Metaphorical framing of the concept of mestizaje in Hispanic American essays of the 20th century

Mestizaje as a formerly colonial term for ethnic origin or physical characteristics has become a modern, extremely effective "narrative metaphor" (Zinken et al. 2008). It is an excellent example for examining the circulation and rhetorical reproduction of ideas, including their misrepresentation, misinterpretation and appropriation, in postcolonial space up to the present day and across national and continental borders.

The project aims to reconstruct a network of discursive engagements with mestizaje, i.e. the reciprocity between different visions of mestizaje (cf. ajiaco by F. Ortiz, árbol by R. Rojas), conceptual and discursive effects and image patterns. When compiling a text corpus, the uniformity of the genre - essay - and the uniformity of the authors - independent socially critical intellectuals from the 1920s to the 1950s (according to Miller 1999; Wertz 2013) - are the main criteria.

From a cognitive-semantic perspective, this study contributes to the understanding of the impact of cognitive mechanisms such as metaphors on communication about "race" issues in a postcolonial and postnational era. Using the method of critical metaphor analysis (cf. Charteris-Black 2005), conclusions will be drawn about how a number of 20th century Hispanic American intellectuals successfully metaphorized and mystified social differentiation through the ethnic component.

From a discourse-analytical perspective (cf. Riggins 1997; Dovidio/Gaertner 1986), the project shows how metaphors contribute to or fail to overcome stereotypical views, ideas and representations of postcolonial Hispanic-American societies. Particular attention is paid to the extent to which the metaphorical, referentialist language of seemingly progressive discourses on ethnic mixing conceals a subliminal racist mask of essentialism and evokes historical stereotypes (see Arroyo 2020; Miller 2004; Martínez-Echazábal 1998).

In the first step, the project focuses on the writings of a very complex Mexican intellectual José Vasconcelos from the 1920s to 1940s. The enormous cognitive appeal of his essay La raza cósmica (1925) in Hispanic America and beyond has hardly been researched to date (cf. Casáus Arzú 2008). The next step will focus on the interrelation between polyphonic (biological, musical, etc.) reproductions of the mestizaje idea in influential essays by Carrión, Cuadra, García, Henríquez Ureña, Masferrer Mónico, Ortiz, O'Gormann, Alfonso Reyes, Ricardo Rojas, Samuel Ramos, and Leopoldo Zea. The project traces how new conceptualizations of Latin America became visible on an international level, especially in the USA, for example through university lectures and press articles.