Culturas de masas alternativas: Intelectuales, tecnologia y comunicacion en Angel Rama y Jose Maria Arguedas

This dissertation examines intellectual responses to the effect of mass communication and mass culture on Latin American high and popular cultures during the decades of 1960 and 1970. It focuses on the comparison of two cultural geographies, the Southern Cone and the Andean region, through the study of the intellectual practices of Angel Rama (Uruguay) and Jose Maria Arguedas (Peru). While examining the relation of their oeuvres with technology, it looks at the ways both intellectuals were involved in the reflection and construction of alternative mass cultures before the consolidation of television in Latin America.;As American mass culture was consolidating in the region, high and popular cultures were transforming its traditional spaces of communication, production, and audiences. In this regard, this thesis explores the impact of industrialization on both cultural spaces. Taking as a starting point Angel Rama's main works, it rethinks 20th century Latin American print culture through what it is referred to as the popular cycle of print culture. It argues for the necessity to broaden the current dominant conception of print culture in Latin America, characterized mainly by the link between print culture and the State.;On the other hand, analyzing Jose Maria Arguedas's work with the voice recorder and the music records, this thesis studies the displacement of orality in the Peruvian Andes from a traditional setting to a secondary, technological orality, in the context of a massive indigenous immigration from the country to the city. At the same time, it shows how Arguedas became a protagonist of what I call a Cholo mass culture, a mass-oriented popular culture based on the traditional culture of the Andes and on new interactions with technology and urbanization.;Attention is also given to theoretical and historical problems related to the concepts of mass culture, public sphere, cultural space, technology and intellectuals. On the one hand, writings by various members of the Frankfurt School, Walter Benjamin, Umberto Eco and Marshall McLuhan are referenced in order to argue that the concept of mass culture referred to in these discussions was based on an American historical model, yet was assumed as universal. On the other hand, this thesis discusses various theoretical approaches to the concept of popular public sphere, such as those posited by Jurgen Habermas, Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge, Jesus Martin-Barbero, Nestor Garcia Canclini, as well as others Latin American scholars. Finally, it evaluates different and contradictory intellectual positions on technology in Latin America and worldwide --a discussion connected to the debate regarding the industrialization of culture and capitalism.