The works of memory

Review of: Elizabeth Jelin, The Works of Memory (Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2021, 3rd ed.)

Abstract

The recent publication of a new edition of Elizabeth Jelin's book, The Works of Memory, is a publishing event that cannot go unnoticed. It is a book that can be considered a classic of Latin American social thought of recent decades, and, at the same time, precisely for this reason, it is also a work open to the possibility of new readings, questions, and interpretations. Undoubtedly, thanks to the initiative of the Fondo de Cultura Económica, it is good news to have, two decades after its appearance, a polished edition that we can consider definitive. Therefore, it is worth highlighting, from the outset, that the book continues to offer a model for the exercise of rigorous critical imagination—the kind taught in an exemplary way by Wright Mills, and which so inspired Jelin herself—as a way to produce knowledge in line with the need for renewed debates and questions.