Summary
"Latin America" is a concept firmly entrenched in its philosophical, moral, and historical meanings. And yet, Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo argues in this landmark book, it is an obsolescent racial-cultural idea that ought to have vanished long ago with the banishment of racial theory. 'Latin America: The Allure and Power of an Idea' makes this case persuasively. Tenorio-Trillo builds the book on three interlocking steps: first, an intellectual history of the concept of Latin America in its natural historical habitat mid-nineteenth-century redefinitions of empire and the cultural, political, and economic intellectualism; second, a serious and uncompromising critique of the current "Latin Americanism" which circulates in United States based humanities and social sciences; and, third, accepting that we might actually be stuck with "Latin America," Tenorio-Trillo charts a path forward for the writing and teaching of Latin American history. Accessible and forceful, rich in historical research and specificity, the book offers a distinctive, conceptual history of Latin America and its many connections and intersections of political and intellectual significance.
Contents
The basic connotations of an idea
Iberismo and latinité
The question of Brazil
Latino/a and Latin America
Singing latinoamérica
US-centered Latin America, part 1
/ US-centered Latin America, part 2
"Latin America" abides: but how should historians speak it?