The following book notice/advertisment was sent to the IGS Newsletter by the publisher: Ediciones La Sierra, Apartado 23007, Estación UPR. Rio Piedras; Puerto Rico 00931.
The Puerto Rican publishing group Ediciones La Sierra announces the book, Gamsci en la De Diego; tres ensayos sobre cultura nacional, posmodernidad e idelogía, by Héctor Meléndez (i.e., Gramsci on De Diego Street--a name borne by various streets in the metropolitan zone of San Juan). The book, which is written in Sapnish, comprises three essays on national culture, postmodernity and ideology, and will be useful for courses on politics, culture, sociology, history and Puerto Rican Studies. It discusses present problems and debates in combination with theoretical reflections. The price is $8.95. A contribution to the social, political and cultural debates of present-day Puerto Rico, the book may spark healthy controversy on themes such as Puerto Rican nationhood, ecology, Afro-Caribbean identity, unity of the Caribbean countries and prospects of social change.
The book takes its name from the Italian marxist Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), who enriched socialist theory with questions like popular culture, how the State and nations are formed, the organization of identities and culture, the relations between classes and ideology, cosmopolitan cultures, the relation between the public and the private, and the role of the intellectuals. Gramsci en la De Diego applies Gramsci's ideas to the present context of Puerto Rico, a modernized, urbanized and subordinate Caribbean country, which maintains a special relation with both the US and Latin America.
One of the essays of the book, titled "Por qué Puerto Rico es latinoamericano" (Why Puerto Rico is Latin American) puts forward the argument that more than a geographic region, Latin America is a social region that has been historically subordinated. At the same time, however, it is a modern region, and this combination is what defines it. Latin America speaks many languages and tongues and it is also present in North America, the essay maintains. Puerto Rico is a Latin American country for its subordinate condition and no juridical decree on its status in itself will change that, Meléndez argues. The Latin American-subordinate character of Puerto Rico is manifested in the latter's specific popular cultures, seen for example in the effects on the present of slave and peasant cultures of the past, and in local forms of speech.
Another essay, on a possible "national-popular bloc" of alliances, analyzes different fragments with which modern Puerto Rican culture and identity have been built-up. Meléndez stresses the hegemony of American and Hispanicist discourses upon specifically Caribbean features of the people. While discussing the notion of popular culture as a wide [END PAGE 49] zone where numerous identities coexist, often escaping from the dominant norms, the essay uses and criticises concepts such as class, ethnicity, gender, nation and development. Cultural plurality among the people could be a new potency to assist an alternative political and economic strategy. The present model of industralization and urbanization by means of foreign capital being worn out, a new political leadership--from the popular classes--is needed, putting forward for instance the ecological question and the possibilities of a Caribbean confederation.
The third essay approaches the end-of-the-century sensitivity manifested in certain intellectual strata, often called postmodern. Meléndez critically discusses the concept of postmodernity pointing at European culture and its present crisis. "Postmodernity", he argues, is a pretext that allows one to appreciate the technological, social and cultural changes of late 20th century. Intellectuals and culture reorganize themselves according to new relations of power and to US hegemony upon global culture. But a new project of the left, the essay says, should transcend the politically conservative effects of the "postmodern party". This is the first essay about postmodernism published in a book in Puerto Rico.
Meléndez teaches politics and sociology at the University of Puerto Rico and the Interamerican University. He was born in Río Piedras in 1953, and has been a long-time journalist in Puerto Rico and later on a university teacher in the Island and in New York. He has studied in Puerto Rico and Europe and recently finished a Doctorate in Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham, England. Other books by Meléndez include El fracaso del proyecto PSP de la pequeña burguesía (Edil, San Juan, 1984); Impacto súbito y otros relatos( La Sierra, 1985); and Regreso de la esperanza y otras historias (La Sierra, 1988). IGS