Latin-Americanism without Latin America: ‘Theory’ as Surrogate Periphery in the Metropolitan University

Resumen

Latin-Americanism, at least as practiced in humanistic disciplines within the North American university exists today as a strange kind of ritualized enclave, outwardly cosmopolitan, but,beneath the surface, increasingly provincial and sectarian. It has become a form of ‘study’ that, over the last couple of decades, has succeeded in inventing for itself a theoretically ‘regional’ object withalmost no remaining connection to any real place. This is the disturbing and no doubt contentious observation with which I begintoday, in a polemical spirit but also in a self-critical and reflectiveone.