The Other Side of the Popular: Neoliberalism and Subalternity in Latin America (review)

Abstract

Williams, Gareth. 2002. The Other Side of Popular: Neoliberalism and Subalternity in Latin America. Durham: Duke University Press. $64.95 hc. $22.95 sc. xii + 375 pp.In 1971, Argentine critic Eduardo Galeano published Las venas abiertas de America latina (The Open Veins of Latin America). Through metaphors of addiction and dependency, Galeano offers a withering Marxist analysis of U. S. hegemony and its perpetual impoverishment of Latin America. After Cuban revolution, in an era that marked rise of left in Latin America as well as strong emergence of Latin American culture (e.g., Boom), Galeano wrote with confidence, and his was one of many voices proffering anti-hegemonic and calling for a more thoroughgoing independence of Latin America from dominion of North. In decades since, though, that sought after independence has been fleeting at best. The U. S. aggressively defeated or neutralized left in places like Chile and Nicaragua while abetting rise of right in Argentina, Chile, and Peru while forging economic ties (e.g., NAFTA) that have furthered Latin America's neo-colonial dependence.In The Other Side of Popular, Gareth Williams writes within current context of globalization and with knowledge of Latin America's continued failures to liberate itself from U. S. dominion. The book reads as if Williams is trying to pick his way through a minefield of failed analyses in search of materials and methods out of which he can piece together a viable approach that posits possibility of a liberatory analysis for Latin America. As a resuk, Williams's efforts are more cautious and nuanced than strident anti-hegemonic arguments of Galeano and his cohort, because Williams questions ability of any master narrative, leftist or otherwise, to not act hegemonically and, thus, never really engages problem of hegemony. In a struggle for power, one unquestioned assumption is power. In struggle between hegemonic and counter-hegemonic forces, one unquestioned assumption is hegemony. Williams wants to question that assumption, and he uses concept of subaltern to produce a post-hegemonic analysis that escapes reductive binarity of hegemony/counter-hegemony. Williams uses Gayatri Spivak's definition of subaltern (the absolute limit of place where history is narrativized into logic (2002, 1)). Moreover, subaltern subject sits beyond hegemony and thus can be used as an active means of disrupting neoliberalism and its effects. But rather than producing a totalizing system with its own particular zones of inclusion and exclusion, Williams endeavors to deconstruct narrative closure, using fragmented, marginalized status of subaltern to discuss the ways in which distinct histories, realities and representations can be evaluated at current time in cultural and political terms . . . within ruins of modern history's foundational narratives (3).The first section of book, entitled Closure, serves as theoretical justification for Williams's own work to illuminate contemporary Latin America. Williams offers a history of Latin American identity from failed nationalist projects (e.g., transculturation and national fictive identity [Chapter 1]) to contemporary transnationalism (Chapter 3). He critiques earlier attempts at Latin American identity construction as well as other positions on neoliberalism (e.g., Jorge Casteneda, Nestor Canclini (Chapter 3)) for playing into hands of U.S. hegemony, and he explores problems of subaltern studies, sketching out proper enactment of subaltern as liberatory intellectual discourse, free of northern hegemonic bias. In second section of book, subdivided into Intermezzo . . . Hear Say Yes and Perhaps, Williams develops post-hegemonic analyses through a varied set of hegemonic and post-hegemonic cultural artifacts (e.g., novels, literary criticism, testimonio, film and photo-essay). …