The Limits of the Modern Nation in El Gráfico

The Limits of the Modern Nation in El Gráfico marı́a mercedes andrade cuny, baruch college  Although frequently considered a secondary aspect of modernity, the phenomenon of fashion can be seen in fact as paradigmatic of the modern experience, as it integrates modern methods of production, modern beliefs about consumption, and the everyday life of the members of a society.1 Critics and theorists such as George Simmel, Herbert Blumer, Quentin Bell, Gilles Lipovetsky , Jukka Gronow, and others have argued that ‘‘the modern fashion mechanism started in the West sometime during the Renaissance or early modern period’’ (Gronow 75), and coincide in viewing it as a form of consumption that displays a ‘‘‘chronic’ demand for novelty’’ that is ‘‘typical of modern consumption patterns alone’’ (Gronow 27), possible only in the modern period, an era characterized by its ‘‘future-orientedness’’ (Habermas 12).2 For such critics, fashion , as a ‘‘vector of narcissistic individualization, an instrument for enlarging the aesthetic cult of the self’’ (Lipovetsky 29), ‘‘belongs structurally to the evolving modern world’’ (24). Research for this article was undertaken with the partial support of a grant from the Professional Staff Congress of the City University of New York. 1 It should be clear that the notion of fashion used in the following pages is not confined to phenomenon of the clothing industry. Rather, I am referring to the ‘‘fashion mechanism’’ (Gronow 75) as a typically modern mode of consumption that requires an incessant flow of ever-renewable objects, and which, consequently, comprises various aspects of modern lifestyle including personal attire, home furnishings, and even cultural products. The connection between modernity and fashion was first theorized in the nineteenth century by Charles Baudelaire, in his article ‘‘The Painter of Modern Life,’’ in which he discusses a series of French fashion plates. Baudelaire famously defines the modern as ‘‘the ephemeral, the fugitive , the contingent’’ (12), thus underscoring a connection between modernity and fashion, and he characterizes the modern world as one governed by the ‘‘transitory’’ (12). 2 Many theorists have argued that the modern period is characterized by a desire to break with the past, an infatuation with innovation, and a tendency to project itself toward the future, notions already evident in the above reference to Baudelaire. Such a characterization of the modern understanding of time is explained in detail in Jürgen Habermas’s The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, specifically, in the chapter titled ‘‘Modernity’s Consciousness of Time.’’ Marshall Berman, in turn, describes modernity as a period of incessant change, ‘‘a maelstrom of perpetual disintegration and renewal’’ (15). The modern understanding of time is also discussed, and critiqued, throughout the work of Walter Benjamin, including a text such as his ‘‘Theses on the Philosophy of History,’’ where he questions the modern belief in a ‘‘homogeneous empty time’’ (261) in which events follow one another ‘‘like the beads of a rosary’’ (263). 144  Revista Hispánica Moderna 60.2 (2007) Given the significance of fashion in European modernity, it is not surprising that in Colombia the notion of fashion and the idea of novelty played an important role in the rhetoric of modernization used by the popular press during the first half of the twentieth century, as major economic and social changes were underway, and that these notions were often specifically linked to the project of developing modern national identities. In what follows, I analyze the convergence between fashion as a mode of consumption, the quest for modernity, and the desire to propose a model of nationhood in Colombia during the 1920s, as articulated in El Gráfico, a popular magazine published during the first half of the twentieth century in Bogotá. El Gráfico is, even today, remembered as a legendary publication and as one of the most important Latin American magazines of its time.3 In spite of its importance and relevance for an analysis of the discourse on modernization in Colombia, this publication has, to my knowledge, never been the focus of scholarly analysis, and precise information about its readership or distribution is not available.4 My essay addresses how the notion of fashion and the search for the new, two prominent themes...