Jon Beasley-Murray

Subalternity and affect

from a preoccupation with the culturalisation of the concept of hegemony, a concept that is, in its way, something like ÒhegemonicÓ within cultural criticism and theory. Our preoccupation with the concept, or rather with its extension and culturalisation, soon manifested itself as a dissatisfaction, though perhaps (as some of the essays in this collection also indicate) it continues to be indispensable, if not always in the ways that one tends to assume. The prevalence of the concept of hegemony coincides with an increasingly unreflexive culturalism in mainstream cultural studies; indeed, it coincides with cultural studies becoming mainstream, as its assumptions and its terminology come to constitute Òwhat goes without sayingÓ in much of academia Ð and many places beyond. Thus, for instance, the assertion that the domain of culture extends far beyond what has traditionally been regarded as ÒlegitimateÓ or ÒhighÓ culture is now taken for granted almost everywhere. Likewise, no one now is taken aback by the assertion that power can be seen at work in this expanded realm of culture as much as (if not more than) in the traditional corridors where power was once said to reside. Indeed, it is precisely because the concept of hegemony seems to accord so easily with our ÒnaturalÓ concept of this new, media-driven and globalised world that we might begin to doubt that the concept has much scope left in it for the articulation of a critique (as opposed to a description of the rationality) of that world. Elsewhere, therefore, we have called for a re-examination of the workings of the state and the relation of culture to its institutional outside as a way to think beyond the concept of hegemony. Here, however, we take another tack. Perhaps the most important innovation provided by the South Asian Subaltern Studies group has been their reconceptualisation of the relation between hegemony and subalternity. Whereas for Gramsci (and for cultural studies in the Gramscian tradition Ð which is a great part of cultural studies today), the relation between hegemony and subalternity was positive, for the Subaltern Studies group, that relation is negative. Indeed, it is at best a relation of non-relation. What is perhaps at issue now is the status of that Òat best.Ó Here is where the question of affect, as explored by the essays in this collection, comes into play. But let us explain this in a little more detail. By suggesting that the relation between hegemony and subalternity has usually been understood as a positive relation, we mean that hegemony has been understood as a strategy of incorporation, co-optation, or inclusion whereby the subaltern has been persuaded to lend his or her support to a social order that (objectively) maintains him or her in a position of inferiority. Hegemony is a form of articulation (and this is

Media and multitude: Chronicle of a coup unforetold

Abstract Venezuelas short-lived coup may appear at first sight relatively insignificant: at the best of times, the country has a low profile (perhaps surprisingly, given the geopolitical importance of its oil) even among Latin Americanists; and a coup that ends after two days with what would seem to be merely the restoration of the previous regime, all without too much bloodshed, understandably raises few eyebrows. Moreover, it is true enough that the coup itself was, if such an event ever can be, rather run-of-the-mill. Hardly unexpected, practically formulaic, it involved the armed forces withdrawing their support from an embattled and visibly unpopular president who had alienated the middle classes and faced a uniformly hostile media; the situation, became critical, and the presidents position untenable, when a popular demonstration was dispersed with violence and several deaths. Exit the president, to the polite applause (and perhaps covert connivance) of the United States, Argentina (to name but one example) has seen several presidents depart in almost precisely this manner over the past couple of decades.

Introduction: Towards a New Latin Americanism

The essays that follow constitute a partial record of the conference ‘The New Latin Americanism: Cultural Studies beyond Borders’, organized by the University of Manchester’s Centre for Latin American Cultural Studies in June 2002. They have deliberately been left in a form quite similar to their original presentation, to give a sense of their exploratory, sometimes provisional, always provocative nature. The conference had a number of aims: to conduct a stocktaking or inventory of a swathe of contemporary Latin American Studies, as practised in the UK, the USA and Latin America; to outline and begin investigating some of the issues and faultlines that might define a twenty-first century Latin American Studies; and, particularly, to assess the potential contributions of and to Latin American Cultural Studies in what has often been described as the contemporary ‘crisis’ of Area Studies. The conference’s premise was that if such a crisis exists, it should be taken as an opportunity rather than an obstacle, enabling new connections and avenues of enquiry, releasing new flows wherever old ones are blocked. If there is any consensus on the current nature of Latin American Studies and its possible future, surely the notion of interdisciplinarity would prove a key common signifier. As such, our first step has been to attempt a dialogue between some of the disciplines and approaches characteristic of Latin Americanism at this moment of transition (and every moment is, at least potentially, the hinge for such a transition) between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ Latin Americanisms. Within the conference, these disciplines and approaches were History, Anthropology, Politics, Visual Studies, Literature, Marxism, Deconstruction, Gender Studies and Cultural Studies. (For various reasons, ‘Visual Studies’ and, perhaps symptomatically, ‘Politics’ are not represented below.) These, we wager, will provide the building blocks of a New Latin Americanism—a phrase by which one might designate something that is both all-encompassing and quite specific. On the one hand, the New Latin Americanism is a near-empty signifier; it is whatever you want it to be, and we gave our contributors the brief of addressing the topic ‘however you might wish to interpret that phrase’. It has been an important part of this project that we should, conceptually at least, take the future of Latin American Studies to be absolutely open. We are here suggesting that the disciplines and approaches of History, Anthropology, Literature, Marxism, Deconstruction, Gender Studies and Cultural Studies will in some way or another have a bearing on the New Latin Americanism, but clearly this list cannot be a definitive or closed selection (beyond the Visual Studies and Politics that featured at the conference, further possible headings might have covered