Latin America: The Allure and Power of an Idea

By Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo

Book Overview

"Latin America" is a concept firmly entrenched in its philosophical, moral, and historical meanings. And yet, Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo argues in this landmark book, it is an obsolescent racial-cultural idea that ought to have vanished long ago with the banishment of racial theory. Latin America: The Allure and Power of an Idea makes this case persuasively.

Tenorio-Trillo builds the book on three interlocking steps: first, an intellectual history of the concept of Latin America in its natural historical habitat-mid-nineteenth-century redefinitions of empire and the cultural, political, and economic intellectualism; second, a serious and uncompromising critique of the current "Latin Americanism"-which circulates in United States-based humanities and social sciences; and, third, accepting that we might actually be stuck with "Latin America," Tenorio-Trillo charts a path forward for the writing and teaching of Latin American history. Accessible and forceful, rich in historical research and specificity, the book offers a distinctive, conceptual history of Latin America and its many connections and intersections of political and intellectual significance. Tenorio-Trillo's book is a masterpiece of interdisciplinary scholarship.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 022670520X
• ISBN13: 9780226705200
• Release Date: February 2020
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.82 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"