Roger Bartra

Roger Bartra is a leading sociologist and anthropologist in Mexico and Latin America.The son of Catalan writers Agustí Bartra and Anna Murià, who went into exile in Mexico following the Spanish Civil War, Roger Bartra studied anthropology in Mexico at the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) and earned his doctorate in sociology from the University of Paris-Sorbonne. He was a professor of social and political history at the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s Institute of Social Investigations (where he is currently a researcher emeritus) and has also been a visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin, the University of California, the University of the Andes (Venezuela), the Catholic University (Lima), Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore), Rutgers (New Jersey), the Paul Getty Center (Los Angeles) and Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona). 

His best-known books include La jaula de la melancolía [translated into English as The Cage of Melancholy] (1987), a key work on Mexican identity; Las redes imaginarias del poder político [The Imaginary Networks of Political Power] (1981), in which he examines the symbolic forms of power; El salvaje en el espejo [Wild Men in the Looking Glass] (1992) and El salvaje artificial [The Artificial Savage] (1997), on myths and representations of the ‘savage’ in the West; Cultura y melancolía [Melancholy and Culture] (2001) and El duelo de los ángeles [Angels in Mourning] (2004), which explore the legacy of melancholy in European culture, and Antropología del cerebro [Anthropology of the Brain] (2006), in which he develops the theory of the ‘exobrain’, arguing that part of our brains’ wiring is based on ‘sociocultural’ external prostheses. Throughout his career he has received several awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship (1985), the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s (UNAM) National University Award (1996), Mexico’s National Prize for Arts and Sciences (2013), an honorary doctorate from the UNAM (2015) and the Eulalio Ferrer International Award (2016). 

Photo: Milton Martinez  Secretaria de Cultura CDMX