Few men have had as much cultural and educational influence on their own countries as the philosopher and educator Antonio Caso (1883-1946). He was above all a patriot of his beloved Mexico, and he sought to deliver his humanitarian message to his countrymen. In his youth, after the revolt against Díaz, he was a member of the Ateneo de la Juventud, a group that sought to bring Mexico, spiritually and economically, back to the Mexicans. Caso realized that this effort involved the forming of a national consciousness among his people, whom he saw divided by their private and public interests. As an educator of Mexican youth for more than thirty years, Caso sought to imbue in his students the desire to search and to question. He saw education as a perpetual search for truth, and his own life and philosophy reflect this search. He rejected any system that proposed to describe all of reality, and he despised all dogmas—official or unofficial. He particularly fought against positivism and Marxism, systems current in his youth. The first part of this book is an introduction to the philosophical and educational ideas of Caso, as well as to the intellectual and political ideas in his life. Mr. Haddox skillfully shows the development of Caso's ideas and how they took shape from his own reading as well as from the experiences of his age and of his country. The second part contains Mr. Haddox's translations of selections from Caso's writings. They give a moving picture of Caso's hopes for Mexico and for humanitiy.

Examines Bergson’s work from the perspectives of critical philosophy of race and decolonial theory, placing it in conversation with theorists from Africa, the African Diaspora, and Latin America. Building upon recent interest in Henri Bergson’s social and political philosophy, this volume offers a series of fresh and novel perspectives on Bergson’s writings through the lenses of critical philosophy of race and decolonial theory. Contributors place Bergson’s work in conversation with theorists from Africa, the African Diaspora, and Latin America to examine Bergson’s influence on literature, science studies, aesthetics, metaphysics, and social and political philosophy within these geopolitical contexts. The volume pays particular attention to both theoretical and practical forms of critical resistance work, including historical analyses of anti-racist, anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist movements that have engaged with Bergson’s writings—for example, the Négritude movement, the Indigenismo movement, and the Peruvian Socialist Party. These historical and theoretical intersections provide a timely and innovative contribution to the existing scholarship on Bergson, and demonstrate the importance of his thought for contemporary social and political issues. “This is an exceptionally strong volume that excites and inspires the philosophical imagination; it shows the centrality of questions of race and gender to philosophical inquiry and appropriation.” — Keith Ansell-Pearson, author of Bergson: Thinking Beyond the Human Condition

This volume features approximately 600 entries that represent the major writers, literary schools, and cultural movements in the history of Mexican literature. A collaborative effort by American, Mexican, and Hispanic scholars, the text contains bibliographical, biographical, and critical material--placing each work cited within its cultural and historical framework. Intended to enrich the English-speaking public's appreciation of the rich diversity of Mexican literature, works are selected on the basis of their contribution toward an understanding of this unique artistry. The dictionary contains entries keyed by author and works, the length of each entry determined by the relative significance of the writer or movement being discussed. Each biographical entry identifies the author's literary contribution by including facts about his or her life and works, a chronological list of works, a supplementary bibliography, and, when appropriate, critical notes. Authors are listed alphabetically and cross-referenced both within the text and the index to facilitate easy access to information. Selected bibliographical entries are also listed alphabetically by author and include both the original title and English translation, publisher, date and place of publication, and number of pages.

This text covers over 2,000 years, tracing the roots of the contemporary Mexican-American. It utilizes the fields of history, political science, cultural anthropology, folklore, literature, sociolinguistics, Latin American studies and ethnic studies. Thus, it is unique for its multidisciplinary approach which probes into the past of the underclass--the exploited Native-American, Campesino and Mexican-American. It presents, therefore, an insider's view of the history, culture and politics of the Mestizo/Mestiza as an underclass. Most important, it presents a new perspective that invalidates the current Spanish/European and Western interpretation of Native-American reality.

In Shakespearean Cultures, René Girard’s ideas on violence and the sacred inform an innovative analysis of contemporary Latin America. Castro Rocha proposes a new theoretical framework based upon the “poetics of emulation” and offers a groundbreaking approach to understanding the asymmetries of the modern world. Shakespearean cultures are those whose self-perception originates in the gaze of a hegemonic Other. The poetics of emulation is a strategy developed in situations of asymmetrical power relations. This strategy encompasses an array of procedures employed by artists, intellectuals, and writers situated at the less-favored side of such exchanges, whether they be cultural, political, or economic in nature. The framework developed in this book yields thought-provoking readings of canonical authors such as William Shakespeare, Gustave Flaubert, and Joseph Conrad. At the same time, it favors the insertion of Latin American authors into the comparative scope of world literature, and stages an unprecedented dialogue among European, North American, and Latin American readers of René Girard’s work.