Blood, Ink, and Culture: Miseries and Splendors of the Post-Mexican Condition

by Roger Bartra, Mark A Healey (Translator)

Overview

Pens and swords, words and blows: for Roger Bartra, the culture of ink and the culture of blood offer two contrasting approaches to the political transformations of our time. In this compilation of essays, Bartra thinks through these transformations by tracing the complex interplay between popular culture, nationalist ideology, civil society, and the state in contemporary Mexico.

Written with verve over a period of twenty years, these essays—most translated into English here for the first time—suggest why Bartra has become one of Latin America’s leading public intellectuals. The essays cover a broad range of topics, from the canonical forms of Mexican culture to the meaning of postnational identity in a globalizing age, from the repercussions of the 1994 Zapatista uprising to the 2000 election of Vicente Fox and the end of the PRI’s seven-decade rule. Across this range of topics, Bartra imparts astute insights into a critical period of transition in Mexican history, stressing throughout the importance of democracy, the complexity of identity, and the vibrancy of the Left. In Blood, Ink, and Culture, he provides a stimulating inside look at political and intellectual life in the southern reaches of North America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822329237
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	07/12/2002
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	6.01(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.77(d)

About the Author

Roger Bartra is Senior Research Fellow at the Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. An anthropologist, sociologist, and respected public intellectual, he has served as editor of the Mexican literary weekly La Jornada Semanal and is a regular contributor to literary and political journals in Mexico, Spain, Japan, England, and the United States. He is also the author of numerous books in Spanish; those available in English include Wild Men in the Looking Glass: The Mythic Origins of European Otherness and The Cage of Melancholy: Identity and Metamorphosis in the Mexican Character.

Mark Alan Healey is Assistant Professor of History and International Studies at the University of Mississippi.

Table of Contents

Preface

I. Blood and Ink

The Mexican Office: Miseries and Splendors of Culture


Tropical Kitsch in Blood and Ink


The Bridge, the Border, and the Cage: Cultural Crisis and Identity in the Post-Mexican Condition

Method in a Cage: How to Escape from the Hermeneutic Circle?

II. The Post-Mexican Condition

The Malinche’s Revenge: Toward a Postnational Identity

Missing Democracy

The Political Crisis of 1982

Journey to the Center of the Right

The Crisis of Nationalism

From the Charismatic Phallus to the Phallocratic Office

III. Miseries and Splendors of the Left

Our Own Nineteen Eighty-Four

Between Disenchantment and Utopia

Nationalism, Democracy, and Socialism

Is the Left Necessary?

Lombardo or Revueltas?

Marxism on the Gallows?

Great Changes, Modest Proposals

Postscript: The Dictatorship Was Not Perfect

Glossary

Bibliography

Index

What People are Saying About This

Irene Silverblatt

Roger Bartra is one of Latin America's premier cultural critics. With this intriguing, provocative, and insightful volume, an English-language audience will have the pleasure of reading some of his best and most challenging commentary.
— Irene Silverblatt, author of Moon, Sun, and Witches: Gender Ideologies and Class in Inca and Colonial Peru

Gilbert M. Joseph

I can think of no other Mexican thinker who has so consistently crossed disciplinary and national boundaries nor so effectively integrated intellectual and political milieus, laying bare the contradictions of the postrevolutionary state and the Mexican Left in the process. Blood, Ink, and Culture pulls no punches. It should be read by anyone seeking to understand Mexico's postnational condition in the new millennium.
— Gilbert M. Joseph, editor of Reclaiming the Political in Latin American History

Editorial Reviews

I can think of no other Mexican thinker who has so consistently crossed disciplinary and national boundaries nor so effectively integrated intellectual and political milieus, laying bare the contradictions of the postrevolutionary state and the Mexican Left in the process. Blood, Ink, and Culture pulls no punches. It should be read by anyone seeking to understand Mexico's postnational condition in the new millennium.”—Gilbert M. Joseph, editor of Reclaiming the Political in Latin American History


“Roger Bartra is one of Latin America’s premier cultural critics. With this intriguing, provocative, and insightful volume, an English-language audience will have the pleasure of reading some of his best and most challenging commentary.”—Irene Silverblatt, author of Moon, Sun, and Witches: Gender Ideologies and Class in Inca and Colonial Peru

From the Publisher