Reframing Latin America: A Cultural Theory Reading ... - BGSU Blogs

182 reframing latin america
1974); The Modern World System II: Mercantilism and the Consolidation
of the European World-Economy, 1600–1750 (London: Academic, 1980); and
The Modern World System III: The Second Era of Great Expansion of the
Capitalist World-Economy, 1730–1840s (London: Academic, 1989).
14. Mignolo cites one of Wallerstein’s later works here: “Eurocentrism
and Its Avatars: The Dilemmas of Social Science,” New Left Review 226
(1997): 93–107.
15. Immanuel Wallerstein, “The Heritage of Sociology, the Promise of
Social Science,” Presidential address, XIVth World Congress of Sociology,
Montreal, 26 July 1998.
16. Anouar Abdel-Malek, Social Dialectics, vol. 1: Civilizations and Social
Theory (London: Macmillan, 1981).
17. Vandana Shiva, ed., Biodiversity Conservation: Whose Resource?
Whose Knowledge? (New Delhi: Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural
Heritage, 1994); Vandana Shiva and M. Mies, eds., Ecofeminism (New Delhi:
Kaly for Women, 1993); Immanuel Wallerstein, “The Rise and Future
Demise of World-Systems Analysis,” Review 21:1 (1998): 103–112.
18. Wallerstein, “Rise and Future Demise,” 42.
19. The term subaltern draws upon theories that emerged in the 1980s
and 1990s, largely from India. Subaltern refers to those people excluded
from or repressed by the centers of power, such as the billions of impoverished
people living in Latin America, Africa, and Asia whose lives have been
largely controlled by Western economic and political systems, colonialism,
and slavery. It often refers to the system of neoliberal globalism. Subaltern
is also used in more local settings, for example, to refer to workers in a factory
struggling against their bosses or members of a poor village struggling
against governmental authorities. For a specifi c, albeit advanced, discussion
of subaltern studies in Latin America, see Ileana Rodríguez, ed., The Latin
American Subaltern Studies Reader (Durham: Duke UP, 2001).
20. Paula Moya, “Postmodernism, ‘Realism,’ and the Politics of Identity:
Cherrie Moraga and Chicana Feminism,” ed. Chandra Talpade Mohanty
and M. J. Alexander, Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic
Futures (New York: Routledge, 1997) 125–150. The extract is from 126.
21. Moya 27; Linda Alcoff, “The Elimination of Experience in Feminist
Theory,” paper presented at the Women’s Studies Symposium, Cornell University,
3 Feb. 1995.
22. Mignolo consistently revisits 1848 and 1898 as dates that defi ned the
relations of power in the Western Hemisphere. The fi rst refers to the end
of the U.S.-Mexican War (1846–1848), which resulted in the annexation by
the United States of large portions of Mexican national territory, now much
of the Southwest. In 1898 the United States defeated Spain in the Spanish-
American War and assumed control of its last colonial possessions, Cuba and
Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam. The defeat of Spain is often thought
of as the moment the United States emerged as a dominant military power.
Mignolo also refers here to Chicanos (Mexican Americans) and other Latinos
who, he says, represent a sort of exterior perspective. He is arguing that
certain minority groups in the United States are “subalternized,” like people