LASA (Latin American Studies Association) has just released a new edition of Spanish and Portuguese Emeritus Professor Arcadio Díaz-Quiñones’ book, Sobre los principios: los intelectuales caribeños y la tradición. Originally published by the Universidad de Quilmes in Argentina, the book is now available on open access in the prestigious LASA collection, revised and with a comprehensive onomastic and subject matter index, as well as a preface by Rafael Rojas.

The “principles”, in this case, echo and amplify the meaning of Edward Said’s “beginnings” and Hannah Arendt’s concept of “natality”. On the one hand, the title refers to the very political nature of the genealogies that are postulated around the “beginnings” of ideas and social practices. Where do traditions begin and how are they consolidated? What do they erase and what do they reveal? On the other hand, the title raises a question about the moral principles that weigh on figures and works that are often considered monumental. What do these monuments show and what do they hide?

Two of the essays in the book were published in Portuguese just under a decade ago. One of them presents the surprising Kardecist vision that is at work in the “beginnings" of Fernando Ortiz’s notion of “transculturation.” At the crossroads between religion and scientific thought, we are introduced to the limits of a view of the political space in which bodies are merely the sustainers of an intelligence that is supposedly abstract but, in fact, is very clearly positioned on the social hierarchy. With slavery as a major backdrop to the formation of the Caribbean and its many cultures, the question remains about the “improvement” and “advancement” of souls: who advances and who lingers on the insidious scale of “civilization” projected by colonial thinking in a discretionary way onto people and their practices? How do origin, the color of one’s skin and one’s symbolic place operate on the grand panel of postcolonial societies?

The other essay, on “Hispanism and war”, is almost a book in itself. In it, we learn how an imperial language separates itself imaginarily from forms of expression considered inferior, and how grammars and anthologies are a tool of power in territories dominated by European powers in the Americas. Taking the war of 1898 as a stage (when Spain lost its territorial “conquests” in the Caribbean and the Pacific to the United States), we can see how “Hispanist” thinking deepened as a reaction to Spain’s defeat, creating an imaginary world dominated by the great symbols of a glory that, deep down, hid the arrogance of its principles and erased the violence at the root of the colonial gesture.

In 2025, Arcadio Díaz-Quiñones’ work will be the subject of various discussions inside and outside the United States. In Brazil, the BVPS (Biblioteca Virtual do Pensamento Social) will include Professor Díaz-Quiñones in its “Authors” series, featuring critical commentaries on his work. At Princeton, as part of Professor Pedro Meira Monteiro’s seminar POR/LAS 554 (Topics in Brazilian Literature I: Machado Black and Blur), Díaz-Quiñones’ work will be discussed with the group “Fugitivities and Confluences” (of which Spanish and Portuguese Lecturers Amina Shabani and Luana Reis are part), in an attempt to understand whether the “art of escape” can illuminate Machado de Assis’ elusive and complex narrative strategies within his fiction and journalistic texts.

Finally, LASA itself has established “el arte de bregar” as one of the thematic axes of the congress to be held in San Francisco in May 2025, alluding to Díaz-Quiñones’ essay on the importance of the term “bregar” to the various cultural forms of resistance and symbolic affirmation developed in Puerto Rico and its diasporas. At the LASA congress, Spanish and Portuguese Visiting Professor Lilia Moritz Schwarcz and Prof. Meira Monteiro will be on a panel with Professor Díaz-Quiñones to discuss his work through its circulation in Brazil and beyond.

In 2025, further news on the circulation and discussion of Sobre los principios will appear on the Department of Spanish and Portuguese website.