Making Magazines in the Storm, or the Insubordinate Strategy of Building Shared Existences

Abstract

This paper analyzes counter-hegemonic cultural practices that emerged in Argentina during the last military dictatorship (1976-1983). The aim is to integrate studies of forms of cultural dissent within the framework of intellectual history and with a particular focus on independent and self-managed magazines. These magazines and the networks woven among them are considered cultural formations through which less observed aspects of experiences during those years can be reconstructed. The guiding hypothesis is that, despite the seismic upheaval that the dictatorship caused in the organizational forms of civil society, groups emerged that functioned as spaces for cultural and intellectual production, the circulation of ideas, the creation of meanings, symbolic exchange, and the development of networks that challenged the limits imposed by dominant discourses. These formations did not constitute an open opposition, but they expressed intellectual dissent and cultural resistance. This active sediment fueled the democratic recovery, challenging from the margins the silencing imposed by the military regime.