City-in-Flux: Neoliberalism and Urban Space in Recent Argentine and Brazilian Cultural Production

City-in-Flux analyzes the reorganization of space and time in Brazilian and Argentine cities due to the painful transition to neoliberalism and its effects. The project contends that studying urban space in the present insists on a reading that requires a range of material in order to examine the role of culture and consumption in constructing and contesting neoliberal discourse affecting life in the city. The first chapter analyzes César Aira’s novel Los fantasmas and Gregorio Graziosi’s film Obra to reveal neoliberalism’s failure to present itself as a perpetual present devoid of history. Chapter two explores how affect offers an opening from which to relate to alterity and to the urban space in Tuca Vieira’s photograph, Luiz Ruffato’s novel Eles eram muitos cavalos, Marcílio Godoi’s experimental book São Paulo Cidade Invisível, Florencia Abbate’s novel El grito, and Alan Pauls short story “Filcar: un diario íntimo” in the collection of short stories titled Buenos Aires, la ciudad como plano. Chapter three claims that urban interventions such as Arte/Cidade III “a cidade e súas histórias” and the stencil art of Vómito Attack and CAM.BsAs disturb and disrupt—albeit momentarily—the hegemony of capitalism. This project argues for the need to reexamine neoliberalism in urban space and its relationship to history, subjectivity, and the nation while reflecting upon the economic, cultural, and political crisis over the last three decades.PHDRomance Languages & Literatures: SpanishUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/151568/1/silvina_1.pd