A Latin American School of Intellectual History? Reflections and Challenges for the Future

The panel aims, on the one hand, at questioning how in Latin America, since the second half of the 20th century, there has been a historiographical dialogue on a transnational scale with analytical traditions already established in the field of Intellectual History, with interpellations, displacements and accommodations. On the other hand, to ensure a space for historiographical analysis and debate on the vigorous production of Intellectual History in Latin America in its different forms, with the aim of highlighting its links with the current levels of historical knowledge - within which a Latin American signature has been built - and its prospects for the future. In this regard, some questions become fundamental. What theoretical references were mobilized to understand the texts produced in the Latin American intellectual movement? What exchanges were made between theory and empiricism in the construction of the reflections developed in the context of intellectual history in Latin America? What historical challenges were posed in the reception and appropriation of key concepts in the area? In the circulation of historiographical productions at the global level, what challenges were faced and what methodologies were mobilized with regard to the heterogeneous times of production and reception of classical texts? Other questions concern the conceptual apparatuses generated, or even (re)elaborated, and historicized in the Latin American practice of intellectual history. How were political languages, vocabularies, and discourses explored in frequent themes of the Latin American historiographical landscape? What approaches were constructed to historically specify the relationships between works, different contexts, and the multiplicity of historical dynamics on the continent? In reference to the transnational dimension in studies on intellectual thought, what is the figure of context in the case of these studies? As is widely recognized, decades ago there was a shift in the analytical focus of Intellectual History, centered on the texts of classical thinkers/theorists, towards those of lesser-known formulators, in addition to those attributed to intellectual mediators. Documentary corpuses such as the writings of publicists, journalists, popularizers, preachers, artists, through media other than books - such as political and cultural manifestos, newspapers and magazines, pamphlets, almanacs, pamphlets, correspondences - entered the scene and with them attention turned to the role of intertextuality and transnational cultural exchanges and circulations. What are their implications for Latin American intellectual history in particular? Has it assumed specific characteristics that bring it closer to the history of publishing and the circulation of printed and manuscript works? Without the concern of describing prescriptive and structural elements of the configuration of intellectual history in the Latin American space, the panel will seek to reflect on the historical, theoretical and methodological challenges faced by its practitioners; the existence of canonical texts in this Latin American historiographical domain; the specific marks of this production; as well as the existence of groups and networks that formalize and institutionalize contacts and approaches between its practitioners, inside and outside the continent, understanding its process of structuring into groups, periodicals, institutions, in order to understand its modes of development and its constant challenges in being and not being a Latin American school.