Planetary Longings

by Mary Louise Pratt

Overview

In Planetary Longings eminent cultural theorist Mary Louise Pratt posits that the last decade of the twentieth century and the first decades of the twenty-first mark a turning point in the human and planetary condition. Examining the forces of modernity, neoliberalism, coloniality, and indigeneity in their pre- and postmillennial forms, Pratt reflects on the crisis of futurity that accompanies the millennial turn in relation to environmental disaster and to the new forms of thinking it has catalyzed. She turns to 1990s Latin American vernacular culture, literary fiction, and social movements, which simultaneously registered neoliberalism’s devastating effects and pursued alternate ways of knowing and living. Tracing the workings of colonialism alongside the history of anticolonial struggles and Indigenous mobilizations in the Americas, Pratt analyzes indigeneity both as a key index of coloniality, neoliberal extraction, and ecological destruction, and as a source for alternative modes of thought and being. Ultimately, Pratt demonstrates that the changes on either side of the millennium have catalyzed new forms of world-making and knowledge-making in the face of an unknowable and catastrophic future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781478015666
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	04/15/2022
Series:	Dissident Acts
Pages:	350
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.81(d)

About the Author

Mary Louise Pratt is Silver Professor, Emerita, of Spanish and Portuguese and Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University and Olive H. Palmer Professor in the Humanities, Emerita, at Stanford University. She is coeditor of Trumpism, Mexican America, and the Struggle for Latinx Citizenship and author of Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments  vii
Introduction. Sitting in the Light of the Great Solar TV  1
Part I. Future Tensions
1.Modernity's False Promises  33
2. Why the Virgin of Zapopan Went to Los Angeles  56
3. Mobility and the Politics of Belonging  75
4. Fire, Water, and Wandering Women  90
5. Planetarized Indigeneity  107
6. Anthropocene as Concept and Chronotope  117
7. Mutations of the Contact Zone: Human to More-Than-Human  125
8. Is This Gitmo or Club Med?  137
9. Authoritarianism 2020: Lessons from Chile  144
Part II. Coloniality, Indigeneity, and the Traffic in Meaning
10. The Ethnographer's Arrival  165
11. Rigoberta Menchú and the Geopolitics of Truth 189
12. The Politics of Reenactment  207
13. Translation, Contagion, Infiltration  220
14. Thinking across the Colonial Divide  234
15. The Futurology of Independence  251
16. Remembering Anticolonialism  265
Coda: Airways, the Politics of Breath  276
Notes  281
References  299
Index  323
Publication History  339

What People are Saying About This

Feral Atlas: The More-Than-Human Anthropocene - Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing

“These brilliant essays bring cultural theory to life. Mary Louise Pratt thinks across the Americas, drawing us into a repertoire that every American should grasp. To decolonize the postcolonial legacy, she shows us how to think generously and rigorously as well as politically.”

Feral Atlas: the More-than-Human Anthropocene - Anna Tsing

“These brilliant essays bring cultural theory to life. Mary Louise Pratt thinks from across the Americas, drawing us into a repertoire that every American should grasp. To decolonize the postcolonial legacy, she shows us how to think generously and rigorously as well as politically.”

Arjun Appadurai

“This scintillating collection of essays by Mary Louise Pratt is a beautifully voiced journey through the major debates in postcolonial and decolonial studies in Latin America as well as the canon wars in the North American academy. These frame the emergent category of indigeneity as a dynamic catalyst of art, social criticism, and world-making on the many margins of Euro-American modernity.”

Editorial Reviews

"Planetary Longings is Mary Louise Pratt in her prime. A profound historical thinker, global intellectual, and reader rooted in Latin American studies, Pratt invites us in this book to witness the tumultuous and changing history of Latin America—and with it, crucially, the discipline of Latin American cultural studies—over the past forty years. . . . In this book, the complex intersections between literary criticism, cultural studies, postcolonialism, and sociolinguistics are brought within our reach in readable and vigorous prose, in which a sharp sense of humor is combined with a vibrant and optimistic invitation to read, think, and listen to the forces that move the world."

A Contracorriente - Felipe Martínez-Pinzón

"Pratt effectively demonstrates a way of reimagining scholarship in relation to Latin America while also providing an interesting reading experience. This collection will be particularly useful to teachers of global studies and to postcolonial scholars looking to expand their knowledge of anti-colonial and decolonial thought."

symploke - Jessi Rae Morton

Planetary Longings reminds me again that what was so electrifying was the conceptual dexterity of Pratt’s work—its ability to develop concepts and frameworks that roved across disciplines and compelled scholars of different stripes to consider them in relation to their own work. Pratt’s most recent book exemplifies this in sixteen short, digestible entries.

H-Environment, H-Net Reviews - Dante LaRiccia

"Planetary Longings offers, among other things, a firsthand intellectual history of the past three decades, examining the consequences for thinkers and activists of a newly totalizing capitalism bent on despoiling the earth."

Critical Inquiry - Kirsten Silva Gruesz

"Mary Louise Pratt is a profound and important thinker and a superb essayist. . . ."

Spectrum Culture - Ryne Clos

"Planetary Longings is Mary Louise Pratt in her prime. A profound historical thinker, global intellectual, and reader rooted in Latin American studies, Pratt invites us in this book to witness the tumultuous and changing history of Latin America--and with it, crucially, the discipline of Latin American cultural studies--over the past forty years. . . . In this book, the complex intersections between literary criticism, cultural studies, postcolonialism, and sociolinguistics are brought within our reach in readable and vigorous prose, in which a sharp sense of humor is combined with a vibrant and optimistic invitation to read, think, and listen to the forces that move the world."--Felipe Martínez-Pinzón "A Contracorriente" (2/1/2023 12:00:00 AM)

"Mary Louise Pratt is a profound and important thinker and a superb essayist. . . ."--Ryne Clos "Spectrum Culture" (10/10/2022 12:00:00 AM)

"Planetary Longings offers, among other things, a firsthand intellectual history of the past three decades, examining the consequences for thinkers and activists of a newly totalizing capitalism bent on despoiling the earth."--Kirsten Silva Gruesz "Critical Inquiry" (8/12/2022 12:00:00 AM)

From the Publisher