All articles by this author
On Claudio Lomnitz
Both the neoliberal turn and the nationalist backlash, Lomnitz argues, are parts of a single process that has given rise to a new kind of state — one characterized by “an excess of sovereignty and a deficit of administrative capacity.” It’s hard to imagine a stronger sovereign for Mexico than AMLO, but his administration failed to make the state more accountable or trustworthy.
March 4, 2024
A taxonomy
In the mid-’60s, a new kind of place emerged in centers of foreign tourism: practical interiors decorated with Roman, Mediterranean, or high-tech futurist themes; a dance floor surrounded by tables on platforms of different heights, directed toward the center; ultrasophisticated lighting and sound; plenty of mirrors, which along with the trick of enlarging small spaces reflected the stars of the show: the customers themselves.
February 20, 2017
Andrés Neuman has written a guide to the literature of an entire continent in the guise of a travelogue.
“Our generation,” recounts Hans, the protagonist of Traveler of the Century, “was a borderline, we were the last to study before Metternich’s repression began, but we were also the first to lose faith in the Revolution.” Though Neuman himself is too young for this description to be a tidy analogy for him and his peers, it nicely sums up the position of his predecessors in Bolaño’s generation. Where the writers of the Boom had the example of the Cuban Revolution to give them hope, no comparably utopian project was available by the time their followers came of age.
