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In Latin America, where even today writing has remained a restricted form of expression, the task of generating consent and imposing the emergent nation-state as the exclusive form of the political, was largely conferred to the image. Furthermore, at the moment of its historical demise, the new, 'postmodern' forms of sovereignty appear to rely even more heavily on visual discourses of power. However, a critique of the iconography of the modern state-form has been missing. This volume is the first concerted attempt by cultural, historical and visual scholars to address the political dimension of visual culture in Latin America, in a comparative perspective spanning various regions and histori...
The 1910 Revolution is still tangibly present in Mexico in the festivals that celebrate its victories, on the monuments to its heroes, and, most important, in the stories and memories of the Mexican people. Yet there has never been general agreement on what the revolution meant, what its objectives were, and whether they have been accomplished. This pathfinding book shows how Mexicans from 1910 through the 1950s interpreted the revolution, tried to make sense of it, and, through collective memory, myth-making, and history writing, invented an idea called "la Revolución." In part one, Thomas Benjamin follows the historical development of different and often opposing revolutionary traditions and the state's efforts to forge them into one unified and unifying narrative. In part two, he examines ways of remembering the past and making it relevant to the present through fiestas, monuments, and official history. This research clarifies how the revolution has served to authorize and legitimize political factions and particular regimes to the present day. Beyond the Mexican case, it demonstrates how history is used to serve the needs of the present.
This book examines the question of democracy in post-revolutionary Mexican society. Each chapter recuperates an event or particular historical sequence that sheds light on the relation between culture and sovereign exceptionality. Each moment or sequence stages a relation to language. In these speech scenes there is a disagreement between social actors (for example, disputes between peasants and intellectuals over words such as democracy, equality, freedom, proletariat, worker, revolution etc.). Democracy in this book is not just a type of Constitution or a form of society that politics affirms on a daily basis. It is the assumption and installation of egalitarian language. Democracy is therefore the momentary interruption or suspension of the police order.
Cárdenas Compromised is a political and institutional history of Mexico’s urban and rural labor in the Yucatán region during the regime of Lázaro Cárdenas from 1934 to 1940. Drawing on archival materials, both official and popular, Fallaw combines narrative, individual case studies, and focused political analysis to reexamine and dispel long-cherished beliefs about the Cardenista era. For historical, geographical, and ethnic reasons, Yucatán was the center of large-scale land reform after the Mexican Revolution. A long-standing revolutionary tradition, combined with a harsh division between a powerful white minority and a poor, Maya-speaking majority, made the region the perfect site ...
Sheppard explores Mexico’s profound political, social, and economic changes through the lens of the persistent political power of Mexican revolutionary nationalism. By examining the major events and transformations in Mexico since 1968, he shows how historical myths such as the Mexican Revolution, Benito Juárez, and Emiliano Zapata as well as Catholic nationalism emerged during historical-commemoration ceremonies, in popular social and anti-neoliberal protest movements, and in debates between commentators, politicians, and intellectuals. Sheppard provides a new understanding of developments in Mexico since 1968 by placing these events in their historical context. The work further contributes to understandings of nationalism more generally by showing how revolutionary nationalism in Mexico functioned during a process of state dismantling rather than state building, and it shows how nationalism could serve as a powerful tool for non-elites to challenge the actions of those in power or to justify new citizenship rights as well as for elites seeking to ensure political stability.
Historically, one of the recurring arguments in psychiatry has been that heredity is the root cause of mental illness. In Inheriting Madness, Ian Dowbiggin traces the rise in popularity of hereditarianism in France during the second half of the nineteenth century to illuminate the nature and evolution of psychiatry during this period. In Dowbiggin's mind, this fondness for hereditarianism stemmed from the need to reconcile two counteracting factors. On the one hand, psychiatrists were attempting to expand their power and privileges by excluding other groups from the treatment of the mentally ill. On the other hand, medicine's failure to effectively diagnose, cure, and understand the causes o...
Drawing on studio files, newspaper critiques, internet sources and scholarly studies of Mexican cinema, this critical history focuses on film depictions, in Hollywood and in Mexico, of the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and the era of Benito Juarez. Mexico's political and military battles are discussed in detail, and contrasted with the film industry's mostly uninformative take on these events. Important figures of Mexican history are discussed--Benito Juarez, Porfirio Diaz, Francisco Madero, Jr., Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata--as well as non-Latinos whose actions were influential. Performers, production personnel and literary sources for films dealing with revolutionary Mexico, from the silent The Life of General Villa to Cinco De Mayo: La Batalla of 2013, are covered.
This compact, incisive study by a senior scholar explores two sources of violent conflict in India: religion and nationalism. Showing how the political aspects of religion and the ideological character of nationalism have led inexorably to struggle, Ainslie T. Embree argues that the tension between competing visions of the just society has determined the social and political life of India. In India, as elsewhere in the world at the end of the twentieth century, religions legitimized violence as people struggled for what they regarded as their legitimate claims upon the future. As examples of the tension between religious and nationalist visions of the good society, Embree examines two explos...