Spectacles of Inclusion

This dissertation examines the practices of leisure and consumption in early twentieth-century Buenos Aires through both intellectual and mass cultural productions. Using works by authors such as Horacio Quiroga and Roberto Arlt together with articles, images, and texts from the Argentine mass media, I examine how national, social and civic identities were intimately tied to, and were constituted through, technologically mediated leisure practices. Sports and film spectatorship, the reception of radio and the reading popular texts were all activities that opened spaces for the rehearsal of forms of citizenship and encouraged the formation of communities and publics both in line with and contrary to the hegemonic and disciplinary mechanisms of the state.