Critique of Latin American Reason

Critique of Latin American Reason is one of the most important philosophical texts to have come out of South America in recent decades. First published in 1996, it offers a sweeping critique of the foundational schools of thought in Latin American philosophy and critical theory.

Santiago Castro-Gómez is professor of political philosophy at the University of Santo Tomás and the University Javeriana in Bogotá. He was part of the influential intellectual collective modernity/coloniality, and he has been visiting professor at Duke University, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Frankfurt. His publications in English include Zero-Point Hubris: Science, Race, and Enlightenment (2021).

Andrew Ascherl has translated several works of Latin American critical theory and literary criticism.

Linda Martín Alcoff is professor of philosophy at Hunter College, City University of New York.

Eduardo Mendieta is professor of philosophy at Pennsylvania State University.

Rocío Zambrana, author of Colonial Debts: The Case of Puerto Rico:
This long overdue translation of Santiago Castro-Gómez's groundbreaking Crítica de la razón latinoamericana is timely. Despite being a record of debates very much of its time, twenty-five years past, the book provides invaluable insights and methodological approximations for our troubled times. A Foucauldian genealogy guides the book’s critical exposition of the construction of 'Latin America,' which Castro-Gómez considers a colonial motif of Othering during the twentieth century by Latin American intellectuals. This exoticization posits an epistemic exteriority that more than homogenizes the complexity of that object—'Latin America.' It recenters an elite through discursive practices that establish it as located 'outside of' and 'antagonistic' to modernity. Readers today might find the specific debates and their framing in need of update. Look again and find here important precursors to and critical keys for engaging the coloniality of power in knowledge production; contemporary pressures on the categories of 'Latin American,' 'Latinidad,' and 'Latinx'; the complexities of the racial order that defines the afterlife of colonialism in the region. Indeed, Crítica is the first installment in what Castro-Gómez considers a trilogy that, along with La hybris del punto cero (2005: Zero-Point Hubris: Science, Race, and Enlightenment in New Granada (1750–1816 (forthcoming) and Tejidos oníricos (2009), provides a Foucauldian genealogy 'to rethink the colonial inheritances of Latin America.' Containing a preface by Castro-Gómez written for this superb Andrew Scherl translation, a forward by Linda Martín Alcoff, an introduction by Eduardo Mendieta, the appendix to the second edition of the Spanish original (an interview with Castro-Gómez conducted by Alejandro Cortés), and a new appendix with provocations by Yuderkys Espinosa Miñoso, Nadia Yala Kisukidi, Don Deere, Barnor Hesse, Cintia Martínez Velasco, María del Rosario Acosta López, Jesús Luzardo, Jimmy Casas Klausen, Rafael Vizcaíno, and myself, this volume is essential reading for any engagement with Latin American thought.

Alejandro Vallega, author of Latin American Philosophy from Identity to Radical Exteriority:
Critique of Latin American Reason is by now required reading in Latin American thought. In this foundational work, Santiago Castro-Gómez rethinks Latin American philosophy through philosophical reflection combined with the empirical methods of the social sciences. While critically undoing the essentialist and colonizing myths that underlie the last hundred years of Latin American philosophy, the book exposes Latin American reality as a neuralgic dynamic space of power, a reality configured by the incessant raging of globalization with its project of infinite progress and domination of life. Ultimately, Castro-Gómez's critique makes a major contribution to liberatory thought in and beyond Latin America.

Bruno Bosteels, author of Marx and Freud in Latin America: Politics, Psychoanalysis, and Religion in Times of Terror:
Castro-Gómez is one of the very few thinkers from Latin America who has crossed over into philosophy in Europe and the U.S., though, until now, a lack of translation has negatively impacted the recognition of his importance. Critique of Latin American Reason is an ambitious archaeological reconstruction of the idea of a separate, unique, authentic form of thinking that would be characteristic of the region in opposition to the imperial and colonial forces. This is a book that is only more urgent today than when originally published.

María del Rosario Acosta López, Professor of Latin American Studies, University of California, Riverside:
Critique of Latin American Reason is one of the pivotal texts in Latin American studies and an obligatory reference for anyone who is interested in approaching critical thinking in the context of the global south. It has changed the conversation about how to do history of ideas in Latin America from a renewed and very timely approach to genealogy and what Castro-Gómez calls, with Foucault, an ontology of the present. If the field of philosophy can recognize that it is in need of a serious critique of its colonial methodologies, this book will be at the center of that undertaking.