APA Newsletters

Spring 2001
Volume 00, Number 2

Newsletter on Hispanic/Latino Issues in Philosophy

From the Editor

Previous Article | Index | Next Article

Eduardo Mendieta

The present issue opens with a wonderful essay by Chicana scholar Paula Moya. The article is an engagement with Jorge Gracia's recent book, Latino/Hispanic Identity: A Philosophical Perspective (Blackwell, 1999), in particular from the standpoint of the social function of identity labels. Moya contests that Gracia's arguments for the adoption of Hispanic as a self-identifying label for Latinos is too broad and porous. Most importantly, runs Moya's argument, it militates again the socio-political function that identity labels perform. Moya illustrates the possible adverse effects of too broad a label for Latinos with a story about her own experiences at Cornell. There, the adoption of the term "Hispanic" lead to a program that did not teach Latino studies and focused on themes unrelated to Latino issues. The use of the term, in fact, led to the betrayal of pedagogical as well as of a scholarly agendas which aimed at studying and addressing problems and concerns facing Latino communities in the US. This is where Moya's contribution links up with the articles by Walter Mignolo and Agustin Lao-Montes.

Mignolo's article addresses the question of the relationship between Latino/a American Studies and critical thought produced in Latin America, while showing the ways in which Latin American Area Studies have had to do with the perpetuation of a colonial imaginary that gave privileged place to a knowing subject who is located in the so-called advanced world. In this way, Mignolo discovers that there is an alignment between epistemological categories and forms of knowledge, on the one hand, and the locus or site of the agent of knowledge and what critical role their knowledge has in their own social milieu, on the other hand. A knower knows about another culture, through very specify types of epistemological categories and sanctioned disciplines. This was the model that guided the modern social sciences (sociology, political theory, economics, for example, which were guided by models and ideas about modernization, primacy of market models, etc). In contrast, there is a type of thinking, which Mignolo calls in some of his work "border gnosis," that tries to think from the standpoint of the known, with epistemological tools that are self-conscious about their historical contingency. In this way, Mignolo argues that Latino/a studies, which had their origin in oppositional movements in the sixties and seventies in the United States, are siblings not of Latin American Area Studies, but of critical thought in Latin America.

Lao-Montes' article looks at the issue of the emergence of Latino/a studies out of Ethnic, Chicano, and Puerto Rican studies. This emergence has to do in part with the contestation of U.S. hegemonic position in the world-system, both from within and from without. Lao-Montes provides us with a wonderful overview of the role of ethnic studies in four regions of the United States, and what has been their primary focus of investigation. This overview and history makes clear to us the kinds of different struggles that different Latino groups have faced, and why Latinos might have been slow to talk to each other across intra-Latino borders.

The articles are excerpts of, in both cases, very lengthy papers that could not be printed in their entirety in this newsletter. The editor refers readers to the full version of the papers, which will appear shortly in books. All the articles raise a series of extremely important questions and challenges for us as Latino/a philosophers in the United States. For instance: are our closest siblings in other disciplines people who do Latin American studies or Latino/a studies? Should we be attending both LASA (Latin American Studies Association) and ASA (American Studies Association), or if just one, which? As Latino/a philosophers, where should we look in order to gather key texts for a cultural and philosophical canon that we can distinctly identify as Latino? Do we as Latino/a philosophers face a similar situation to that of so-called "Continentalist" philosophers, who are educated in the tradition of Europe, but who can also specify that they focus on German, or Italian, or French, or Scandinavia, etc. philosophy? In other words, can and should we say that we are Latino/a philosophers who do "Mexican-American," "Puerto Rican," "Dominican," etc., Latino/a philosophy? And, by the same token, is there a specific agenda or ethos, that gives coherence to a Latino(a) philosophy? The work of Mignolo and Lao-Montes can help us articulate more clearly some of the challenges that we face. Mignolo and Lao-Montes also make it clear that we must look outside philosophy for guidance and resources.

The newsletter closes with Prof. Alcoff's review of Martinez's recent book Phenomenology of Chicana Experience and Identity, and a list of books recently published by Anthropos. Anthropos is one of the premier publishers in Spain and Latin America. The list is included so that readers of the newsletter will be appraised of what is being published in Spanish in philosophy, but also in order to request reviewers. If there are philosophers who would like to review any or several of the books on the list, the editor will procure them for the prospective reviewer.

Finally, the editor of the newsletter would like to refer readers to Vol 27, No. 2 of Philosophy and Social Criticism which contains the articles of the symposium held on Jorge Gracia's book Latino/Hispanic Identity at the 1999 annual meeting of the Eastern Division of the APA. There readers will find articles by Gregory Pappas, Robert Gooding-Williams, Eduardo Mendieta, Richard Bernstein, Jorge Garcia, and a response by Jorge Gracia. Philosophy and Social Criticism will also publish the papers presented at the symposium on Jorge Valadez's book Deliberative Democracy, Political Legitimacy, and Self-Determination in Multicultural Societies (Bolder, Westview: 2000). This special issue will include articles by Martha Nussbaum, James Bohman, Eduardo Mendieta, and a response by Jorge Valadez.

Errata: in the last issue of the newsletter, the editor failed to note that the translation of Reyes Mate's articles appeared with permission from Duke University and the journal Nepantla: Views from the South, where the articles will appear in a slightly different version.

The Present Members of the Committee are:

Linda Martín Alcoff, outgoing Chair (1999-2001) lsalcoff@syr.edu

Pablo De Greiff, incoming Chair (2001-2004) degreiff@acsu.buffalo.edu

Juan De Pascuale (1998-2001) DEPASCUALEJ@KENYON.EDU

Anne Freire Ashbaugh (1998-2001) ashbaugh@rci.rutgers.edu

Jose Medina (2001-2004) jose.m.medina@vanderbilt.edu

Eduardo Mendieta (1999-2002) mendietae@usfca.edu

Gregory Velazco y Trianosky (1999-2002) gregory.trianosky@csun.edu

Marcelo Sabates (1999-2002) sabates@ksu.edu

Susana Nuccetelli (2000-2003) snuccete@carleton.edu

Gregory Pappas (2001-2004) pappas@io.com

Adam Vinueza (2000-2003) adam.vinueza@colorado.edu

Previous Article | Index | Next Article

APA Newsletters

Spring 2001 Volume 00, Number 2

Spring 2001
Volume 00, Number 2