Corruption and political purity: on the principles of vision and division in El estudiante (The Student) (Santiago Mitre, 2011)

Abstract

This paper analyzes the Argentine film El estudiante (The Student), Santiago Mitre’s debut film (2011), which contains the seeds of many of the themes of his later work. The objective is, through immanent criticism method (as Adorno understand it), to interrogate its perception of politics; specifically, we problematize (what, with Bourdieu, can be conceived as) the principles of vision and division through which this film constructs and stages a particular sense of the political game. To this end, the film studies the different ways in which different main characters play this game in the film, as well as the trajectories they develop throughout it. On this basis, the different oppositions that configure these principles of division are addressed: the one that opposes the academic to the political, the one that pits the latter against personal relationships, and the one that contrasts the public with the private. Finally, it seeks to show that the principles of division thus configured are not exclusive to this film (nor to Mitre’s filmography), but rather, they express a particular tradition of Argentine political culture and its limitations.