In this rigorous study, Isabella Cosse examines the celebrated comic Mafalda. Engrossing and meticulously researched, Cosse's study re-creates the world of the beloved Argentine character while revealing Mafalda as emblematic of the last 50 years of Argentine history. This is the book's most compelling success.
Cosse anchors this excellent social history in the tradition of Raymond Williams's cultural studies. She traces Mafalda as a cultural artifact of Argentine history and considers the production of meaning across its circulation and public reception. Cosse thus reveals how Mafalda narrates the nuances of Argentine social and political life.
Cosse expressly intervenes in the relatively recent turn in social and cultural historiography to analyze the Argentine and Latin American middle class's symbolic and identitarian components. Humor, she argues, has analytical possibilities for grasping the social world inhabited by Mafalda and her friends. Moreover, Cosse's appreciation of humor points to a new paradigm for...