., I thank Edward Waisnis. Portions of Chapter 1 appeared in Modernism/ Modernity (“Late Modernism, Pulp History: Jorge Luis Borges’ A Uni- versal History of Infamy”) and Luso- Brazilian Review (“Mass Culture and the Laboratory of Late Modernism in Patrícia Galvão’s Parque Industrial”). I am grateful to Johns Hopkins University Press and the University of Wisconsin Press, respectively, for permission to publish these essays here in revised form. I found a wonderfully supportive network at Notre Dame, where the bulk of this book was written, and wish to thank my colleagues in and beyond the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, in particular Ted Cachey, Zyg Baranski, María Rosa Oliveira Wil- liams, Diana Jorza, Anne García- Romero, Jennifer Jones, and, for their advice and support at critical junctures, Julia Douthwaite and Carlos Jáuregui. For accompanying me in the very last stages, I thank my new colleagues in the Department of Comparative Literature and Folklore Studies at the UW– Madison, in particular Jordan Rosenblum, for his advice and humor, and Mary Layoun, a mentor, colleague, and friend of extraordinary generosity. The modernist reading group I formed Acknowledgments ❘ ix with Dean Krouk at Madison was a touchstone as I put the finishing touches on this manuscript. I would like to give special thanks to those who read the entire man- uscript: the two anonymous external reviewers and Edward Dimend- berg, my series editor. Their suggestions from a variety of disciplines, including modernist studies, film and media studies, and Latin Ameri- can literature, were illuminating. It was a pleasure to work Gianna Mosser and the Editorial Board and production staff of Northwest-