Bolívar Echeverría

Bolívar Echeverría (31 January 1941 – 5 June 2010) was a philosopher, economist and cultural critic, born in Ecuador and later nationalized Mexican. He was professor emeritus on the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

Bolívar Echeverría Andrade
Born31 January 1941
Riobamba, Ecuador
Died5 June 2010(2010-06-05) (aged 69) (heart failure)
Mexico City, Mexico
EraContemporary philosophy
RegionLatin America
SchoolMarxism · Frankfurt School
Main interests
Political economy, literary theory, cultural history, political philosophy, Marxism, history of art
Notable ideas
Historical ethos; capitalist circulation; four ethoses of modernity: baroque ethos, realist ethos, romantic ethos, classical ethos; crisis of civilization

Life and work

Echeverría studied in Germany (Free University of Berlin) and Mexico. He participated on the German student movement in the late 1960s, establishing friendship and long-lasting collaboration with its leaders, including Rudi Dutschke.[1] In 1970, he started permanent residence in Mexico, where he lived as a translator, also continuing his studies on philosophy and economics. Later on, he developed a seminar on Marx's Das Kapital, which lasted six years and included intensive systematic readings of the book. Since then he became an academic of the Faculties of Philosophy and Economics on the UNAM, where he founded several magazines on culture and politics, such as Cuadernos Políticos (Political Notebooks) (1974–1989); Palos de la Crítica (roughly translated as Sticks of the Critique) (1980–1981); Economía Política (Political Economy) (1976–1985) and Ensayos (Essays) (1980–1988). He was also part of the Editorial Board of magazines like Theoria (Theory) (since 1991); and Contrahistorias. La otra mirada de Clío (since 2003).[2]

His investigations where mainly (and broadly) concerned on: the ontological problems of existentialism, especially in Sartre and Heidegger; Marxian critique of political economy, focusing on the contradiction between Use value and Exchange value; and a contemporary development of critical theory and the Frankfurt School, including cultural and historical phenomena of Latin America. From this standpoint, Echeverría formulated a rigorous critique of postmodernity, with which he developed his theory of capitalist modernity and the baroque ethos, a form of cultural resistance in Latin America. He also wrote extensively on the fundamental contradictions of modernity as a civilizatory process and explored the possibilities of what he called an alternative modernity, in other words, a non-capitalist modernity.

Echeverría received several awards for his work, including: Premio Universidad Nacional a la Docencia (México, 1997), Premio Pio Jaramillo Alvarado (FLACSO-Quito, 2004) and Premio Libertador Simón Bolívar al Pensamiento Crítico (Caracas, 2006).

He died in Mexico City on June 5, 2010, of a heart attack, as a result of several blood pressure complications.[3]

Major works
  • El discurso crítico de Marx, México: Era, 1986.
  • Conversaciones sobre lo barroco, México: UNAM, 1993.
  • Circulación capitalista y reproducción de la riqueza social. Apunte crítico sobre los esquemas de K. Marx, México: UNAM / Quito: Nariz del diablo, 1994.
  • (comp.), Modernidad, mestizaje cultural y ethos barroco, México: UNAM / El Equilibrista, 1994.
  • Las ilusiones de la modernidad, México: UNAM / El equilibrista, 1995.
  • Valor de uso y utopía, México: Siglo XXI, 1998.
  • La modernidad de lo barroco, México: Era, 1998.
  • Definición de la cultura, México: Itaca, 2001.
  • (comp.), La mirada del ángel. Sobre el concepto de la historia de Walter Benjamin, México: Era, 2005.
  • Vuelta de siglo, México: Era, 2006.
  • Modernidad y blanquitud, México: Era, 2010.
  • Modernity and Whiteness, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2019.

Works on Bolívar Echeverría
  • Stefan Gandler, Critical Marxism in Mexico: Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez and Bolívar Echeverría, Leiden/Boston, Brill Academic Press, 2015. 467 pages. ISBN 978-90-04-22428-5.(Historical Materialism Book Series, ISSN 1570-1522; vol. 87.)
  • Stefan Gandler, Marxismo crítico en México: Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez y Bolívar Echeverría, México, FCE/UNAM/UAQ, 2007.
  • Stefan Gandler: Peripherer Marxismus. Kritische Theorie in Mexiko. Hamburg, Berlin: Argument-Verlag, 1999. 459 pages, ISBN 3-88619-270-9.

References
  1. ¿Quién es Bolívar Echeverría?
  2. 200 Mexicanos que nos Heredó el Mundo. Paralelo 21. Instituo Nacional de Migración/ Centro de estudios migratorios. 2010. p. 118. ISBN 978-607-7891-02-4. Las 200 personalidades incluidas aquí destacaron por sus notables contribuciones a México. Todas ellas nacieron en el exterior y se arraigaron en el país por diversos motivos y razones....
  3. Falleció Bolívar Echeverría, voz crítica de la modernidad capitalista
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