Culture Can't Cure Chaos: Thematic Analysis of 'Reasons of State' Anonymous College

In Alejo Carpentier’s Reasons of State, the Head of State’s efforts to align his country’s culture with the intellectual culture of Paris completely breaks down any sense of national identity within his homeland and further agitates political unrest among the nation’s citizens. On the surface, his country becomes a modernized center of intellectual culture and progress. Below the surface, the citizens grow exhausted with the corruption and negligence of the President’s administration. The political unrest makes any attempt at importing high culture useless.

During Nueva Córdoba’s economic boom, the Head of State works to modernize the city so quickly that he takes no influence from the native culture and instead diminishes the accomplishments of his own people. He does not take the time to incorporate the country’s existing style of architecture into the hugely symbolic capital building; he considers creating it in the styles of the Roman forum and a Parisian opera house, among a host of other potential foreign architectural influences. After contemplating thirty-one possible styles for the building, he settles on a replica of the Washington Capitol despite all of his supposed resentment toward The United States of America. The...