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by Elías J. Palti (Author)
Is there a Latin American thought? What distinguishes it from the thought of other regions, particularly from European thought? What are its main expressions in political, cultural, and social life? How has it evolved historically? As the Mexican philosopher Leopoldo Zea Aguilar stated: "hardly any other society has so zealously sought for the features of its own identity."
In Misplaced Ideas?, Elías J. Palti examines how Latin American identity has been conceived across different epochs and diverse conceptual contexts. Palti approaches these ideas from a historical-intellectual perspective, unraveling the theoretical foundations on which the very interrogation on Latin American identity has been forumulated and re-formulated. While he does not endorse or refute any particular perspective, Palti discloses the historical and contingent nature of their foundations. Ultimately, Misplaced Ideas? highlights the problematic dynamics of the circulation of ideas in peripheral regions of Western culture, which raises, in turn, broader theoretical questions regarding the ways of approaching complex historical-intellectual processes.Author Biography
Elías J. Palti is Professor of History at the Universidad Nacional de Quilmes and the Universidad de Buenos Aires, and Principal Researcher at the CONICET, Argentina. He is the author of fourteen books, including An Archaeology of the Political Regimes of Power from the Seventeenth Century to the Present (Columbia University Press, 2017). He is also a member of the editorial board of the Journal of the History of Ideas. Palti received the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2009 and the Pensamiento de América "Leopoldo Zea" Prize in 2021, conferred by the Pan American Institute of Geography and History at the Organization of American States (OAS). He served as the Director of the Center for Intellectual History at the Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, Argentina from 2016 to 2022.
