The Other Side of the Popular: Neoliberalism and Subalternity in Latin America (review)

In 1971, the Argentine critic Eduardo Galeano published Las venas abiertas de America latina (The Open Veins of Latin America). Through the metaphors of addiction and dependency, Galeano offers a withering Marxist analysis of U. S. hegemony and its perpetual impoverishment of Latin America. After the Cuban revolution, in an era that marked the rise of the left in Latin America as well as the strong emergence of Latin American culture (e.g., the "Boom"), Galeano wrote with confidence, and his was one of many voices proffering anti-hegemonic narratives and calling for a more thoroughgoing independence of Latin America from the dominion of the North. In the decades since, though, that sought after independence has been fleeting at best. The U. S. aggressively defeated or neutralized the left in places like Chile and Nicaragua while abetting the rise of the right in Argentina, Chile, and Peru while forging economic ties (e.g., NAFTA) that have furthered Latin America's neo-colonial dependence.

In The Other Side of the Popular, Gareth Williams writes within the current context of globalization and with the knowledge of Latin America's continued failures to liberate itself from U. S. dominion. The book reads as if Williams is trying to pick his way through a minefield of failed analyses in search of materials and methods out of which he can piece together a viable approach that posits the possibility of a liberatory analysis for Latin America. As a result, Williams's efforts are more cautious and nuanced than the strident anti-hegemonic arguments of Galeano and his cohort, because Williams questions the ability of any master narrative, leftist or otherwise, to not act hegemonically and, thus, never really engages the problem of hegemony. In a struggle for power, the one unquestioned assumption is power. In the struggle between hegemonic and counter-hegemonic forces, the one unquestioned assumption is hegemony. Williams wants to question that assumption, and he uses the concept of the subaltern to produce a post-hegemonic analysis that escapes the reductive binarity of hegemony/counter-hegemony. Williams uses Gayatri Spivak's definition of the subaltern ("the absolute limit of the place where history is narrativized into logic" (2002, 10)). Moreover, the subaltern subject sits beyond hegemony and thus can be used as an active means of disrupting neoliberalism and its effects. But rather than producing a totalizing system with its own particular zones of inclusion and exclusion, Williams endeavors to deconstruct narrative closure, using the fragmented, marginalized status of the subaltern to discuss "the ways in which distinct histories, realities and representations can be evaluated at the current time in cultural and political terms . . . within the ruins of modern history's foundational narratives" (3).

The first section of the book, entitled "Closure," serves as the theoretical justification for Williams's own work to illuminate contemporary Latin America. Williams offers a history of Latin American identity from failed nationalist projects (e.g., transculturation and national fictive identity [Chapter 1]) to contemporary transnationalism (Chapter 3). He critiques earlier attempts at Latin American identity construction as well as other positions on neoliberalism (e.g., Jorge Casteñeda, Nestor Canclini (Chapter 3)) for playing into the hands of U.S. hegemony, and he explores the problems of subaltern studies, sketching out the proper enactment of the subaltern as liberatory intellectual discourse, free of northern hegemonic bias. In the second section of the book, subdivided into "Intermezzo . . . Hear Say Yes" and "Perhaps," Williams develops post-hegemonic analyses through a varied set of hegemonic and post-hegemonic cultural artifacts (e.g., novels, literary criticism, testimonio, film and photo-essay). Williams imagines post-hegemonic engagements and in them sees the potential for challenging northern dominion. The concept of the post-hegemonic and the complex theoretical and applied constructs Williams creates are fascinating and labyrinthine, and they yield superb insights into the contemporary transnational cultural milieu of the Americas. My only substantive reservation about...