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.

Committee Chair

Javier García-Liendo

Committee Members

Elzbieta Sklodowska; Ignacio Sánchez Prado; Sonia Robles; William Acree

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Author's Department

Romance Languages and Literature: Hispanic Studies

Author's School

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Document Type

Dissertation

Date of Award

8-13-2024

Language

Spanish (es)

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Available for download on Thursday, August 15, 2030

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