[...]... theorists of popular culture analyse the field, as ‘folk culture , ‘mass culture and culture and power’ The other chapters in the book also remain porous to the mixing of cultural forms and practices There is no better way of understanding the effects of the culture industry’ on local communities than by reading the novels of the Argentine Manuel Puig In the same way, the Paraguayan writer Augusto... Bolivia, to Guaraní in Paraguay, contested the Latin domination in the region and questioned any easy invention of even a ‘national’ cultural unity Cultures in the plural would always be the defining characteristics of the region, Introduction cultures marked by their heterogeneity, to use the term of the critic Antonio Cornejo Polar In the same way, the ‘non -Latin strains of African culture continued to. .. brutality and anonymity of modern existence After celebrating the dynamism of Sao Paulo, Cendrars asked to be ˜ taken to Rio de Janeiro to take part in the street carnival Together with 2 Companion to Modern Latin American Culture a group of Brazilian artists and intellectuals, including Tarsila and her companion, the poet Oswald de Andrade, he witnessed this popular festival, the intricately choreographed... artists’ understanding of their own popular culture, which, together with the pace and vitality of the cities, became the subject matter of many modernist texts and paintings of the 1920s, as the following chapters reveal Europe/America, high culture / popular culture: these were the dichotomies that Oswald de Andrade sought to dissolve in his celebrated Anthropophagist Manifesto of 1928 Oswald developed... somewhat more space than other areas This reflects the nature of the current academic field, where courses on Latin America are almost invariably based on Latin American novels or short stories, texts that are used as stepping-stones to the appreciation of broader cultural concerns The same is true of the wider interested public: the first exposure to Latin America is still likely to be a novel by Gabriel... many poor immigrants to the big cities, their access to entertainment and to knowledge is through the culture industry: television and, in Macabea’s case, her radio, which acts as a comforter and a ´ talisman: – On the radio (says Macab ´ea) they discuss culture and use difficult words For instance, what does ‘electronic’ mean? – Silence 5 6 Companion to Modern Latin American Culture – I know what... the ´ football skills of a Maradona might justifiably lay claim to question the pre-eminence of the written word Such an emphasis does not imply, however, any hierarchical relationship in the analysis of different artistic practices and movements It is necessary from the outset to clarify the title modern Latin American culture Following orthodox historiography, this book takes the 3 4 Companion to. .. 3 4 Companion to Modern Latin American Culture creation of independent Latin American states in the 1820s as the starting point of the modern period, although neat ‘beginnings’ must, of necessity, look to continuities and breaks with the past For this reason the book includes a framing chapter on pre-Columbian and colonial Latin America for, as its author Anthony McFarlane notes, these newly independent... course?6 The arguments for a consideration of Latino/a culture in this Companion are overwhelming, for, as James Dunkerley points out [a]ccording to the US Bureau of Census, what it calls the ‘Latino’ population of the country is growing at such a rate that by 2050 it will be half that of the ‘white’ citizenry and double the number of African-Americans At the turn of the century Los Angeles is amongst the. .. should be given to Jorge Luis Borges, who, in a slightly more cerebral version of the cannibal image that opened this discussion, sought to define modern Latin American culture in terms of creative irreverence, turning the periphery into the centre, or, rather, arguing that there are no centres, for the centres can be located everywhere: I believe that our tradition is the whole of Western culture and I . der Will The Cambridge Companion to Modern Russian Culture Edited by Nicholas Rzhevsky The Cambridge Companion to Modern Spanish Culture Edited by David T. Gies The Cambridge Companion to Modern. introduction to the rich and varied culture of modern Latin America.