Description: "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.Brief description: Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo is the Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor of History at the University of Chicago. He is the author of several books, including Latin America: The Allure and Power of an Idea, "I Speak of the City" Mexico City at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, and Clio's Laws: On History and Language.
Review Quotes: "Serving as an investigation of "Latin America" in the abstract, historian Tenorio-Trillo's work reframes the understanding of not only where this abstract concept originated but also why it endures. . .Rooted in deep, thorough interdisciplinary research and analysis and written in witty prose, the book promises to open rich dialogues, not only within graduate seminar classrooms but also in the field as a whole."-- "Choice"