Modernidad iberoamericana: Cultura, política y cambio social

Abstract

This collection is based on the assumption that modernity is not the final stage of a gradual and chronologically ordered process. Editor Francisco Colom González states that the book’s aim is to update the cultural self-perception of Latin American societies and to situate their evolution within the parameters of Western modernity (which sounds like a paradox). According to the current perspectives that this book rejects, Latin American modernity was a kind of counter-modernity whose retrograde effects were perceived as economic decay, religious obscurantism, scientific delay, and political incapacity. A diametrically opposed view that highlights an ecumenical, spiritualist, and supposedly epic Iberian culture reaffirms its moral superiority against the declining materialism of the North. According to the editor, both of these perspectives are problematic due to their teleological and determinist connotations.The development of Latin American modernity cannot be described as either a happy and irreversible chronicle or as a dialectic refusal that hinders human freedom and dignity. Indeed, there can be no canonical modernity, but only multiple “modernities” — ultimately no great insight. According to Colom, modernity is essentially a form of looking at the world, a sort of cultural and political consciousness able to perceive social changes and to react to them in order to guide action. It alludes to conscious processes of social transformation whose tendencies can be divergent and even contradictory. For this reason, movements of modernity include the Renaissance, the protestant Reformation, the scientific revolution, or the Enlightenment, but also the encounter with the Other across the ocean and the cultural syncretism forged as a result. The criteria that define the book’s field of analysis are conscientiously indisciplinados (not disciplined); the play on words echoes the Foucaultian denial of academic disciplinary boundaries as an act of freedom. In other words, they do not adhere to the current academic rules that have split the hemispheres. Latin America cannot be studied without consideration of Europe, and vice versa. The criteria that define the Ibero-American space must be linguistic, historic, and political. Culture is the key to understanding Latin American or Ibero-American modernity (both terms are used interchangeably).The book is divided into six sections (the opening to the Western world; baroque syncretism; people, power, and the city; under the syndrome of mimesis; resistance of tradition; nation and integration), each one comprising three essays that vary greatly in length, depth, and density. They were first delivered at the XI Simposio de la Asociación Iberoamericana de Filosofía Política held at the Department of Humanities of the Universidad Nacional del Sur, Argentina, September 23 – 26, 2009.Generally speaking, gathering these conference papers together in a book was a bit precipitous. This volume is little more than a conference proceedings. Designing a book demands much more balance and a general plan. The anarchic, rebellious perspective on academic rules has resulted in a fragmented set of ideas and perspectives. Moreover, the insistence on the determinative nature of culture, however one defines it, already shows signs of exhaustion.Another very important problem is the apparent disdain for the Luso-American part of the Ibero-American world studied in the book, as the book deals solely with the Hispanic American experience. Portuguese America is not even mentioned in parts 1, 4, and 5. In part 2, on the baroque, the bibliography reveals a notable lack of reference to the major experts on the subject (including Alfonso Ávila, Alcir Pécora, and João Adolfo Hansen, among the leading Brazilian scholars). In chapter 3, on the importance of the city (urbe) in the formation of the “Latin American world,” the absence of any reference to Portuguese America is more justified, for as all the Brazilian historiographical classics have affirmed (from Gilberto Freyre to José de Souza Martins), the agricultural world dominated until the late nineteenth century. Therefore, unless one is not considering Portuguese America as part of this “Latin American” whole, this section is at least partial. The only essay dealing with Brazil (Sergio Buarque’s “homem cordial”) would be better placed in the section on the “force of tradition” than in the one on “nation and integration,” where it appears.Last, but not least, the book’s structure, which suppresses the Portuguese portion of America, suggests an unfamiliarity with the region and the long way still to be trod to reach an effective comparative analysis. If modernity cannot be approached disregarding relations between Europe and America, neither can it be done by undervaluing the Portuguese-speaking portion of Latin America. Thus, the editor’s stated aim — to update the cultural self-perception of Latin American societies — leaves this Brazilian reader feeling like an outsider.