Graciela Raquel Montaldo

Professor Montaldo specializes in modern and contemporary Latin American cultures. Her research is focused on cultural institutions and the intersection between culture and politics. She has published Museo del consumo. Archivos de la cultura de masas en la Argentina (2016, Translation into English forthcoming), Rubén Darío. Viajes de un cosmopolita extremo (2013), Zonas ciegas. Populismos y experimentos culturales en Argentina (2010), A propriedade da Cultura (2004), Teoría crítica, teoría cultural (2001), Ficciones culturales y fábulas de identidad en América Latina (1999), La sensibilidad amenazada (1995), and De pronto el campo (1993). She is also co-editor of The Argentina Reader: History, Culture and Politics (2002), Esplendores y miserias del siglo XIX (1996) and Yrigoyen entre Borges y Arlt (1989).

academic statement

My research interests are at the crossroads of different fields. Trained in literature and cultural practices (intellectual history, sociology of culture), I moved progressively through media, cultural, and visual studies. My last book, Museo del consumo (2016), intersects those multiple perspectives exploring the politics of cultural consumption in modern Argentina. I have studied cultural practices such as tango, circus, and fashion to understand how mass culture reconfigures the social space and rearticulates political experiences.
In my current research, I explore the culture of “the clandestine/underground” as a political tool in modern Latin America. I am interested in cultural and aesthetic practices that fictionalize or interpellate something not officially allowed, secret or prohibited. I am also working on the dynamics of “theory” in Latin American cultures. Given that theoretical thought was/is a key discourse in arts and culture since the early twentieth century, I focused on its aesthetics and political dimensions. Since the theory was an essential part of the reflection on Avant-garde and Marxist works, my research explores key moments of this tense relationship