Mariátegui and Chaplin, Avant-garde Cinema and the Cultural Industry

Abstract

Although the Peruvian essayist José Carlos Mariátegui (1894-1930) is best known for being the first and most original Latin American Marxist thinker, in this article I propose to explore one of the facets of his thinking as a precursor to the line that observed the cultural character of capitalism and, by necessity, combined economic and sociological inquiry with philosophical criticism to understand the depth of the popular and mass cultural phenomena of the first half of the twentieth century. I am especially interested in highlighting the compatibility and discrepancy of ideas with the concept of culture industry, which served Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer to characterize the mercantilist and reproductive logic of the capitalist system represented in Hollywood film productions. With a brief review of the main lines of Mariátegui's aesthetic thinking, I inquire here both in that precursor perspective and in the reasons why the Amauta considered Chaplin one of the greatest artists of his time.