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156.More information
AbstractTo study the peoples of ages past in order to define the principles of the human spirit; to describe contemporary paganism in order to understand the paganism of ancient nations, then clarify the nature of the Christian religion: such was the project issued in 1724 by two men — Joseph Lafitau, author of Customs of the American Indians Compared with the Customs of Primitive Times, and Fontenelle in his treatise De l'origine des fables [On the Origin of the Fables]. The former, a Jesuit who had spent time in the New World, seeks to prove the universal persistence of God's revelation to the first humans, a revelation deformed but never lost amid the permutations of human beliefs. The latter, on the other hand, a sceptical rationalist anxious to re-examine established dogma, wishes to discredit religious belief by demonstrating that its foundation is linked intrinsically to myth. But these differing perspectives employ the same method: the meditation on Christianity is based on a comparison between the native Indians of North America and the people who founded western civilization, the ancient Greeks.
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157.More information
AbstractIn La volonté du savoir, Michel Foucault attributes a leading role to demography in the implanting of new techniques of power, what he called the biopolitics of the population. However, this view of demography as an answer to the need to modify the techniques of ‘power over life' at the same time as capitalism was gaining hold elicited little response from either demographers or sociologists, including those of a Marxist bent. Part of the explanation can probably be found in the ambivalent views of Foucault himself as regards Marxist theory in general and more particularly as regards the problem of reproduction. We invite the reader to reexamine Foucault on these questions and propose an interpretation in which the latter finally takes a stand in a decisive but hitherto neglected space in Marxist theory — that of reproduction.
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160.More information
Literary anthologies and histories systematically exclude autochthonous verbal art since the conquest, and thus betray a monolithic conception of Latin American culture, while their inclusion of minimal pre-Columbian selections often indicates an appropriation of the past for the constitution of cultural identity and differentiation with respect to Europe. This marginalization of the Other is increasingly criticized by Latin American intellectuals.