Universality and Utopia: The 20th Century Indigenista Peruvian Tradition

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Universality and Utopia explores the intersection between philosophical universalism and revolutionary politics in 20th Century Peruvian indigenista literature. It traces a tradition of thought whose basic tenets originate in the philosophical works of Jos Carlos Maritegui, and are subsequently elaborated in the literary works of Csar Vallejo and Jos Mara Arguedas. My central thesis is that, more than a 'regionalist' or 'provincialist' literature that describes the social reality and historic oppression of the rural Indian since colonial times, the socialist indigenismo is continuous with the invention of a utopian imaginary for a project of alternative modernity, through which urban intellectuals, artists and activists conceived of a national future beyond that of capitalist modernisation. Above all, such a future would traverse the prescient division between the urban mestizo and the Indian, and finally the lingering disparity between the nations Western and native heritage. In doing so, indigenista writers did not only adapt the tenets of socialist philosophy and avant-garde aesthetics to describe their unique social realities and thinking of the possibility of an emancipatory political practice; they also interrogated the foundations of European Marxism, expressing various figurations of the emancipatory process to come, and different models for the new revolutionary subjectivity that would aid this transition.

Rejecting assimilation into Western modernization within the urban milieu ('acculturation') under liberal capitalism imagined by liberal writers such as Manuel Gonzlez Prada and Clorinda Matto de Turner, in the late 19th Century I argue that the 20th Century socialist indigenista tradition anticipated a bilateral process of appropriation and mediation between the rural Indian and mestizo, integrating indigenous as well as Western cultural and economic forms. In the first chapter, I assess Mariteguis heterodox 'Peruvian socialism', tracing the articulation of a nascent indigenista aesthetics to an emancipatory politics as part of an 'active philosophy' driven by what the author names 'creative antagonism'. In the second chapter, I explore how Csar Vallejos 'materialist poetics' progressively extend the nationalist destiny and social realist aesthetic avowed by Maritegui onto an internationalist and geopolitical horizon, as part of an 'aesthetics of transmutation' that coincides with a plea for humanity as a whole. In the third chapter, I trace how Jos Mara Arguedas novels attempt to reconcile what he named 'the magical and rational conceptions of the world', extending the ideal of a transcultural mediation between the rural Indian and urban mestizo to conceive of a new collectivist and cooperativist ethics of 'labor for-itself', informed by his anthropological and ethnographic research. In the fourth chapter, I propose a general retrospective of the aims and limitations of the ideals guiding this tradition, considering the development of Peruvian indigenista literature after Arguedas, interrogating the legacy and prospects of emancipatory politics in response to the limits of neoliberal capitalism and the crisis of democracy in Latin America today.

Reviews

In his daring and groundbreaking study, Daniel Sacilotto navigates the political theory of Jos Carlos Maritegui, the poetic vision of Csar Vallejo, and the narrative anthropology of Jos Mara Arguedas to argue that their seminal engagements with the unemancipated indigenous peoples of the Andes is not aclosed chapter for Peruvian history, but a promising corpus to address urgent historical predicaments, and to imagine the possible in our fragmented political present writ large.

Bold, lucid, and convincing, Sacilottos Universality and Utopia shows how Peruvian indigenismo makes its own the lexicon of Left universalism . A historically grounded argument that can also be translated beyond its local context, Universality and Utopia is not only a major contribution to studies of Latin American literary-political culture, but an important contribution to the philosophy of political internationalism Jacques Lezra, Distinguished Professor, University of CaliforniaRiverside

Explores imaginaries of emancipation against horizons of Indigenism, international socialism, and national integration in the works of three key twentieth-century Peruvian thinkers: essayist Jos Carlos Maritegui, poet Csar Vallejo, and novelist Jos Mara Arguedas. Lucidly composed and subtly argued, Universality and Utopia renders the complexity and rigor of Peruvian literary-political imaginings with uncommon clarity and insight Michelle Clayton, Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies and Comparative Literature, Brown University.

Author Bio

Daniel Sacilotto is a professor of critical studies at the California Institute of the Arts, and PhD in comparative literature from the University of California, Los Angeles.