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This book explores the intersection between philosophical and literary universalism in Latin America, tracing its configuration within the twentieth-century Peruvian socialist indigenista tradition, following from the work of José Carlos Mariátegui and elaborated in the literary works of César Vallejo and José MaríaArguedas. Departing from conventional accounts that interpret indigenismo as part of a regionalist literature seeking to describe and vindicate the rural Indian in particular, I argue that Peruvian indigenista literature formed part of a historical sequence through which urban mestizo intellectuals sought to imagine a future for Peruvian society as a whole. Going beyond the destiny of acculturation imagined by liberal writers, such as Manuel González Prada, in the late nineteenth century, I show how the socialist indigenista tradition imagined a bilateral process of appropriation and mediation between the rural Indian and mestizo, integrating pre-Hispanic, as well as Western cultural and economic forms, so as to give shape to a process of alternative modernity apposite to the Andean world. In doing so, indigenista authors interrogated the foundations of European Marxism in light of the distinctiveness of Peruvian society and its history, expressing ever more nuanced figurations of the emancipatory process and the forms of its revolutionary agency.
In his daring and groundbreaking study, Daniel Sacilotto navigates the political theory of José Carlos Mariátegui, the poetic vision of César Vallejo, and the narrative anthropology of José María Arguedas to argue that their seminal engagements with the unemancipated indigenous peoples of the Andes is not a closed 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, Sacilotto’s 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 California–Riverside
“Explores imaginaries of emancipation against horizons of Indigenism, international socialism, and national integration in the works of three key twentieth-century Peruvian thinkers: essayist José Carlos Mariátegui, poet César Vallejo, and novelist José María 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.
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.
List of Figures; Introduction: The Question of Indigenismo and the Socialist Imaginary; José Carlos Mariátegui’s Critique of Liberalism: From Acculturation to Revolution; From Existential Despair to Collective Jubilation: César Vallejo’s Materialist Poetics; The Light within the World: José María Arguedas and the Limits of Transculturation; The Contemporary Scene: The Future of Indigenismo and the Collapse of the Integrative Dream after Arguedas; Bibliography/Cited Works; Index