Raúl Antelo and his scripts of extimity: The primitive scene and its relationship with the european aesthetic thought

Abstract

This article analyzes the critical production of Raúl Antelo, taking as a central topic his research on travelers and readers in the first decades of the twentieth century who were interested in the primitive cultures of Latin America, within the framework of a generalized interest in mythical thought. The article also proposes that this interest in mythical thought is the result of a generalized crisis of European reason and the Enlightenment project. Finally, the text stresses that such travels and readings have a deconstructive effect on the critical and aesthetic narratives that tend to think of the relationship between Europe and Latin America as one of cultural dependence. Antelo's research, in this sense, seeks to exhibit a network of circulations that have a decentering effect on any attempt to construct a linear account of the configuration of an aesthetic thought during the first decades of the last century.