New World iconography: a rereading

I want to return to this image for a moment, which I posted on earlier, in light of a nudge I received from some reading I did last week.
From Sandra Messinger Cypess’ La Malinche in Mexican Literature: From History to Myth, as part of a discussion of Rosario Castellanos’ essay, “Once Again Sor Juana”:
Veneration of [...]

New World babies as articulations of cultural difference

Note: This is heading in the direction of a preface or introduction to the book project. The image below is its starting place, at any rate. Would reading this make you want to read more? Comments welcome and encouraged.
Detail from a panel of Diego Rivera’s mural at the Palacio Nacional, Mexico City. [...]

The Book of the New World–some preliminary comments

To begin with, this passage from George Washington Cable’s The Grandissimes (1880):
Resolved, in other words, without being [Joseph] Frowenfeld the studious, to begin at once the perusal of this newly found book, the Community of New Orleans. True, he knew he should find it a difficult task–not only that much of it was in [...]

A brief adventure in New World iconography

(Cross-posted at Blog Meridian)
Frieze depicting the Virgin of Guadalupe’s appearance to Juan Diego, on the east side of the old basilica dedicated to the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico City. 1531-1709. Image taken by the Mrs. Click to enlarge.
As regulars here know, I recently posted a discussion of a couple of paintings depicting [...]

The Virgin of Guadalupe, and “the New World” as oxymoron

Left: Anonymous, Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de México, Patrona de la Nueva España. 18th Century. Museo de la Basílica de Guadalupe, Mexico City (Image found here); right: Josefus de Rivera y Argomanis, Verdadero Retrato de Santa Maria Virgen de Guadalupe, Patrona Principal de la Nueva España Jurada en Mexico. 1778. [...]

Culture and historical “forgetting”

Should a culture have a memory faithful to history? What role can/should legend and myth play in such a culture?
These are questions that the post-Encounter culture(s) of the Western Hemisphere must of necessity be concerned with. Over at my other blog I’ve put up a brief post that wonders aloud about these issues. [...]

The “ideology of form” and Go Down, Moses

The Vintage edition of Go Down, Moses. Image found found here.
Hosam Aboul-Ela’s book, Other South: Faulkner, Coloniality, and the Mariátegui Tradition, begins at the same place Glissant’s Faulkner, Mississippi does: that it might be useful to read Faulkner not as a Modernist or American writer, but as one whose region has much in common [...]

The thing about manifestos . . . (summing up/responding to Mignolo)

Anon., El hallazgo de la Virgen de los Remedios. 18th century. Pinacoteca de la Profesa, Mexico City. Image found here
The thing about manifestos is their tendency toward the use of the broad rhetorical brush. Consider:
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
Well, sure, you say. [...]

Blogging The Idea of Latin America

Image found here.
I’m pleased to say that I’ve just begun a happier reading experience than the one I reported on in the previous post.
I’ve just finished the introduction to Walter D. Mignolo’s The Idea of Latin America, and here are a couple of things said there that made me sit up straight. Italics in [...]