The Idea of Latin America [Hardcover]

The Idea of Latin America is a geo-political manifesto which insists on the need to leave behind an idea which belonged to the nation-building mentality of nineteenth-century Europe.

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• Charts the history of the concept of Latin America from its emergence in Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century through various permutations to the present day.
  
• Asks what is at stake in the survival of an idea which subdivides the Americas.
  
• Reinstates the indigenous peoples and migrations excluded by the image of a homogenous Latin America with defined borders.
  
• Insists on the pressing need to leave behind an idea which belonged to the nation-building mentality of nineteenth-century Europe.

Acknowledgments.

Preface: Uncoupling the Name and the Reference.

1 The Americas, Christian Expansion, and the Modern/Colonial Foundation of Racism.

2 “Latin” America and the First Reordering of the Modern/Colonial World.

3 After “Latin” America: The Colonial Wound and the Geo-Political/Body-Political Shift.

Postface: After “America”.

Notes.

Index

Winner of the 2006 Frantz Fanon Prize for Outstanding Work in or on the Caribbean Thought in the English Language

“What's in a name? This vigorous, politically engaged essay reveals the 'colonial matrix of power' behind the invention of the term Latin America. A timely and significant contribution to de-colonial theory and to debates about new social movements in the Americas.” John King, Warwick University

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