Improvisations of a Tropical Cartesianism

Author(s):  
Fred Coelho

This article presents the contrasting views and theories formulated by European intellectuals such as Claude Lévis-Strauss and Max Bense on the situation of Brazil and Latin America in relation to the main centers of twentieth century criticism. It analyzes improvisation as a fundamental reflection index on the possibilities that third world countries have for negotiating the European Cartesian paradigm. If for some thinkers improvisation and its corollaries are proof that these countries and their people would live forever on the margins or in negative dialectics within the heritage of Enlightenment reason, for others it is precisely there--in the possibility of reinventing reason from hybridisms, strategic appropriations, and re-readings--that the creative and autonomous potentials in the post-colonial world lie. This article is situated precisely in the conflict between reason and the tropics, and looks to bring the debate up to date.

1978 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harry E. Vanden

We do not regard Marx's theory as something completed and inviolable; on the contrary, we are convinced that it has only laid the foundation stone of the science which socialists must develop in all directions if they wish to keep pace with life.V. I. Lenin (Our Program)The peasant is one of the least understood and most abused actors on the modern political stage. He is maligned for his political passivity and distrust of national political movements. Yet, most of the great twentieth-century revolutions in the Third World have, according to most scholars, been peasant based (Landsberger, 1973: ix; Wolf, 1969). In Latin America the peasant was once pictured as the archetypical parochial who was more suited for siestas under his sombrero than serious political activity. Stereotypes aside, the region has been no exception to the growing tendency of peasants to become involved in major revolutionary processes.


GEOgraphia ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (42) ◽  
pp. 89
Author(s):  
Rejane Cristina de Araujo Rodrigues

Resumo: Filmes do Cinema de Hollywood são representativos de um imaginário geopolítico hegemônico. A este imaginário contrapõe-se uma antigeopolítica identificada nas representações de filmes do Cinema do Terceiro Mundo. Partindo de importantes contribuições da geografia política crítica que apontam para articulações entre as representações geopolíticas e os filmes, analisamos três filmes que retratam a América Latina em um dos períodos mais conturbados da sua história. Sua análise nos revela elementos característicos de uma geopolítica de resistência durante as ditaduras civil-militares implantadas no Brasil, no Chile e na Argentina.Palavras-chave: Antigeopolítica. Cinema. América Latina. Ditadura. THE THIRD WORLD CINEMA UNDER THE ANTIGEOPOLITICS VIEW: DICTATORSHIP AND RESISTANCE IN LATIN AMERICAAbstract: Hollywood film movies are representative of a hegemonic geopolitical imaginary. This imaginary contrasts with an antigeopolitics identified in the Third World Cinema representations. Based on important contributions from critical political geography that points to articulations between geopolitical representations and movies, we analyze three cinema productions that portray Latin America in one of the most troubled periods of its history. That analysis reveals elements of a geopolitics of resistance related to the civil-military dictatorships implanted in Brazil, Chile and Argentina.Keywords: Antigeopolitics. Movies. Latin America. Dictatorship. EL CINE DEL TERCER MUNDO BAJO LA VISIÓN ANTIGEOPOLÍTICA: DICTADURA Y RESISTENCIA EN AMÉRICA LATINAResumen: Películas del Cine de Hollywood son representativas de un imaginario geopolítico hegemónico. A este imaginario se contrapone una antigeopolítica identificada en las representaciones de películas del Cine del Tercer Mundo. A partir de importantes contribuciones de la geografía política crítica que apuntan para articulaciones entre las representaciones geopolíticas y las películas, analizamos tres películas que retratan la América Latina en uno de los períodos más revueltos de su historia. Su análisis nos revela elementos característicos de una geopolítica de resistencia durante las dictaduras implantadas en Brasil, en Chile y en Argentina.Palabras clave: Antigeopolítica. Cine. América Latina. Dictadura.


Author(s):  
Wesley J. Wildman

Subordinate-deity models of ultimate reality affirm that God is Highest Being within an ultimate reality that is neither conceptually tractable nor religiously relevant. Subordinate-deity models ceded their dominance to agential-being models of ultimate reality by refusing to supply a comprehensive answer to the metaphysical problem of the One and the Many in the wake of the Axial-Age interest in that problem, but they have revived in the twentieth century due to post-colonial resistance to putatively comprehensive explanations. Subordinate-deity ultimacy models resist the Intentionality Attribution and Narrative Comprehensibility dimensions of anthropomorphism to some degree but continue to employ the Rational Practicality dimension of anthropomorphism, resulting in a strategy of judicious anthropomorphism. Variations, strengths, and weaknesses of the subordinate-deity class of ultimacy models are discussed.


Author(s):  
Paul D. Kenny

Case studies of Indonesia and Japan illustrate that party-system stability in patronage democracies is deeply affected by the relative autonomy of political brokers. Over the course of a decade, a series of decentralizing reforms in Indonesia weakened patronage-based parties hold on power, with the 2014 election ultimately being a contest between two rival populists: Joko Widodo and Subianto Prabowo. Although Japan was a patronage democracy throughout the twentieth century, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) remained robust to outsider appeals even in the context of economic and corruption crises. However, reforms in the 1990s weakened the hold of central factional leaders over individual members of the LDP and their patronage machines. This was instrumental to populist Junichiro Koizumi’s winning of the presidency of the LDP and ultimately the prime ministership of Japan. This chapter also reexamines canonical cases of populism in Latin America.


1994 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 543-574
Author(s):  
Timothy P. Wickham-Crowley

Social revolutions as well as revolutionary movements have recently held great interest for both sociopolitical theorists and scholars of Latin American politics. Before we can proceed with any useful analysis, however, we must distinguish between these two related but not identical phenomena. Adapting Theda Skocpol’s approach, we can define social revolutions as “rapid, basic transformations of a society’s state and class structures; and they are accompanied and in part carried through by” mass-based revolts from below, sometimes in cross-class coalitions (Skocpol 1979: 4; Wickham-Crowley 1991:152). In the absence of such basic sociopolitical transformations, I will not speak of (social) revolution or of a revolutionary outcome, only about revolutionary movements, exertions, projects, and so forth. Studies of the failures and successes of twentieth-century Latin American revolutions have now joined the ongoing theoretical debate as to whether such outcomes occur due to society- or movement-centered processes or instead due to state- or regime-centered events (Wickham-Crowley 1992).


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-37
Author(s):  
MANISHA SETHI

Abstract A bitter debate broke out in the Digambar Jain community in the middle of the twentieth century following the passage of the Bombay Harijan Temple Entry Act in 1947, which continued until well after the promulgation of the Untouchability (Offences) Act 1955. These laws included Jains in the definition of ‘Hindu’, and thus threw open the doors of Jain temples to formerly Untouchable castes. In the eyes of its Jain opponents, this was a frontal and terrible assault on the integrity and sanctity of the Jain dharma. Those who called themselves reformists, on the other hand, insisted on the closeness between Jainism and Hinduism. Temple entry laws and the public debates over caste became occasions for the Jains not only to examine their distance—or closeness—to Hinduism, but also the relationship between their community and the state, which came to be imagined as predominantly Hindu. This article, by focusing on the Jains and this forgotten episode, hopes to illuminate the civilizational categories underlying state practices and the fraught relationship between nationalism and minorities.


2012 ◽  
pp. 39-54
Author(s):  
Marianna Scarfone

After briefly considering the influence of Gramsci's thought on the founders of Subaltern Studies in India, the author outlines the theoretical and thematic transformation which the approach went through since the mid eighties, under the inspiration of the "cultural turn". In the second part of her essay Scarfone traces the spread of Subaltern Studies to other parts of the world, such as East Asia, Latin America and Europe, thanks also to the multiplier function of American and European universities. Whereas its influence on post-colonial and cultural studies is sizable, Subaltern Studies never became a widely recognized model to the practice of historiography, partly because of its later full immersion in postmodern waters. However, its contribution to the theory of history as a discipline and as practice should not be underestimated.


Author(s):  
Paul Gillingham

Unrevolutionary Mexico addresses how the Mexican Revolution (1910-1940) turned into a capitalist dictatorship of exceptional resilience. While soldiers seized power across the rest of Latin America, in modern Mexico the civilians of a single party moved punctiliously in and out of office for seventy-one years. The book uses the histories of the states of Guerrero and Veracruz as entry points to explore the origins and consolidation of this unique authoritarian state on both provincial and national levels. An empirically rich reconstruction of over sixty years of modernization and revolution (1880-1945) revises prevailing ideas of a pacified Mexico and establishes the 1940s as a decade of faltering governments and enduring violence. The book then assesses the pivotal changes of the mid-twentieth century, when a new generation of lawyers, bureaucrats and businessmen joined with surviving revolutionaries to form the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, which held uninterrupted power until 2000. Thematic chapters analyse elections, development, corruption and high and low culture in the period. The central role of military and private violence is explored in two further chapters that measure the weight of hidden coercion in keeping the party in power. In conclusion, the combination of provincial and national histories reveals Mexico as a place where soldiers prevented coups, a single party lost its own rigged elections, corruption fostered legitimacy, violence was concealed but decisive, and ambitious cultural control co-existed with a critical press and a disbelieving public. In conclusion, the book demonstrates how this strange dictatorship thrived not despite but because of its contradictions.


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