Critical Passions: Selected Essays (review)

Critical Passions: Selected Essays. By Jean Franco. Edited, with an introduction, by Mary Louise Pratt and Kathleen Newman. Post-Contemporary Interventions. Durham: Duke University Press, 1999. Notes. Index. vi, 536 pp. Cloth, $69.95. Paper, $22.95.

Long recognized and highly respected as a key figure whose scholarship in Latin American literary criticism, popular culture, and cultural politics has helped to shape the field of Latin American studies as we know it today, Jean Franco is the author of several major books that are an important and essential component of any serious Latin Americanist's library. However, until 1999, her many scholarly articles, however, remained scattered among various periodicals and journals throughout Latin America, the United States, and Europe until 1999.

In Critical Passions, Mary Louise Pratt and Kathleen Newman have for the first time collected (and translated from Spanish to English when necessary) in one single volume, 32 essays Franco published between 1971 and 1997. Rather than merely listing the articles, the editors have grouped them into four interrelated categories: feminism and the critique of authoritarianism (part 1); mass and popular culture (part 2); Latin American literature from the "boom" onward (part 3); and Mexican literature and culture (part 4). Within each category, the articles are presented chronologically, thereby revealing to the reader the trajectory of Franco's thinking. Both the variety and the depth of the articles attest to Franco's multifaceted engagement as literary critic, political analyst, scholar, feminist, and interdisciplinary theorist. For example, the nine essays of the "feminism and the critique of authoritarianism" section focus on diverse topics that range from a pre-colonial indigenous icon (Malinche) to the seventeenth-century literary giant Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, to the twentieth-century artist Frida Kahlo, to current gay and lesbian issues.

Pratt and Newman conclude that Jean Franco's essays demonstrate a marked capacity for synthesis, pointing out her ability to "conceptualize and define the big picture without losing sight of the fact that this picture is known through its details: a text, a song, an advertisement, graffiti, a Puerto Rican funeral" (p. 1). Moreover, they underscore the extent to which popular culture and the mass media have influenced Franco's literary and cultural analyses. For example, in her essay "High-Tech Primitivism" she uses several films (The Mission, The Emerald Forest, and Fitzcarraldo) to illustrate her ideas on "postmodern indigenismo" (p. 190).

The essays in Critical Passions represent the impressive range and analytical depth of Jean Franco's work; at the same time they demonstrate the extent to which she employs history as a basis for her analysis and criticism of literature, art, politics, and popular culture. They are uniformly well written and copiously documented with notes. The editors have made a most valuable contribution to the field of Latin American studies by making these articles readily accessible, and the book would make a significant addition to the library of any Latin Americanist.