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BOOK PRESENTATION AND DISCUSSION:
Nación y Ritmo, descargas desde el Caribe[Ediciones Callejon, 2000]

Guest Speaker:
Dr. Juan Flores

 
THE BEST THAT CULTURAL STUDIES HAS TO OFFER
Another aspect of the book that I find particularly interesting in relation to my own work is the concept of popular culture that´s at work throughout the book, whether it´s music, literature that is being talked about. Juan activates this concept that is sometimes dismissed and dropped because it´s too complicated or too old-fashioned or something in favor of others but Juan holds on to it and applies it I think in a very sophisticated and intelligent way. He also complicates the concept and doesn´t accept it for the way it is usually thought. So that here´s where you have a great deal of theoretical reach where he draws on very strongly on the work of John Fiske´s theory (Understanding Popular Culture) as well as Raymond Williams, Michel de Certeau and Pierre Bourdieu and many of the other major thinkers on popular culture come into play in this book in a very applied and very specific, practical way.

And this concept of popular culture in Juan´s book has another advantage, aside from helping him to bring out that complicated and interesting relationship between literature and music, in that it stretches his own theoretical and political background, both the Marxist orientation of his, according to his own writing, his earlier stages -- politically -- his Marxist formation as well as his staunch anti-colonial and national position that he takes. In both cases, a close study of popular culture and an application of popular culture to the music and the literature of the Spanish Caribbean have the effect of questioning or placing into question some of the assumptions of his ideological background in a really interesting way. That´s something else which I think is really good about the book. So that Nación y Ritmo illustrates, I would say, probably the field that it fits into most closely would be called Cultural Studies, but it fits into Cultural Studies -- it exemplifies I think the best that Cultural Studies has to offer.


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