Gramsci in Latin America between Literature and Society

Abstract

This article reconstructs the genesis and development of some Latin American conceptions of literature influenced by the thought of Antonio Gramsci. In Argentina, the work of Héctor Agosti is pioneering. It is followed by José Carlos Portantiero’s analysis of realism, where Gramsci is explicitly quoted as one of the main theoretical references. Gramsci’s influence is evident in elements such as the rejection of determinism, the Argentine contextualization of Marxist theoretical postulates, and the critic’s attention to literary form in the context of the relationship between literature and society. The Gramscian presence continues to be felt in Argentine journals such as Pasado y presente and La rosa blindada. The innovative characteristics of Gramsci’s reflections on art and literature have also been appreciated in other Latin American countries. In Brazil, although from a Lukácsian perspective, references to Gramsci’s aesthetic considerations are explicit in the work of Leandro Konder and Carlos Nelson Coutinho. After discussing the cases of Argentina and Brazil, the article takes Mexico into consideration. During the 1970s and 80s, the country was a laboratory for new Marxist literary ideas. The most interesting phenomenon of this new phase of reflection on literature inspired by Gramscian thought is the use of Gramsci not only inside Marxism, but also within contexts that are not strictly Marxist.

Keywords:

• literature
• Marxism
• post-Marxism
• Antonio Gramsci
• Latin America
• society
• national-popular
• hegemony

Notes

1 “During 1948–54, the so-called Cold War broke out on an international scale, starting with a generalized imperialist offensive against the U.S.S.R., followed by a hardening of the latter and of the international Communist movement. … In response (and following the new orientation of the U.S.S.R.), the Latin American CPs refurbished their anti-imperialist credentials and, to a certain extent, relaunched the class struggle against their bourgeoisies” (Lowy 1992, xxxvi).

2 “The reception of the Zhdanov Report changed the communist modus vivendi and altered the relationship of intellectuals and artists within the Party. In order to solve the internal conflict, old and new mechanisms were implemented: expulsions. In addition, other subtler forms, such as economic problems, were interfering in cultural projects which were associated with the anti-fascist style. Gradually, those who represented the Soviet positions took greater prominence, and figures that embodied a Latin American cultural project moved away. However, Zhdanovism did not completely colonize the cultural developments of the Latin American communists, since they survived in intermediate areas, as reflected in the case of Héctor Agosti” (Acosta 2013). When a translator is not referenced in the bibliography, the translation of the quotations in a language other than English is our own.

3 From the first encounter with his works, it is evident that Gramsci is closer to thinkers such as Sartre or Lukács than to the “diamat” theorists. Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the same issue of Realidad that featured Sabato’s review also included an excerpted Spanish version of Sartre’s Qu'est-ce que la littérature? (1947).

4 It is interesting to observe that in the 1960s, the Peronist thinker and politician John William Cooke proposed a synthesis between Peronism and Gramscian thought. In 1971, Horacio González provided a Peronist interpretation of Gramscian social and aesthetic theory in which literature is conceived within an “organic” vision of a voluntarist political struggle (1971, 17–18).

5 In 1965, Konder wrote Marxismo e alienação, with an emblematic reference to Gramsci in the chapter “Alienação e arte.” Her eGramsci is represented by Konder as a defender of aesthetic freedom: “There is, indeed, an essential freedom to the aesthetic creation. And it was this that Gramsci sought to highlight in his notes on Letteratura e Vita Nazionale” (123).

6 “The aesthetic value of a work of art cannot be directly deduced from its social genesis. In one of his most fortunate statements, Gramsci warned: ‘two writers may represent (express) the same socio-historical moment; however, one can be an artist and the other a mere untorello’. The understanding of the aesthetic value of a work of art, as we have seen, demands the use of methods from dialectical materialism, in particular from the categories of artistic reflection of reality” (Coutinho 1967, 133). Coutinho utilizes here a Gramscian quotation to confirm the validity of the Lukácsian “theory of reflex.” Such a theory, however, is totally foreign to the Gramscian view, as Coutinho explained more than four decades later when writing about “epistemological divergences” between Gramsci and Lukács (Coutinho 2011, 163).

7 Roberto Bolaño’s character Juan Stein is representative of leftist intellectuals working in Chile before the coup that brought the Pinochet regime to power: during a conversation with young students and poets at Stein’s home, the conversation “turned to Gramsci” (2009, 55).

8 Burgos points out a theoretical renewal, “which places emphasis on Gramsci ‘the theorist of hegemony,’ displacing, rearranging, or completing the two main reading codes of the Argentinian stage, specifically: Gramsci of ‘the national-popular’ theme, and Gramsci ‘the counselor’” (2004, 248).

9 In 1971, Carlos Fuentes wrote that prevalent “in Gramsci’s Italy, as in our Mexico, [is the] Marxist idea that no social formation disappears while the productive forces that have developed therein find that there is still room for a further progressive movement” (1971, 190).

10 “The concepts of ‘historical bloc’ and ‘hegemonic apparatus’ enable one to think of structure and superstructure as integrated, which is the material basis for their ideal representations” (Canclini 1979, 73).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yuri Brunello

Yuri Brunello is Professor of Italian Literature at the Universidade Federal do Ceará (Brazil) and Researcher at National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) (Brazil). He has published on topics including the works of Ludovico Ariosto, Luigi Pirandello, Antonio Gramsci, Jorge Amado, Nelson Rodrigues, and Elena Ferrante. His current research focuses on the role of Italian literature in the Brazilian baroque. He is the author of Nelson Rodrigues Pirandelliano (Substânsia, 2016).