Analysis Of The Book When Mirko Lauer Sent Us A Review

In their opening note to the special section, the editors poin out that: â€Å"When Mirko Lauer sent us a review essay on Garcia Canclini s book, the importance of the issues raised convinced us that it would be useful to hold a wider debate on this crucial book. We invited further contributions and then asked Garcia Canclini to respond to them† (Lauer, 1992: 124). Lauer’s essay is titled â€Å"Modernity, A Foreign Body†. Lauer highlights the intellectual trajectory that leds Garcà ­a-Canclini to Culturas hà ­bridas†¦ This book â€Å"attempts to establish relationships between modernity, the theory of modernity and the Latin America of the last decade† and also pursues â€Å"to articulate the various aspects and stages of its author’s production in these last 14 years† (p. 125-126). The academic credentials of Garcia Canclini s anthropology are fine and Culturas hà ­bridas†¦ can and should be read as a brilliant uni- versity text of anthropology in the 1990s (p. 131). However, Lauer critics what he calls indeterminism in Garcà ­a-Canclini, his open language, some lack in specificity when he refers to authors or intellectual paths in a general way (â€Å"who are these theorists and historians†¦? †, p. 131) and a â€Å"somehow idealized vision of creativity in Latin America† (p. 132). To Franco, â€Å"Garcia Canclini is a pioneer in the field of culture criticism† (p. 135). One of the fundamental questions of Culturas hà ­bridas†¦ is â€Å"Can one be radical without being fundamentalist?†, which means that this dilemma is not