Repertoires of Knowledge

This chapter highlights public institutions, practical knowledge, and popular enlightenment as the prescription for a virtuous and prosperous community everywhere. It looks at periodicals of the 1810s and 1820s that were full of artes, industrias y ciencias (arts and crafts, manufacturing industries, and scientific subjects) and conocimientos útiles (useful knowledge). It also cites that Buenos Aires presented a unique opportunity to create institutions of learning tailored to republican nation-building. The chapter reviews well-known political and economic difficulties of the half century after independence that played a major part in explaining why the founding ambitions to create a modern educational system were not realised during those years. It looks at the exchanges between Cosme Argerich and Juan Crisóstomo Lafinur, which underlines the epistemological crisis created by the wars of independence and other varieties of crisis.