Edición y política como vocación

Abstract

Books, magazines and pamphlets were still the privileged weapons for political combat during the Cold War. Until the beginning of the period, parties and intellectual formations planned and implemented publishing projects to disseminate their causes. In the late 1950s, book publishers consolidated their role as nodal agents in the formatting and distribution of printed ideas, a transformation that particularly affected the relationship between print and politics. Book publishing became an art for professionals. A kind of capital of relatively autonomous markets of symbolic goods was then stabilized and imposed rules for the political book system. Siglo XXI publishing house is a dynamic reference to demonstrate such a process. It is a transnational company specialized in social sciences and politics (oriented towards the left), a purely commercial company that cannot be identified with a precise ideology. In this article I focus on the figure of Arnaldo Orfila Reynal (alma mater of the Mexican and transnational company) to interpret the type of publisher he embodied, the power he mobilized and the mediations by which publishing conditioned the senses on politics.

Keywords

• politics
• publishing
• left
• Cultural Cold War
• Siglo XXI publishing house
• Reynal (Arnaldo Orfila)