An exploration of critical Latin American historical analyses of the capitalist state and the University system in Argentina

Abstract

This investigation into certain elements of critical Latin American Literature was prompted by the apparent post-1980s neglect by academics of Anglo-Saxon origin to engage with the state and social class, in the contextual framework of the political economy, as central elements of social analysis. This analytical perspective of the state was marginalised by post-modernism and post-structuralism during the 1980s and 1990s with the state re-defined by contemporary globalisation theorists according to a notion of the nation-state. This constitutes one element of an overaching configuration of power relationa and networks comprising a variety of transnational players who assume political and economic roles to pursue their interests. This designation of players detracts from the centrality of class as an analytical tool, preferring to dwell on notions of power and conflict without pursuing tha analysis to its fundamental origin in a system of control and ownership of resources by dominant transnational corporations. An abandoning of the state as a central conceptual tool has coincided with changes , in the way the role performed by the university is conceptualised, foregrounding symptoms of an ideological intrusion by neoliberal discourse concerning the role of the University, rather than locating the cause. Hence the greater struggle for ideological hegemony that occurs within society, waged by the mass media, as mouthpiece of implementation by agents of transnational financial capital, and progating a neoliberal discourse, seems overlooked.