The exhaustion of difference : the politics of Latin American cultural studies / Alberto Moreiras.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Moreiras, Alberto.

Series:

e-Duke books scholarly collection.

Post-Contemporary Interventions.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Latin American literature--Study and teaching (Higher).

Latin American literature.

Latin Americanists--United States.

Latin Americanists.

Criticism (Philosophy).

Latin America--Civilization--Study and teaching (Higher).

Latin America.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 350 pages.)

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2001.

Summary:

The conditions for thinking about Latin America as a regional unit in transnational academic discourse have shifted over the past decades. In The Exhaustion of Difference Alberto Moreiras ponders the ramifications of this shift and draws on deconstruction, Marxian theory, philosophy, political economy, subaltern studies, literary criticism, and postcolonial studies to interrogate the minimal conditions for an effective critique of knowledge given the recent transformations of the contemporary world. What, asks Moreiras, is the function of critical reason in the present moment? What is regionalistic knowledge in the face of globalization? Can regionalistic knowledge be an effective tool for a critique of contemporary reason? What is the specificity of Latin Americanist reflection and how is it situated to deal with these questions? Through examinations of critical regionalism, restitutional excess, the historical genealogy of Latin American subalternism, testimonio literature, and the cultural politics of magical realism, Moreiras argues that while cultural studies is increasingly institutionalized and in danger of reproducing the dominant ideologies of late capitalism, it is also ripe for giving way to projects of theoretical reformulation. Ultimately, he claims, critical reason must abandon its allegiance to aesthetic-historicist projects and the destructive binaries upon which all cultural theories of modernity have been constructed. The Exhaustion of Difference makes a significant contribution to the rethinking of Latin American cultural studies. -- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Conditions of Latin Americanist critique

Global fragments

Negative globality and critical regionalism

Theoretical fictions and fatal conceits

Restitution and appropriation

The national popular in Antonio Candido and Jorge Luis Borges

The end of magical realism: Jose Maria Arguedas's passionate signifier

The aura of testimonio

The order of order: on the reluctant culturalism of anti-subalternist critiques

Hybridity and double consciousness.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (p. [327]-343) and index.

ISBN:

9780822380597 (electronic book)

9786612903526

9780822380597

0822380595

OCLC:

841913044