Identity and Modernity in Latin America (review)

Identity and Modernity in Latin America. Jorge Larrain. Malden, Mass: Blackwell, 2000. Pp. 250. $59.95 (cloth); $26.95 (paper).

According to Octavio Paz, the history of Latin America consists of a series of attempts to achieve modernity. ¹ But he also argues that the study of Mexico's past, from the Conquest to the Revolution, reveals "a search for ourselves, deformed or masked by alien institutions, and for a Form that will express us." ² What better confirmation than these two statements of the crucial importance of the subject of Identity and Modernity in Latin America? Larrain's refreshingly commonsensical and well-informed approach to his topic makes the publication of this excellent new book an especially welcome event. His reading of Latin American history as both "a process of identity construction" and, since independence, "a process of the construction of modernity" as well as his assumption that these interconnected processes have not yet run their course, places him at odds with the widespread notion that "identity" and "modernity" in Latin America are only worth attending to insofar as they can be made the target of a deconstruction (6).

This does not mean that Larrain approaches the two key concepts in his study in an uncritical fashion. He is clearly sympathetic towards the agendas of modernity, which he associates with Enlightenment ideas of "freedom, tolerance, science, progress and reason," as well as industrialism and economic development (12). But he is highly critical of the "naïve wish to become a true image of the United States or Europe" (common among pro-modern thinkers in Latin America) and fully aware of the mixed results of modernization in the region (82). He is also sympathetic to the Latin American search for an identity of its own. At the same time, his book includes a powerful critique of the essentialist conceptions of cultural identity that have repeatedly been put forward by the continent's intellectuals. He rightly points out that such conceptions misconstrue identity as something that is "fixed forever" (158). Yet he is equally critical of the postmodernist idea of the "total fragmentation and dispersion" of identity (42). Between these two extremes, he stakes out an intermediate position (the "historical-structural"), according to which "identity is constructed not solely by discourse but also by the solidified practices of a people and therefore it can change but in a materially conditioned manner" (37).

Armed, then, with these eminently lucid and sensible definitions of identity and modernity, Larrain undertakes an ambitious rereading of Latin American history from 1492 to the present. Much of the ground he covers will be familiar to scholars in Latin American studies. Yet he manages to analyze in an illuminating fashion materials not usually discussed together. His focus is mainly on economic and intellectual history, but he also offers compelling analyses of religion, literature, politics, and the media in Latin America. And he makes a convincing case that the interconnected trajectories of modernity and identity can be seen threading their way through these diverse areas of Latin American culture and society. But what exactly are the connections between the two concepts as they play themselves out in Latin American history? Larrain argues for a relationship between economic conditions during any given period and the importance granted to one or the other of the two concepts. During "periods of expansion" modernity comes to the fore, whereas identity receives more emphasis "in times of crisis" (207). It is an interesting idea, and Larrain presents a great deal of evidence in support of his thesis. But one could also look at the interaction between identity and modernity--in Latin America, but also in other parts of the world--in an entirely different way. It appears, in fact, that interest in identity does not have to wait for modernization to go into crisis, but rather that it is itself a product of the advance of modernity. Fascination with questions of identity is often a response to the erosion in modern...