Lectures in Criticism: Claudio Lomnitz

   
Summary

Lectures in Criticism: Claudio Lomnitz

Description

Claudio Lomnitz is the Campbell Family Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University and a regular collaborator at La Jornada, a daily newspaper published in Mexico City. Abstract: In late-19th century Mexico, polemics around national history cast present generations as a jury that could pass impartial judgment on actors of the past. The implication of that era’s impassioned historical polemics was that future generations, too, would judge those of the present. This faith in future generations as sites of justice was important, in part, because there was no form of demanding justice under the dictatorship, and in part because the dictatorship was secure enough for a range of discretionary measures to be readily available. The dictator could thus step in and act as an arbiter of justice. This strategy was useful through most of the twentieth century. Today, it no longer works very well. Mexico is a democracy, but its system of justice is in shambles. That combination—democracy and the lack of a functioning apparatus of justice—diminishes the effectiveness and comfort of “the judgment of History,” while calls for justice become tired. Their lack of social effect leads justice-talk to devolve into posturing, demagogy and self-fashioning. The lecture offers a look at justice in Mexico’s prisons, with the hope that a direct inspection of social relations in the penitentiary may help ground contemporary social criticism

Starts

6:00pm on Thursday, October 8th 2015

End Time

7:30pm

URL

http://www.bu.edu/lecturesincriticism/

 
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