Cultural studies, academic work and political action, interview with Víctor Vich

Estudios culturales, trabajo académico y acción política, entrevista a Víctor Vich

MMDV First, Victor, I would like you to tell me, from your perspective, about your academic background, how did you get to literature and cultural studies?

- VV. Good. I came to literature very rarely, because I entered university and wanted to study social sciences, I wanted to study sociology or anthropology; but at the same time I really liked literature, specifically poetry. And then I didn't know what to do, because on the one hand I had a very theoretical inclination, very towards a sociological vision of things and on the other hand I had a very textual vision, about the importance of the word and aesthetics in communication. Well, I went to college first, and here in Peru it's two years of general studies and in those two years I had to think about it.
And there I realized that what I really wanted was to teach, was to be a teacher. And it seemed more fun to teach literature than social sciences. Or in other words, it seemed to me that teaching literature could also teach social sciences because literary texts allow you to speak, or are spaces to make social problems visible. And then I decided to study literature and there I discovered oral tradition. that is to say, that the study of oral tradition or of oral literature became the «meeting point » where I could reconcile my two interests, that is, an ethnographic interest, of field work, of street work, of questioning for the collective and an interest in textual analysis, working with language. Then, I began to specialize in oral literatures, and when I graduated I went to the United States and there I discovered all the development of contemporary critical theory, all the development of cultural studies, postcolonial studies, junior studies, theories of psychoanalysis and gender, of contemporary Marxisms and I was very shocked and felt that all that served me to analyze oral texts and that was my story.

Hamann, Marita, Santiago López Maguiña, Gonzalo Portocarrero y Víctor Vich (eds.). 2003. Batallas por la memoria: antagonismos de la promesa peruana. Lima, Red para el Desarrollo de las Ciencias Sociales en el Perú. López Maguiña, Santiago, Gonzalo Portocarrero, Rocío Silva-Santistevan y Víctor

Vich (editores). 2001. El discurso de la calle. Los cómicos ambulantes y las tensiones de la modernidad en el Perú. Lima, Red para el Desarrollo de las Ciencias Sociales en el Perú.

Millones, Luis, Aldo Panfichi y Víctor Vich (eds.). 2002. En el corazón del pueblo: pasión y gloria de Alianza Lima. Lima, Fondo Editorial del Congreso del Perú.
Monteagudo, Cecilia y Víctor Vich (eds.). Del viento, el poder y la memoria. Lima, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.

Ubilluz, Juan Carlos, Alexandra Hibbett y Víctor Vich. 2008. Contra el sueño de los justos: la literatura peruana ante la violencia política. Perú, IEP.

Vich, Víctor. 2010. «Un nuevo atentado de Manuel Macías», en http://www.elmorsa. pe/2010/06/06/un-nuevo-atentado-de-manuel-masias-envio-de-victor-vich/ recuperado noviembre 2010.

Vich, Víctor. 2004a. «Desobediencia simbólica. Performance, participación y política al final de la dictadura fujimorista», en Alejandro Grimson (ed.). La cultura en las crisis latinoamericanas. (63-80). Buenos Aires, Clacso.

Vich.Víctor. (compilador). 2004b. Julio Ramón Ribeyro: Cuentos y ensayos. Lima, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú