Florencia Mallon

"Conflictual Spaces of Solidarity: Latin American Studies and Postcolonialism in the Age of Globalization"

Abstract:

Historically, Latin American Studies emerged as a field after World War II, and its original intellectual character was defined by Cold-War policies and debates in the western hemisphere, especially within the United States. The Cuban Revolution of 1959 suggested an alternative purpose for the field, by helping to inspire a new, more politically engaged generation of scholars, both in North and South America, who came of age in the 1960s and attempted to put their research in dialogue with the pressing social-justice issues of the day. What has happened to the notion of "Latin America," and the field of Latin American Studies, with the age of globalization, when imperialism has been transformed into postcolonialism, and Marxist notions of domination and class struggle have given way to questions of subaltern agency and identity politics? This paper will explore the new opportunities and pitfalls provided by this transformation. On the one hand, it will suggest that postmodern and postructuralist approaches have made possible more exciting and complex perspectives on politics, power, and resistance. On the other hand, it will argue that deepening socioeconomic differences and power differentials, as well as academic overproduction, make more difficult the deep reflection and cross-regional collaboration that are necessary in order to rebuild the spaces of solidarity, however conflictual, that were possible in the heyday of revolutionary engagement.