LATIN AMERICA AND THE CHALLENGE TO IMPERIAL REASON

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Fanon (1967 Fanon, F. 1967. Black skin, white masks, London: Pluto Press. [Google Scholar], p. 188) for instance defined the ‘collective unconscious’ as the ‘sum of prejudices, myths, collective attitudes of a given group’. The term can be used in relation to all kinds of society, and in Western societies the history of Empire leaves in its wake a whole series of attitudes and values that act as a barrier to the working through of the varied meanings of the imperial experience so that new identities can be formed and fought for. Instead there is frequently a blockage preventing the processing of the imperial mentality and opposition to multiculturalism, or better expressed, interculturalism as well as new forms of racism result. For a stimulating analysis see Gilroy (2005 Gilroy, P. 2005. Postcolonial Melancholia, New York: Columbia University Press. [Google Scholar]). 2. For an insightful analysis of the role of the United States in the recent events in Honduras, see, for example, Vigna 2010 Vigna, A. 2010. Cómo Blanqear un Golpe de Estado. Le Monde Diplomatique en español, XIV(172): 24 [Google Scholar]. 3. Geo-political interventionism can be taken as a clear sign of imperial power and during the nineteenth century, before the rise of communism, the United States intervened 103 times in the period from 1798 to 1895, in a wide range of countries, from Japan and China to Nicaragua and Argentina – see Zinn (1996 Zinn, H. 1996. A People's History of the United States, New York: Longman. [Google Scholar], pp. 290–291). 4. In this sense I would disagree with Arditi (2008 Arditi, B. 2008. Arguments about the Left Turns in Latin America: a post-liberal politics?. Latin American Research Review, 43(3): 59–81. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], p. 60) who is quoted by Escobar and who has written an imaginative paper on ‘Left turns’ in Latin America; rather than maintain that struggles against imperialism and infringements of sovereignty are in decline it can be seen that with Chávez (Venezuela), Morales (Bolivia) and Correa (Ecuador) – not to mention Cuba – these are urgent and contemporary issues. 5. Elsewhere I have dealt with this issue in some detail, see Slater (2009 Slater, D. 2009. Exporting imperial democracy: critical reflections on the US case. Human Geography, 2(3): 24–36. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). 6. For a detailed review and analysis of Latin American social movements, see Stahler-Sholk et al. (2008 Stahler-Sholk , R. et al. 2008 Latin American Social Movements in the Twenty-first Century , Boulder, CO , Rowman & Littlefield Publishers . [Google Scholar]). 7. This is an extensive field of analysis, but for two recent texts which are particularly useful see Chakrabarty (2008 Chakrabarty, D. 2008. Provincializing Europe, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) and Connell (2007 Connell, R. 2007. Southern Theory, Cambridge: Polity Press. [Google Scholar]). 8. The Mexican social anthropologist Roger Bartra made the point that in many ways Latin American intellectuals are more global in orientation than their counterparts in the North, since in the global south intellectuals keep up to date with their own literature as well as that produced in the North – interview in Mexico City, April 2005. See Bartra (1996 Bartra, R. 1996. Las Redes Imaginarias del Poder Político, Mexico City: Editorial Oceano de Mexico. [Google Scholar]) for related discussion. 9. For an excellent critical review of these three international financial institutions see Peet (2009 Peet, R. 2009. Unholy Trinity, London: Zed Books. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]).