ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores that in Latin American studies, there have been in the past twenty-five years a number of influential turns, many of which would seem to be part of a similar paradigmatic shift as that which confronted Theory, transnationalism, or the cultural and linguistic turns. It offers key signposts and questions to invite a conversation about the "memory turn": the specific trajectories memory studies have taken in Latin America, the challenges this area of inquiry presents, its possible futures, and its pedagogical potential. The book focuses on four types of readings of ethical philosophy in Latin American and Latin Americanist thought: theological, literary, political, and deconstructive. It elaborates on factors affecting knowledge production and models of representation in Western cultures in the last decades of the twentieth century, thus precipitating the restructuring of the humanities and the social sciences.
