Date Thesis Awarded

5-2009

Access Type

Honors Thesis -- Access Restricted On-Campus Only

Degree Name

Bachelors of Arts (BA)

Department

Modern Languages and Literatures

Advisor

Jonathan Arries

Committee Members

Silvia Roxana Tandeciarz

Jennifer Bickham Méndez

Abstract

In what follows I analyze three cultural products made in response to Fuentealba's assassination: the documentary made by Carlos Fuentealba's former students, Un modelo de vida, un estado de homicida, the piquete in which Fuentalba lost his life, and the Album para no Olvidar in which news clippings, essays and art commemorating the fallen teacher and reflecting on this moment are compiled. The study of cultural products is important to the study of neoliberalism because representation is one of the key methods used to both legitimize dominant discourse and to repress dissenting voices in the struggle for interpretative power and hegemony. The repression executed by neoliberal discourse includes both the physical and ideological suppression of resistance and the deliberate distortion of reality. The motivation behind this distortion is to undercut resistance and to mask even the needs for its existence. Cultural production, then, is a battlefield for contestatory power. The students of CPEM N°69 and teachers in solidarity (as piqueteros and members of ATEN) in the making of a documentary and an Album pose important challenges to the neoliberal discourse in Argentina that has permeated all aspects of life, including education. Like the piquete- a public performance of resistance- they undermine the hegemony of neoliberal discourse as supported in the mainstream media and create spaces for new political and social imaginaries. I argue that these cultural products represent resistance to neoliberalism in the ways that they expose its failures and contradictions.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Comments

Thesis is part of Honors ETD pilot project, 2008-2013. Migrated from Dspace in 2016.

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