Beatriz Sarlo , a disciplined rebel.

A journey through the history of one of the greatest Argentine intellectuals and her time at Unicamp

Not understanding was my first and definitive experience. I began by not understanding and, almost immediately, accepted that this was the starting point for everything worthwhile. Convinced that understanding was work, I became accustomed to this work being a pleasure. (Beatriz Sarlo in * No entender* , Siglo XXI Publishing House. The digital version of the book was provided to the reporter by the publisher).

“Unruly in everything, when it came to learning my character changed, as if I had a split personality.” These words, by Beatriz Sarlo, appear in her last work, *No entender* (In Understanding ). Sarlo had just finished editing the book when she died in December 2024, after suffering a stroke. Considered one of the leading Argentine intellectuals, the scholar said she liked to “irritate or fascinate,” reactions that frequently arose in the criticisms or praise she received throughout her life and are expressed bluntly in one of the texts about her death, entitled “Amar odiá-la” (Loving to Hate Her), published in * Revista Anfibia* by Adriano Peirone.

Her vast output combines literary criticism with politics, making it difficult to attribute a very strict academic profile to her. Some people will find her books in the field of literature. Others will find them on the shelves of sociology. “Convinced,” “controversial,” and “incisive” are adjectives that have accompanied her career. A child who decided on her career at the age of seven, after discovering that the word “intellectual” meant “someone who thought, read, and wrote,” she flirted with Peronism in her youth and, as an adult, became a critical thinker of Kirchnerism. Sarlo left the militancy of the 1960s and 1970s, when she participated in Marxist organizations, to adopt a position, later, that she classified as “social democrat without a party.” She was a rebel and sided with other rebels because, in her words, “they are always better than the submissive.” 

Sarlo reshaped literary canons, innovatively analyzed the work of Jorge Luis Borges, one of the leading Argentine writers, and reflected on modernity, media, architecture, cinema, and politics. She also worked as a journalist and, in seeking to connect with literary critics considered by the thinker to be references, she visited Unicamp in the 1980s, documenting the encounter in a report published in the magazine Punto de Vista , which she edited for 30 years.

at Unicamp

In an environment conducive to the circulation of ideas and free from academic protocols, she did not just envy the tropical midday heat at Unicamp, as she wrote in issue number 8 of the magazine. In the summer of that year, Sarlo boarded a bus in Buenos Aires (capital of Argentina) that took her to Campinas, where she finally arrived at the Institute of Language Studies (IEL). There, the Jornadas de Literatura Latino-Americanas (Latin American Literature Conferences) would take place, an event that sought to reflect on the unity and diversity of literature on the continent. The scholar was not yet known to those who participated in the event, as she emphasized in her memoirs. She went as a “gatecrawler”, with the prospect of meeting and interviewing literary critics she admired, such as the Brazilian Antonio Candido, a professor at IEL at the time and the creator of the event, the Uruguayan Ángel Rama and the Peruvian Antonio Cornejo Polar.

“In some reports and interviews, she describes this meeting as ‘the famous meeting in Campinas’ and also mentions her meeting with the ‘great powers of Latin America’ [the term she uses to refer to the three critics]. Two years later, in 1983, she returned for another meeting at Unicamp. This time, she did not appear as a ‘gate-crasher’, but as a guest,” describes social scientist Caroline Tresoldi.

“Shock” and “envy” are among the words used by the writer to describe that first encounter at Unicamp, says Tresoldi, who interviewed Sarlo for her master's thesis in sociology, defended in 2019 at the University. “'Shock' because she saw Antonio Candido walking through the University with his former students. A young university, it should be noted, that had been created during the military dictatorship and that, at that moment, hosted a meeting with free circulation of ideas and controversy, as recorded in the article for Punto de Vista . 'How was this possible?', she repeatedly asked herself during the event. And 'envy' for the same reason. Candido's good relations with his former students and with other critics from Latin America gave Beatriz the impression that the Brazilian university had not interrupted careers and dialogues, as had happened in Argentina.”

An exaggerated view, in Tresoldi's opinion, because this meeting "was only possible when Brazil was already moving towards the end – very slowly and gradually, as the military wanted – of a dictatorship that was also very harsh with its intellectuals. In any case, in Campinas, Beatriz came into contact with another intellectual experience, which left a deep impression on her."

The mark of dictatorship

Sarlo graduated in literature in 1966 from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). That year, the country faced its penultimate coup d'état of the 1966th century – there were six in all. The Argentine military dictatorships marked her career. “She belonged to a generation that was educated in intellectual circles that I call alternative, because they were not characterized by academic specialties. I am referring to young people, or not so young, who, formally or informally prevented from attending universities due to the strong repression of the successive Argentine dictatorships [1973-1976 and 1983-XNUMX] against left-wing groups, built their careers on the fringes of official circles, working in publishing houses and collaborating with literary and cultural magazines,” says the social scientist.

Therefore, coming to Campinas and finding left-wing intellectuals gathered in public debates at a university in the midst of the dictatorship meant something surprising for Sarlo, who would only return to the academic environment in Argentina after the end of the dictatorship, more than 20 years after his graduation.

The continuities and discontinuities in training, as well as exile and solidarity networks, permeated his trajectory and that of other generations who experienced authoritarian periods, reflects Eduardo Mejía Toro, PhD in literary theory and history from Unicamp.

In his doctorate, Toro analyzed how the Ayacucho Library project – a publishing entity founded in 1974 in Venezuela – and its literary editor, Rama, contributed to “the articulation of an intellectual group affected by the tragedy of exile.” According to the researcher, “these networks found in editorial work a way to affirm, promote and disseminate a certain Latin American project.” 

He points out that these are different generations, “but all affected by the tragedy of dictatorships in Latin America.” In preparing his thesis, Toro researched Rama’s archive in Uruguay. “There are letters from Antonio Candido and other intellectuals from the region. All of them debating and concerned, trying to understand the magnitude of the tragedy that was unfolding on the continent and at the same time creating ties to denounce and consolidate spaces of resistance and memory, such as the Latin American Literature Conferences that took place in Brazil in a very complicated context,” he says.

The Ayacucho Library served as one of the most important references for the work done by Sarlo, he says. “The dictatorship was already underway when she began a small but always critical project.” 

Point of view

This project was the magazine Punto de Vista . The publication began circulating in 1978, at the height of the last Argentine military dictatorship. Due to the context of censorship and persecution, it was only in 1981 that the group of editors presented themselves to readers. At that time, Carlos Altamirano, Ricardo Piglia, María Teresa Gramuglio, Hugo Vezzetti, and Beatriz Sarlo also explained the purpose of the magazine: “[…] to defend, in practice, the critical spirit and our right to dissent. That is, to reclaim the freedom to think, write, and disseminate different ideas: the right to a point of view.” Sarlo stated that the publication was invisible enough to allow discussion of sensitive issues for the dictatorship.

“ Punto de Vista was sold at newsstands and in some bookstores where it would get a little mixed up with other things. It passed from hand to hand. At a time when repression was so great, the existence of a small publication like this, as a space of resistance, was crucial. And then the magazine consolidated itself with the return of democracy,” explains Miriam Gárate, professor of literary theory at IEL.

The teacher, who is from Sarlo’s country, and other colleagues launched the magazine in Rosario Province (Argentina), where she studied. “There were half a dozen of us students who saved up money for the ticket and to sleep in a hotel. And the launch of the magazine was a kind of semi-secret,” she says.

For Gárate, the publication proved to be important for the country because it systematically disseminated the reading of the work of intellectuals such as Walter Benjamin and Raymond Williams, as well as that of thinkers on media culture, urbanism, music and neo-avant-garde movements.

Issue number 8 of Punto de Vista features interviews with Candido, Rama, and Polar. In Toro's words, "the questions always refer to what will become Sarlo's major reflections, such as the idea of ​​tradition, nation, literary imagination, and political imagination."

Throughout the editions, thinkers from Latin America and other countries were invited to contribute articles. One of them was Paulo Arantes, a philosophy professor at the University of São Paulo (USP). Arantes met Sarlo during the Argentine thinker's stay in Brazil in 1980, and in 2006 he wrote for Punto de Vista about the wave of violent acts promoted by the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC). By email, the professor received an invitation to speak about his encounter with Sarlo and to assess the legacy of literary criticism. The philosopher replied: “I read the books. Not all of them, of course. But personal memories, though precious, are scarce. Two or three encounters in brief glimpses of collective events, and always thanks to the mediation of a mutual friend, Roberto Schwarz. I must, however, record my gratitude for a small gesture from Beatriz that charmed me with its generosity and attention. In 2006, I received a request for an article from Punto de Vista about the so-called PCC uprising in São Paulo, for yesterday, as they say. Upon receiving the magazine, I saw that Beatriz herself had taken the trouble to translate it for me. Thus I entered through the side door of the wide circle of the happy few who had the chance to meet her personally.”

In the 'blurred realm of possibilities '

Besides the magazine Punto de Vista , Sarlo worked in other spaces, such as the magazine Los Libros and the Latin American Publishing Center (Ceal). At Los Libros, the thinker even served as editor for a period, along with Carlos Altamirano, her husband at the time, and Ricardo Piglia. “They took over the direction of the magazine for a while and began to propose that aesthetic and political discussions go hand in hand. The magazine was raided and shut down by the military with the new dictatorship, which was established in 1976, and the friends began to meet at Ceal or at the home of one of them,” says Tresoldi.

The center had been founded by Boris Spivacow, with whom Sarlo worked at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) publishing house until he was removed from the position due to the dictatorship. “Ceal, as she liked to say, served as a kind of postgraduate course for her,” says the social scientist. Structuralist readings and social and political theories developed at that time formed the basis for Sarlo’s thinking, says Tresoldi. “That was the basis, so to speak, for her to begin developing, from the mid-1970s, a literary critique with a strong historical-social content.”

The publishers, magazines and intellectual circles that emerged around these ideas were part of a self-taught education undertaken while the academic world remained inaccessible due to dictatorial governments. It was only in 1984 that Sarlo returned to UBA, remaining there until 2003 as a professor. She was also a visiting professor at American universities and at the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom) and left the classroom at a time when she began to seek out the press as a space to continue her reflections, this time trying to reach a wider audience.

The literary critic had been writing regularly for the press since the mid-1990s and intensified this presence after leaving the academic environment. In Brazil, Sarlo was interviewed in 2007 in an episode of Roda Viva, a renowned program on TV Cultura.

The public intellectual 

“Beatriz Sarlo was someone who always expressed herself with great conviction and vehemence and with a great desire to participate in the arena of discussions. During her first decades of activity, this occurred fundamentally in the university and editorial spaces. But, from the end of the 1990s and beginning of the 2000s, there was a shift in which she began to participate in the periodical press”, says Gárate.

This transition occurs after literary criticism has reached a conclusion, says the professor. “Beatriz said that what interested her in culture was somewhere else and that she wanted to go to that other place.” The transition was not well received by some of her intellectual colleagues, who accused her of, for example, “selling out” to newspapers, precisely at a time when the most important media outlets were turning against Kirchnerism. “During an interview that became famous, she made a gesture that became a catchphrase. ‘Not with me!’ she said, pointing her finger. Sarlo argued that she was working without restrictions to say what she wanted to say. As long as they didn’t censor her, she would continue,” analyzes Gárate.

Since then, Sarlo has been a constant presence in the media. Even in the last months of 2024, before suffering his stroke, he appeared frequently on podcasts, on television and on the internet.

One of the last long interviews she gave took place on a videocast called El Método Rebord. The interview is interesting, with several moments in which Sarlo leaves the interviewer disconcerted. Right at the beginning of the program, the interviewer greets her: “It’s a pleasure to welcome you.” To which she replies: “Wait until the end.”

At one point in the conversation, Sarlo recounts how early he decided to become an intellectual. “When I was seven years old, I came across the word ‘intellectual’ in a newspaper article. I didn’t know what it meant, but when they told me it was someone who thought, read and wrote, I decided that’s what I wanted to be.”

Impatient with some questions, she alternates professional reports with cultural analyses. When she visibly gets tired, she looks at her watch and says she has to go: “I’m going to the theater.”

“We Argentines make a point of being professionally unpleasant and inflexible,” jokes Gárate. The teacher also comments that, “in the programs, [Sarlo] became a great teacher.” After all, she was a leading intellectual, perhaps the most influential in Argentina.

Her presence in the media, however, led to some divisions with the Argentine intelligentsia. "There were disagreements with part of the intelligentsia, especially because of her very critical intervention in relation to the Kirchner governments. She started working at La Nación [a newspaper opposed to the Kirchners] precisely during the Macri government [Mauricio Macri, president of Argentina between 2015 and 2019], even though she was critical of Macri," the professor exemplifies.

The controversies, Gárate assesses, also occurred due to the fact that Sarlo's analyses reverberated in literary canons, causing a “movement of chosen and rejected”.

“She was a polemicist all the time and passionate about getting involved in discussions,” he sums up.