EL MEJOR ESCUDO DE ARMAS ES EL ROLLSROYCE: MODERNITY AND DECADENCE OF BUENOS AIRES BY EZEQUIEL MARTINEZ ESTRADA

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to think the essay La Cabeza de Goliat, published in 1940 by the argentinean Ezequiel Martinez Estrada, from the confrontation of his perception of a decadent and chronically inviable city with a wide repertorie of criticism and mistrust of modernity that characterized his generation and consisted a point of convergence between several authors of his contemporaries. I consider that to think this essay like a part of a broader critique made by much of the field of modernity as it appeared in Argentina in the 1930´s and 1940´s, while at the same time shedding light on what kinds of visions of modernity circulated among the intelectual field of this period, can help to identify a spectrum of ideas circulation that connects the diagnostic of Strada´s generation to some of the main tensions that composed the discussion of the German thought that circulated in Argentina in that context.