2 - The multiverse of Latin American identity, c. 1920–c. 1970

Summary

A deeply imaginative reflection on the character of cultural expression in the Americas, presented by historical eras, is La expresión americana by the noted Cuban writer José Lezama Lima, first published in Havana in 1957. The sole critical edition is the Portuguese version, A expressão americana (São Paulo, 1988), translated with a highly competent introduction and notes by Irlemar Chiampi. In his essays ‘Visión de América’ and ‘Conciencia e identidade de América’ in La novela latinoamericana en vísperas de un nuevo siglo (Mexico, D.F., 1981), 59–158, Alejo Carpentier addressed continental Americanism. Leopoldo Zea expands the barbarism-civilization theme to global proportions in Discurso desde la marginación y la barbarie (Barcelona, 1988). See also his Filosofía de la historia americana (Mexico, D.F., 1978). The role of intellectuals is examined in Juan F. Marsal (ed.), El intelectual latinoamericano (Buenos Aires, 1970).

Studies of Latin American thought include two classics by the Spanish philosopher José Gaos, El pensamiento hispanoamericano (Mexico, D.F., 1944) and Pensamiento de lengua espanola (Mexico, D.F., 1945). Gaos’s Mexican disciple Leopoldo Zea produced a volume which, although controversial, remains seminal for the nineteenth century: The Latin-American Mind, trans. J. H. Abbott and L. Dunham (Norman, Okla., 1963). See also Harold Eugene Davis, Latin American Thought: A Historical Introduction, 2nd ed. (New York, 1974); and W. Rex Crawford, A Century of Latin-American Thought, rev. ed. (New York, 1966).