No Apocalypse, No Integration: Modernism and Postmodernism in Latin America

What form does the crisis of modernity take in Latin America when societies are politically demobilised and there is no revolutionary agenda in sight? How does post-modern criticism make sense of enlightenment and utopia in a region marked by incomplete modernisation, new waves of privatisation, great masses of excluded peoples, and profound socio-cultural heterogeneity? In No Apocalypse, No Integration Martin Hopenhayn reviews these and other themes related to the collapse of received modernist paradigms for social study in Latin America. With the failure of utopian movements that promised social change, the rupture of the link between the production of knowledge and practical intervention, and the defeat of modernisation and development policy established after World War II, Latin American intellectuals and militants have been left at an impasse without a vital program of action. Hopenhayn analyses these crises from a theoretical perspective and calls upon Latin American intellectuals to re-evaluate their objects of study, their political reality, and their society’s cultural production, as well as to seek within their own history the elements for a new collective discourse. Taking issue with the notion that strict adherence to a single paradigm of action can rescue intellectual and cultural movements, Hopenhayn advocates a course of epistemological pluralism, arguing that such an approach values respect for difference and the exaltation of social and theoretical diversity and heterodoxy. This essay collection will appeal to academic readers in sociology, public policy, philosophy, cultural theory, and Latin American history and culture, as well as to those with an interest in Latin America’s current transition.