Geopolitics, Culture, and the Scientific Imaginary in Latin America

María del Pilar Blanco (Edited by), Joanna Page (Edited by)

9781683403876, University Press of Florida

Paperback / softback, published 28 March 2023

352 pages, 57 b/w illustrations
23.5 x 15.6 x 3 cm, 0.207 kg

This multidisciplinary, well-researched work is an excellent contribution to the fields of cultural studies and Latin American studies."—Choice

"Wonderful and imaginative. . . . An exciting new addition to the literature."—New Books Network

"The humanities, including language, literature, and history, have increasingly provided valuable insights on the relationships between science, society, and creative work. This book adds significantly to our appreciation of these connections in the Latin American context, including multiple countries and time periods."—Journal of Latin American Geography

"Excels above all in its capacity to inspire further work on the raised issues. . . . The book does not shy away from the challenge of digging deeper and redeeming forgotten or unknown figures and episodes in the history of Latin American science and culture, which is the reason why it is highly recommended for a broad readership"—Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society

Highlighting the relationship among science, politics, and culture in Latin American history

Challenging the common view that Latin America has lagged behind Europe and North America in the global history of science, this volume reveals that the region has long been a center for scientific innovation and imagination. It highlights the important relationship among science, politics, and culture in Latin American history.

Scholars from a variety of fields including literature, sociology, and geography bring to light many of the cultural exchanges that have produced and spread scientific knowledge from the early colonial period to the present day. Among many topics, these essays describe ideas on health and anatomy in a medical text from sixteenth-century Mexico, how fossil discoveries in Patagonia inspired new interpretations of the South American landscape, and how Argentinian physicist Rolando García influenced climate change research and the field of epistemology.

Through its interdisciplinary approach, Geopolitics, Culture, and the Scientific Imaginary in Latin America shows that such scientific advancements fueled a series of visionary utopian projects throughout the region, as countries grappling with the legacy of colonialism sought to modernize and to build national and regional identities.

• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• I. Latin America'
  s scientific landscapes
• Introduction
• Marí
  a del Pilar Blanco and Joanna Page
• 1. Bone Tales: Patagonian Monsters and the Paleontological Imagination Gabriela Nouzeilles
• 2. Nation as Laboratory: Rethinking Science Writing in Mexico'
  s Repú
  blica Restaurada (1868-1876) Marí
  a del Pilar Blanco
• 3. Natural Histories of the Anthropocene: Santiago del Estero, Argentina, in the 1930s Jens Andermann
• II. Latin America as the site of knowledge production Introduction
• 4. Empathy, Patients'
  Needs and Therapeutic Innovation in the Medical Literature of Early Viceregal Mexico Yarí
  Pé
  rez Marí
  n
• 5. Between Potosí
  and Nuevo Potosí
  : Mineral Riches and Observations of Nature in the Colonial Andes, ca. 1596-1797 Heidi V. Scott
• 6. Indigenous Medicine and Nation-Building: Hermilio Valdizá
  n'
  s Medical Project Edward Chauca
• III. Science and the modern nation
• Introduction
• 7. Postcolonial Social Sciences of Nineteenth-Century Spanish America: Land Surveys, Comparative Political Sociology, and the Malleability of Race Lina del Castillo
• 8. "Una nueva y gloriosa nació
  n": Patriotic Lyrics and Scientific Culture in the Forging of Political Emancipation in Rí
  o de la Plata Miguel de Asú
  a
• 9. Inventions and Discoveries in Letters to Peró
  n: Dialogue and Autonomy in the Popular Technical Imagination in Argentina in the 1940s and 1950s Herná
  n ComastriI
• V. Utopian convergences between science and the artsIntroduction
• 10. Modernismo, Spiritualism, and Science in Argentina at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: An Analysis of National Magazines Soledad Quereilhac
• 11. Doing Poetry with Science: Unthinking Knowledge in Sarduy, Perlongher, and Eielson Julio Prieto
• 12. The Science of Reading Fiction: New (Post-Darwinian) Metaphors to Live ByJoanna Page
• V. Science, epistemology, and the critique of modernity
• Introduction
• 13. Laboratories of Universality: A Genealogy of Solitary Latin American Inventors Carlos Fonseca Suá
  rez
• 14. The Politics of Relativity: Radical Epistemologies and the Revolutionary Potential of the Scientific Imaginary in José
  Carlos Mariá
  tegui Brais Outes-Leó
  n
• 15. Beyond Empiricism: Rolando Garcí
  a'
  s Theory of Complex Systems and the Epistemological Consequences of a Non-linear Universe Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra
• Bibliography
• Index