Modernity and "Whiteness"

Description

Bolívar Echeverría was one of the leading philosophers and critical theorists in Latin America and his work on capitalism and modernity offers a distinctive account, informed by the experiences of Latin American societies, of the social and historical forces shaping the modern world. For Echeverría, capitalism and modernity do not coincide: modernity is a long-term historical phenomenon that involved a new set of relations between human beings and nature and between the individual and the collective, while capitalism is a particular form in which modernity has been realized. As Marx showed, capitalism is a mode of reproduction that involves the growing commodification of social life - everything, even human labor power itself, is turned into a commodity. Echeverría introduces the notion of blanquitud or "whiteness" to capture the new form of identity that is brought into being by the totalizing and homogenizing character of capitalism. While blanquitud includes certain ethnic features, it is not so much an ethnic category as an ethical and cultural one, referring to a type of human being, homo capitalisticus, which threatens to spread throughout the world, overcoming and integrating identities that might otherwise resist it. But capitalism is not the only form of modernity - there are alternative modernities. In the final part of the book Echeverría explores the baroque as a characteristic of Latin American identity and sees it as a way of theatricalizing and transforming reality that takes some distance from Eurocentric paradigms and resists the homogenizing forces of capitalism. Echeverría's analysis of the dynamics of capitalism and modernity represents one of the most important contributions to critical theory from a Latin American perspective. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of critical theory and postcolonial theory and anyone concerned with the global impact of capitalism on social and cultural life. "Bolívar Echeverría was one of the most brilliant and innovative Marxist thinkers of Latin America. Using, in a creative way,concepts of the Frankfurt School, he develops a radical criticism of the capitalist "really existing" modernity, grounded on "whiteness". But he also shows how the Latin American baroque ethos, rooted on mestizaje, becomes a spontaneous strategy of resisting to capitalist colonisation and the "American Way of Life"." Michael Löwy, emeritus research director, CNRS, Paris Bolívar Echeverría (1941 --2010) was a philosopher, economist and cultural critic. He was Professor Emeritus at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Cover ......Page 1 Title page......Page 4 Copyright page......Page 5 Contents......Page 6 Foreword Diana Fuentes......Page 8 Translator’s Preface......Page 19 Introduction......Page 22 The novelty of the modern......Page 26 Modernity and the “challenge” of “neo-technics”......Page 31 Modernity, capitalism, and Europe......Page 38 The essence of modernity and actually existing modernity......Page 42 2 “Technological Rent” and the “Devaluation” of Nature......Page 45 3 Meanings of Enlightenment......Page 51 The appearance of the subject and the possibility of Enlightenment ......Page 54 Enlightenment as the “destiny” of the West......Page 58 Enlightenment in myth......Page 59 Modern Enlightenment......Page 60 4 Images of “Whiteness”......Page 63 5 “American” Modernity: Keys to its Understanding......Page 77 “Feeling and courage”: A myth of “American” modernity......Page 94 Notes on the “natural form”......Page 95 6 From Academia to Bohemia and Beyond......Page 99 7 Art and Utopia......Page 114 The humanism in existentialism......Page 131 Sartre and Marxism......Page 141 A......Page 148 B......Page 149 C......Page 150 D......Page 151 10 Meditations on the Baroque......Page 153 Guadalupanismo and the baroque ethos in the Americas......Page 162 11 The Mexican ’68 and its City......Page 175 Responses to questions from the audience......Page 191 12 Mexican Modernity and Anti-Modernity......Page 195 Introduction......Page 207 Chapter 3 Meanings of Enlightenment......Page 208 Chapter 4 Images of “Whiteness”......Page 210 Chapter 5 “American” Modernity: Keys to its Understanding......Page 212 Chapter 6 From Academia to Bohemia and Beyond......Page 214 Chapter 7 Art and Utopia......Page 217 Chapter 8 Sartre from a Distance......Page 219 Chapter 10 Meditations on the Baroque......Page 221 Chapter 11 The Mexican ’68 and its City......Page 222 Chapter 12 Mexican Modernity and Anti-Modernity......Page 223 Index......Page 224 EULA ......Page 239