On Edge: The Crisis of Contemporary Latin American Culture

A collection of essays on cultural and political innovations in Latin America. The work shows how the penetration of capital and media - known as globalization - into the political and everyday life of Latin America has had far-reaching cultural consequences. The attempt to integrate Latin American economies into the new world order has provoked a rethinking of questions of modernization, modernity, postmodernity, the meaning of pluralism, and contemporary leftist ideology in general. Within this context, the work explores the transformed terrain of Latin American culture, employing a multi-disciplinary approach that tries to transcend traditional constraints imposed by social science methodologies, historical interpretations, or aesthetic analyses. The contributors focus on the cultural politics of the various struggles in Latin America waged through intellectual and aesthetic practices, including the place of Latin America in the discussion of postmodern culture, a refocusing of the debates concerning dependency theory in its relation to cultural production, the relation of the state to cultural activities in Latin America, questions of race and gender, and a review of the effects of military and socialist governments on culture in recent years.