Abstract

IBARRA, Antonio. The critique as anticipation: historical knowledge production and the decline of academic Marxism in Latin America. El trimestre econ [online]. 2020, vol.87, n.347, pp.859-876.  Epub Feb 06, 2021. ISSN 2448-718X.  https://doi.org/10.20430/ete.v87i347.1087.

In July of 1974, during the First Meeting of Latin American Historians held in Mexico City, which originated the Asociación de Historiadores Latinoamericanos y del Caribe (Adhilac), Carlos Sempat Assadourian presented a text -unpublished until how- which he titled “The problem of theoretical practice in Marxist historical production” as a critical approach to academic Marxism in the economic history field. This text allows us to turn towards the construction of contemporary critical knowledge based in current intellectual history. We are interested in analyzing such defying discourse, wish warns about its context, in order to understand the intellectual moment that produced a “listening void”, a lack of reply and a complacent audience among the Marxist historians of the time.

Although the discussion wasn’t unknown to Mexican Marxists, who had debated the problem of the modes of production, the context of ideas showed a different relation with the empirical research, which suggests an assent of interest and experiences. We will take the text as a fragment of a necessary intellectual history of the discursive production of history, specifically economic history, to resort to its temporality and highlight its anticipatory value and the validity of its critique.

Keywords : Economic history; Latin American Marxism; Carlos Sempat Assadourian; Marxist historiography.

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