Benjamin in Buenos Aires? Skiing in Mexico?

Last year at a party in Chicago, I was relating my Fulbright proposal to a graduate student/screenwriter whom I knew somewhat tangentially. When I told him I was planning to go to Buenos Aires to study psychoanalysis, he said, “that’s crazy! Studying psychoanalysis in Argentina is like trying to learn to downhill ski in Mexico.” He was actually quite wrong. Bs. As. is probably the world capital of psychoanalysis at this point, but the quote still stuck with me as a worthy, if misguided, jab. (On a side note updating a recent post, my left jab is getting a lot better.)

While studying psychoanalysis in Bs. As. might not be like skiing in Mexico, it’s quite possible that studying Walter Benjamin in Buenos Aires is. And yet, that’s exactly what I found myself doing tonight: sitting around a wooden table in the back room of a bookstore in Palermo Hollywood in a seminar on the German critical theorist.

I’m a little surprised I ended up going. I even made one abortive attempt not to go, walking back to my apartment after I’d walked two blocks toward the subway. I’ve been taking an informal class on Borges on Monday nights. It’s a bunch of people sitting around a kitchen table, mostly listening to the teacher—a young “tipo” named Marcos—lecture in machine-gun-cadence about the magic and genius of the great porteño author. It costs 10 pesos a class (about 3 US dollars), and befitting its kitchen table style, its really just a bunch of friends hanging out, drinking mate, and gushing about their favorite author.

The Benjamin class promised to be a far more intimidating affair. For one, it’s much more expensive (an unfathomable 7 US dollars/class) and is taught by a philosophy professor from the University of Buenos Aires. I found out about the class from a proper Oxford man who said he’d be there, but ended up being absent. So it was ten Argentines and I, sitting in the back room of a bookstore, listening to a professor gush about Walter Benjamin.

I didn’t make that sound particularly wonderful, but in it’s own way it was. First, there was the realization I came to about twenty minutes in that I was actually participating in a seminar on Walter Benjamin and the Frankfurt School in Spanish and understanding about 90% of the material. Then, there was the fact that I actually was able to learn something through Spanish that had nothing to do with learning the language itself. Finally, there was the pleasure of being the only Yankee in the room. (I also managed to stay completely incognito by virtue of not speaking. To be fair, not many people spoke, and I did laugh in the right places and appeared to understand the material. Thus, my ability to blend in was, in equal parts, based on circumstance, accident, and a dab of language shyness.)

This class doesn’t have quite the vibes of the Borges get together, but hopefully through the two of them, I’ll meet enough Argentines to go a bit more native. Next up, submerging myself into what my friend Gabe Arce-Rollins once called, “the jazz hipster elite.” Or something like that…