PROGRAM IN CRITICAL THEORY

Circulating Anarchisms and Marxisms in the Andes

The theme of this collaborative project between Víctor Vich (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú) and Jorge Coronado (Northwestern), has been the emergence of critical theory in the Andes region in the period 1890-1950, focusing on the creative transformations and adaptations of European Marxist and anarchist thought in this geopolitical context. The project will result in the publication of Antología de textos primarios: Anarquismos y marxismos en los Andes with Editorial Plural in La Paz. Edited by Jorge Coronado. The collaboration also included a graduate student exchange through the award of a Mellon predoctoral fellowship to support the participation of a graduate fellow based in Peru, to assist with the research for the course development during a visiting residency at Northwestern. The predoctoral fellowship was awarded to Sheyla Liliana Huyhua Muñoz.

Faculty

Victor Vich is Professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP) in Lima, where he specializes in cultural theory and contemporary and literary culture in Peru. He is the author of numerous books, most recently Poéticas del duelo. Ensayos sobre arte, memoria y violencia política en el Perú (2015). He is the co-director of PUCP’s Maestría en Estudios Culturales (Master’s Degree in Cultural Studies), a leading program for training in cultural and critical theory.

Jorge Coronado is Professor of Spanish & Portuguese and Comparative Literature at Northwestern. He is also Co-Director of the Andean Cultures and Histories Working Group at the Buffett Institute for Global Studies. A specialist in modern Latin American and Andean literatures and cultures, he is the author of The Andes Imagined: Indigenismo, Society, and Modernity (2009), as well as Portraits in the Andes: Photography and Agency, 1900-1950 (2018).

Visiting Predoctoral Fellow

Sheyla Liliana Huyhua Muñoz is working on her M.A. in Cultural Studies at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. She is interested in analyzing how Peruvian society constructs the sense of politics. Her research focuses on how modernity reduces complex categories such as memory, reconciliation, forgiveness, justice and democracy to a simple metaphysical exercise. Her theoretical framework is related to deconstruction. She approaches Peruvian political conflicts not from the official discourse, but from what can not be verbalized or quantified by it. Her master's project involves cultural studies and philosophy, aiming to explain why is it difficult to understand political conflicts beyond the limits of rational discourse and its ethical consequences. Sheyla visited Northwestern in the Fall of 2018. Contact Sheyla at here.

Project Syllabi

• SPPO 480: Anarchisms and Marxisms in the Andes
• SPPO 420: Indigenismos and Indigeneities in Latin America
• SSPO 343: Latin American Avant-Gardes

Background Reading: Political Violence in Peru

News and Events

• Forthcoming in 2021
  Editorial Plural in La Paz will publish Antología de textos primarios: Anarquismos y marxismos en los Andes. Edited by Jorge Coronado.
• January 2019
  Professor Victor Vich arrived at Northwestern on Monday, January 14th for nine days of collaborative meetings with Professor Jorge Coronado, Sheyla Liliana Huyhua Muñoz, and associated faculty members, graduate students, and undergraduate students. Professor Vich's visit to Northwestern will include delivering two guests lectures in Professor Coronado's graduate seminar, "Anarchisms and Marxisms in the Andes," as well as a public lecture on January 17th entitled “Performances medioambientales en el Perú contemporáneo.”

• October 2018
  Visiting Predoctoral Fellow Sheyla Huyhua Muñoz has arrived at Northwestern and is working with Professor Coronado on the project syllabus. Welcome, Sheyla!

• August 2018
  Professors Coronado and Vich's collaborative course is in development and will be offered through the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Northwestern in the winter quarter of 2019. The course will investigate the shape that anarchist and Marxist thought took upon its contact with Andean societies through to its later development among various actors and at diverse sites, from 1890-1950. Course readings will be drawn from the work of a wide range of intellectual-activists, including José Carlos Mariátegui, César Vallejo, Raúl Haya de la Torre, and Manuel Seoane in Peru; Jorge Icaza, Enrique Gil Gilbert, Demetrio Aguilera Malta, Manuel Gustín Aguirre, and Joaquín Gallegos Lara in Ecuador; and Tristán Marof, Arturo Urquidi Morales, Gamaliel Churata, and José Antonio Arze in Bolivia, as well as texts by urban and indigenous activists such as Carlos Condorena, Ezequiel Urviola, Domitilia Pareja, and Luis Cusicanqui.
  
  
• November 10–13, 2017 | Northwestern
  Professor Vich visited Northwestern for "Transformations of Critical Theory," the inaugural workshop of the Critical Theory in the Global South Project. On November 13, he led a Spanish-language teach-in at Northwestern on the theme "Circulating Anarchisms and Marxisms in the Andes: A discussion of Marx and Mariátegui."
  
  
  Professor Vich convenes his teach-in at Northwestern on Marx and Mariátegui
  
  
• June 2017
  Professors Coronado and Vich are currently designing their collaborative syllabi and deliberating over which pieces will be translated from Spanish into English.
  
  
• May 27, 2017 | Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
  Professor Coronado presented his paper "Tecnologías de la letra: grafoesfera, cultura popular y agencia indígena" at the 35th International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association.