Rock Ritual and Literature: Youth Culture and the Transition to Democracy in the Southern Cone

The paper proposes a reflection on pogo dance, and its aesthetic and political significance in the context of youth cultures in the Southern Cone. I propose a reading of 'pogo' as part of the rock event, looking into the performative aspects of this cultural form, and discussing how the ceremonial and the ritual in the rock event constitute and reveal the cultural; how the political inscribes the global and redefines it; and how the rock conglomerate becomes an aesthetics that feeds and is fed by the literary in the Southern Cone. The focus of my study falls on the less studied side of rock communication: audience participation, specifically pogo dance. The approach I am proposing identifies a recurring connectedness along the rock recital, and what is involved in it, and the theatrical. The paper focuses on a group of texts by Uruguayan authors, which have been referred to as the 'Aesthetic of Cruelty'.