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

post what?! (not) an abbreviated introduction 35
the United States it was “consumed,” labeled, and fi t into a foreign intellectual
tradition. “How might it have happened,” he asked, “that all that
we thought we had invented or consciously adapted . . . had, in fact, been
invented in one place, Birmingham (UK), and then re-engineered in the U.S.
and exported to the rest of the world?” 33 Other contemporary scholars, like
the Colombian Jesús Martín Barbero, the Argentine Beatriz Sarlo, and the
Argentine/Mexican Néstor García Canclini have reiterated Mato’s sentiments,
insisting that they were doing cultural studies before they knew the
label existed. 34
Mato’s concern is that U.S. cultural studies is being imposed on Latin
American scholars rather than being created by them or in consultation
with them. This, he argues, recreates the classic imperial act of fetishizing
Latin America, of seeing it as an exotic object to be observed, not as a
subject of its own making. As Mato put it, “If what our English-speaking
colleagues are seeking in Latin America are their peers, not their followers,
then the focus has to be made on a diversity of intellectual practices that
are not necessarily related to the English-speaking tradition of Cultural
Studies.” 35 Mato wonders if U.S.-based scholars of Latin America, whether
or not they are of Anglo or Latino descent, might be “Orientalizing” Latin
America.
Scholars like Mato, Martín Barbero, Sarlo, and Canclini contend that the
roots of their so-called cultural studies frameworks are indigenous to Latin
America, dating back at least to the early twentieth century, when politically
engaged intellectuals like José Martí in Cuba or José Martiátegui in
Peru devised broadly inclusive philosophical traditions to challenge social
and political hierarchy. Their contributions, while still very modernist, laid
the foundation for later scholar-activists like Paulo Freire in Brazil, Roberto
Fernández Retamar in Cuba, and Angel Rama in Uruguay, who devised intellectual
traditions that matured alongside the schools of cultural studies
in the United States and Europe. Furthermore, critics of the so-called U.S.
school of Latin American cultural studies point out that the characteristics
typical of postmodernist literature in the United States and Europe (“decentering
the subject, dissolving borders among literary genres, reader’s participation,
among others”) were being practiced by Latin Americans already as
part of their modernist literary movement. 36
Reaction from the so-called U.S. school of Latin American cultural studies
has varied. Some worry that the Latin American critics are falling into
old traps of essentializing Latin American identity and the scholars suited
to study it. Others insist that Latin Americans have long been contributing
to U.S. and European cultural studies traditions. Marc Zimmerman, a Latin