On the Limits of Historical Imagination
| Author | Mauricio Tenorio Trillo |
| Date | 01 September 2006 |
| Published date | 01 September 2006 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070200606100304 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Mauricio Tenorio Trillo
On the limits of
historical imagination
North America as a historical essay
| International Journal | Summer 2006 | 567 |
Over the last decades of the 20th century, the writing of history underwent
serious political and epistemological criticism, especially in US academic
circles. Yet it remained attached, by its origins, its academic structure, and
its goals, to the nation and the state, as well as to unchallenged racial, eth-
nic, and civilizational identities. Over the same decades, however, a renewed
idea of Europe—despite its flows and uncertainties—saw an interesting
experiment in the conscious rewriting of histories and cultures, re-examin-
ing the 19th-century focus on the nation as the central plot of history.1
Mauricio Tenorio Trillo is professor of history at the University of Chicago, and at CIDE,
Mexico City. He acknowledges the input of his conversations with Nuria Font, Ana Sofia
Cardenal, Fernando Escalante, James Sidbury, Neil Kamil, William Forbath, Alan Tully,
and Olivia Muñoz-Rojas.
1 Regarding this reconstruction of European history, see, for example, Mikael af Malmborg and
Bo Strath, eds.,
The Meaning of Europe: Variety and Contention within and among Nations
(Oxford: Berg, 2002); Josep Fontana,
The Distorted Past: A Reinterpretation of Europe
(Oxford:
Blackwell Publishers, 1995); Steinar Stjerno,
Solidarity in Europe: The History of an Idea
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Craig Parsons,
A Certain Idea of Europe
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003); Anthony Pagden, ed.,
The Idea of Europe: From
Antiquity to the European Union
(Washington: WoodrowWilson Center Press, 2002); Zygmunt
Bauman,
Europe: An Unfinished Adventure
(Cambridge: Polity,2004); and Edgar Morin,
Penser
l’Europe
(Paris: Gallimard, 1987).
| Mauricio Tenorio Trillo |
| 568 | International Journal | Summer 2006 |
Almost four decades of documenting a common historical and cultural con-
sciousness for Europe might, in the long run, turn out to be a political and
social failure. The constitutional challenge, rapid expansion, and the Turkey
factor might in the end make the story of “Europe” an obsolete tale. Yet the
mere effort, and, so far, its consequences in terms of peace, political stabil-
ity, and economic progress make the effort to create an idea of Europe a
more appealing intellectual temptation than keeping untouched the craft of
the national historian.
Why has the idea of a European-like process of integration not been
even remotely considered for and in North America? Can North America
become a symbol of a different kind of relationship between Mexico,
Canada, and the US, a relationship in which cultural particularities exist but
which responsibly assumes a common past and a common future? What
is certain is that maintaining “civilizational” differences—though in the
short run intellectually comfortable and academically profitable—is partic-
ularly risky and undoable in the long term. The consequences of main-
taining and nurturing assumed civilizational differences will affect the
peace, stability, and good standards of living in the region. This is not only
because of Mexico’s growing inequality and uncertain economic and politi-
cal future, but also because of the world’s violent challenges and the vicious
cycles in the US that blend inexorably—if irresponsibly—economic growth,
immigration, all sorts of nativisms, notions of national security, and dan-
gerous racio-cultural conceptions of the “American identity.”
NORTH AMERICA: BASIC THESIS ON THE FAILURE OF A SYMBOL
North America does not have a symbolic, cultural, political, or legal exis-
tence. Yet it is the gigantic economic and human fact within which Mexico,
Canada, Central America, and the US live without ever discussing it. It
resembles a gigantic statue of a medusa-like lady whose name has been lost
by history but whose gaze we avoid, knowing that upon looking at those
eyes we would see our own.
North America has been a timid geographical mark that has paled in
comparison to the clearly unconcealed map—not cartographical but moral
and racial—known as “Latin America.” North America has been a geogra-
phy that is conventionally used in reference to the indigenous people of
Canada, the US, and northern Mexico. North America is real when it is
about native Americans, a pre-national reality. The cultural-racial dichoto-
my (“Anglo” vs. “Latin”), however, is conceptually mightier than the map of
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