Malinchism as a social pathology

Social pathologies as the imposition of a type of practical rationality

Within the tradition that has conceptualised social pathologies, these social processes have been explained as undermining our condition of free, equal and autonomous beings that corresponds to a specific exercise of practical reason available to individuals through shared social practices. Therefore, it is their being pathological that limits or undermines the exercise of practical rationality (Honneth 2009, 23). ³ To elaborate on this notion, I must make my assumed conception of practical rationality explicit. I endorse Habermas’s and Forst’s conception of practical rationality (Forst 2002, 2012; Habermas 1993), which consists of every speaker’s capacity to offer reasons that sustain the validity claims arising in practical contexts, which are also contexts of justification. This refers to a rationally grounded principle of justification, which Forst presents as a version of Habermas’s discourse principle, and is expressed in different practical contexts. Therefore, the different validity claims must be justified in terms of reciprocity and generality within the particular community of justification determined by the practical context (Forst 2002, 196). The concept of a community of communication and that of good reasons are thus differentiated according to validity claims that will arise in communities of justification. There are different types of practical rationality, depending on its object and on how people act in the social space delimited by it. Consequently, when the object of the action is (a) the choice of the best means to achieve a set of ends, we are faced with pragmatic rationality; when such an object is (b) the life plan that we decide to embrace to achieve what we consider a good life, it is ethical rationality; when the object is (c) the principles that regulate our action from the perspective of the interests of all those who might be affected, it is moral rationality; when the object is (d) the form of organisation of social institutions that regulate how we assign the benefits and burdens of social cooperation to one another, we are faced with political rationality; and when the object is constituted by (e) the norms that establish the reciprocal respect objectified in protections and limits to our ends, it is legal rationality (Forst 2002, 262–69; Habermas 1993, 2–10).

Social pathologies have been primarily explained as a kind of imposition of the means-ends or pragmatic rationality on other social spaces articulated by a different logic. This is especially clear in Weber’s thesis of the ‘iron cage’, which is the result of the means-ends rationality becoming value independent, and as societies become more complex, the freedoms gained through modernisation turn into disciplinary constraints transmitted from the bureaucratisation and juridification of society (Weber 2005, 122–24). Something similar is present in Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, who explained the imposition of the means-ends rationality on social spaces alien to it as a process of reification of social and individual life through the rule of instrumental reason. Lukács interprets this process as the imposition of calculation and mechanisation on all social spaces, which progressively leads to the obliteration or elimination of qualitative properties in favour of quantifiable aspects, causing, at the same time, a growing insensitivity and blindness to difference (Lukács 1971, 88–89). Finally, Habermas calls this process colonisation of the lifeworld by the system, which consists in the imposition of the type of rationality characteristic of the processes of system integration on the lifeworld, that is, on the social spaces regulated by the communicative rationality, typical of social integration processes. The colonisation of the lifeworld means, therefore, that the spheres of life that depend functionally on value orientations, binding norms and processes of understanding are reduced to the unifying logic of the systems of action driven by money and power (Habermas 1987, 323–29).

I defend that the aforementioned distinctive feature of social pathologies, implying the imposition of the means-ends rationality on social spaces alien to it, can be radicalised and generalised to all the types of practical rationality. Therefore, it is possible to recognise a pathological imposition of moral rationality on ethics, which could imply that intimate relationships are treated with the impartiality and universalism of morality, or the effects of the invasion of ethical rationality on politics, which could mean that a certain conception of good or the rules that regulate friendship and intimate relations are imposed on political contexts as a common good, or on moral contexts, thus reducing the idea of equal dignity to a specific conception of one’s own good life. I call these cases of pathologies moralism and ethicism, respectively, and they seriously endanger the interpersonal relationships of the agents who suffer from them, since the context in which they perform can be misrepresented. Therefore, they may interact according to a type of rationality that is not appropriate for the context in question, and thus, the outcomes of their actions might be deficient regarding what is expected from this type of relationship. Although there are also cases of ethicism or legalism where the type of practical rationality imposed is ethical or legal, my current intention is not to provide an exhaustive account or typology of social pathologies but to provide a couple of relevant examples of moralism and politicism to illustrate these two specific cases. ⁴

The criterion that allows us to distinguish whether a type of rationality is appropriate or not depends on the internal logic of the practical context at stake, which, in turn, as mentioned above, are contexts of justification as Forst (2012) calls them. When agents act in those contexts, they are supposed to be in control of the shared rules and beliefs, as in a ‘language game’ (Wittgenstein 2009). Through the socialisation process, individuals progressively acquire the rules that allow them to behave in these contexts in such a way that they can identify the practical contexts in which they perform and the normative expectations inherent to them. This occurs mainly at a pre-reflective intersubjective level in which rules about how to behave in shared practices are acquired. This gives rise to the ontological constitution of the social world and can be understood as ‘a mechanism of taking something for granted’, that is, ‘the social world has the habitual mode of being of a second nature’ (Testa 2015, 298). As already said, this process implies being in control of the normativity present in every language game, which, following Wittgenstein’s argument against private language (2009, § 243 ff), is of the same order as the normativity needed to ensure the understanding between two people, that is, sharing certain rules used to evaluate whether someone has made a mistake. This allows us to interact with others by enabling the expectations about the behaviour of our interaction partners, which in turn enables the evaluation of behaviours as anomalous or pathological compared to what is expected.

Social spaces are not determined by a single type of practical rationality: one type prevails depending on the object of the action. For example, as economy is a complex field, different practical rationalities govern the orientation of the action, and one of them will determine how to solve the problem, depending on its nature. Means-ends rationality prevails when efficiency problems arise, while moral rationality may appear when discussing the ends of an economy. In the family, we can identify ethical rationality regulating parent–child relationships, as well as moral rationality, when parents teach children to respect other people, insofar as these other people are ends in themselves. Therefore, social practices are not determined by one but by several types of rationality that are available to the agents who share the practices regulated by them. ⁵

Social pathologies, conceived as the imposition of a type of practical rationality on a social space alien to it, imply that the prevailing type of practical rationality in a space is altered in such a way that it distorts, diminishes or even cancels its potential exercise. This imposition tends to create interpersonal conflicts because the behaviour of those affected is perceived by their interaction partners as dissonant in relation to what is expected in such contexts and cannot be justified. Regarding moralism, the behaviour suitable for the moral practical context is imposed on other contexts governed by their own internal logics. This leads to, for example, intimate relationships being governed treated according to the parameters of morality. To provide a more detailed account of this, I will focus again on family relationships, in particular in Michael Haneke’s film, ‘The White Ribbon’, which shows how a father, Pastor Martin, treats his teenage children, Clara and Martin, according to the logic of the moral practical context, which results not only in the distortion of the parent–child relationships but in a misconception of morality itself. Pastor Martin relates to his children through a certain set of rules, accepting no exception to them. Thus, the misbehaviour of the adolescents is severely punished without considering any mitigation or exceptions. Such punishment shows the rigour of a rule to which no exceptions can be made, and also the obligation to wear a ‘white ribbon’ indicating the innocence and purity of childhood, so that the assumed ‘virtue and decency’ adolescents should have is no longer attributed to them by his father, thus ‘degrading’ them to the condition of children. Pastor Martin’s behaviour does not only affect the expected relations between father and children but implies a deformation of morality. Therefore, this social pathology includes two aspects: the imposition of an alien rationality and the deformation of the logic of the rationality affected. This does not entail diminishing the normative force that the application of a rule without exceptions has in the moral context; instead, I would like to emphasise the need to apply the rules in the appropriate contexts. When considering the value of human life, it is expected that the rule be applied rigorously and without exceptions, but when it is not the moral context but the ethical one, then the internal logic of this context makes the differential treatment necessary.

The effects of this social dynamics can be seen not only in moralism but also in the aforementioned case of ethicism, which implies that ethical rationality is imposed on the practical context of politics. Therefore, the space of the common good, where the continuity of the tradition of a political community is manifested, can be reduced to the logic of the ethical context and thus be governed by a preferential treatment to our inner circle. This can be called political ethicism, which has a strong presence in contemporary societies, and which leads to a type of corruption, nepotism being the most remarkable one. Besides, if ethical rationality is imposed on the practical context of morality, the consequence of reducing one context to the other is the restriction of universalism, which leads to the denial of the condition of equal dignity to some people or groups that do not coincide with the bonds that emerge from a shared life project. This is moral ethicism, and some cases of xenophobia, racism or ethnic discrimination could be explained in this way. It is important to point out that this type of social pathology depends on the historical background of the individuals affected, who do not treat others in terms of equal dignity based on the discriminating prejudices that their historical self-understanding provides, such as cultural particularities, religious beliefs or identification with a national feeling, like anti-Semitism or xenophobia. In the case of racism, the social pathology that emerges from moral ethicism has different bases from the ones associated with the background discriminating beliefs that are a consequence of historical slavery, which implies reducing others to mere means and is caused by the imposition of the means-ends rationality. Finally, cases of homophobia, sexism or aporophobia can be also explained by moral ethicism.

These examples intend to be only indicative of how the imposition of a type of practical rationality is manifested beyond the traditional way of presenting social pathologies articulated on the imposition of the means-ends rationality, and how it can be radicalised to the imposition of all the possible types of practical rationality. Next, I present the case of malinchism as a specific manifestation of ethicism.

Malinchism as a comprehensive metaconception

Malinchism is an ethicism, that is, a social pathology by which what is imposed on different practical contexts is a particular way of understanding what a good life looks like, how it should flourish and how it should be led. To develop this point, I will use the Rawlsian concept of ‘comprehensive conception’, that is, a conception of

what is of value in human life, and ideals of personal character, as well as ideals of friendship and of familial and associational friendship, and much else that is to inform our conduct, and in the limit to our whole life as a whole. (Rawls 1993, 13)

The life plans pursued by citizens have at least three ways of articulating what is considered to be valuable to them: comprehensive conceptions, ideas of what good is and lifestyles. Among them, in turn, there are relationships of determination from the most general to the most concrete. The most general of these are the comprehensive conceptions, and as I said before, they refer to what is valuable for human life and gives meaning to it through a set of values articulated systematically. Comprehensive conceptions can be classified into fully and partially comprehensive, depending on the range of values and virtues they systematically cover.

In a democratic society, there are several comprehensive conceptions that can coexist under the rule of justice and against a background of pluralism and tolerance; in turn, these comprehensive conceptions determine the citizens’ ideas of the good. Comprehensive conceptions are thus the source of the idea of the good that citizens have, that is, a scheme of objectives and projects that are valuable in themselves, which is why we want to realise them (Rawls 1993, 19). In addition, this set of objectives and projects have a relational dimension that integrates, within this idea of our good, interpersonal bonds that are related to our flourishing as people and are part of what is considered valuable. These ideas of the good, insofar as they are revisable and adjustable, integrate elements of the comprehensive conceptions that can be rejected, modified or relegated to a secondary or lower place throughout the life of citizens. The ideas of the good generate lifestyles, that is, behaviours and practices that are specific ways of pursuing and realising their set of purposes and life projects. Thus, there seem to be three constitutive stages as regards people’s behaviour concerning the pursuit of a life plan: (a) a comprehensive conception embraced by the individual, by virtue of which (b) a conception of one’s own good is constituted, which generates (c) a consistent lifestyle. These three stages have the strong presence of revisability, which leads to either the confirmation of the assumed beliefs and values or their reflective adjustment, or even their abandonment.

This is clearly an analytical distinction that allows us to attribute a background of interests to individuals, from which they will guide their actions. Like any analytical distinction, it provides us with tools to explain complex situations with a strong intertwining of the concepts at stake; such complexity can be perceived once our attention focuses on real contemporary democratic societies. This concept intertwining can be particularly perceived through the hybridisation that occurs between the different ideas of the good, as a consequence of the permeability and transfer of values and beliefs among them. In turn, these hybrid ideas of the good create lifestyles that undergo other processes of hybridisation as a result of contact, conflict and the exchange that occurs in the daily lives of individuals. However, these hybridisation processes ultimately do not substantially affect the distinctions made but are explained as from such distinctions. It is precisely in this capacity to explain this type of circumstances where the strength of those distinctions lies, along with their survival in the contemporary debate.

This dynamic, which accounts for the processes of hybridisation of ideas of the good and lifestyles, can be presented against the background of a formal or post traditional ethical life, as presented by Honneth in his early thinking. This post traditional ethical life ‘(…) is now meant to include the entirety of intersubjective conditions that can be shown to serve as necessary preconditions for individual self-realization’ (1995, 173). Such conditions account for the relationality that underlies the aforementioned hybridisation processes. These conditions must assure and maintain a degree of self-confidence, self-respect and self-esteem to be able to support ‘(…) a process of realizing, without coercion, one’s self-chosen life-goals’ (p. 209). Honneth’s ‘lack of coercion’ refers to ‘psychological inhibitions and fears’ that block or undermine the general conditions of the integrity of subjects. Malinchism falls within this category of ‘psychological inhibitions and fears’, so it becomes a threat to the integrity of subjects.

Based on these considerations, I argue that the relationship between comprehensive conceptions, ideas of the good and lifestyles, in the case of malinchism, has the background of a partially comprehensive metaconception, which operates behind the agents’ backs, by guiding their decisions and self-perception and making them meaningful, thus colouring their conceptions of what is good and the lifestyles that arise from them. Hence, malinchism endangers the formal ethical life, insofar as it can undermine the self-reliance individuals have in pursuing their life plans. This comprehensive metaconception is the product of the values that colonisation imposed and that shaped the self-understanding of Latin American societies, creating a way of seeing ourselves from a perspective that has always prioritised the model of the European colonising centre. Initially, it may have been possible to talk about a fully comprehensive metaconception. However, over time, the reappropriation of our own history, culture and traditions makes it more accurate to speak of a partially comprehensive metaconception that affects the self-understanding of a portion of the population of Latin American societies. Such comprehensive metaconception is manifested with varying intensities in different geographical areas, depending on how the local historical configuration expresses the self-understanding characteristic of malinchism. Besides, malinchism is not attributable as a permanent state but attributable as a characteristic that arises in certain specific circumstances. Therefore, like any other social pathology, malinchism does not completely distort the life of the people affected, but how they perform in some practical contexts in certain periods of time. This is why, when speaking about malinchism, it is more appropriate to refer to attitudes than to states.

The social process that resulted in malinchism and its projection beyond Latin America is understandable because most colonies around the world have tended to reproduce the culture of the colonial centres, so they have progressively created a self-image articulated by emulation. Latin America, unlike other regions with a colonial past such as the United States, is a particular case because the image of the colonising centre as something valuable and therefore worthy of emulation has persisted over time, thus hindering the creation of an authentic and autonomous self-understanding. The perpetuation of this relationship has been modified over time by going through adjustments and transformations, one of the most important ones being the change of the referential centres, which has been associated with shifts in the centres of economic and political power. As a result, the cultural centres of reference have expanded from the colonising ones to include many European countries, the most remarkable ones being the influence of England and France and later the United States as well. Although these transformations also take place along with processes of increasing appropriation of the Latin American culture and tradition, they continue reinforcing the assumed undervalued self-image of Latin Americans. As I said above, these appropriation processes allow us to speak of a partially comprehensive metaconception instead of a fully comprehensive one, which colours the attitudes of Latin Americans with the desire to emulate the reference centres, which in turn affects and distorts the internal dynamics of different shared practices (Leyva 2017). For example, in political and economic debates, to justify a position it is usually stated that it is ‘what the countries in the world do’, ‘what is done in civilised countries’ or ‘what is done in respectable countries’, where the model to follow comes from. Such frequently used phrases, which intend to support an argument, clearly show the historical and foundational contrast of Latin American identity between civilisation and barbarism, as well as the contrasts between formality and informality, and between the leading centre of the world and the ashaming margins (Martínez Estrada 1991 [1933]). This way of expressing ideas and arguments occurs regardless of the correction or the adequacy of the measures or policies to the local reality and regardless of their systematic failure where they have been implemented. For the malinchist spirit, the only important thing is that in certain central countries such ways of understanding politics and the economy are presented as the best, and if we want to be like them, to be successful and prosperous, we should do the same. Malinchist attitudes tend to ignore or overlook the corruption, xenophobia, aporophobia, racism and warmongering of the centres that are taken as a reference, unconditionally assuming them as a model to be imitated. Something similar happens with the investments that come from these countries to Latin America: they are all seen as carriers of progress and development, regardless of whether the result is environmental degradation and rapacity of natural resources as in the terrible case of the widely spread opencast mining. The history of plundering Latin American wealth includes many factors: imperialism, corruption, opportunism, domination and oppression, but it could not be fully grasped without a strong element of malinchism.

In a similar vein, Fanon has presented his postcolonial account of colonised people’s identity, which is explained as the outcome of the internalisation of an image that makes them the opposite of the colonisers’ perspective. Herein lies the coloniser’s superiority and the traumatic inferiority of the colonised people (Fanon 1952 [2008]). According to Fanon, a way of dealing with this traumatising situation is adopting the colonisers’ values, beliefs and language, although covering up the ‘uncivilized’ condition is not enough to be accepted as an equal (p. 114). The shared behaviour expectations perpetuate the distinction between men and black men, imprisoning the mind of those colonised despite the mask they try to wear.

This image of the identity constitution process of colonised people has taken place in the Latin American colony as well and is clearly reflected in contemporary race oppression, in particular in the cases of Latin American indigenous and black people, mestizos and mulattoes. However, the internalised colonial gaze that causes malinchism is not that explained by Fanon, because it is a trace of the colonised perspective that equally affects all classes and social groups, the dominant and the dominated. This feature is expressed by Octavio Paz when he says that malinchism is not characteristic of a subordinated class, race or group (1985, 69). This distinctive feature of malinchism explains the subordination of creole elites to central countries, which is needed to enable and feed imperialism in its different manifestations, especially political and economic ones. In connection with this, malinchism also explains why in Latin America it has been so difficult to identify a ‘national bourgeoisie’ capable of leading autonomous economic development as those in Europe or the United States.

Based on these considerations, in Latin American societies, it is possible to identify at least two types of current oppression that started in the colony and have survived and been reinforced by different historical circumstances. The first one is the racial oppression of indigenous people, black people, mulattoes and mestizos, all racist attitudes that can be traced back to the initial discrimination of the population once enslaved or wildly exploited. The second type of oppression is articulated by malinchism and affects all society groups equally, as they have internalised an undervalued self-perception in comparison with the centres to be emulated. Both types of oppression intersect in many circumstances, but they are conceptually different.

Malinchism must also be distinguished from Young’s ‘cultural imperialism’. This kind of oppression ‘(…) involves the universalization of a dominant group’s experience and culture, and its establishment as the norm’ (p. 58). This causes the perspective of dominant groups to be projected as the authentic human experience, hence other groups’ experiences are categorised as expressions of difference or deviance (p. 59).

Malinchism is not a specific case of cultural imperialism because, as mentioned above, it is not associated with current oppressive groups, but is more a trace of that oppression that affected all groups and classes. The oppressive group can be traced back in history, and what remains is a kind of shadow influence that operates behind the malinchist’s backs. The outcomes of malinchism and cultural imperialism tend to be similar because both create an undervalued self-image. However, malinchism lacks oppressive groups that impose their valuations patterns. As oppression has been historically internalised, it can be said that malinchism has an intermittent and lighter effect than cultural imperialism, as well as a general influence on all groups, classes and races in Latin American societies.

As I said before, malinchism does not distort the whole life of the people affected or the entire society, but its influence on social institutions remains unclear. We can say that it does affect institutions, but not by transforming or deforming the relationality inherent to the shared norms that make up normative expectations and allow for the reproduction of society, but through the interpretation and the application of binding norms. Typical malinchist attitudes are present in the interpretation of norms and ideals universally binding such as equality. This is seen in how some groups such as the indigenous peoples have been historically neglected, marginalised or excluded because an idea of equality blind to differences prevailed. This interpretation is similar to what has occurred in societies where malinchism is not present, so the crucial aspect is the implicit shame that our institutions feel about these groups. This is why the interpretation of equality I mention has historically worked by concealing the characteristics of ‘uncivilized’, ‘lazy’ or ‘physically disgusting’. This interpretation permeates the application of justice, in particular when practitioners neglect some groups that they consider shameful, and instead of doing justice, they produce the opposite outcome. Another example of this burden of malinchism: when competing for public funds, foreign companies tend to be chosen over local ones. Of course, the law protects the equal right of companies to obtain public funds, but it cannot regulate the evaluation process and the beliefs at stake in it. ‘Common sense’ dictates that a German or French company will always be better than a Latin American one.

The way Latin Americans live corruption, inequality or injustice is also part of the landscape of our social institutions, and the malinchist spirit tends to attribute these scourges to our condition; it seems we are doomed by our ‘nature’ and, try as we might, inequality or corruption will remain. According to the malinchist view, no matter how rich our countries are, we will never overcome inequality and corruption ‘as Europeans have done’, and this is the very obstacle to realising social justice.

Malinchism has a clear ideological side, insofar as is formed by justification processes that set our interpretation of the social world in a distorted, one-sided and deceptive way. Based on this interpretation, we understand ourselves, the relationships we establish with others and our limits and possibilities. Examining this ideological aspect of malinchism in depth is beyond the scope of this article, but in the next section, I will refer to it when I describe malinchism as a pathology of recognition.

Distorted recognition

So far, I have conceptualised malinchism as a social pathology that qualifies as what I call ethicism, insofar as it establishes a comprehensive metaconception that creates attitudes towards ourselves and others that colour our practical life. Additionally, due to the complexity of this social phenomenon, it is insufficient to explain it from only one theoretical approach. Therefore, besides being conceptualised as an ethicism, malinchism can also be presented as a pathology of recognition since it is a consequence of distorted recognition relationships.

By pathologies of recognition, I refer to Honneth’s primary conceptualisation of social pathologies. To explain this, it is useful to recall Honneth’s criticism of Habermas’s rigid presentation of society divided into two forms of integration: systemic and social. Honneth’s conceptualisation of social pathologies aims to overcome this rigidity, by arguing that in different social spaces, it is possible to find both strategic behaviour and communicative understanding. This can be seen in the economy and politics, where not only strategy prevails, as well as in the civil society, where it is possible to find strategic instrumentalisation (Honneth 1991, 293–300). This criticism of Habermas’s theory of society clearly affects the thesis of the colonisation of the lifeworld because, as it is based on the distinction between system and lifeworld, it would be equally rigid in explaining pathological social processes. This is why Honneth links the idea of social pathology to the different distortions of the processes of recognition that affect or prevent the acquisition of the individuals’ identity, as well as their self-understanding as equals (2007, 74). According to this, social pathologies are presented as pathologies of recognition and, as such, they undermine the individuals’ rational capacities to take part in social life. Thus, distorted recognitional relationships prevent individuals from adequately ensuring their practical relations to self, which provide them with enough self-reliance to intervene in the interpersonal relations that are part of their life, and also negatively affect how different groups understand themselves. That is why these pathological processes of recognition operate as indicators of the structures and social relations ‘responsible for a distortion of the social framework of recognition in each particular case’ (p. 74).

In a second variant, and following Zurn’s interpretation of his work (Zurn 2011, 245–6), Honneth presents social pathologies as ‘second order disorders’, that is, as ‘deficits of rationality in which first order beliefs and practices can no longer be acquired and implemented at a second order’ (Honneth 2014, 86). This means that social pathologies are disruptions in the reflective appropriation of social and institutionalised practices that end up in forms of behaviour that hinder participation in social cooperation. This occurs because when the affected individuals appropriate the normative content of the institutionalised practices defectively, they are isolated from the rest of society (p. 153). This variant places social pathologies within the exercise of freedom, understanding freedom so that there can be no internal problems to it, but merely externally caused misdevelopments. This new way of understanding social pathologies restricts their scope and weakens the potential for radical criticisms inherent to Honneth’s previous and more ambitious approach. ⁶ Besides, when focusing on how social pathologies undermine individuals’ capacities, Honneth’s emphasis on the reflective impairment of agents, which prevents them from reappropriating the norms they have already intuitively acquired, renders the first acquisition of the set of norms of the practical context where individuals perform unproblematic (Freyenhagen 2015, 138). Therefore, following Freyenhagen, a distorted first-order appropriation of the set of norms that rule the practical context at stake, disregarded by Honneth, is also a major effect of social pathologies insofar as they can generate rigid and inflexible behaviours in relation to what is expected in the contexts where individuals participate.

I will assume Honneth’s first formulation of social pathologies to explain how malinchism can be also characterised as a pathology of recognition since it is the outcome of distorted recognition relationships. These relationships that underlie malinchism have their origins, as indicated, in the oppression suffered during the Conquest and perpetuated during the Colony (Mariátegui 1970 [1928], 30–31). However, the most remarkable thing is that once the institutional constraints were removed by the Independence, domination processes persisted through their subtle integration into the subjectivity of the colonised peoples. This gave place to a distorted individual self-image of who we are, what we can aspire to or what we can legitimately fight for. Such an image is the result of reciprocal recognition relationships that have been distorted or not adequately developed, so they cause implicit domination on the people affected. In particular, what is affected by such distorted reciprocal recognition relationships is what in Honneth’s (1995, 130) perspective is the practical relation to self of self-esteem, that is, the one resulting from the value that others attribute to our acts and contributions to society. Self-esteem depends on a symbolic network of shared values, according to which each member of a community is recognised as valuable. If this network reproduces a distorted self-image, the self-esteem people acquire will prevent them from an autonomous appropriation of the shared tradition and culture.

The self-image created by malinchism is mediated by a set of beliefs that reproduces the distorted shared self-understanding structured into an internally coherent set that accomplishes the social function of masking the self-imposed oppressive situation. Such masking function has an ideological character and can be presented as a deceptive justification that provides reasons that conceal, or allow for unilateral or partial access to, the circumstances or social processes that determine malinchism ⁷ ; therefore, those types of justifications establish the boundaries of our interpretation of the social world in a distorted way that prevents the affected individuals from articulating their own self-understanding in a reflective way. Malinchism seems to cause an intrapersonal dialogue rather than an interpersonal one, which provides the affected individuals with an image of themselves that keeps their self-esteem undermined. This can be interpreted as part of the distorted recognition that Taylor (1995, 225) presents as a form of oppression that has the effect of ‘imprisoning someone in a false, distorted, and reduced mode of being’. In this way, such kind of recognition prevents the affected people from reflectively appropriating their culture and tradition, which is why malinchism can also be explained as a pathology of recognition (Honneth 2014, 86).

The question that arises at this point is whether malinchism, besides being a pathology of recognition, qualifies as what Honneth calls ‘ideological recognition’ (Honneth 2012). This is a rather difficult question because what seems clear is that not all forms of distorted recognition, even if they are ideological, qualify as ideological forms of recognition. Honneth is very cautious when establishing the conditions that would allow us to speak of ideological recognition because he considers that ‘the majority of the evaluative classifications we might currently encounter in our current lifeworld do not even meet the prerequisites for being credible as ideological forms of recognition’ (p. 86). The first of these conditions is that they should allow individuals to refer to themselves in a positive way, whereby discriminatory value systems do not qualify. The ideological forms of recognition are means of integration, not exclusion. The second condition is their credibility; individuals must be able to identify with these systems of persuasion and the evaluative reasons offered must have a historical index: they must share the contemporary evaluative vocabulary. The third condition is that the forms of ideological recognition must be contrastive, that is, they must express new values or capacities that they ‘(…) have to be able to apply to themselves in comparison with the past or with the surrounding social order’. Those values or capacities ‘(…) will have to evidence a contrast that guarantees that they will feel distinguished in some special way’ (p. 88). These features articulate the motivation that individuals have for voluntary submission, which is distinctive of ideological recognition. In addition, ideological recognition cannot provide the material conditions for fulfilling its evaluative promise, since this would be incompatible with the dominant social order.

According to these characteristics, malinchism does not qualify as an ideological form of recognition. Clearly, it does not appeal to a positive reference of the affected individuals, nor does it create identification with its evaluative guidelines. Furthermore, malinchism does not have a historical index insofar as it is the traces of an oppression system that persists; finally, it is not contrasting either, as it does not express new values or capacities. However, this is merely a preliminary statement that would require empirical research to substantiate it, which goes beyond the scope of this article. What we can say is that malinchism can be classified as a pathology of recognition that articulates a deceptive justification fulfilling a social function of oppression, that is, that fulfils the distinctive features of ideology, but this is insufficient to characterise it as what Honneth calls ‘ideological recognition’.

Personal alienation

Malinchism also involves personal alienation, which is the by-product of the two possible ways of conceptualising social pathologies presented so far. This is why malinchism is an obstacle or an impediment to realising an authentic life through an undistorted appropriation of the different practices that people, in relation to others, decide to carry out. Contrarily, malinchism causes people to lead a life according to imposed beliefs and patterns of behaviour that they have never reflectively endorsed.

When talking about personal alienation, I refer to one of the two great traditions in conceptualising alienation. One of them can be called social alienation and has Rousseau as its main referent, as well as Hegelian and Marxist philosophies. The other tradition is mainly connected to existentialist philosophy and can be called personal or individual alienation. As way of brief presentation, in the first of these traditions, specifically in Rousseau’s case, the normative point of departure is humankind’s needs in their natural state, from which we are alienated because life in society is driven by the pursuit of esteem; this leads individuals to look for what others consider valuable instead of their own authentic needs. In virtue of this, individual alienation is connected with the search for social esteem, which eventually turns individuals’ needs into something alien (Rousseau 1997, 119–24). This, in turn, sets the normative point of view from which to criticise what should be transformed in society. Besides, Hegel’s and Marx’s philosophies are based on the fact that, in addition to their natural reproduction, humans’ distinctive feature is a process of self-creation, that is, a self-construction objectified in the world, and their freedom lies in this process of objectification. This objectification of what human beings create is expressed through shared practices that they control and appropriate, which are expressed in culture, institutions and work. Alienation thus consists in the relationship of estrangement of human beings from what they have created, in such a way that their work becomes alien and hostile to them, for example, through the institutions that undermine their freedom or the work that dehumanises them (Hegel 2008, § 255, 270–71; Marx 1975, 274–75).

The second tradition is mainly concerned about the authenticity of the life that is led and especially how such authenticity is blocked, prevented or affected. These positions establish a way of guaranteeing an authentic life, which, in turn, sets the normative point of view from which to evaluate what hinders it. Alienation is thus explained through a type of circumstances that prevent access to a distinctively human authentic life; in leading an inauthentic life, agents are alienated from the proper characteristics of a human life. Consequently, they are also less free because they lead their life according to imperatives that are alien to them. The works of Heidegger, Sartre and Kierkegaard are representative of this tradition (Jaeggi 2014, 16–21; Schmitt 2003, 24–26).

This primary classification shows that social alienation focuses mainly on the institutions, social structures and social relations that make the subject alien to the objectification of her subjectivity, for example, in culture, work or the institutions, whereas personal alienation focuses on the blockages that the subject faces in her attempts to lead an authentic life. In both cases, there is a concern for the circumstances that intervene in the alienation, but social alienation focuses more intensely on the circumstances themselves and therefore the question that arises is which causes lead to them. Regarding personal alienation, it focuses more intensely on the effect of such circumstances on the agent, and therefore, the question is how these circumstances affect the possibility of leading an authentic life. These differences in emphasis also affect the concern for authenticity present in both traditions; in social alienation, authenticity has a secondary place regarding the process of self-construction and self-creation of the human that is objectified in the world and is therefore alienated. However, this process of self-creation can be understood as a way of realising an authentic life, which as a result of alienation is hindered or blocked, thus condemning the agent to lead an impoverished, dehumanised and inauthentic life. In the tradition of personal alienation, as already noted, authenticity is essential and serves as an evaluative criterion for alienation, but this concern also entails paying attention to the social circumstances that operate as an obstacle to an authentic life. By virtue of this, both the concern for social circumstances and the realisation of an authentic life are present in both traditions, with different emphases and weight attached to them, though, which leads to different conceptualisations of alienation.

Although social alienation is the most important conceptual antecedent of social pathologies, phenomena such as bureaucratisation, monetarisation or reification do not seem to be typical examples of social pathologies that are adequately captured by social alienation. However, it is possible to defend a causal relationship between social pathologies and personal alienation because the former can be considered among the most important explanatory factors of the latter, as is the case of malinchism. In this phenomenon, personal alienation is present as a consequence of the impact of social pathologies. A self-image caused by distorted reciprocal recognition relationships is also present. In this way, malinchism as a social pathology negatively impacts how someone leads and realises an authentic life, insofar as the beliefs and patterns of behaviour that articulate the affected people’s life plan are not reflectively endorsed but imposed and unconsciously followed.

A problem that arises regarding personal alienation in connection with malinchism and its relation with culture is the risk of essentialism as a normative criterion to evaluate a life as inauthentic and therefore alienated. This is a significant difficulty present in some conceptualisations of alienation, such as in Rousseau or Marx, and this problem may also appear in the way we understand culture or tradition as part of a normative criterion to attribute malinchism to some behaviours or attitudes. In this case, an essentialist position consists in identifying the condition of being Latin American in a fixed and crystallised way, thus overseeing the multiple particularities of the different regions of the cultural area. I feel very close to Jaeggi’s way of understanding alienation as a disturbance of the relations that someone establishes with themselves and with the world after the process of identifying with them. The resulting undistorted relation of these processes is what she calls appropriation, which leaves both the world and oneself under one’s control (2014, 29). Therefore, I assume a postmetaphysical conceptualisation of personal alienation which, in the specific case of malinchism, anchors authenticity in the process of reflective appropriation of culture and tradition, as has been presented by Uruguayan philosopher Mario Sambarino (1980). As I have already stated, it is especially relevant for a region with the tradition and history of Latin America to take culture and tradition as something dynamic and open to reconfiguration (Benhabib 2002, 35). However, as Christman has suggested (2018, 34), Jaeggi’s perspective seems to be too formal, and in her attempt to avoid substantive commitments, it is not clear what the restrictions of the process of appropriation should be. ‘Some orienting framework must be in place and operating to determine when an appropriation sequence (in Jaeggi’s sense) is intelligible as the person’s own and not artificially constructed or externally imposed’ (Christman 2018, 34). Regarding this, Jaeggi addresses a criterion to overcome this difficulty:

(…) not every story will be an adequate one unless it is (1) coherent with respect not only to some sequence but to the sequence of action that is relevant for the bigger plot and (2) somehow coherent with respect to the outside world. (Jaeggi 2018, 149–50)

As an alternative way of reducing, though not eliminating, this problem, Christman appeals to Korsgaard’s concept of practical identity. Such concept implies having a conception of ourselves formed by what we consider valuable and constitutive of who we are, based on which we can adopt a principle that expresses us and generates unconditional obligations (Korsgaard 1996, 102). Based on this, Christman says that these ‘self-schemas’ not only imply ‘a rich language of roles, social categories, and standards of behavior’, but also establish ‘socially structured expectations and motivations’, and ‘orient our way of seeing the world and prioritize values and options’ (Christman 2018, 37). This is why practical identities operate as a framework that restricts the appropriation process, in turn mediated by the exercise of reflection. Reflection is crucial since it allows the endorsement of reasons to act and at the same time shapes our practical identity. However, this should not be understood as an endless exercise; in our daily lives, the actions we undertake often reproduce patterns that have been reflectively assumed and constitute our practical identity, but which we follow intuitively (Pereira 2019, 59–60). Therefore, once reflection has fulfilled its function of shaping our practical identity, it has a surveillance function that can be activated whenever identity is threatened or questioned by new circumstances, one of them being alienation. Christman states that: ‘One is alienated, then, when one feels deep cognitive and affective dissonance in acting on a desire (in a socially structured setting)’ (2018, 40), and reflection is part of the process for overcoming it, which is why connecting Christman’s and Jaeggi’s positions allows us to adopt the concept of reflective appropriation.

In the case of malinchism, a perspective that integrates practical identities in the process of reflectively appropriating Latin American culture and tradition provides a substantive base for understanding a possible process aimed at leaving malinchist attitudes aside. In particular, cognitive dissonances similar to the one mentioned by Christman can arise when someone with malinchist attitudes is confronted by experiences of authentic appropriation manifested in institutional reconfigurations. Such a dissonance triggers reflection, which can foster the appropriation of the shared culture and tradition in an authentic manner.

This postmetaphysicial, though not formal, perspective of conceiving alienation and culture allows us to integrate, without violence and in a normative learning process, the different waves of immigration, the legacy of the Conquest and the Colony, the heritage of original peoples, among other factors, into this radically multicultural, multiracial and multi-ethnic region. Besides, this way of understanding culture promotes a symmetrical relation with other cultures through a fusion of horizons (Taylor 1995, 252–53) that dynamises and contributes to an autonomous and reflective development of the different expressions of Latin American culture. Such postmetaphysical way of understanding culture allows us to overcome both the risks of essentialism and the threats of assuming a crystallised conception with conservative consequences denying individual autonomy and freedom.

Concluding remarks: Methodological implications and counteracting of malinchism

Malinchism can be captured through the three conceptualisations that have been presented so far and illustrate the possible difficulties and challenges when analysing and explaining this type of social processes. First, it is a social pathology because it represents the imposition of a type of practical rationality on social spaces regulated by another one. Second, it is a social pathology that affects recognition relationships by imposing a type of distorted recognition that generates an undervalued image of those who have been the object of colonialism in Latin America and, in turn, affects the possible reflective reappropriation of the shared tradition and culture that mediates interpersonal relationships. Consequently, malinchism can also be qualified as a pathology of recognition. Finally, given its pathological trait, malinchism causes personal alienation by preventing an authentic appropriation of the practices carried out by the ones affected. These three possible ways of understanding a pathological social phenomenon can be methodologically aligned with others that are equally complex such as racism, sexism or corruption, insofar as they can also be explained and counteracted by more than one theoretical perspective. In all these cases, an explanation based exclusively on the way I understand social pathologies or on other ways of conceptualising them is insufficient. Therefore, it is necessary to assume a modest scope with such conceptualisation and to recognise the necessary complementarity with other ways of explaining these types of pathological phenomena. For instance, by integrating explanations of social pathologies from distorted experiences of recognition (Honneth), juridification and monetarisation (Habermas), reification (Lukács) among others, as well as including alienation as one of those theoretical resources. This seems to be the best way to understand the complex pathological social phenomena that affect Latin Americans and especially to identify possible ways of counteracting them.

This methodological approach goes hand in hand with what I call emancipatory criticism, which consists not only in presenting the distorted developments of a society according to an emancipatory perspective but also in identifying the possible ways to reach such a realisation. In exercising this criticism, imagination has a central role insofar as it allows us to envision the possible alternatives to realise the normative potential that is the emancipatory ideal present in the practical contexts where individuals exercise their practical life. ⁸ Adopting such a kind of criticism assumes the responsibility for intervening in social circumstances to realise the emancipatory ideal of equality and liberty.

The emancipatory criticism finds in malinchism an exemplary case of how to proceed. In this case, using the conceptual resources mentioned above, it is possible to take the two following steps: (a) to highlight the distorted self-understanding distinctive of malinchism and its assumed undervalued self-image and (b) to identify the paths that allow for a reflective appropriation of the history, tradition and culture of those affected and thus promote the development of autonomous self-understanding. The first one is part of a sort of aspect of the radicalisation of the Enlightenment, or more precisely of Enlightenment submitting itself to its criticism, since the dominant and oppressive perspective that malinchism generates and the critical perspective based on equality and freedom that unmasks it, are part of the enlightened heritage of Colonisation. This can be presented as a specific case of what Allen has called the ‘entanglement of normative ideals and principles with relations of power’ (Allen 2016, 183).

The second task is complex. The historical development of Latin America has its peculiarities and requires distinguishing it from the other regions in the world that have been decolonised; we must also identify the subregional logics of their specific historical, ethnic, migratory, racial and cultural configurations. Therefore, it is impossible to reduce Latin America to a single unified dynamic of development, so the manifestation of malinchism varies depending on the circumstances and the logics they impose. This complexity rules out the possibility of assuming other apparently similar decolonisation processes to establish how the reflective appropriation of our history, tradition and culture should be carried out.

Malinchism’s complexity is also seen in how different fields of culture and knowledge have processed an authentic appropriation of culture and tradition with dissimilar results; Latin American literature is clearly a successful case, as well as that of visual arts, while philosophy has not been as successful. Unfortunately, Latin American philosophy has often been just a mimicry of what is developed in other centres, with a budding insight or even with no autonomy, virtually no more than a branch office ⁹ of analytical philosophy, post-structuralism or critical theory.

We can then think of at least three dimensions for assessing the presence of malinchist attitudes: the ethnic and racial dimension, the historical dimension and the one related to culture and knowledge. This is a cyclopean task, with a high demand for empirical and normative work that far exceeds what can be indicated here. However, I can humbly suggest a few elements to consider in a strategy aiming to modify malinchist attitudes.

A first element is related to the most accurate attitude towards the different decolonisation experiences in the world. Not setting some of these processes as a metric does not imply disregarding the lessons that can be learned from them. Therefore, the self-constitution and development of black consciousness in decolonisation in Africa (Fanon 1952 [2008]), the ‘self-reflective revitalization’ of cultural practices and traditional indigenous values (Coulthard 2014) or the deconstruction of the images we have of Europe and the Middle-East (Said 1979), among others, are inescapable sources for the tradition and culture appropriation processes in Latin America.

These three elements that can open paths leading to a new self-understanding of our tradition and culture can be illustrated with a well-known anecdote told by Ástor Piazzola. In 1953, he was in Paris studying with Nadia Boulanger, and in their first encounter, he played his ‘Symphony of Buenos Aires’, which was the result of his growing immersion in classical music and his abandonment of tango. Although Boulanger liked Piazzola’s symphony, she asked him what kind of music he used to play in Buenos Aires. Visibly embarrassed, Piazzola told her that he used to play tangos in cabarets. Boulanger asked him to play a tango piece, and after listening to it, she told him that his classical music was not special, but when he played tango, it was very original. Piazzola used to tell this anecdote as the awakening of his reappropriation of the musical tradition of tango, in which he had developed himself as a musician and which marked, without a doubt, the beginning of one of the greatest Latin American musical expressions. In Piazzola’s tango, as a consequence of the cognitive dissonance introduced by Boulanger, the tradition was projected into a real fusion of horizons with other musical styles, setting a true milestone for Latin American music and musicians.

According to what has been presented in this article, malinchism is a distinctive Latin American social phenomenon that can be traced back to the Conquest, the Colony and the Independence, characterised by the internalisation of attitudes that deny or underestimate local cultural expression and assume foreign cultures and traditions as models to imitate. Due to its characteristics, malinchism can be explained as a social pathology. In particular, I have defended that malinchism can be explained as an imposition of a particular type of practical rationality on social spaces alien to it, but the complexity of this social phenomenon also needs to be explained in terms of pathology of recognition as well as of personal alienation. I consider that this methodological approach, by assuming that social reality usually exceeds our conceptual frameworks, is the correct way to explain complex social phenomena such as malinchism. Finally, I have introduced some elements that could be part of strategies to counteract malinchist attitudes. A final remark I would like to make: as malinchism colonises our subjectivity so pervasively, I wonder whether this article, my first on this subject, written in English and addressed to non-Spanish speaking readers, is a manifestation of malinchism. This apparent paradox is something our Latin American condition must learn to live with.