40 years of books in democracy: from political book to the factory of bestsellers

Books and politics have always been inextricably linked. Certainly, the centrality that the two occupied in social life was a key factor in this close intertwining. Since the end of the 19th century, when the figure (individual but also commercial) of the modern publisher began to consolidate, the policy, even the identification of certain publishing companies with a certain ideology (sometimes even partisan), has is translated by the letter of identity of any publishing house: its catalogue. Both to the right and to the left of the political arc were companies whose editorial programs sought to diffuse, confirm or indoctrinate their readers. But also, especially during the 20th century and because of the prestige and influence it has always had in the world of cultural objects, the book, and in particular the political book, was considered a powerful instrument of struggle of ideas and battles. by force.

The more than two hundred years of Argentine history have to their credit a valuable heritage to confirm this positive assessment that politicians have always given to the book as a channel for expressing their way of seeing the world. They are there to confirm it in the libraries of all readers who are interested in social and political thought, volumes of Domingo F. Sarmiento, Esteban Echeverria oh Barthelemy Miter that of Juan Domingo Peron, Arturo Frondezi, Rogelio Frigerio oh Alexandre Lanusse.

The last forty years – those of the return and final consolidation of democracy that we are celebrating this year – were not exactly far from this reality, only that they perhaps require deeper reflection to discover some of the changes that have occurred. Indeed, like two sides of the same coin: the book and the political have undergone respective and significant transformations which allow us to hypothesize that this overlapping has not been expressed in the same way over the years. In an examination of what has happened over the past four decades in relation to the political book, two great moments could be highlighted, with the confluence of profound social, political and cultural changes that took place between the late 1990s and the 1990s acting as a dividing line from the second decade of this century.

The political book as an editorial event

At least during the first two decades of the four analyzed here, it is possible to see the politicians and the way they used the books, in a clear line of continuity with what they had been in the past. Whether in programmatic form or as self-referential memories, most of these editorial artefacts responded exclusively, either to the need to project oneself – with more or less success thereafter when it came to imposing their candidacies or to engage in the “electoral battle”. – their figures in the upcoming electoral scene; anyway – as had happened with iconic memoir books like those of Winston Churchill– to leave a testimony of his passage – more or less traumatizing – at the top of the power.

During this first stage and beyond the changes that gradually manifested themselves, the editorial statements of the candidates and policies of this first stage shared much of what society itself at the time was still manifesting through relation to politics: an effervescent and active commitment to questions of public interest life in which the debate of ideas was central. In this strict sense, it can be said that the political books of the democratic transition were properly political.

Like the annual editions of Book Fair –a showcase like few others for exhibiting and seeing the marriage between culture and society–, this process could be clearly verified: the day when the politician-author of service presented his bibliographical novelty, the public spontaneously overflowed the halls, assimilating in reaction to the events in which the usual “ticket sellers” played, although of very different editorial genres: cinchona, fontanarrosa oh Nick in graphic humor; Ernesto Sabato, Juan Jose Sebreli oh Marcos Aguinis in the field of philosophy; Felix Moon oh Philip Pignain that of history or of the infallibly admired Ray Bradbury, Maria Esther de Miguel oh Mario Vargas Llosa in literary genres as different as science fiction or the novel.

This is how, during these years, we have seen them parading through the corridors and rooms of the Municipal exhibition center –area where the Fair was held between 1975 and 1999– to politicians such as Carlos Menem, Edouard Angeloz, Alvaro Alsogaray oh Raul Alfonsin carrying copies of his volumes fresh from the press under his arm. In any case, in these events, much was left to chance: neither the managers of the respective publishers nor, even less, the representatives of the publishers or the civil servants took an active part in this event which, in the end, had the even greater than any other carried out days before or to be carried out days after in order to promote and spread the good news that the new and very varied types of books bring.

The political book as a political event

The first decades of the new century have begun to be marked by profound epochal changes. “The civilization of the spectacle” and the lights of television sets and reality TV shows seemed to inevitably color political and cultural life and, with it, editorial activity. The time would come, as the saying goes Safersteinof the “factory of political best-sellers”, real “editorial operations” confused with real “political operations” (Ezequiel Saferstein. How do you make a political bestseller?). If again the application of the Buenos Aires Book Fair As a privileged lens to observe the transformations in the field of culture and in the field of publishing in particular, in a progressive way, this act and, in particular, its first acts had more politics than culture. And these “editorial/political operations” seemed to fit into this same imprint.

Never before had it been so evident that the overlap or feedback between publishing houses and political protests, the book launch Sincerelyof the former president at the time Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, is perhaps the most emblematic case of this process. His well-known presentation, on May 9, 2019, had several elements that clearly would allow us to postulate a new stage in the political book. On the one hand, due to the massive attendance of the public-activist who even filled the outdoor space which, exceptionally, was used to carry it out within the exhibition center. On the other hand, because of the absolute care of all the technical details of stage and security that it had, all more typical of a political event than a cultural one.

Finally, because they also shared the platform in an unprecedented way, with the author, the editorial director of Random House (the company that published the book) and the president of Fundación El Libro, an institution whose leadership, at the time, did not bother to show its explicit alignment with the Kirchner governments. For the first time in history, a cultural scenario – for several decades strongly politicized and with undeniable media projection – exhibits full consubstantiation between a representative of the political class, one of the publishing house and one of the society of the book.

Four years later, Mauricio Macri will take a new step in this process by presenting the first of his two volumes –First time–, although with a few other components. The scene would no longer be Feria but the Convention Center, this time the publishing house would be the most competitive Random House on the market (Planeta), and the former president would speak – in front of a massive audience summoned by invitation – in the company of his former Minister of Culture, Pablo Avellutowho before taking up this position already had extensive professional experience at the Sudamericana publishing house and continued to maintain close ties with his colleagues in the publishing world.

In short, what do these two nights represent when the two audiences – or at least a large number of them – separated by the “crack” led by their “author-stars”, seemed to become, overnight, voracious readers?

For the political world, the book has become a formidable pretext to give shape to a new staging – tinged with the prestige that the book continues to enjoy – of “politics as spectacle”. If the respective activists who took part in these acts had reading as a practice and books as a cultural fetish, this was irrelevant information. For the world of culture, publishing and in particular political books, this is a new twist – from which the commercial dimension is not exempt, of course – in this intertwining that politics and books have always had .

In any case, what is undeniable is that the two processes merged coherently in the now fully consecrated “civilization of the spectacle”, a phenomenon which also occurred during these first forty years of democracy.

* Sociologist (UBA) specializing in cultural issues. PhD student in Human Sciences (UNSAM).

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