Politic of Rhythm: Typography and Topology in Mid-Twentieth-Century Valparaiso

Abstract

Taking as an analysis strategy the “counterpoint reading” deployed by the Brazilian critic José Miguel Wisnik in his essay “Machado Maxixe: the Pestaña case”, this work develops a “counterpoint” between typography and topography, anchored in the cultural history of the city of Valparaíso, in the middle of the nineteenth century. The analysis focuses on the edition of American Societies in 1828 that Simón Rodríguez published in the city, in 1840, in the printing house of the newspaper El Mercurio, interspersed with descriptions of travelers passing through the city, among them Mary Graham, Charles Darwin, Max Radiguet or Domingo Faustino Sarmiento. From this montage between typography and topography (between the blank space of the page and the space under construction of the city), historical waves of different duration and scope are superimposed and interfere, producing suggestive correlation effects around visual perception in Valparaíso towards the middle of the nineteenth century, correlation effects not necessarily analogical nor necessarily comparable in importance but through which a sensory heterogeneity appears that expresses different perceptual experiences in the city.