ANTONIA VIU. MATERIALIDADES DE LO IMPRESO: REVISTAS LATINOAMERICANAS 1910-1950.
SILVIA FALORNI
1Doctorado en Ciencias Humanas, Universidad de Talca, Chile. Correo electrónico: silvia.falorni@utalca.cl
VIU, ANTONIA. ., MATERIALIDADES DE LO IMPRESO: REVISTAS LATINOAMERICANAS 1910-1950. ., , SANTIAGO: :, METALES PESADOS, ,, 2019. ., 170p. PÁGINAS
ANTONIA VIU. MATERIALITIES OF THE PRINTED MATERIAL: Within the framework of the study of Latin American magazines, Antonia Viu proposes a text that focuses on the materialities of the printed material. It explains how print culture has a materiality "that goes beyond the aspects usually considered 'material': paper, printing costs" (10). It refers to these formats which readers are affectively familiar with, as the posters in Clarity magazine, which are discussed in the second chapter, but also photographs, illustrations, clippings described in the last chapter, recipes and more, which contributed to the transformation of reading in the first half of the 20th century. As the author puts it, the book aims to think about the materiality of the past "also incorporating the perspective of new materialisms, to escape from unidirectional temporalities in which things only affect the present from a logic of symbol" (12), taking some distance from other recent studies in material culture in which the emphasis is placed on the symbolic function it exercises in daily life, and where then materialities of the past have no influence on the present.
The chapters generally focus on the hegemony of print and how magazines have changed access to information, consumption and cultural goods. For illustration, in the first chapter entitled "Indexes, catalogues and libraries: Zig-Zag magazine" the author explains that at the beginning of the 20th century indices were used as a sorting technology, and catalogues of stores emerged, Indexing systems in libraries and magazine sections, for example the relevant "Questions and answers" of the Zig-Zag magazine, which "Replicates the undifferentiated order of the traditional store and answers the most diverse questions week by week" (25), achieving such success that, in the fourth year since its
The second chapter "Hear you. What happens': the posters in Claridad magazine", discusses the importance of the posters and reflects on the meeting between ephemeral printed matter and the more enduring newspaper, with the aim of demonstrating that "from that reading the temporal loses protagonism in favor of the movement, redefining the ideas of useful life and obsolescence from new materialisms" (47). The posters represent a real manifesto against obsolescence and a "coupling of temporalities that work by contagion" (15). In the magazine Claridad, the posters formed their covers by forming a section entitled "The poster today" which had a "very strong and deliberate relationship with urban posters" (41), and besides producing an important modification of the physiognomy of the walls of Santiago, the dissemination of these media assumed a fundamental role "in the field of anarchist propaganda and in the history of social movements in Chile" (41).
The third chapter, "Graphic media and literary illustration: Faces and Masks", studies the literary illustration in graphic media from the stories of Marta Brunet. Illustration is considered here as a new medium, which does not fulfil a subsidiary function to writing, but shares with it expressive characteristics and capacities. The differences in illustrations and their integration with the writing produced a different reception of the Chilean author’s stories in Argentina. This collaborative dynamic between text and image that takes place in the fiction narrative published by the magazines would be one of the most eloquent examples of the transformation in the forms of reading that Antonia Viu’s research is concerned with. The chapter also sees illustration as a strategy for legitimizing and prestige for authors and journals in the international arena.
The fourth chapter, "Graphological Consultancies; Handwritten and Printed Letters" explores the presence and functions of handwriting in journals. In Zig-Zag and Caras y Caretas, the number of graphic offices is increasing, showing, as the author suggests, a certain mistrust towards the handwritten writing of popular sectors from a criminal code, This reinforces a bureaucratization which replaces the presence of the manuscript with means such as the form or the memorandum. In addition, interesting in this chapter is the paradox between the value of women inserted into the world of professional work of the press and its societal consideration from a male perspective.
The fifth chapter, "Latin American magazine magazines: the cuts in the globalization of culture" deals with a group of Latin American cultural magazines from the thirties and forties that identify themselves as "magazine magazines". The chapter examines press clipping as a modern object, archival technology and editorial practice, representing an important contribution to the globalization of cultures and information. These magazines, according to the author’s metaphor, "digest" different configurations of global culture, and in the book we analyze the case of two publications: Babel. Revista de Revistas, and Ultra, Cultura Contemporánea. Revista de Revistas. The "digestion" processes by the Latin American intellectuals who edited these publications produced a modelling in understanding of the phenomena taking place in Europe and the United States, particularly the Second World War and the way of thinking about the inclusion of the subcontinent in global culture.
A journey through different materialities that we can also see in the illustrations of the book that make reading even more interesting, passing by reflections that come to relate Nietzsche and Benjamin with the subject of graphology
Received: August 19, 2019; Accepted: September 13, 2019
Este es un artículo publicado en acceso abierto bajo una licencia Creative Commons
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