Modernity and Difference: Identity Constructs of Latin American “Hombres de Letras” in the Nineteenth Century and Intellectuals in the Twentieth Century

This project will investigate the postcolonial identity constructs of Latin American “hombres de letras” (“men of letters”) and intellectuals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as well as their relationship with European modernism. On the one hand, the hombres de letras and intellectuals drew on European cultural models, on the other, they attempted to define the ways they were different in their postcolonial worlds. In part, the project will analyze the fracturing of the intellectual elites and their discourses along feminist, postcolonial, postmodern, ethnic and other lines. In 2010, the symposium “La historia intelectual como historia literaria (México y Argentina)” was realized at the El Colegio de México.