Title: Barbarian Theorizing and the Limits of Latin American Exceptionalism
Abstract: Two important concepts for Latin American(ist) cultural criticism 1 define the focus of this essay: exceptionalism and Eurocentrism. The objective of my critique is to interrogate the limits of Latin American exceptionalism by placing it in dialectical tension with Eurocentrism. I aim to signal the ways in which exceptionalism as a mode of theorizing Latin American singularity--while ultimately a critical endeavor--tends to overlook its own symptomatic relationship with Eurocentrism, and thereby succumbs to the same problems that it identifies in Eurocentric discourse. Exceptionalism, I propose, is not simply a reaction to or result of external factors, such as Latin America's marginalization from the construction of Western knowledge. It is also a symptom of the tenacity of Eurocentrism within Latin American(ist) criticism. Just as Eurocentrism elides the intellectual contribution of peripheral or subaltern cultures to the epistemological constitution of the so-called West, so does exceptionalism reach its limits by focusing attention upon this very issue. Left aside is the engagement with epistemologies uncommonly, if ever, taken seriously in the rarefied discourses of Western knowledge production. At stake then is the role of the Latin American(ist) intellectual as complicit in the erasure of the epistemological plurality of Latin America.
Publication Year: 2001
Publication Date: 2001-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 24
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot