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The Mestizo Mind: The Intellectual Dynamics of Colonization and Globalization
Mestizo: a person of mixed blood; specifically, a person of mixed European and American Indian ancestry.
Serge Gruzinski, the renowned historian of Latin America, offers a brilliant, original critique of colonization and globalization in The Mestizo Mind. Looking at the fifteenth-century colonization of Latin America, Gruzinski documents the mélange that resulted: colonized mating with colonizers; Indians joining the Catholic Church and colonial government; and Amerindian visualizations of Jesus and Perseus. These physical and cultural encounters created a new culture, a new individual, and a phenomenon we now call globalization. Revealing globalization's early origins, Gruzinski then fast forwards to the contemporary mélange seen in the films of Peter Greenaway and Wong Kar-Wai to argue that over 500 years of intermingling has produced the mestizo mind, a state of mixed thinking that we all possess.
A masterful alchemy of history, anthropology, philosophy and visual analysis, The Mestizo Mind definitively conceptualizes the clash of civilizations in the style of Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak and Anne McClintock.
Serge Gruzinski, the renowned historian of Latin America, offers a brilliant, original critique of colonization and globalization in The Mestizo Mind. Looking at the fifteenth-century colonization of Latin America, Gruzinski documents the mélange that resulted: colonized mating with colonizers; Indians joining the Catholic Church and colonial government; and Amerindian visualizations of Jesus and Perseus. These physical and cultural encounters created a new culture, a new individual, and a phenomenon we now call globalization. Revealing globalization's early origins, Gruzinski then fast forwards to the contemporary mélange seen in the films of Peter Greenaway and Wong Kar-Wai to argue that over 500 years of intermingling has produced the mestizo mind, a state of mixed thinking that we all possess.
A masterful alchemy of history, anthropology, philosophy and visual analysis, The Mestizo Mind definitively conceptualizes the clash of civilizations in the style of Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak and Anne McClintock.
- GenresHistory
289 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 10, 2000
6 people are currently reading
119 people want to read
About the author
Serge Gruzinski
35 books19 followersborn in Tourcoing in 1949, studied at the Ecole des Chartres from 1969 to 1973 and received his diploma there as an archivist and paleographer. During the following eleven years, within the framework of various research projects, Gruzinski traveled to a number of Mediterranean countries as well as North and South America. The precolonial history of Mexico was to become one of his major focuses. In 1985 he published his first book, Les Hommes-dieux du Mexique, now also available in Italian, Spanish, and English translations. In 1991 and 1993 the two volumes of his treatise La Découverte du Nouveau Monde appeared and in 1991 the book L’Amérique de la découverte peinte par les Indiens du Mexique described the aesthetic encounter between pre-Columbian art and the European Renaissance. Serge Gruzinski is a research director at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and the assistant director of the Center of Research on Mexico, Central America and the Andes
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 19, 2025
"Mestiço" e "mestiçagem" são palavras complicadas hoje em dia. Talvez quando este livro foi escrito, na década de 1990 esses termos não fossem tão pejorativos como são hoje em dia. Contudo, ele vem de um pesquisador europeu e não de uma pessoa propriamente mestiça, como Gloria Anzaldua, e sua consciência de la mestiza. Isso deixa a questão ainda mais complexa, como é toda a questão da mestiçagem ou, como vem sendo chamada de forma menos ofensiva, a da interseccionalidade. Gruzinski diferencia aqui mestiçagem e hibridação, mas se foca muito mais na primeira, e nos movimentos feitos entre europeus e indígenas latino-americanos. Mais para o final do livro ele usa de exemplos artísticos contemporâneos como os filmes de Hong Kong flertando com a cultura de Hollywood. Este livro foi retirado na biblioteca da Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina em função de um artigo acadêmico que aborda interseccionalidades.
October 18, 2022
Going with five stars. Excellently resourced. Not always a smooth read and sometimes the análisis is a bit over the top in My opinión.
Author shares his familiarity with art work engendered in México in the 1500's when the two cultures were blending. (Some use the term clashing). Anyone interested in mesoamericana themes, Náhuatl art and language will gain something from this book.
He speaks to the Náhuatl Codex, the "Cantares Mexicanos", Bernardo de Sahagún's "Psalmodia Christiana' , Teoyotica which translates to "in a sacred way", or "in a Divine sense" and how that phrase is used to superimpose cosmo conceptions. Who is John the Baptist? The Psalmodia replies he is "the one who, 'in a Divine sense', is the star Venus, the Star Venus being heavily associated with Amerindians pre conquest world view. Also mention of linguistic coupling; forming equivalentes such as the Spaniard's idea of "soul" with the Amerindian's world view concepto of heart. Or the Spanish 'rose' to the new continent's marigold. Way to complicated for a simpleton such as this review writer to justify in few words.
A look at mingling cultures, and how art, language and religión fared. The sort of book which inspires reading the notes at the back of the book as a follow up endeavor for the referencia and pointers in different directions.
Serge Gruzinski wrote in French. Translated by Deke Dusinberre.
Author shares his familiarity with art work engendered in México in the 1500's when the two cultures were blending. (Some use the term clashing). Anyone interested in mesoamericana themes, Náhuatl art and language will gain something from this book.
He speaks to the Náhuatl Codex, the "Cantares Mexicanos", Bernardo de Sahagún's "Psalmodia Christiana' , Teoyotica which translates to "in a sacred way", or "in a Divine sense" and how that phrase is used to superimpose cosmo conceptions. Who is John the Baptist? The Psalmodia replies he is "the one who, 'in a Divine sense', is the star Venus, the Star Venus being heavily associated with Amerindians pre conquest world view. Also mention of linguistic coupling; forming equivalentes such as the Spaniard's idea of "soul" with the Amerindian's world view concepto of heart. Or the Spanish 'rose' to the new continent's marigold. Way to complicated for a simpleton such as this review writer to justify in few words.
A look at mingling cultures, and how art, language and religión fared. The sort of book which inspires reading the notes at the back of the book as a follow up endeavor for the referencia and pointers in different directions.
Serge Gruzinski wrote in French. Translated by Deke Dusinberre.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews