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With a little help from my friends

Intellectual sociability and literary value in contemporary Buenos Aires

New York University, USA

This article presents an ethnography and analysis of the formations in which the latest Argentine literary ideas and intellectuals are shaped. In trying to understand the end, during the 1990s, of the polemic as the main mechanism of self-regulation in the field of literature, I focus on two questions: (1) How did a ‘new’ intellectual generation both reproduce and transform itself during those years? (2) What processes did the writers involved use to transcend the previous schism, while reproducing artistic value in the field? I suggest the answer to both is through sociability organized in public events. Presenting data from several years of ethnography of the Buenos Aires literary scene, my interest is to show the production of circles of sociability that resulted in more solidarist than conflictive strategies in the production of literary value.

Key Words: literary field • sociability • intellectuals • writing • Argentina • friendship • generation

Ethnography, Vol. 7, No. 2, 155-178 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/1466138106067054


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