La retórica bajo el barniz de la lógica: Samuel Ramos y su discurso sobre la inferioridad mexicana

Abstract

Samuel Ramos reflects on the essence of the Mexican people in the philosophical essay El perfil del hombre y la cultura en M´exico (1934). He emphasizes the sentiment of inferiority and the desire to hide this inferiority by camouflage strategies as a distinctive characteristic of the Mexican. This analysis of Ramos’s Perfil unveils a discrepancy between the form that the author imitates—the scientific treatise—and the true argumentative constitution of his text—the rhetorical discourse. Along with the anti-rhetoric position of the rationalists, Ramos considers rhetorical argumentation as an inferior approach that has to be dissimulated and hidden under a layer of science.