The Aesthetics of Solidarity: Our Lady of Guadalupe and American Democracy

180 Pages·2021·5.195 MB·English

by  Nichole M. Flores

T AESTHETICS SOLIDARITY
he of
Selected Titles from the Moral Traditions Series
David Cloutier, Andrea Vicini, SJ, and Darlene Weaver, editors
The Vice of Luxury: Economic Excess in a Consumer Age
David Cloutier
Diverse Voices in Modern US Moral Theology
Charles E. Curran
The Structures of Virtue and Vice
Daniel J. Daly
Consumer Ethics in a Global Economy: How Buying Here Causes Injustice There
Daniel K. Finn
Kinship across Borders: A Christian Ethic of Immigration
Kristin E. Heyer
Radical Sufficiency: Work, Livelihood, and a US Catholic Economic Ethic
Christine Firer Hinze
Keeping Faith with Human Rights
Linda Hogan
Humanity in Crisis: Ethical and Religious Response to Refugees
David Hollenbach, SJ
The Fullness of Free Time: A Theological Account of Leisure and Recreation in the Moral Life
Conor M. Kelly
Reimagining Human Rights: Religion and the Common Good
William R. O’Neill, SJ
Hope for Common Ground: Mediating the Personal and the Political in a Divided Church
Julie Hanlon Rubio
Love and Christian Ethics: Tradition, Theory, and Society
Frederick V. Simmons, editor
All God’s Animals: A Catholic Theological Framework for Animal Ethics
Christopher Steck, SJ
T AESTHETICS
HE
SOLIDARITY
OF
O L G
UR ADY OF UADALUPE AND
A D
MERICAN EMOCRACY
NICHOLE M. FLORES
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY PRESS / WASHINGTON, DC
© 2021 Georgetown University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this book may
be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
The publisher is not responsible for third- party websites or their content. URL links
were active at time of publication.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Flores, Nichole M., author.
Title: The aesthetics of solidarity : Our Lady of Guadalupe and American
democracy / Nichole M. Flores.
Other titles: Moral traditions series.
Description: Washington, DC : Georgetown University Press, 2021. | Series: Moral
traditions | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020034787 | ISBN 9781647120900 (hardcover) |
ISBN 9781647120917 (paperback) | ISBN 9781647120924 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Religion and politics—United States. | Hispanic Americans—
Religion. | Hispanic Americans—Politics and government. | Solidarity—
Political aspects—United States. | Solidarity—Religious aspects. | Guadalupe,
Our Lady of. | Christian sociology—Catholic Church. | Political theology—
United States.
Classification: LCC BL65.P7 F54 2021 | DDC 322/.10973—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020034787
c This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1 992 (Permanence of
Paper).
22 21 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 First printing
Printed in the United States of America
Cover design by Nathan Putens
Interior design by BookComp, Inc.
The image on the cover is of a National Farm Workers Association march during
the California Grape Strike in 1966. Jon Lewis photograph, Beinecke Rare Book &
Manuscript Library © Yale University. All rights reserved.
In memory of María Guadalupe García Flores
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1 A Political Theology of Guadalupe and Juan Diego 19
2 John Rawls’s Liberal Imagination 47
3 Martha Nussbaum’s Liberal Aesthetics 75
4 Lifting Up the Lowly 103
5 The Aesthetic Dimension of Solidarity 123
Bibliography 153
Index 161
About the Author 167
vii
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In March of 2011 I journeyed with my spouse and in- laws to the Basilica of
Our Lady of Guadalupe located on the outskirts of Mexico City. A second-
year doctoral student at the time, I arrived at Tepeyac with a notebook and a
Nikon, prepared to observe popular worship at the basilica. I was certain that
what we would see, hear, and experience that day would inform my research
on a budding dissertation. As soon as I crossed the threshold of the basilica,
however, I burst into tears. I had come to Tepeyac as a researcher but was
experiencing it as a pilgrim. In many ways the writing of this book has been
an extension of that experience and that journey. I wish to acknowledge those
who have accompanied me on the pilgrimage over the past decade.
My thanks especially go to Al Bertrand and the editors of Georgetown
University Press’s Moral Traditions series, David Cloutier, Andrea Vicini, and
Darlene Fozard Weaver, for their confidence in this project and their crucial
support in shepherding it to completion. I am also indebted to Kristin Heyer
and Richard Brown for recognizing the promise of this work in its earliest
stages. Since 2017 the editorial team at America: The Jesuit Review of Faith and
Culture has welcomed me and shaped me as a writer. Thank you for allowing me
to share in the pages of the magazine some of the stories that inspired this book.
I remain grateful to the members of my doctoral committee, Lisa Sowle
Cahill, Nancy Pineda Madrid, and David Hollenbach, for their continued
enthusiasm and support for the project as it matured from dissertation into
book. There is a cloud of witnesses—teachers and mentors—who inspired
me during the formative years of my doctoral studies at Boston College, espe-
cially Roberto Goizueta, M. Shawn Copeland, James Keenan, Stephen Pope,
Richard Gaillardetz, James Bretzke, Mary Jo Iozzio, and Hosffman Ospino. I
am also appreciative of the time I spent working at the Boisi Center for Reli-
gion and American Public Life alongside Erik Owens and Alan Wolfe; much
of my initial reflection about this work took place behind the French doors of
the graduate assistant’s office, and the finished work reflects the spirit of the
Boisi Center in those days.
I have been fortunate to write this book surrounded by colleagues in the
Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, who care about me
ix