A leading Latin Americanist exhorts scholars to reclaim the indigenous subjectivities still perceived by many as "not modern" and excluded from the production, distribution, and organization of knowledge.

Embers of the Past is a powerful critique of historicism and modernity. Javier Sanjinés C. analyzes the conflict between the cultures and movements of indigenous peoples and attention to the modern nation-state in its contemporary Latin American manifestations. He contends that indigenous movements have introduced doubt into the linear course of modernity, reopening the gap between the symbolic and the real. Addressing this rupture, Sanjines argues that scholars must rethink their temporal categories. Toward that end, he engages with recent events in Latin America, particularly in Bolivia, and with Latin American intellectuals, as well as European thinkers disenchanted with modernity. Sanjinés dissects the concepts of the homogeneous nation and linear time, and insists on the need to reclaim the indigenous subjectivities still labeled "premodern" and excluded from the production, distribution, and organization of knowledge.

"“There is a careful logic to how the four pieces fit together…. Throughout Embers of the Past, Sanjinés provides a study on the permanence of the past into the present, meditating on the need to shift the locus of enunciation from which we speak when we encounter, think about, and ultimately struggle against coloniality.”" - Postcolonial Studies

"“[T]here is much depth of knowledge and insight in Sanjines’s sparkling literary history of Bolivia (and Latin America).... When read along with Sanjines’s first major English-language book… this striking set of essays opens new windows onto Bolivia’s variegated cultural and literary landscapes.”" - Canadian Journal of History