Latin American Cultural Studies Research Articles

Para una teoría del arte en Historia y estilo, de Jorge Mañach by Yaneidys Arencibia Coloma

Reviewed by: Para una teoría del arte en Historia y estilo, de Jorge Mañach by Yaneidys Arencibia Coloma Christina García Arencibia Coloma, Yaneidys. Para una teoría del arte en Historia y estilo, de Jorge Mañach. A Contracorriente, 2018. 110 pp. Yaneidys Arencibia Coloma's engagement with Jorge Mañach's early-to-mid-twentieth century essays will be of particular interest to Latin American Cultural Studies scholars and intellectual historians of Cuba's Republican era. While Jorge Mañach is already regarded as one of Cuba's most important thinkers, Arencibia Coloma effectively makes the case for considering his essays as models of multidisciplinary praxis and formulating theory from the contextual specificity of the region. For those committed to thinking Latin American culture and history from a situated vantage point, through its vernacular tropes and, thereby, bypassing hegemonic European paradigms, Mañach's essays, as shown by Arencibia Coloma, merit attention beyond a Cuban literary canon. Specifically, Arencibia Coloma's intervention in the scholarship on Mañach is to consider a collection of four essays published in a volume titled Historia y estilo from 1944, as contributing to the discipline of Art Historical theory. Whereas Arnold Hauser is credited for being the first to argue for a sociological approach to art in 1951, Jorge Mañach had articulated an interdependence between art and society seven years prior. Again, for Latin American Cultural Studies scholars who privilege the authority of autochthonous intellectuals, Mañach's sociological art theories articulated through the literary genre of the essay not only provide an alternative to US and European criticism, but also demonstrate that Cultural Studies methods in Latin America predated those of Britain and the US. In her introduction, Arencibia Coloma explains that, while scholars have attended to the individual essays compiled in Historia y estilo, alongside other works of Mañach devoted to particular cultural manifestations, the 1944 volume as a whole has not been carefully studied. Consequently, previous readers have missed Mañach's singular contribution to art historical theory. From the island's colonial past to his present, Mañach traces artistic trends in tandem with the island's geography, institutions, forms of government, minor and major political events, and, especially, to stages in the nation-building project. What he formulates is a processional evolution of styles as both constituted and constitutive of historical circumstance. Arencibia Coloma later notes that, for contemporary readers, such a relationship between art and its sociopolitical context is taken as a given. However, in the first half of the twentieth century, Eurocentric discourses and periodizations dominated; these discourses tended to focus on form, as having its own internal raison d'être and linear chronology, or iconography, privileging correlations with texts such as [End Page 293] the Bible and Greco-Roman mythology. Ultimately, Mañach succeeds in understanding the trajectory of Cuban art styles in relation to its academies and immediate historical climate, that is, as a process and not a phenomenon. Practicing an Electivist philosophy, Mañach was not tethered to any one ideology and selected concepts from a variety of thinkers and discourses. In this respect, together with his multidisciplinarity, Arencibia Coloma argues that Mañach further escapes Eurocentric models and their presumed inherent theorems. Significantly, Mañach drew from the historiography of the Longue Durée, Emile Durkheim's notions of societal integration and collective consciousness, Herbert Spencer's evolutionism and aggregates, and Oswald Spengler's notion of cultures as discrete organisms with souls. While positivist historians focused on the facticity of documents, the dates of battles and the names of generals, the Longue Durée historiographers set their sights on much longer, wholistic processes. As Arencibia Coloma explains, in Mañach's dense cultural essays the binary between politics and aesthetics collapses and a single literary work is considered a more efficacious synthesis of the era's zeitgeist than a heap of government documents. Drawing from Durkheim, Spencer, and Spengler (among others), Mañach elaborates various stages in the evolution of the nation, like the maturation of a larger subjectivity, imbued with a consciousness. For Mañach, what he describes as initially an amorphous aggregate eventually becomes a...

An overview of Caribbean and Latin-American cultural heritage studies

This review analyzes, through three recently published books that talk about cultural heritage in Latin America, how the Cultural Heritage Studies have allowed us to understand the current situation in the region characterized by the growing tendency to promote declarations of heritage as part of a plan for the use of culture as a resource for sustainable development. Likewise, those books analyze how responses from local communities are generated to hegemonic definitions of heritage, which indicates that cultural heritage in Latin America is not something given but something in constant construction and dispute.

Introduction: Digital changes in Latin American cinemas

This article introduces the dossier of the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies devoted to the study of digital cinema in Latin America. First, the text addresses the lack of research on the history of digital cinema in Latin America. Then, it proposes a comprehensive analysis of the digital, in terms of film aesthetics, production, distribution, exhibition, and consumption. At the same time, it establishes a dual axis to account for the changes and continuities generated by digital technology in temporal and spatial terms, within both sub- and supra-national logics. In this way, it emphasises the need to understand digital cinema as connected with previous technological and cultural phenomena such as analogue cinema or magnetic video. It also acknowledges that digital cinema is an extension of several local and global economic and industrial processes that different countries have negotiated in diverse and, at times, antagonistic fashions. Lastly, the article presents the five articles included in this dossier, and a sixth, shorter piece that functions as a critical response to the arguments and points addressed by the contributors.

Nas margens, uma crítica

Fazendo das relações entre cultura e política um ato de cumplicidade, Beatriz Sarlo é um dos nomes que mais se destacam no cenário da crítica literária argentina e, principalmente, nos debates do que se convencionou chamar de estudos culturais latino-americanos. Nascida em 1942 em Buenos Aires, e descendente de famílias imigrantes, Beatriz Sarlo se graduou em Letras pela Universidade de Buenos Aires no ano 1966, quando tem início a ditadura militar argentina. Durante o regime autoritário, à margem da universidade e de uma formação acadêmica continuada, desenvolveu atividades em grupos editoriais e em revistas de crítica literária e cultural, espaços “alternativos” que foram decisivos em sua formação intelectual.

The Turn to the Object: Recent Developments in the Field of Nineteenth-Century Latin American Cultural and Literary Studies

This essay provides an overview of the current state of nineteenth-century Latin American literary and cultural studies. It begins by reviewing some of the key critical interventions in the field, including Doris Sommer’s Foundational Fictions and Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, and argues that Sommer’s and Anderson’s postulations helped turn the critical gaze away from a vision of nineteenth-century Latin American literature as subsidiary to the subsequent, supposedly superior literary movements of the fin de siglo and the twentieth century. Critics of nineteenth-century Latin American literature have increasingly focused on previously less-studied texts, on those not typically considered literary, and on other cultural phenomena that can be both read as texts and alongside written texts, such as music and visual imagery. The essay also resists binarisms and implicit hierarchies and conceptualizes nineteenth-century Latin America in terms of Bourdieu’s field of cultural production, while taking into account Bottero and Crossley’s “concrete connections” among actors in that field. In that way, I conclude that the two chief critical tendencies today in nineteenth-century Latin American literary studies may be categorized as a focus on the circulation of ideas and on the circulation of objects.

Apontamentos sobre os Estudos Culturais no Brasil

Resumo: A partir de uma revisão sobre as articulações entre os Estudos Culturais e as teorizações das áreas da Comunicação Social, Antropologia, Ciências Sociais, Teoria Literária e Educação no Brasil, coloca-se em destaque a produtividade acadêmica de conceitos, perspectivas e modos de pesquisa. O estudo envolveu: (a) ampla varredura nos principais periódicos internacionais de Estudos Culturais; (b) pesquisa no Google Acadêmico e em outras plataformas específicas; (c) investigação de filiações institucionais, grupos de pesquisa, currículos Lattes e, eventualmente, entrevistas disponibilizadas online. Finaliza-se este texto apresentando apontamentos político-acadêmicos relativos aos estudos realizados no Brasil em sua articulação com os Estudos Culturais latino-americanos.

Las culturas urbanas, se apropian de la hora del recreo

“Las Culturas Urbanas, se apropian de la hora del recreo”, es el resultado de una investigación en la cual se realizó un estudio etnográfico dentro de una institución educativa secundaria particular mixta de Cuenca, en la que se analiza la dinámica que tienen los colectivos para agruparse y formar las culturas juveniles. Se estudia cómo construyen sus identidades, cuáles son los entornos en los cuales los jóvenes del colegio interactúan, y cómo utilizan el espacio público dentro de la ciudad. En este estudio cualitativo se aplica la técnica de la etnografía, cuyo objetivo fundamental es analizar la construcción de las identidades y las culturas juveniles, y su entorno, y como este es capitalizado por los grupos de adolescentes para conocer sus necesidades, intereses e interacciones. Se analiza cómo estos jóvenes conciben el “espacio público”, de qué manera interactúan en él; dónde y para qué se reúnen, qué hacen, cómo se vinculan entre ellos, si son rechazados o aceptados en este. La investigación permitió descubrir, identificar y describir diversas culturas juveniles inmersas en la institución educativa, y cómo van construyendo sus identidades en los diversos entornos y cómo convierten en su territorio el espacio público de la ciudad. Además, se estudia a las culturas urbanas como se enfocan conceptualmente desde la comunicación y cultura y se afianzan en los estudios culturales latinoamericanos.

Trajetos com Jesús (e para além): autoanálise da pesquisa dos usos sociais da mídia

Começando pelo título, “além” é uma referência à figura con(sagrada) do intelectual que conduz a amplos voos teóricos, em contraposição à figura profana do homem Jesús. Além significa, igualmente, o avanço da minha trajetória em direção a posições fronteiriças à Teoria das Mediações de Martín-Barbero: dos estudos culturais latino-americanos e britânicos, à etnografia crítica da audiência, à história das mentalidades, à sociologia da reprodução e às teorias de gênero. Evidencio o impacto do especialista em Comunicação e sua metáfora do mapa noturno nas investigações sobre os usos sociais da mídia à luz da problemática das desigualdades. Finalizo com questões para pensar as dinâmicas da convergência digital e seus novos desafios para a abordagem dos conflitos culturais e políticos. A fala que segue é um palimpsesto, foi raspada e rasurada no ritmo industrial do trabalho acadêmico. Por isso, preservo as características de um texto oral elaborado sem a preocupação de referenciar todas as fontes que o embasaram, mesmo que dando nomes próprios à origem das ideias aqui sistematizadas.

CIÊNCIAS SOCIAIS, COMUNICAÇÃO E IMAGEM: APORTES TEÓRICOS SOBRE A (RE)PRODUÇÃO DA DIFERENÇA (E DO PODER) NO JORNALISMO HEGEMÔNICO

A partir da relação entre ciências sociais, comunicação e imagem, neste artigo apresento algumas reflexões teóricas sobre a reprodução da diferença e do poder no jornalismo hegemônico, em diálogo com o pensamento decolonial, além de outras fontes teóricas como a semiótica e os estudos culturais latino-americanos. O objetivo é colaborar e dialogar com as pesquisas que buscam compreender o papel da imagem e da imprensa em nossas sociedades ocidentais contemporâneas. O artigo está dividido em quatro partes. Na primeira, proponho algumas reflexões sobre a relação entre comunicação, decolonialidade e poder. Na sequência apresento considerações sobre a relação entre a construção da diferença e a reprodução do poder para, posteriormente, discorrer sobre jornalismo e representação da diferença. Por último, desenvolvo uma análise sobre o uso da imagem como recurso para transmissão de informações e discursos a partir da relação entre ficção e realidade.

Estudos culturais latino-americanos e Jesús Martín-Barbero: mais afinidades do que disputas

Although Martín-Barbero claims that “we had done cultural studies long before this label appeared”, this article sustains that, without De los medios a las mediaciones (From the Media to Mediations), Latin American cultural studies would not have developed, especially those linked to communication studies. The argument highlights the kinship between cultural studies, especially in the version associated with the Birmingham School, and the premises of the research program proposed by the Spanish-Colombian author. To trace these affinities, the combination of methodological programmatic and ethnographic approaches was adopted.

‘It’s Like Biting Your Own Tail’: Pedro Lemebel’s Queer Response to the Challenge of Subversion in Neoliberal Times

Using the methods of textual analysis and in conversation with both Latin American cultural studies and queer studies, the essay examines the ways that Pedro Lemebel’s diverse body of work – ranging from live performances, fiction, non-fictional crónicas, and interviews – engages the limits of subversion in neoliberal times. On the one hand, Lemebel’s work has been routinely framed in terms of its subversion of gendered, sexual, and political norms. On the other hand, scholars and commentators have not deeply engaged the many ways that Lemebel’s own work comments on and represents the challenges of producing subversive cultural productions in a globalized, late capitalist environment in which subversion, including his own, can be undone precisely when it is most celebrated, valued, and commodified. Reading Lemebel’s commentaries and interviews as producing cultural criticism that complements his better-known crónicas’ and performances’ ideological narratives, the essay argues that Lemebel’s oeuvre repeatedly addresses the challenges of performing a delicate dance between resistance and co-optation, given his acknowledged inseparability from the market. Taking Lemebel as a model for this balancing act, the essay ultimately aims to reveal and critique some of the ways that we academics tend to read sexual dissidence as successful subversion without recognizing its complications and limits.

Transculturation and Bourdieu’s habitus theory

AbstractIn the last two decades, Bourdieu’s sociology has provided appropriate tools for examining the work of literary translators through history. However, Bourdieusian approaches to literary translation seem to reproduce a major problem underlying Bourdieu’s theory; namely, a deterministic view of human behaviour. This article, against the alleged incompatibility between sociological approaches and culturalist paradigms, proposes to combine Bourdieu’s sociology with the notion of transculturation borrowed from Latin American cultural studies. The article demonstrates how transculturation helps elucidating the divided and contradictory nature of the habitus, as it was originally formulated by Bourdieu in his early writings on Kabylian society. Data from my previous study on the translational activity of Dai Wangshu in Republican China are used to illustrate how transculturation reveals itself as a valid model for the study of literary translators through history beyond the limitations of a sociologically-informed approach based exclusively on a Bourdieusian perspective.

La cultura como clave analítica de la acción colectiva popular

En este artículo la autora caracteriza los enfoques que asumen la cultura como clave analítica de la acción colectiva y que analizan los procesos simbólicos y cognitivos que tienen lugar en las organizaciones y redes de los movimientos sociales; donde se gestan los marcos de significados y las identidades colectivas que confieren sentido a la participación social y explican, al menos en parte, el surgimiento, desarrollo y persistencia de un movimiento social en el tiempo. También caracteriza la recepción crítica que este giro cultural en el estudio de la acción colectiva tuvo en América Latina hacia fines del siglo pasado, a partir de las categorías de clase y los aportes de los estudios culturales latinoamericanos.

Turn of the Tide? Cultural Critique and the New Right

The following contributions are transcripts of talks and debates from a workshop jointly organized by the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies and the Latin American Center Zurich, which took place at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, on March 2–3, 2017. Titled, somewhat provocatively, ‘Cultural Criticism and the Fascist Turn’, the workshop invited four renowned cultural critics from Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay to reflect on the recent political sea-change in all three countries, and the ways in which it compared to, and perhaps even foreshadowed, political and cultural trends as well as critical discussions that have recently occurred across the region as well as on a global scale.

Mexican Melodrama: Film and Nation from the Golden Age to the New Wave by Elena Lahr-Vivaz

Reviewed by: Mexican Melodrama: Film and Nation from the Golden Age to the New Wave by Elena Lahr-Vivaz Olivia Cosentino Lahr-Vivaz, Elena. Mexican Melodrama: Film and Nation from the Golden Age to the New Wave. Tucson: The U of Arizona P, 2016. 218 pp. Lahr-Vivaz's first book is a fresh, comparative project that reads "new-wave" Mexican films of the 1990s-early 2000s in conjunction with classic melodramas from Mexico's Golden Age (1930-58). Offering in-depth analyses of historical and industrial contexts, Mexican Melodrama maps the development and subsequent unraveling of nosotros, or the imagined Mexican nation created through cinema, in relation to melodrama. This book follows sustained interest in the Golden Age period, including Ramírez Berg's The Classical Mexican Cinema: The Poetics of the Exceptional Golden Age Films (2015), and gives further attention to what LahrVivaz terms the "new-wave" (or nuevo cine mexicano or new Mexican cinema) that "emerged in the 1990s and continued into the 2000s" (9). This term could create confusion because it does not refer to the French or other global new waves, nor does it necessarily reference Alvaray's (2008) notion of aesthetic renewal in recent Latin American film due to economic and social "waves" of change. Rather, LahrVivaz uses "new-wave" to interweave film with the nation, lo mexicano, because according to Jeff Menne, "a new wave may only be intelligible against the backdrop of the nation-state" (qtd. in Lahr-Vivaz 9). This study intervenes in conversations within Latin American and Mexican film and cultural studies, particularly about the function of melodrama, allegory, and nation-building in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. While the book is organized by chapter into thematic comparisons, it begins with an overview of the terms "melodrama" and "Mexico," layered with information about the history of Mexican cinema. Many scholars have underscored the importance of melodrama to Latin American cultural production—as documented in volumes edited by Sadlier (2009) and Herlinghaus (2002), which both treat melodrama beyond the Mexican context and delve into other media (television and music). Echoing Brooks, Singer, Williams, Gledhill, López, and Burton-Carvajal, Lahr-Vivaz understands melodrama as a "mode" and sometimes "metagenre" (11). Importantly, melodrama is "protean," seen in various forms across time (10). This approach foregrounds Lahr-Vivaz's reading of melodrama in contemporary Mexican film as it relates to nation and allegory, tracing its roots back to the widely accepted idea that Golden Age melodramas "imagined [Mexico] into existence through tears and laughter" (12). She grounds her argument in the idea of Mexico as an "(empathetically) imagined community," Linda Williams's extension of Benedict Anderson (10). Lahr-Vivaz claims that new-wave directors return to classical melodrama in order to "demonstrate the limitations (rather than the possibilities) of Mexico as a construct in which all spectators might believe," and throughout, she points to the rich ambiguity that results from melodramatic excess(5). Subsequent chapters, organized by theme, contrast one Golden Age film with two to three new-wave films, resulting in an interesting amalgamation of heavily studied (Amores perros, Y tu mamá también) and relatively untouched films [End Page 265] (Modelo antiguo, Ángel de fuego, ¡¿Qué te ha dado esa mujer?!). Chapter two examines how references to the Mexican Revolution and the "taming" of the indomitable woman once helped form national unity (Enamorada), but now "allegorize the nation as intrinsically fragmented" and encourage spectators to be more critical and questioning of melodramatic excess (43). The following chapter contrasts the moral clarity of Golden Age cabaretera melodramas with regards to incest (La mujer del puerto) with the greater ambiguity of new-wave films that do not directly punish such relationships (though unmentioned, Por la libre (2001) follows Lahr-Vivaz's theory). In chapter four, Lahr-Vivaz suggests that the characters' suffering and shared tears—which once led to the consolidation of nation (Nosotros los pobres)—only end up creating a nosotros that is forged in shared culpability between protagonists and spectators, especially in El crimen del padre Amaro. This reading is especially interesting when we consider narratives of excess in contemporary Mexican film that treat drug violence and social problems. Lahr...

The Specter of Races: Latin American Anthropology and Literature between the Wars

The Specter of Races: Latin American Anthropology and Literature between the Wars

Repeating Translation, Left and Right (and Left Again): Roberto Bolaño’s Between Parentheses and Distant Star

Research Article| November 01 2017 Repeating Translation, Left and Right (and Left Again): Roberto Bolaño’s Between Parentheses and Distant Star Gavin Arnall Gavin Arnall University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Gavin Arnall is an assistant professor of Spanish in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He received his PhD and MA in comparative literature from Princeton University in New Jersey and his BA (summa cum laude) in the College Scholar Program and philosophy from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. His work has appeared in several edited volumes and peer-reviewed journals, including Theory and Event, Critical Inquiry, and the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies. His translation of Emilio de Ípola’s Althusser, the Infinite Farewell is forthcoming from Duke University Press. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google CR: The New Centennial Review (2017) 17 (3): 237–263. https://doi.org/10.14321/crnewcentrevi.17.3.0237 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Gavin Arnall; Repeating Translation, Left and Right (and Left Again): Roberto Bolaño’s Between Parentheses and Distant Star. CR: The New Centennial Review 1 November 2017; 17 (3): 237–263. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/crnewcentrevi.17.3.0237 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressCR: The New Centennial Review Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © Michigan State University Board of Trustees2017 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Hernán Vidal y el aporte de la crítica literaria latinoamericana al proyecto de construcción y defensa de los derechos humanos

La revisión de la obra crítica y teórica que realizara el investigador y ensayista chileno Hernán Vidal (1937-2015) desde la Universidad de Minnesota sirve de punto de apoyo para explorar un proceso de ida y vuelta. Por un lado, de construcción de una hermenéutica cultural y literaria de los derechos humanos, anclando la primera en los segundos, a fin de realizar una serie de aportes desde la perspectiva de los estudios literarios y culturales latinoamericanos de orientación sociohistórica al propio discurso de promoción y defensa de los derechos humanos en América Latina.

Maria's Rebellion: Gayl Jones's Mosquito and the Problem of Recognition

This essay proposes a hermeneutic of critical invisibility, borrowed from the politics of silence in African American and Latin American cultural studies, to offer a revisionary account of recognition: rather than a condition to which to aspire, the undocumented immigrant demonstrates what can be gained by remaining in the shadows of recognition. Using Mosquito 's attention to interethnic coalition building between African Americans and Latinos both in the U.S. and abroad, this paper proposes that we read the novel for what it might say about the failures, and not the promises, of recognition for these populations. In so doing, I extend the project of looking to African American literature as a necessary and valuable source for powerful and enduring representations of immigration, as well as critiques of the methods and objectives of immigrant rights movements.

The Learned Ones: Nahua Intellectuals in Postconquest Mexico by Kelly S. McDonough

Reviewed by: The Learned Ones: Nahua Intellectuals in Postconquest Mexico by Kelly S. McDonough Daniel Nemser McDonough, Kelly S. The Learned Ones: Nahua Intellectuals in Postconquest Mexico. Tucson: U of Arizona P, 2014. 280 pp. ISBN: 978-08-1653-421-0. If Ángel Rama's La ciudad letrada (1984) secured the place of the intellectual in the field of Latin American literary and cultural studies, until recently indigenous intellectuals have been largely overlooked. This is partly a consequence of the enduring conceptual association of indigeneity with orality and in opposition to the written word. Yet the proliferation of Nahuatl texts in colonial Mexico indicates that this assumption could not be further from the truth. This is the point of departure for Kelly S. McDonough's fascinating study, which traces the political and cultural significance of Nahua intellectualism from the colonial period to the present day. The Learned Ones is divided into five main chapters, chronologically organized and each focused on the life and work of a different figure. Chapter 1 considers the Jesuit Antonio del Rincón, one of the few non-European priests to be ordained in sixteenth-century New Spain. Comparing Rincón's Nahuatl grammar to others written [End Page 211] by Spanish friars, McDonough foregrounds this native speaker's unique contribution to a categorical description of the language and, consequently, to the colonial project of evangelization. His grammar was the first to include phonological aspects like contrastive vowel length which, though nearly imperceptible to non-native speakers, could radically alter the meaning of phrases – an indigenous man might be told, for example, "to cut off his hands and drink, as opposed to washing his hands and bowing his head" before sitting down to a meal (54). Another colonial writer, the Tlaxcalan noble Juan Buenaventura Zapata y Mendoza, is the focus of chapter 2. His annals history recorded important events in the polity, above all the activities of the indigenous municipal council. By the seventeenth century, when Zapata wrote, the political and economic privileges that had been awarded to Tlaxcala for its early alliance with Cortés were coming under increasing pressure. Zapata's manuscript captures this context of crisis and the authorities' ultimately unsuccessful struggles to defend these special rights through public spectacles emphasizing their pre-Hispanic noble lineage, loyalty to the crown, and true conversion to Christianity. In chapter 3, McDonough transitions to the period following political independence in the nineteenth century. As an attorney and administrator versed in both colonial and national law, Faustino Galicia Chimalpopoca worked to defend indigenous lands from expropriation at a time when colonial protections had been dismantled under the formal equality of "citizenship." He also collected, transcribed, and translated numerous Nahuatl texts from the colonial period, from ecclesiastical manuals to historical annals. Although his political affiliation with the Second Empire made him controversial, McDonough insists on the importance of these curatorial efforts, without which many Nahuatl sources available today would have been lost. Chapter 4 considers one of the few published female Nahua writers, Luz Jiménez. Most famous for her work as a model for Diego Rivera, Jiménez also collaborated with anthropologists like Fernando Horcasitas, narrating traditional Nahua folktales as well as her testimonio of growing up in Milpa Alta during the Mexican Revolution. Importantly, McDonough centers Jiménez as an active participant and knowledge producer in her own right, rather than a "ready-to-order source for extraction" (133). Finally, in chapter 5, McDonough turns to the playwright and artist Ildefonso Maya Hernández, with whom she conducted a series of interviews before his death in 2011. His play Ixtlamatinij ("the learned ones," from which McDonough draws her title) stages the intimate conflicts wrought by cultural assimilation as well as the multiple forms of discrimination that Nahuatl-speakers have continued to face into the twenty-first century. Breaking up these main chapters are short personal narratives written in Nahuatl by some of the indigenous scholars with whom McDonough collaborated, including Refugio Nava Nava, Victoriano de la Cruz Cruz, and Sabina Cruz de la Cruz. The inclusion of these pieces is one example of the "decolonizing methodologies" that are at the heart of the project. Another is...