Latin American philosophy and the case of Mariategui: Philosophy as Caliban or a defense of philosophical cannibalism

This dissertation is a critical re-assessment of Latin American philosophical tradition and its quest for an authentic philosophical identity. This re-evaluation is brought about through s distinct reading of the writings of the Peruvian Marxist, Jose Carlos Mariategui (1896-1930). The analysis which is exercised in this inquiry proposes that its philosophical production should not be considered as an obscure or secondary form of European philosophy, or in the most unfortunate case, as a radical denial of the latter\u27s philosophical heritage. In attention to the central question concerning this dissertation it is claimed that a hermeneutic strategy of devising a re-interpretation of a single theorist could yield preferable and more illuminating results than just an extensive survey of the numerous philosophers who belong to the Latin American philosophical tradition. The case study which has been performed is that of the Peruvian Marxist Jose Carlos Mariategui (1895-1930). This dissertation argues that regardless of the broad range of studies on the writings of this Peruvian revolutionary thinker, there is still much to say about his idiosyncratic interpretation of the Peruvian society of his times and about his eminently anti-dogmatic conception of Marxism. In his own discursive practice he unveiled a critical response to the inherent and rigid determinism of the Marxist dogmatic orthodoxy widely accepted in Latin America and the rest of the world during his lifetime. His self-education and theoretical practice is described as a virtual ingestion of the 1920s Marxism and many other non-Marxist philosophical and theoretical notions which were critically transformed into an innovative and effectual thought replete with revolutionary relevance. The purpose in stressing this point in Mariategui\u27s critical adaptation of Marxism is to accentuate the undeniable Eurocentric core of Marxism with which the Peruvian thinker had to contend. The reading of Mariategui which has been suggested, characterizes his theoretical practice as an immanent critique of Eurocentric Marxism. The relevance that Mariategui\u27s writings bear for the problem of Latin American philosophy can be posited as a critique by practice of the traditional discourses of legitimation imposed on non-Eurocentric forms of thought