Date of Award
8-13-2024
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Degree Type
Dissertation
Abstract
The dissertation examines the politics of sound in the representation of labor and workers in twentieth-century South America, particularly Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. It delves into a sonic archive to study a period I termed the “Age of Labor,” a time between 1920 and 1970 when political organizations, governments, unions, intellectuals, and artists appealed to sound to portray workers as the key figures of twentieth-century modernity. I approach labor as a complex and multilayered category, central to State-sponsored governmentality policies that aimed to forge the citizen as a dominantly male, white, and industrial worker, but also as a category that allowed oppressed groups —workers, women, racialized minorities—to exert ways of resistance and agency. By analyzing an eclectic and trans-medial corpus of newspapers, songbooks, novels, radio broadcasts, and films, the dissertation underscores the pivotal role of sound culture in the dispute around labor in twentieth-century Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. It argues that listening to, capturing, and staging the voices of workers, as well as the soundscapes of labor, became central in the debates about capitalist modernization. The dissertation considers a vast array of sonic objects, listening practices, and ideas about the value/meaning of sound and the voice, and analyzes different print, sound, and audiovisual media.
Language
Spanish (es)
Chair and Committee
Javier García-Liendo
Committee Members
Elzbieta Sklodowska; Ignacio Sánchez Prado; Sonia Robles; William Acree
Recommended Citation
Viqueira, Rodrigo Sebastian, "El Trabajador Audible: Trabajo, Cultura Sonora y Modernidad en Argentina, Brasil y Uruguay (1920-1970)" (2024). Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 3325.
https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/art_sci_etds/3325