The Militant Song Movement in Latin America. Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina. Ed. by Pablo Vila. Lexington Books, Lanham [etc.] 2014. ix, 282 pp. $95.00; £59.95. (E-book: $94.99; £59.95.)

Abstract

Cambodia, but why these are included rather than Latin American or African examples is not clear. What, for instance, was the more general role of the Commune legend in post-World-War-II decolonization struggles? The lack of theoretical grounding especially struck me in the chapter on eroticism, which offers a pop-psychological, ''phallic'' reading of the Commune and its aftermath without referring to the conceptual debates behind it. Hardly any mention is made of the vast research on collective memory and public remembrance. The equally expansive literature on the Commune is briefly summarized in the introduction. Consequently, it is often hard for the reader to discern which parts of Bos's reading are original vis-à-vis the existing scholarly consensus. A more conceptually and theoretically infused analysis could have substantiated some of Bos's central contentions. For example, he claims a ''remarkably uniform'' (p. 146) and relatively stable Commune memory throughout the years. According to Bos, this is mainly due to the classic status of Marx's and Hippolyte Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray's early histories, respectively The Civil War in France (1871) and Histoire de la commune de 1871 (1876). Relatively little attention is paid to diachronic and synchronic variations within the Commune memory. For instance, how did the commemoration fare when 1 May gradually became the main annual moment of socialist celebration? What happened to the revolutionary imagery when reformism, Organisationspatriotismus and ''revolutionary attentism'' started to gain ground within social democracy during the belle e´poque? In Belgium, an example Bos often refers to, the Commune cult was already overshadowed by 1 May celebrations in the 1890s. Another neglected question is whether the Commune imagery might have become ''nationalized'', especially in an era when ''inter-nationalism'', social patriotism, and oppositional patriotism were on the rise. Generally, Bos reflects too little on the social functions of commemoration. In the introduction he claims that ''there is no reason to fear that the long second life of the Commune will soon come to an end and that the memory of the Commune will pass into oblivion'' (p. 18). Past myths can only survive when they are linked to present-day concerns and interests. So the question is which useful social function the Commune can still have for contemporary socialists, also outside the West. All in all this is a great feat of scholarly research. Bos's mastery of languages and sources is impressive, but the book could have used some extra editorial and analytical rigour.