Collection and identity in Ángel Rama's critique in the 1970s

Abstract

This paper analyzes the intellectual trajectory of Ángel Rama (1926-1983), an Uruguayan critic from the 1970's. When he issued La generación crítica 1939-1969, in 1972, he intended to write a second volume, since the book's subtitle is “I. Panoramas”. However, he never worked on it again, and this is symptomatic in this work. In his only book dedicated to his country's culture, Rama analyzes nostagically the problems, noting that an individual-happiness culture with confidence in the State vanishes. Surprised by the1973 coup, Rama could not return to his homeland. In the exile, he improves himself in his work as a literary critic, which already in the 1960's was recognized in Marcha, along with cultural-integration collective projects like the one in the Casa de las Américas, from the Cuban government. With the discontinuity of his past, he worked in the foundation of the Ayacucho Library, in 1974, when he planned a history opened to the future.