Assimilating the Primitive ― Parallel Dialogues on Racial Miscegenation in Revolutionary Mexico

Colgate (Spanish, Colgate U.) examines the development of the discourse of Mexican nationalism, placing it in the context of philosophical debate within scientific anthropology, religious thought, and aesthetics. The Mexican ideal of race mixing, she argues, was a project that sought to reject Eurocentric ideals of pure rationalism and racial hierarchies. In the field of anthropology, figures such as Manuel Gamio and Gilberto Freyer put their science at the service of the state by including Mexico's indigenous groups into the "discourse of futurity" in which indigenous groups would add to the development of the mixed-race civilizations, while philosophers such as Jose Vasconcelos performed similar duties by proposing vitalist theories of aesthetics that celebrated the incorporation and subsumation of indigenous culture into a progressive project of cultural renewal. Annotation c2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)