Pluriculturalidad y creación artística italiana en Buenos Aires (Argentina, 1890-1910)

In the late 19th and early 20th Century Buenos Aires was modeled as “Babel”; in response to this model arose the systems of rules of nationalist aesthetics. The analysis of the topics of the lyrics of songs composed by Italian immigrants shows that they conveyed structures of sensitivity associated with Italianity. Consequently, the nationalism considered these texts as foreign ―not syncretizable―. Therefore, in order to understand the effects of this textual plexus of immigrant creation, one should not inquire into the intrinsic conditions of the artistic text, but rather in its inadequacy to the nationalist hegemonic instructive metatext of culture.Buenos Aires a fines del siglo XIX y principios del XX se modelizó como una “Babel”; en respuesta a este modelo surgieron los sistemas de reglas de la estética nacionalista. El análisis de los topics de las letras de canciones compuestas por inmigrantes italianos muestra que vehiculizaron estructuras de sensibilidad asociadas a la italianidad. Entonces, el nacionalismo consideró estos textos como ajenos ―no creolizables―. Por ello, para comprender los efectos de este plexo textual de creación inmigrante no habría que indagar en las condiciones intrínsecas del texto artístico sino en su inadecuación al metatexto instructivo hegemónico nacionalista de la cultura.In the late 19th and early 20th Century Buenos Aires was modeled as “Babel”; in response to this model arose the systems of rules of nationalist aesthetics. The analysis of the topics of the lyrics of songs composed by Italian immigrants shows that they conveyed structures of sensitivity associated with Italianity. Consequently, the nationalism considered these texts as foreign ―not syncretizable―. Therefore, in order to understand the effects of this textual plexus of immigrant creation, one should not inquire into the intrinsic conditions of the artistic text, but rather in its inadequacy to the nationalist hegemonic instructive metatext of culture