Burke, Janet

English

Comparativ (E-Journal)

Buchbesprechungen | 133Mabel Moraña / Bret Gustafson (Hrsg.): Rethinking Intellectuals in Latin America, Madrid: Iberoamerica-na-Vervuert, 2010, 388 S.Reviewed by Janet Burke, TempeLatin American literature and cultural studies have a fairly well established histo-ry among English speaking peoples, but its vibrant public philosophers remain rela-tively unknown. Many of them have never even been translated into English. This collection of essays starts to fill a hole in that regard. As is typical in collections of essays, the various parts of this volume go off in a multitude of directions and lack the strong thematic foundation of a mono-graph, but the editors have done an excel-lent job of assembling the ideas into a co-herent whole. The result is a complex but quite extensive look at the various ideas and actions of intellectuals on the periph-ery at a time when that periphery is start-ing to move toward center stage. Many of the essays offer new ways of thinking about traditional subjects, and many venture into totally new areas of consideration. The various threads of thought offer the reader a rather exciting collection of novel ideas and thought provoking approaches to those ideas and, certainly, an apprecia-tion of the challenges Latin American in-tellectuals face as they attempt to navigate their way through the intricacies of a world in flux. This collection brings together the ideas and insight of scholars from a variety of disciplines, including literature, history, anthropology and sociology, on the timely subject of the rapidly changing world of the intellectual in Latin America. The es-says grew out of the “South by Midwest”-Conference (November 2008) on “the role of intellectuals and the definition of intel-lectual practices in peripheral societies” (p. 10). The volume’s diversity of writers, writ-ing styles and viewpoints is an appropriate reflection of the pluralism that engaged in-tellectuals currently face; it is a world in motion, a transformation of knowledge production and politics in Latin America, which the writers indicate they wish to document and encourage. In his summative essay, “Pluralism, Ar-ticulation, Containment,” Bret Gustafson writes that “these shifts represent possibili-ties, ruptures, and interventions that cre-ate space for rethinking and addressing the region’s ongoing paradoxes – a history of monocultural nationalism in a region of vast plurality, vast wealth and intense gaps of inequality, democracy and racial and so-cial exclusion, environmental degradation and an embrace of natural resource ex-traction and export, and zones of relative stability alongside regions of bloody war, violence, and criminality” (p. 355). Indeed the concept of pluralism is at the heart of the volume, and the tension described by many of the writers arises as this plural-ism runs up against conservative elements of society that would contain it. In this unstable and quickly evolving world, the intellectual has a critical role to play: He or she is no longer the traditional member of the lettered elite or the revolutionary leader, but rather is now in think tanks, part of the media, an activist for various causes. Today’s Latin American intellectual 134 | Buchbesprechungenmust “negotiate multiple scales and forms of intellectual activity and consider how these intersect with multiple modalities of analysis and representation” (p. 358). Be-sides thinking across national boundaries, different localities and traditional social and ideological orders, the contemporary intellectual must operate in a world that contains new forms of social and political agency and the heavy influence of technol-ogy. Although grounded in the fluctuating world the Latin American intellectual of today must navigate, the volume explores a multitude of directions, Including the role of literature; the importance of sacred beliefs and indigenous practices in this intellectual world and the concomitant need for the indigenous to participate in exploring their own knowledges; and the role of language, specifically English as the dominant global language because of its grounding in the sciences, and Span-ish as an umbrella for a new Pan-Hispan-ism, built upon an intriguing mix of the discrediting of area studies, the growth of Spanish capitalism and transnational cor-porations, and Spain’s new international status.Two essays glance back at the roots of the intellectual on the periphery to some of the earliest intellectual outliers: the Inca Gar-cilaso de la Vega and Blas Valera, whom José Antonio Mazzotti sees as the “colonial antecedents to elements of contemporary discourse on indigenous rights” (p. 29); and Jacinto Ventura de Molino, a black intellectual in 1820s and 1830s Montevi-deo who engaged with the public through his advocacy writing and law practice on behalf of black people. Looking at the challenge to contemporary intellectuals as they seek to navigate national cultures, Jan Hoffman French examines the role of anthropologists as collaborators with and advocates for descendants of fugitive slaves in Brazil and other black people who live in quilombo, their traditional settlements, and seek government recognition and property rights. Concentrating on Ecuador and Bolivia, Catherine Walsh looks at the social-politi-cal-ancestral movements of Indian and Af-rican descendent peoples, which she sees as “leading and orienting the most significant intellectual projects” (p. 200). These proj-ects move away from the lens of Europe and the United States, she writes, and the two countries’ recently adopted constitu-tions create a new way of thinking about the State.Walter Mignolo analyzes indigenous prac-tices within the framework of pluriversal-ity, as opposed to universality. Despite a tendency of many to see Evo Morales’s rise to the presidency of Bolivia as indicating the merging of indigenous decolonial-ism and the Latin American Left, in this pluriversality, there is no Right or Left; Indian decolonialism is not the equivalent of the Latin American new Left. From the Indian perspective, Marxism and capital-ism are both part of Occidentalism, and the Indian revolution opposes both. In-stead, decolonialism “focuses on racism that justified exploitation of labor outside of Europe and now inside of Europe be-cause of immigration.” (254). The Aymara intellectual Félix Patzi Paco proposes that a communal system replace the liberal sys-tem, which would entail reconstituting the traditional indigenous ayllusand markas; this reconstitution defines what Mignolo’s plurinational state would be like: “The Buchbesprechungen | 135idea is coming from the simple existence and memories of millions of Indians who are not convinced that they can live the ex-istence and memories of millions of Euro-peans and their descendants in the Andes, whether these come from the Left or from the Right” (p. 255).George Yüdice looks at technology as the ultimate transnational flow, the way the public sphere moves into the area where the private sphere used to predominate and takes it to the international level. In-tellectuals have a major role to play in this world. As Yüdice argues, “Transcultural intellectual work does much of the transla-tion necessary to render the communica-tive power of public spheres into law or administrative power” (p. 309). Examples from El Salvador and Brazil illustrate the complexities involved. Although the volume covers a broad spec-trum of ideas and both poses and answers many questions, it also points the way for future research; each contributor of-fers extensive bibliographies that might serve as a starting point. As editor Mabel Moraña writes, “Without a doubt, due to the changing nature of our cultures and the deep changes we are witnessing both at social and political levels in Latin America, all the answers that we seem to find to our questions today are necessarily provisional and subject to reconsideration. This book is intended as a modest but passionate contribution to this process of recognition and understanding (p. 23).” Jürgen Kocka / Günter Stick (Hrsg.), Stiften, Schenken, Prägen. Zivilge-sellschaftliche Wissenschaftsförde-rung im Wandel, Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 2011, 206 S.Rezensiert von Thomas Adam, ArlingtonDer hier zu besprechende Band bietet Einblicke in die gegenwärtigen und wohl auch zukünftigen Diskussionen um die Rolle von Stiftungen in der Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Lehre und Forschung an deutschen Universitäten. Die in dem Band versammelten Autoren nähern sich diesem Thema von fachlich verschiedenen Ausgangspunkten sowie unterschiedli-chen Interpretationen und Grundüber-zeugungen an. So ist Gesine Schwan da-von überzeugt, dass nur eine staatliche Wissenschaftsförderung nicht willkürlich sein kann, während private Wissenschafts-förderung nicht demokratisch kontrol-liert sei und daher Stiftungen willkürlich handeln könnten. Dem hält Jürgen Kok-ka in seinem Schlusswort entgegen, dass auch staatliche Wissenschaftsförderung intransparent und „meist nur in sehr ver-mittelter Form demokratisch legitimiert“ sei. Insgesamt widerspiegeln diese gegen-sätzlichen Ansichten die Grundlinien der Diskussionen unter Akademikern und Politikern und das oftmals generelle Un-wohlsein gegenüber privater Anteilnahme an der Finanzierung öffentlicher Projekte in Deutschland. Hier wird allerdings auch ein begriffliches Grundproblem deutlich: Handelt es sich bei Stiftern um Akteure 

Mabel Moraña / Bret Gustafson (Hrsg.): Rethinking Intellectuals in Latin America, Madrid:: Iberoamericana-Vervuert, 2010, 388 S.

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Mabel Moraña / Bret Gustafson (Hrsg.): Rethinking Intellectuals in Latin America, Madrid:: Iberoamericana-Vervuert, 2010, 388 S.

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