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

post what?! (not) an abbreviated introduction 27
fundamentally unique individual. But—and this is important—a tremendous
paradox exists at the core of these modernist notions of identity, and
it is on this paradox that most of this book will be centered. While modernity
claims to have discovered and released the Cartesian individual, it has
simultaneously cemented individuals into rigid and unyielding categories
of group identity. Cultural theorists use the term essence to refer to these
categories, and they accuse modernists of engaging in acts of essentialism
or essentialization.
Where Is the Real Us?! Group Essences
For modernists, individuals possess not only a unique core or essence, but
certain groups of people can be defi ned by traits shared by their individual
members. As these traits are intrinsic, they are immutable and ontological;
in other words, they exist prior to our perception of them. Like natural law,
they simply exist. Therefore, according to modernists, essences can be identifi
ed and described by modern techniques; namely, the scientifi c method.
While the number of these essential categories is vast, cultural theorists
have so far tended to focus on only a few, and of those we have selected four
for this book: race, class, gender, and nation.
We might think of modernists conceptualizing essentialized identities
as dog breeders talking about different types of dogs. They consider each
breed to have a distinct set of characteristics that is intrinsic, immutable, or
essential. One breed is high-energy, another is relaxed; one is highly intelligent,
another is unresponsive, and so forth. After the discovery of genetics
in the mid-twentieth century, these traits were referred to as genetic
in origin, whereas previously it was thought that they were simply passed
along “in the blood,” as was often said. What distinguishes each breed, even
before its inherent traits are manifested in behavior, is physical appearance.
When we see a dog that looks like a Jack Russell terrier, we expect it to
behave according to its inherent Jack Russell essence.
Modernists’ conceptualizations of race, class, gender, and nation have
functioned very similarly to breeders’ classifi cations of dogs. Modernists
believed that each of the varying subgroups of these four categories were
distinguishable as physical types and that these corresponded to immutable
essences. They set races apart by skin color, hair texture, and various other
physical features; genders by sex organs and body parts; classes by bloodline
or possession of property; and nationalities, which can be a bit more
abstract, by the physical manifestations of a national people. Modernists
argued that there existed, for instance, a white race and a black race, a male