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Meridional. Chilean Journal of Latin American Studies is pleased to invite you to participate in the dossier “Relevance of Latin American Marxism: Thinking from, with, and beyond Michael Löwy’s work”, which consists in our 21st volume, to be published in October 2023. 

Sylvia Wynter and the problem of “humanism”

Authors

  • Luis Adrián Mora Rodríguez Universidad de Costa Rica

Abstract

Sylvia Wynter is one of the most important thinkers in the Caribbean. Although her work has been developed in English, she has always broken down the barriers imposed by the imperial presence. A specialist in Spanish Golden Age literature, Wynter has not ceased to reflect on the historical and intellectual aspects that mark the emergence of the Caribbean in modern consciousness, as well as on the emergence of a certain definition of the human. Wynter belongs to what we might call the first generation of an independent and self-determined Caribbean. Her intellectual journey is intimately linked to her personal and social trajectory. In this article we will address Wynter’s systematic criticism of the different historical and intellectual versions of “humanism”. My objective is to show how this critique postulates a systematic and binary functioning of the contemporary social order, inherited from Western imperial history. How this criticism is sustained and what are its possible limits is what I am interested in developing in the following lines.