“What’s So Funny? Humor and Emotionality in ‘Estridentismo’ and ¡30-30!”

• In Event: “The Precariousness of Feeling Anew: Affects and Emotions in the Latin American Avant-gardes”

Abstract

In Arqueles Vela’s little-known short story “Al margen de un piano” (1923) the narrator is an introspective romantic tormented by a piano player, who sounds the same unbearable tune every time he is in his room. With no place for his dreamy musings, the character is forced to escape to the streets and endure the din of the modern city. While one theme of the story is that modernity is inescapable, it also speaks to the role of emotions in contemporary aesthetics. The Estridentistas struggled to find a balance between emotions and avant-garde experimentation. Though Manuel Maples Arce implied that the function of art is to “translate our personal emotions,” he and Vela established a dichotomy between humor and true emotion, with only the latter being capable of producing serious literature. The paradox was that Estridentismo exploited scandal and humor to garner attention, and its manifestos were marked by humorous passages.

Estridentismo’s offshoot movement ¡30-30!, comprised exclusively of visual artists, also exploited humor in its emotionally fraught manifestoes through prose as well as imagery, often conveying anger and outrage. Eventually censored, the group was given to understand that its uncivil behavior was unacceptable. This paper examines the role of emotions in these two avant-garde movements in texts and images as well as personal interactions, focusing especially on how the social imperative against public displays of emotionality curtailed their activities.

Author

• Tatiana E Flores, Rutgers University