book: The Other Side of the Popular: Neoliberalism and Subalternity in Latin America

book: The Other Side of the Popular: Neoliberalism and Subalternity in Latin America | Gareth Williams ...

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	• The Other Side of the Popular: Neoliberalism and Subalternity in Latin America Gareth Williams Duke University Press, 2002 - 375 pages average customer review:based on 1 review view larger image
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Uneven in quality, but neverthless important.

As everywork in the field of Cultural Studies, where there's no hierarchy of subject matter in terms of intrinsec, objective relevance, this work is uneven in quality, in that subjects covered go from harcore politics and sociology to something not above the level of innuendo. Neverthless, this work has a singlepiece - the analysis of neoliberal ideology in Peru as expressed in the late work by Mario Vargas Llosa _Death in the Andes_ , to be found in Chapter 6 - that is simply superb and is a throughly explanation of the ressurrrection of racist and excluding elite ideologies in Latin America in the wake of the devastating impact of neoliberalism in Latin America, that crrppled national states and led to a forswearing of all conservative attempts at creating policies for societal integration in the framework of a bourgeois national state.

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Drawing on deconstruction, postcolonial theory, cultural studies, and subaltern studies, The Other Side of the Popular is as much a reflection on the limitations and possibilities for thinking about the politics of Latin American culture as it is a study of the culture itself. Gareth Williams pays particular attention to the close relationship between complex cultural shifts and the development of the neoliberal nation-state. The modern Latin American nation, he argues, was built upon the idea of "the people," a citizenry with common interests transcending demographic and cultural differences. As nations have weakened in relation to the global economy, this moment?of the popular as the basis of nation-building?has passed, causing seismic shifts in the relationships between governments and cultural formations. Williams asserts that these changed relationships necessitate the rethinking of fundamental concepts such as "the popular" and "the nation." He maintains that the perspective of subalternity is vital to this theoretical project because it demands the reimagining of the connections between critical reason and its objects of analysis.

Williams develops his argument through studies of events highlighting Latin America?s uneasy, and often violent, transition to late capitalism over the past thirty years. He looks at the Chiapas rebellion in Mexico, genocide in El Salvador, the Sendero in Peru, Chile?s and Argentina?s transitions to democratic governments, and Latin Americans? migration northward. Williams also reads film, photography, and literary works, including Ricardo Piglia?s The Absent City and the statements of a young Salvadoran woman, the daughter of ex-guerrilleros, living in South Central Los Angeles.

The Other Side of the Popular is an incisive interpretation of Latin American culture and politics over the last few decades as well as a thoughtful meditation on the state of Latin American cultural studies.

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