Resumen de Identity and Nation: more of the same?
In an article titled, ¿Cultural Studies: Reworking the Nation, Revisiting Identity,¿ published some time ago in the Journal for Latin American Cultural Studies, Beatriz Sarlo, focusing on current debates on the questions of nation and identity, offered a succinct analysis of the paths taken, particularly within the field of Cultural Studies, in the elaboration of these topics, which have been central to the reflection on Latin America, from the times of independence to the present. I would like to contribute to that discussion, by pointing out some dissidence with Sarlo¿s analysis. Nevertheless, I would like to indicate from the beginning that I share with her the general concerns that she expresses in connection with current elaborations on those concepts, as well as some of the conclusions of her study. To begin with, I feel, like Sarlo, that the practice of Cultural Studies has been characterized by a general disposition that is more ¿public¿ than ¿political¿, a feature that seems to indicate a generalized and somehow vague desire of social intervention among intellectuals. In many cases this impulse is nothing more than a willful expression, which, in any case, provides a good point of departure for the definition of the historical and intellectual ¿mission¿ of Cultural Studies, alluded to by Sarlo, a mission that I would also characterize as redemptionist and self-legitimizing, at least in the case of some of the manifestations of Cultural Studies. With this said, I would also like to point out that in my opinion, in the case of Latin America, the problems raised by current theorizations on the issues of nation and identity should be situated neither in the deficient practice nor in the globalizing tendency of Cultural Studies. Although the impulse to ¿kill several birds with one stone¿ is, sometimes, understandable, I feel that a distinction between the need to criticize the critic, and the very nature of the phenomena analyzed here could yield a deeper reflection of the issue at hand.
