
The Technical Imagination
Argentine Culture's Modern Dreams
Beatriz Sarlo(Author)
Stanford University Press
Published on 13. December 2007
Book
Hardback
208 pages
978-0-8047-3542-1 (ISBN)
Description
In what Beatriz Sarlo calls six "episodes," ranging from the proto-science fiction of Horacio Quiroga and the apocalyptic urban surrealism of Roberto Arlt through the development of mass media, tales of inventors and inventions, and an entertaining tour of "weird science" and medical quackery, The Technical Imagination examines how technology entered the popular imagination in 1920s and 1930s Argentina. Often wry, but always sympathetic, and dispensing erudition with a light touch, Sarlo shows how the products of modern technology (radio, the telephone and telegraph, movies, and rudimentary forays into television, among other phenomena) announced an unprecedented break with the past while also provoking an ironic recrudescence of age-old superstitions. Although the new technologies helped to shape notions of modernity at all levels of Argentine society, Sarlo focuses particularly on the working-class amateur inventors of Buenos Aires, and on how their inventions-even when they failed, as they frequently did-point to what can be recognized today as the reorganization of an intellectual hierarchy, and thus of an era's, and a culture's, intellectual history.
Reviews / Votes
"The importance of Beatriz Sarlo's work for literary and cultural criticism in Argentina over the last three decades can hardly be overstated. . . The sheer breadth and scope of Sarlo's work, from studies on Echeverria, Payro and Borges to the cultural politics of Peronism, postmodern consumerism or, most recently, the critique of the 'memorial shift' in history, puts her in a league of her own: few in Argentina, or indeed elsewhere, can match the lucidity of Sarlo's 'reading machine', her ability to trace connections and relays across the archive of Argentine culture, high as well as low-brow."-Jens Andermann, Bulletin of Spanish Studies "This slim yet solid volume provides rare insight into the intersection of culture, technology, and society in early twentieth-century Argentina."-The AmericasMore details
Series
Edition
New edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Palo Alto
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Edition type
New edition
Product notice
Cloth
Dimensions
Height: 218 mm
Width: 150 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
381 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8047-3542-1 (9780804735421)
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Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Beatriz Sarlo, one of the most important literary and cultural critics in Argentina and all of Latin America, was a founder of the progressive journal Punto de Vista. She is currently a professor in the Department of Philosophy and Literature at the Universidad de Buenos Aires.
Content
Contents Acknowledgments ix Translator's Note xi Introduction 1 Part I. Letters 000 1. Horacio Quiroga and Technoscientific Theory 000 2. Arlt: Technology in the City 000 3. Popular Science and the Popularizing Press 000 Part II. Histories 000 4. Inventors: Technology and Mythmaking 000 5. Radio, Cinema, and Television: Long-Distance Communication 000 6. Doctors, Clairvoyants, and Quacks 000