Qui sont les « têtes pensantes » dans l'Uruguay contemporain ? Culture et intellectuels face au gouvernement de gauche

Abstract

In recent years, Latin America Southern Cone – Argentina, Chile and Uruguay – has seen a resurgence of debate on the role that intellectuals should play in their nations’ social and political life. This is a central debate in early twentieth century’s modernizing impulses as well as in the 1950s and 1960s left political avant-gardes, which reappears today in the public sphere. Today’s Latin American intellectuals ask themselves which is their influence and specific role in their countries. In Uruguay the debate is installed after a series of media disagreements between President José Mujica and some Uruguayan intellectuals. Exploring this confrontation allows us to review how the notion of intellectuals has been understood in this continent and analyze their validity to designate an active social actor in contemporary Uruguay.

Keywords

• Frente Amplio
• intellectuals
• elites
• politics