Monstruos, galanes, sumisos
La disputa en torno a la representación visual del trabajador nacional
Abstract
Throughout the twentieth century, the figure of the worker was the object of a series of visual representations: monuments, plastic works, graphic media, performances, etc. In Argentina, these prescriptive imaginings consolidate an exemplary, idealized proletarian as a way of projecting a model of future citizenship. However, resistance was also part of that process. In this article I affirm that the very figure of the worker functioned as the surface on which many of the political and cultural tensions of this period were printed. In fact, the visual representation of the proletariat was articulated as a dispute. On the one hand, these experiments represent the proletariat as an anxiety of synthesis, an embodiment of the social heterogeneity of the new urban crowds. On the other, the proletariat exhibits an instability of meaning, a figure that cannot be concretized.