Cuban Counterpoints: The Legacy of Fernando Ortiz [Paperback]

This volume is a compelling encounter with the many personas of Fernando Ortizanthropologist, lawyer, politician, humanist, and, perhaps most important, Cuban visionary. Ortiz's multidisciplinary contributions are approached with respect, affection, critical consciousness, and a welcome playfulness rarely seen in academic anthologies. Whether you are already familiar with the huge corpus left by Ortiz or discovering him for the first time, let this volume be your guide to the exuberance of Ortiz's legacy, which is not only a gift to Cuba but to our globalized world, struggling with ever more pathos to figure out why culture still matters.This interesting collection of essays . . . highlights how relevant Ortiz's writings are to understanding contemporary as well as historical trends in the Americas.While Fernando Ortiz's contribution to our understanding of Cuba and Latin America more generally has been widely recognized since the 1940s, recently there has been renewed interest in this scholar and activist who made lasting contributions to a staggering array of fields. For the first time in English, this volume of essays demonstrates his impact on a staggering array of fields. Much of his most challenging and provocative thinkingwhich embraced simultaneity, conflict, inherent contradiction, and hybridityhas remarkable relevance for current debates about Latin America's complex and evolving societies.While Fernando Ortiz's contribution to our understanding of Cuba and Latin America more generally has been widely recognized since the 1940s, recently there has been renewed interest in this scholar and activist who made lasting contributions to a staggering array of fields. This book is the first work in English to reassess Ortiz's vast intellectual universe. Essays in this volume analyze and celebrate his contribution to scholarship in Cuban history, the social sciencesnotably anthropologyand law, religion and national identity, literature, and music. Presenting Ol3œ