Hybrid Identities (Identities / Identités / Identidades) 9783034314718, 9783035107043, 303431471X

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PETER LANG

FLOCEL SABATÉ is professor in Medieval History and head of Institute for Research into Identities and Society (University of Lleida, Catalonia, Spain). He led international research projects from European institutions; participate in scientific boards in research centres in Europe and America, belong to different boards for scientific journals and series and has written many research works.

ISBN 978-3-0343-1471-8

www.peterlang.com

FLOCEL SABATÉ (ed.) HYBRID IDENTITIES

This book dissiminates a selected collection of research texts from the Congress Hybrid Identities, held in 2011 in the Institute for Research into Identities and Society (University of Lleida, Catalonia, Spain). Outstanding researchers from Social and Humanities fields adapted the hybridization of society such as a new perspective in order to study and understand the evolution of conviviality from the Middle Ages to current days throughout a comparative space and time. Taking the concept from the anthropology, the hybridization became a new approach for social studies and Humanities. Hybridization offers a historical perspective in order to renew perspectives for study different societies during all historical periods since Middle Ages to current days. At the same time, hybridization appears as a tool for analysing social realities in the different continents of the word. In any case, it is a new way in order to understand how the societies reaches its respective cohesions throughout mixted identities.

VOL

2

FLOCEL SABATÉ (ed.)

HYBRID IDENTITIES

Identities. An interdisciplinary approach to the roots of present Identités. Une approche interdisciplinaire aux racines du présent Identidades. Una aproximación interdisciplinar a las raíces del presente

PETER LANG

FLOCEL SABATÉ is professor in Medieval History and head of Institute for Research into Identities and Society (University of Lleida, Catalonia, Spain). He led international research projects from European institutions; participate in scientific boards in research centres in Europe and America, belong to different boards for scientific journals and series and has written many research works.

FLOCEL SABATÉ (ed.) HYBRID IDENTITIES

This book dissiminates a selected collection of research texts from the Congress Hybrid Identities, held in 2011 in the Institute for Research into Identities and Society (University of Lleida, Catalonia, Spain). Outstanding researchers from Social and Humanities fields adapted the hybridization of society such as a new perspective in order to study and understand the evolution of conviviality from the Middle Ages to current days throughout a comparative space and time. Taking the concept from the anthropology, the hybridization became a new approach for social studies and Humanities. Hybridization offers a historical perspective in order to renew perspectives for study different societies during all historical periods since Middle Ages to current days. At the same time, hybridization appears as a tool for analysing social realities in the different continents of the word. In any case, it is a new way in order to understand how the societies reaches its respective cohesions throughout mixted identities.

VOL

2

FLOCEL SABATÉ (ed.)

HYBRID IDENTITIES

Identities. An interdisciplinary approach to the roots of present Identités. Une approche interdisciplinaire aux racines du présent Identidades. Una aproximación interdisciplinar a las raíces del presente

HYBRID IDENTITIES

Identities. An interdisciplinary approach to the roots of present Identités. Une approche interdisciplinaire aux racines du présent Identidades. Una aproximación interdisciplinar a las raíces del presente

Vol. 2

Editorial Board: – Flocel Sabaté (Editor) (Institut for Research into Identities and Society, Universitat de Lleida) – Paul Aubert (Aix Marselle Université) – Patrick Geary (University of California, Los Angeles) – Susan Reisz (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú) – Maria Saur (London University)

PETER LANG Bern · Berlin · Bruxelles · Frankfurt am Main · New York · Oxford · Wien

FLOCEL SABATÉ (ed.)

HYBRID IDENTITIES

PETER LANG Bern · Berlin · Bruxelles · Frankfurt am Main · New York · Oxford · Wien

Bibliographic information published by die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at ‹http://dnb.d-nb.de›. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data: A catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library, Great Britain Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: A catalogue record for this book is available

Institute for Research into Identities and Society. University of Lleida ISBN 978-3-0343-1471-8 pb. ISSN 2296-3537 pb.

ISBN 978-3-0351-0704-3 eBook ISSN 2296-3545 eBook

© Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2014 Hochfeldstrasse 32, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland [email protected], www.peterlang.com All rights reserved. All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. Printed in Switzerland

Contents

Flocel Sabaté Hybrid Identities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

7

Josep Fontana Histories and Identities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

15

Andrew Vincent The Lineage of Hybrid Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

29

Christiane Stallaert Hybridization, Transculturation, and Translation. Europe through the Lens of Latin America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

39

Adeline Rucquoi Hybrid Identities: the Case of Medieval Spain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

55

Gerhard Jaritz Outer Appearance and the Construction of Identities . . . . . . . . . . . .

83

Anna Maria Oliva Quivi hanno refugio tutte le nationi come commune domicilio del mondo (Here all the Nations have Refuge as Shared Home of the World). The Cosmopolitan Identity of Rome between the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

99

Maria Eugenia Cadeddu Plurilingualism and Identity in Sardinia (XVI–XVII centuries): Some Thoughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Agustí Alcoberro Identities in Exile from the War of the Spanish Succession (1713–1747): Some Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 Martine Reid Hybridité ou les femmes en littérature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

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Contents

Daniel Compère Hybrides et Surgeons : Naissance des Genres Populaires . . . . . . . . 149 Ndèye Anna Gaye Fall The Rule of Osha in Cuba. A Hybrid Identity? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 Joan J. Pujadas Hybrid Identities in Contexts of Minorisation of Citizens: Thinking about the Indigenous Peoples of Latin America . . . . . . . . 183 Fulvia Caruso Global Ecumene, Electroacustic Music and “Other” Music . . . . . . . 213 Graciela Spector The Role of the Significant Other in the Construction of National Identities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241 Ugo E. M. Fabietti Hybrid Memories: Building the Present in Southern Pakistan . . . . . 259 Kathryn Crameri Hybridity and Catalonia’s Linguistic Borders: the Case of Najat El Hachmi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271

Hybrid Identities Flocel Sabaté Universitat de Lleida

When, towards the end of the 20th century, the world was clearly moving towards a network society,1 linked by the information networks,2 the notions of identity also adapted themselves to this new reality.3 Not only was there a growth in communications and exchanges, but also a new framework of reference and understanding arose: from Universal History we moved to Global History, with all the conceptual and experiential implications that this implies.4 Faced with these changes, some fear the loss of the traditional references that they hold dear. This is not only about the fear of the new homogeneity derived from globalisation and dominated by the powerful5 silencing the minor and weaker voices,6 especially given the unequal effects that this globalisation on markets, social stratification and world governance.7 Besides these effects, in the same global context, complaints from members of solidly consolidated groups have arisen, fearful that 1 2 3 4 5

6

7

Manuel Castells, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture. The Rise of the Network Society (Cambridge (Mass.): Blackwell Publishers Inc., 1996), vol. 1. Manuel Castells, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture. The Power of Identity (Cambridge (Mass.): Blackwell Publishers Inc., 1997), vol. 2. Manuel Castells, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture. End of Millennium (Cambridge (Mass.): Blackwell Publishers Inc., 1996), vol. 3. Bruce Mazlish, Ralph Buultjens, eds., Conceptualizing Global History (Oxford-San Francisco: Westview, Boulder, 1993). Brad Roberts, ed., Order and Disorder after the Cold War (Cambridge (Mass.): The MIT Press, 1995); Joaquín Estefanía, El poder en el mundo (Barcelona: Plaza & Janés Editores, 2000). Susan George, Nous, peuples d’Europe (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2005); Alcira Argumedo, Los Silencios y las Voces en América Latina. Notas sobre el pensamiento nacional y popular (Buenos Aires: Ediciones del Pensamiento Nacional, 2006); Partha Chatterjee, La nación en tiempo heterogéneo y otros estudios subalternos (Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno editores–Clacso coediciones, 2008). Luciano Gallino, Globalizzazione e disuguaglianze (Roma-Bari: Editori Laterza, 2000).

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the new miscegenation will damage or even annihilate their own identity. Thus, there have been calls to reinforce the cohesion of specific groups, especially of a national nature. Some countries are said to lose their memory and, thus, renounce their own history,8 while trying to preserve the anchorage referring to a past as a unique guarantee to maintain an identity in the future.9 With the same concern but aiming to avoid remaining merely stopped in these complaints, other groups seek to restructure their national patriotic values to bind together those who share identity.10 One way and another, it is possible to perceive the fear of losing the essence that define one’s own society and, inherently, a distrust of otherness, a return to the fear of the barbarians,11 an approach not far removed from the conviction that otherness should be interpreted as confrontation.12 Nevertheless, faced with the same problem, other authors accept that the mixture shapes society however messily. Beyond the secular calls for the goodness of mixing and combination of identities,13 one perceives reality as the result, in itself, of a mixture, which could not be any different given the speed with which populations, ideas and reference points have drawn closer and mixed in all aspects over recent decades.14 In fact, this has been no sudden change, given that the roots of the present globalisation run very deep, and time ago scenarios appeared like the one perceived by Georges Trésor when reflecting about the identity of the island of Guadalupe: tout est mêlé. Ce n’est pas inextricable, mais c’est un tissage où on ne sait quel fil prendre qui soit le bon. La situation des Antilles aujourd’hui est ce tissage là.15 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Jean-Pierre Rioux, La France perd la mémoire. Comment un pays démissionne de son histoire (Paris: Editions Perrin, 2006). José Ribeiro e Castro, Una Pátria com memória e com futuro. 1 de dezembro. Dia de Portugal (Parede: Princípia Editora, 2012), p. 5. Eric Liu, Nick Hanauer, The True Patriot. A pamphlet (Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 2007). Tzvetan Todorov, La peur des barbares. Au-delà du choc des civilisations (Paris: Robert Laffont, 2008). Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of Word Order (New York: Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, 1996). Laurent Ferri, De Sénèque à Lévi-Strauss. Ils raccontent la mondialisation (Paris: Éditions Saint-Simon, 2005). Zygmunt Bauman, Dentro la globalizzazione. Le conseguenze sulle persone, (Roma-Bari: Editori Laterza, 2006). Georges Trésor, Guadeloupe: l’enfermement identitaire? (Petit-Bourg: Dérades, 2009), p. 9.

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In 1872, when taking stock of his life, Jules Michelet wrote that everything in the world had accelerated: Un des faits les plus graves, et les moins remarqués c’est que l’allure du temps a tout à fait changé. Il a doublé le pas d’une manière étrange16. In 1947, Daniel Hálevy published a book with a very explicit title: Essai sur l’accélération de l’Histoire;17 and in 1973 Manuel Lloris stated that la sociedad humana tiene ahora una base cultural común más amplia que nunca, which facilitated the movement hacia una sociedad planetaria18. Thus, this did not suddenly appear in society at the end of the 20th century, when the concept of multicultural citizenship arose,19 which would transform the whole range of collective identities, be these ethnic, religious or national.20 If everything has come so close, a mixture will result that cannot be anything but strange for human understanding, because individual identity, as psychiatry and psychology show, is no more than the result of an unequal and complex, not very predictable, sum of influences.21 It should not be difficult to prolong the malleability to adaptation, not only individual but also social, of humans beings. In fact, given this proximity, the antidote to the shock that would result from identities imagined as insoluble can be nothing other than la mixité of the same identities, as Gilles Kepel reflects.22 Mixing dilutes the density of identity. This, in its pure state, was well weighed up by the leading character of Monsieur Ibrahim et les fleurs du Coran, to the point that lightening load this meant getting rid of the books that serve the function of memory and that linked him to a costly and rigid Jewish identity: à chaque fois que je vendais un livre, je me sentais plus livre.23 A lighter and more permeable content would avoid the unbearable 16

17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Judith Wulf, “Rythmes sémantiques (‘Richelieu et la Fronde’)”, Michelet, rythme de la prose, rythme ed l’histoire, Paule Petitier, ed. (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires de Septentrion, 2010), p. 30. Daniel Halévy, Essai sur l’accélération de l’histoire (Paris: Éditions Self, 1948). Manuel Lloris, El siglo XXI (Barcelona: Salvat Editores, 1973), pp. 135–138. Will Kymlicka, Ciudadanía multicultural (Barcelona: Ediciones Paidós-Ibérica, 1995). Gerd Baumann, El enigma multicultural (Barcelona: Ediciones Paidós-Ibérica, 2001). Aquilino M. Polaino-Lorente, La formación de la personalidad (Madrid: Editorial Magisterio Español – Editorial Prensa Española, 1976), pp. 50–51. Gilles Kepel, Terreur et martyre. Relever le défi de civilisation (Paris: Éditions Flammarion, 2008), pp. 294–295. Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, Monsieur Ibrahim et les fleurs du Coran (Paris: Éditions Albin Michel, 2001), p. 51.

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weight of identity and, at the same time, the demand for confrontation with the otherness.24 However, one cannot dispense with identity, but rather seek another more adequate one, as Amin Maalouf stated: What makes a Muslim from Yugoslavia one day stop calling himself Yugoslav to call himself firstly a Muslim? And what makes a Jewish worker in Russia who has considered himself first and foremost a member of the proletariat all his life start to perceive himself as more than anything a Jew? How can one explain that arrogant claims of belonging to a religion, which would until recently have seemed inconvenient, nowadays seem natural and legitimate, and in so many countries at the same time?25.

Thus, identity is always needed. In the 12th century, Chrétien de Troyes explained that the Knight of the Lion wandered around the forests like a crazy wild man, living like an animal, while he had lost his identity.26 In all cases, the essential personal and social identity requires more or less secure fixing points, but always as references to the past. Thus, in our ever-changing world, rebuilding a new historical memory adapted to defining global identity documents which fit the social setting.27 This being so, the importance of identity is not only taxonomic and descriptive: its characteristics are the basis for interpretation the world. Its contents condition the way and forms with which to take on the surroundings, the neighbourhood and the otherness. That is, the ability to grasp reality and to coexist. Significantly, un sistema epistemològic més relacional que substancial (“an epistemological system more relational than substantial”) reflects and, at the same time, facilitates, identities clearly aimed at coexistence, more than at adjustment to certain essences: La innovació de la filosofia contemporània passà, de fet, d’una filosofia de la “substància” (que assumia que la veritat de l’ésser existia amb independència de les seves relacions amb d’altres éssers) a la moderna filosofia de la “relació” (que postulà que la veritat de l’ésser era constituïda, més que per si mateixa, “en” o “mitjançant” d’altres éssers). Innovation in contemporary philosophy became in fact a philosophy of ‘substance’ (which assumed the truth of the being existed regardless of its relationship with other 24 25 26 27

Francesco Remotti, Contro l’identità (Roma-Bari: Editori Laterza, 2001), pp. 97–104. Amin Maalouf, Identidades asesinas (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1999), p. 106. Chrétien de Troyes, El Caballero del León (Madrid: Edicions Siruela, 1986), pp. 50–51. Mario Carretero, Documentos de identidad. La construcción de la memoria histórica en un mundo global (Buenos Aires: Paidós, 2007).

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beings) to modern philosophy ‘relationship’ (which postulated that the truth was being made, but by itself ‘in’ or ‘through’ other beings).28

In this context of thought, the interaction of cultures in contact that frames the present facilitates a relational and porous model of identity, with the consequences that derive from this contact.29 The contact is even the succession of cultures does not generate displacements but rather different degrees of mixing, that can be taken as hybridity, to use the term with which Néstor García Canclini successfully referred to culture in Latin America.30 Seen as a daring transfer of biology to culture and perhaps even endowed with a specific ideological weight,31 the expression had considerable impact, especially among the social sciences in Latin America, as its promoter recognised on taking stock and seeing it used successfully en los estudios antropológicos, sociológicos, comunicacionales, de artes y de literatura (“in anthropological, sociological and communication studies, in arts and literature”).32 Certainly, one can appreciate an urge to find the right label for the social mixture observed at the end of the 20th century and that continues into the this century.33 However, the specificity of hybridity would not be defined so much as an interpretative method but rather as an image of the reality of the formative process over time and across societies. Accepting this definition of hybridity, rather than as a palimpsest, in which each stage overlaps the 28

29 30 31 32

33

Alfons Puigarnau, “Un cert medievalisme. Cinema artúric i mutación de valors”, L’Edat Mitjana. Món real i espai imaginat, Flocel Sabaté, coord. (CatarrojaBarcelona: Afers, 2012), p. 268. Dolors Mayoral, Mercè Tor, Cultures en interacció. La vida quotidiana (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 2009). Néstor García, Culturas híbridas. Estrategias para entrar y salir de la modernidad (Mexico: Grijalbo, 1990). Antonio Cornejo, “Mestizaje e hibridez. Los riesgos de las metáforas. Apuntes”, Revista de Crítica Literaria latinoamericana, 24/47 (1998), pp. 7–11. Néstor García, “Noticias recientes sobre la hibridación”, Trans. Revista trabscyktyrak de música, 7 (2003) . El último cuarto del siglo XX vio nacer, sobre todo en discursos académicos y políticos occidentales, una celebración generalizada de la diferencia, bajo las etiquetas de la hibridez, la transcultural, la multicultural, la traducción (en el sentido dado por Homi Bhabha), la ‘créolité, la ‘antillanité’, la relación (en el sentido que le dio Édouard Glissant y el mestizaje cultural (Amaryll Chanaduy, “La hibridez como signicacion imaginaria, Revista de Crítica literaria latinoamericana, 24/49 (1999), p. 265 ).

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previous one, the path of humanity should be seen as a sum of strata that, instead of being clearly separated, contaminate each other, adopting a specific identity, which we term hybrid identity. Therefore, hybridity does not refer to a mere mixture or heterogeneity and also differs from a miscegenation, because it is actually a specific item, impure in its essence given its nature,34 that requires cultural translations of the progressive registrations. Seen like this, as Mario Erdheim noted, all cultures are hybrids in origin35 and, faced with multiculturalism of the diversity of cultures, hybridity does not lead to a more or less balanced fit of diversity but rather to the creation of a specific articulation.36 Thus, the sequence can be chronological and also sectorial and spatial, combining the global stimuli with the local reality.37 Under these parameters, the results of many researches have generated significant glimpses of the social sciences and humanities from hybridity. It is present in the study of literary work38 and historical sources,39 fitting in different conceptual influences;40 it is used in different aspects of linguistics;41 it has contributed to renewing the geographical analysis of the territory;42 and the framework for delving into the evolution and cohesion of societies,43 while using the concept to seek views of long chronological and 34 35 36 37 38 39

40

41

42 43

Amaryll Chanady, “La hibridez como significación…”, pp. 11–12. Mario Erdheim, “Das Eigene und das Fremde. Über ethnische Identität”, Fremdenangst und Fremdenfeindlichkeit (Frankfurt: Stroemfeld, 1993), p. 168. Homi K. Bhabha, Die Verortung der Kultur (Tubinga: Stauffenberg, 2000), p. 208. Nelly Richard, “Lo local y lo global: hibridez y traducción interculturales”, Inter: art actuel, 102 (2009), p. 54. Mariselle Melendez, Raza, Género e Hibridez en “El Lazarillo de Ciegos Caminantes” (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999). Benito Quintana, “Hacia un barroquismo hispanoamericano: hibridez e intertextualidad en el ‘Coloquio de los cuatro últimos reyes de Tlaxcala’ ” Romance Notes, 52/1 (2012), pp. 35–42. Chiara Donadoni, Eugenia Houuvenaghel, “La hibridez de la tradición judeocristiana como reivindicación del sincretismo religioso en la Nueva España: el ‘Narciso’ de Sor Juana”, Neophilologus, 94/3 (2010), pp. 459–475. Salvador Lira, Anna María d’Amore, “Hacia una hermenéutica de la cultura: símbolo, mito y traducción”, Traducción, mediación, adaptación. Reflexiones en torno al proceso de comunicación entre culturas, Eva Parra Membrives, Ángeles García Calderón, eds. (Berlin: Frank & Timme GMBH Verlag für wissenschaftliche Literatur, 2013), pp. 87–88. Claudia Barros, Perla Zusman, “La geografía en la búsqueda de conceptos híbridos”, Boletín de la Asociación de Geógrafos Españoles, 27 (1999), pp. 67–80. Emma Ruiz Martin del Campo, “La marginación interna en México: entre la marginación y el potencial de creación de hibridez cultural”, Migración e identidad:

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historical sequences.44 In fact, society, in itself, becomes a very receptive field for the concept, and this shows deep-seated roots: back in 1928, Robert Park viewed immigrants as hybrids in their cultural identity.45 Researching into society as a compound hybrid requires consistency in adopting the right analytical tools. We must assume a clearly multidisciplinary approach, in the most traditional sense, in other words, yuxtaponer disciplinas distintas para el estudio de un fenómeno concreto (“juxtapose different disciplines for the study of a particular phenomenon”).46 The working method must also be coherent. If we assume a reality that we call hybrid as the subject of study, to grasp it, we must apply the research method through an adequate hybridity. This should gathers together questions and answers from all the aspects that make up the framework of human development and that seek the respective point of combination, while facilitating a transfer of contents and meanings in the analysis. As in the approach, this is not a set of more or less concordant aspects, but more a single subject of research, namely human society, in its specific spatial and chronological scenarios. Rather than concerning ourselves with the working method, we must go deeper, from the respective areas of research, about societies that we assume to furnish identities that, one way or another, we accept as hybrid. These tasks have been taken up for the Institute for Research in Identities and Society at the University of Lleida, which is devoted, precisely, to questioning society through the humanities and social sciences. Consequently, during 2011, reflection in this field culminated in November of the same year in a scientific meeting that brought together researchers from very diverse fields with the aim of comparing and debating research into hybrid identities from different, but at the same time complementary, perspectives. The participants were Josep Fontana (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona), Andrew Vincent (Cardiff University), Christiane Stallaert (Catholic University of Leuven and University College of Antwerp),

44 45 46

emociones, familia, cultura, María Elena Ramon, coord. (Monterrey: Fondo Editorial de Nuevo León, 2009), pp. 135–142. Alfonso Toro, Cornelia Sieber, Claudia Gronemann, René Ceballos, eds., Estrategias de la hibridez en América Latina (Bern: Peter Lang, 2007). Robert Park, “Human Migration and the Marginal Man”, The American Journal of Sociology, 6 (1928), pp. 881–893. Jean Chesneaux, ¿Hacemos tabla rasa del pasado? (Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno de España Editores, 1984), p. 195.

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Martine Reid (Université Charles de Gaulle – Lille III), Gerhard Jaritz (Central European University, Budapest), Anna Maria Oliva (Istituto di Storia dell’Europa Mediterranea, Roma), Daniel Compère (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris III), Maria Eugenia Cadeddu (Istituto per il Lessico Intellettuale Europeo e Storia delle Idee, Roma), Agustí Alcoberro (Universitat de Barcelona and Museu d’Història de Barcelona), Kathryn Crameri (University of Sydney), Josep Maria Terricabras (Universitat de Girona), Adeline Rucquoi (Centre de Recherches Historiques, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris), Sosthène Onomo Abena (Université de Yaoundé II), Ndèye Anna Gaye (Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar), Fulvia Caruso (Università degli Studi di Pavia), Joan Josep Pujadas (Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona), Ugo Fabietti (Università degli Studi di Milano “Bicocca”), Graciela Spector Bitan (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) and Nasr Hajj (Université Mohammed V, Rabat). This plurality of voices, diversity of disciplines and variety of centres and research traditions ensures the meeting and discussions are rich. All of them, apart from exceptional cases (Nasr Hajj, Sosthène Onomo Abena and Josep Maria Terricabras), have culminated these reflections in the texts included here, all aiming to continue the reflection about social identities in an interdisciplinary view of social mobility.

Histories and Identities Josep Fontana Universitat Pompeu Fabra

The theme of identities is very important for historians, as these are a vital tool we use to understand why men and women act collectively. The first of the problems that we encounter, however, is that each of us lives associated with a whole series of elements that correspond to different networks of identity. Remember, if you like, the poem by Maria-Mercè Marçal: A l’atzar agraeixo tres dons: haver nascut dona, De classe baixa i nació oprimida. I el tèrbol atzur de ser tres voltes rebel. I thank luck for three dons: of having been born woman, Of low class and from oppressed nation. And the cloudy azure of being thrice a rebel.

As we can see, the writer claims three identities: those that correspond to gender, class and nation. However, we cannot ignore the last line where she proclaims herself, in function of these identities, “thrice a rebel”, which reminds us of an essential fact: that identity is not only an element of union, but also, and especially, of differentiation, of opposition. These three conditions of gender, class and nation are not the only ones that are used to group us together and to bring us into conflict. There are racial identities. Or ethnic, if you prefer another, less emotive, term. The identities of caste are close to this. This are still important in India, where the state of Uttar Pradesh, which has a population of 200 million, is dominated by a political force based on the predominance of the dalit, the lower caste.1 Then there are the religious identities, a factor that throughout history has always been a cause of clashes and violent deaths, and still are.

1

News about this in: “Touchable”, The Economist (22 October 2011), p. 67.

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However, what complicates everything even more is that these elements of identification are often presented in a confusing way. Let us talk about religion. However, what does religion mean? In the case of Islam, for example, religion also implies the political terrain, the concept of how a society should be organised. For example, it calls for legislation, the sharia, which enters into the fields of politics, economics and customs. In the case of Judaism there is, as we know, a significant element of racial identification. Moreover, in most cases, the authentically religious contents have been replaced by a set of moral and behavioural rules set by organised churches, as in Christianity, or by a body of authorised interpreters, as in Islam, that have established which texts in the doctrine are valid and the interpretations these have to be given, and have ended up establishing how a basic principle of belonging has been complemented with the conditions that have to be met to reach salvation. As Elaine Pagels has mentioned, referring to the origins of Christianity, at the end of the fourth century, some Christian leaders began to establish the acceptance of an determined set of doctrines and norms as a requirement for salvation, much less each individual’s acts, as Jesus had preached. Let us leave religion aside. It is too full of arguments that go beyond reason to be discussed objectively. Let us move on to identifications based on class and the nation, which are again not very clear. The problem regarding class, a term that arose to designate relations between groups involved in the processes of production and distribution of goods, is that this has become deformed, converted into a typology defined by the possession of wealth. Not that this is new. In 1602, Fernando Álvarez de Toledo said, “Three states are considered in the Republic: one of the rich, the other of the poor, and the other of those who have a moderate income with which to get by”. However, this typology does not express what was firstly meant to designate the notion of class, created to define solidarities, and especially those of the salaried workers, who used it to identify themselves and, at the same time, to oppose themselves to the other pole of this relation, the businessmen who obtained their work and paid compensation for it, who are traditionally qualified as bourgeois. However, what is bourgeois? According to the third edition of the Diccionario de la Real Academia Española, published in 1791, society is polarised between the caballero, defined as “the gentleman from qualified nobility” and the villano, who was “the neighbour or inhabitant from the commoners of some town or village, in contrast to the noble or gentleman”.

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As could be expected, neither bourgeoisie nor burgués appeared, although, curiously, burgés did, the latter being “[he] who belonged to the burgh or village and those born there”, which was clarified by the Latin equivalents added to this definition: “rusticus, paganus”. In other words, burgés meant almost the opposite of burgués.2 This modern concept arose from popular use in France in the late 18th century. The 1788 edition of the Dictionary of the French Academy has a definition of burgès as a “master” and clarifies that “the workers, talking about who they work for, tend to call him the burgès, whatever the quality of the persons who give them work”.3 This concept “of class” was thought up by French workers at the end of the Ancien Regime, at a time when the burgeois, for their part, defended a more globalised vision of society, englobing all those neither nobles nor churchmen, including themselves and their workers, in a joint “third estate”, that is in another static typology, this time related to the strata of society. The concept of class among the French workers was taken up by the economists and historians of the Restoration, then later by Marx, who added the nuances of accentuating the historicity and the polarising character of a relation. Then Marx used the French terms bourgeois and bourgeoisie, instead of the German bürgertum4, and would say that it was not he who discovered the classist character of society in his times and the role of the classes in history, but rather the French historians of the Restoration.5 I have no early Spanish examples of this perception of the bourgeoisie by their workers, but I do have that of the defenders of the Ancien 2 3 4

5

Diccionario de la lengua castellana compuesto por la Real Academia Española (Madrid: Ibarra, 1791). These notes are from the article: Guy Antonetti, “bourgeoisie”, Dictionnaire Napoléon, Jean Tulard, ed. (Paris: Fayard, 1987), p. 279. About the German Bürgertum and the special problems presented by the concepts of Bildungsbürgertum and Wirtschaftsbürgertum (Jürgen Kocka, “The European pattern and the German case”, Bourgeois society in nineteenth-century Europe, Jürgen Kocka, Allan Mitchell, eds. (Oxford-Providence: Berg, 1993), pp. 3–39). Those who confuse Marx’s contributions with the context of ideas that were widely accepted in his time should look carefully at this addition, which has not been given the attention it deserves: “what I have contributed is to: 1) demonstrate that the existence of classes is only linked to certain historical phases in the development of production (dass die Existenz der Klassen bloss an bestimmte historische Entwicklungsphasen der Produktion gebunden ist) Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Werke (Berlin: Dietz, 1967), vol. 28, p. 508.

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regime (the gentlemen, as the dictionary of the Spanish Real Academia called them), alarmed by the emergence of a group that had yet to acquire a name, but that concerned them given the importance they were winning. Thus, the members of the Audiència de Catalunya condemned in 1785 “the pride that money gives to the common people”, referring to the Barcelona cotton mill owners, while Campomanes condemned the system of modern factories in which “the artisans are mere labourers, separated from the work in the fields” and “the factory owner is a stroller who lives from the toil of others”. As if the feudal owners like him worked the land personally. With E.P. Thompson, we recuperated the original sense of a concept of class that he interprets as a dynamic and changing, historical, relation between human groups, as he wrote in the following words: By class I understand a historical phenomenon, unifying a number of disparate and seemingly unconnected events, both in the raw material of experience and in consciousness. I emphasise that it is an historical phenomenon. I do not see class as a “structure”, nor even as a “category”, but as something which in fact happens (and can be shown to have happened) in human relationships. More than this, the notion of class entails the notion of historical relationship. Like any other relationship, it is a fluency which evades analysis if we attempt to stop it dead at any given moment and anatomise its structure. (…) The relationship must always be embodied in real people and in a real context. Moreover, we cannot have two distinct classes, each with an independent being, and then bring them into relationship with each other. (…) And class happens when some men, as a result of common experiences (inherited or shared), feel and articulate the identity of their interests as between themselves, and as against other men whose interests are different from (and usually opposed to) theirs.6

To understand how this sentiment of class identity arose, we need to know the networks that related these men and women, and helped them to create a shared awareness, that did not derive only from collective action, for example in the unions, but rather from the forming of a culture through the centres where they gathered, the press they read, etc. An excellent study of the CNT shows us the importance, for explaining the militant activism, the existence of a common culture that was fed by libertarian literature, the press, the conferences, meetings and talks, of activities in the athenaeums, where there was usually a library and a theatre. In other words, the 6

Edward P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968), p. 9.

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fact that the activities of the CNT “came to influence all aspects of the social life of the working class”. An explanation that does not only serve to understand the cohesion of anarcho-syndicalism, but also of popular movements in Catalonia – republicanism, co-operativism, etc. – that were based around a shared culture as an element that serve to forge links in civil society.7 In contrast with this, we could say, historical vision of class, we find that most of the current social typologies are based on descriptive and static criteria (percentage of the wealth or income, nature of the work, etc.) and also establishes, a series of graduations that attenuate the differences with other groups. The bourgeoisie is divided between a “petite bourgeoisie”, differentiated from the haute; in the “working class” distinctions are made between blue-collar and white-collar workers, between skilled and unskilled workers, there is even talk of an “aristocracy of work”. The majority of the descriptions distinguish a group of the most rich, another of the poor and, between these, a wide spectrum de “middle classes” that break with the image of conflict associated with the idea of class. In the Unites States, where it has been usual to deny the very existence of classes, according to the latest surveys, 91 per cent of the population consider the selves to be part of the middle class, or perhaps better said, of “the middle classes”. Recent statistical studies distinguish a group of the rich who make up 10 per cent of the total population although, according to the figures for 2007, they own 71.5 per cent of the wealth; a middle class that would make up the mass of those who were between 50 and 90 percent in the ranking according to their wealth, who own 26.0 percent of the resources, and the 50 percent of the poorest who together own no more that 2.5 per cent of the total wealth. In fact, according to the latest data published by Crédit Suisse, this corresponds with a distribution of wealth on a world scale which gives following pyramid: the richest 8.7% owns 82 % of all the wealth, a middle class that includes 23.6 % of the population has 14.5% and 67.6% of the poorest only own 3.3 % of all the resources.8 7

8

Anna Monjo, Militants: participació i democràcia a la CNT als anys trenta (Barcelona: Laertes, 2003). For the forming of networks, see: Michael Savage, “Space, networks and class formation”, Social Class and Marxism: defences and challenges, Neville Kirk, ed. (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996), pp. 58–86. David F. Ruccio, “The global wealth pyramid”, Real-World Economics Review Blog (28 October 2011).

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That this typology does not envisage poverty as a temporary situation, but rather as a reflection of a “natural” inferiority, either biological or cultural, explains the efforts currently being made in the United States to deny the poorest the right to vote. On 1st September 2011, Matthew Vadum wrote in “American Thinker” that, “registering the poor so they vote is anti-American”: it is profoundly antisocial and anti-American to give power to the non-productive sectors of the population for them to destroy the country.9 There are currently 12 states that have passed laws with measures restricting voting rights (another 26 are studying this), the most important of which is the requirement of an voter identity card which requires the potential voter to present such documents as a driving licence or bank account details. Over 10 per cent of north-American citizens do not posses this kind of documents: the old, the poor, members of ethnic minorities, etc. This includes 18 per cent of young voters and 25 per cent of Afro-Americans.10 A recent study reveals that five million North Americans, the vast majority members of the groups who tend to support the Democrats, could be denied a vote in 2012. This is a figure larger than the winning margin in two of the last three presidential elections.11 Social inequality has grown even greater as a consequence de la crisis that began in 2008, which has accentuated the differences in North American society: between December 2007 and June 2009, in full crisis, average family income fell by 3.2 per cent. However, from June 2009, when the recession was officially declared over, to June 2011, income has dropped by even more, 6.7 per cent.12 According to the CIA Factbook, the United States is nowadays a more unequal society than Pakistan, Ethiopia or Kazakhstan. It was the multi-millionaire Warren Buffett who had the lucidity to state some years ago, “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning”.13 However, this is a rare recognition by a singular character. The reality is more complex: it is now 9 10 11 12 13

Matthew Vadum, “Registering the poor to vote is un-American”, American Thinker (1 September 2011). Ari Berman, “The GOP war on voting”, Rolling Stone (30 August 2011). Jorge Rivas, “Report: New restrictive voting rules could hurt five million Americans”, Truthout (5 October 2011). Robert Pear, “Recession officially over, U.S. incomes kept falling”, New York Times (9 October 2011). Ben Stein, “In class warfare, guess which class is winning”, New York Times (26 November 2008).

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the right that accuses those below of “class war”, unearthing a lexis that was prohibited during the Cold War.14 Using it, however, asymmetrically; as Peter Radford states, “When the poor push back it is class warfare, but when the rich scarf up billions it isn’t”.15 The most complex problem presented by the kind of identities that interest the historian especially is, however, the one that refers to the nation; an inter-classist identity, vertical, which contrasts with the horizontal solidarity of class. The first factor of confusion derives from the fact that the term is normally used to designate two different realities: the nation-states or national states, defined by possession of a territory and the authority of a centralised government, and the nation, understood as an element of cultural community, with no need for a territorial base, but which is rather even kept alive by the diasporas. The relation between these two phenomena is complex. The first of the difficulties lies right in the differentiation between “state” and “nation. This confusion can be seen in the name of the United Nations Organisation itself, which is, in fact, an organisation states and not nations, and whose only full members are 193 states. The CIA Factbook, more ambiguously states that there are 267 “countries, dependent areas and other entities”, although when dealing with such questions as international trade, this list is restricted to 196 entities. Not 193, but not 267 either. A recently created “International Consultative Committee for the Protection of Indigenous Peoples in Situation of Isolation” claims that there are nowadays over 120 indigenous peoples, or segments of peoples in Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay and Venezuela. These peoples live in isolation, without social contact and who, as the committee states, “voluntarily exercise their right to self-determination and to continue living on their lands according to their habitual lifestyles, and refuse contact with the society that surrounds them”. There are also peoples who do not live in isolation, but within nation-states that do not recognise them as an entity, like the Mapuche in Chile or the Awà in Colombia, among others. Then there is still the case of those peoples that not only lack a state, but also do not want to have one. These would include the ones that some researchers claim that live in the so-called Zomia, the area of Asia between Tibet, Laos and North Vietnam where, according to James C. Scott, there 14 15

Henry A. Giroux, “Got class warfare? Occupy Wall Street now!”, Truthout (6 October 2011). Peter Radford, “Why is it? Wages, profits, and civil unrest”, Real-World Economics Review Blog (3 October 2011).

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are a series of stateless peoples, which would appear to demonstrate that the existence of a state is not a natural necessity of human societies.16 The nation-state has been, essentially, a tool for social domination. I quote Thomas Bender: History – and especially that which is taught in schools – contributed powerfully to the acceptance of the nation in the 19th and 20th centuries. It became the central nucleus of civic education in schools and other institutions dedicated to converting the peasants, immigrants and people from the provinces into national citizens. This category of citizenship is supposed to dominate over all other forms of identity. The regional, linguistic, ethnic, class or religious solidarities or any other form of greater or lesser connexions, had to be de subordinated to the national identity. In contrast, the modern nation-state promised to protect its citizens both at home and abroad. An artefact that indicates both the importance of the frontiers and the promise of protection is the passport: a 19th-century invention”.17 Among all the aberrations that we have attributed to modernity, making it responsible for the greater part of contemporary evils, from the dictatorships of one type or another to the systematic massacres, there is one that has caused and is still nowadays causing millions of deaths, and that we seem to have ignored. I am referring to the forcible imposition of the nation-state. Multi-national communities were normal in many parts of the world, for example, in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. The Western European models of ethnic homogenisation were considered to be the path to political modernity. As applied since the end of the First World War l, these have led to almost a hundred years of massacres and ethnic cleansing, the most habitual way to create homogenous nation-states on a basis that could, and should, have served to constitute multi-national states where the different groups lived together in peace. Kate Brown explains the history of a frontier area between Russia and Poland where, around 1925, Poles, Germans, Jews, Ukrainian and Russians lived together. Over the following thirty years, attempts were made successively by the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Polish nationalists and Ukrainian nationalists to were homogenise them, with the result that the original community was destroyed.18 16 17 18

James C. Scott, The Art of not Being Governed. An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009). Thomas Bender, A Nation among Nations. America’s Place in World History (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006). Kate Brown, A biography of no place. From ethnic borderland to Soviet heartland (Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press, 2004).

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The series of ethnic cleansing processes that took place at the end of the Second World War, with the approval of the powers who met at Potsdam (Germans forced out of Poland and Czechoslovakia, Ukrainians persecuted in Poland, Jews who had survived the holocaust and were not accepted on their return) is calculated to have cost two millions lives. To this, we must add the deaths in the 1990s as a consequence of the disintegration of Yugoslavia.19 However, while the “ethnic cleansing” that led to the creation of nation states has been bloody for Eastern Europe and the Balkans, the problem has been even more serious in the Africa that became independent after 1960. The irrational delimitation of the colonial frontiers, which it was wished to maintain on winning independence, would lead to a sequence of conflicts that explain why it could be said of that in Africa “the state is virtually at war with its population and has murdered 15 million human beings in Biafra, Rwanda, Darfur, South Sudan, Guinea-Bissau, the Congo, Angola, the Ivory Coast and almost everywhere between 1966 and 2011. In Africa, the state is a genocidal entity”.20 The nation-state arose from the failure of the absolute monarchies of the 18th and 19th centuries, which were transformed into modern states, based in theory on suffrage, with the aim of maintaining social stability. As Burbank and Cooper have written, “nationalism arose as an ideology to defend unequal social orders, but only when the imperial structures had shown themselves incapable of resolving the conflicts”.21 This was a question, as Anatol Liven states, of combating the social movements that expressed horizontal interests, of class, mobilising the inter-classist support of the masses in the name of a kind of nationalism whose basic element of cohesion was the struggle against internal and external enemies.22 However, the new states jealously maintained the borders they had inherited from absolutism, without bothering to ask their subjects, who it 19

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Philip Ther, Ana Siljak, eds., Redrawing Nations. Ethnic Cleansing in East-central Europe, 1944–1948 (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001); Ben Shephard, The Long Road Home. The Aftermath of the Second World War (London: The Bodley Head, 2010); Robert Bideleux, Ian Jeffries, The Balkans. A Post-Communist History (London: Routledge, 2007). Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, “The African state, genocide and the exigency of AFRICOM”, Pambazuka News, 545 (18 August 2011). Jane Burbank, Frederick Cooper, Imperios (Barcelona: Crítica, 2011), p. 337. Anatol Lieven, America Right or Wrong. An anatomy of American nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 28.

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was supposed had become free citizens, whether they wanted to form part of this new entity, theoretically based on a voluntary acceptance that was meant to replace the forced dependence on a monarch who derived their authority from God. As these subjects generally belonged to diverse cultures and languages (in Louis XIV’s France, for example, only a third of the population spoke French as their mother tongue23) they were “nationalised” linguistically being obliged to learn the official language of the state and fighting the survival of the other. It should be remembered that before the 19th century a large proportion of the official languages adopted by European states did not exist in the form we know them in. The Hungarian elites used Latin as a language of political expression in the diet until well into the 19th century. Norway still lives with two linguistic variants accepted simultaneously24 and the standard Albanian was not approved until 1972. Pakistan made the mistake of wanting to impose Urdu on the population who spoke Bengali, a language nowadays used by over 200 million people, and this was one of the causes of the secession of Bangladesh. India, in contrast, recognises 23 different national languages. In the case of Catalonia, a nation without a state, the ruling classes had abandoned the country’s own language, and we should not take too much notice of the recovery in the 19th-century romantic poetry, as the poets who created the Floral Games, used Castilian in the exchange of letters between them and spoke it at home. If the language has survived, it has been due mainly to the loyalty of the popular classes. In the times of the War of the Spanish Succession, at the beginning of the 18th century, the sense of a Catalan identity was not based on the language, but rather on an awareness of common rights and freedoms: what was known as “the laws of the land”. The other element of awareness of the nation-states is the invention of a history constructed as a biography of the “motherland”, as the depictions of the homeland are always feminine and maternal. The nation-states impose a teaching of history that is instilled at school, and then reinforced by a range of civil ceremonies and the patriotic education of commemorations, monuments and names of public places. The streets and squares, which in the old cities from before the nation-state had name related 23 24

Pierre Goubert, Le siècle de Louis XIV (Paris: Editions de Falloix, 1996), p. 189. Anne-Marie Thiesse, La création des identités nationales. Europe XVIIIe-XXe siècle (Paris: Seuil, 2001), pp. 73–76.

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especially to the trades of those who lived and worked there, then became elements of commemoration. The names of the streets, squares, bridges and monuments of a city like Paris, for example, are like a sort of map of the official version of the history of France, with a special dedication the Napoleonic epics. In central London, Trafalgar Square simultaneously evokes the defence against the French and Spanish enemies, and the naval foundations of an empire that aspired to rule the world. In Barcelona, the gridiron of streets in the Eixample district mixes the names of old Catalan patriots with those of battles remembered popularly, and thus susceptible to provoke emotions, like Lepanto, Bruc, Bailén, Wad Ras. The fact that these names simultaneously commemorate Catalan heroes and Spanish battles is another demonstration of the ambiguity and indefinition of those who thought them up. The national history taught in schools is not generally that of a nation but rather of a “nationalised” state, set in terms that completely exclude any alternative vision, and which is used as a basis for official patriotism. That is why, for example, that only the metropolis had history. The colonial lands were normally defined as “countries without history”, that only enter this by way of the discoverers, the colonisers or conquerors (in other words, through the same process that led them to become colonies). Thus, if they lack history, then they cannot have nationalism. Doctor John Warnock, who spent from 1895 to 1923 in an important official post in Egypt, diagnosed Egyptian nationalism as “an infectious mental disorder”.25 A singular observation from a Briton, a member of the first country to create a nation-state, in the 18th century. This was between 1740 and 1745, in a climate of international war that led to confirming Great Britain as a great power in the Seven Years’ War, that popularised “God save the King”, which was in fact the first European national anthem, and when “Rule Britannia” by the Scot James Thomson was popularised. This anthem linked British control of the seas with the preservation of the Britons’ freedom.26 25

26

Bernard Porter, “Strew the path with flowers”, London Review of Books (4 March 2004), p. 33, in a review of James Mills’ book: James H. Mills, Cannabis Britannica (Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). Linda Colley, Britons. Forging the nation, 1707–1837 (London: Pimlico, 1994), p. 11 and pp. 43–44. E.P. Thompson has modified Colley’s excessively complacent view, showing that, although there was a wave of national euphoria during the Seven Year’s War, that persisted until the North-American crisis, the divisions lasted in a society

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This invention of a history begins with “the designation of the ancestors” chosen to do the imaginary genealogy of the community.27 For example, the Greeks and Romanians have invented direct origins from ancient peoples who did not exist beyond their imagination. When Mustapha Kemal started the Turkish nation, after the failure of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War, the traditional history of the Empire was replaced by a brand new history of a Turkish nation that had just been invented. That same happened to a whole series of new states that arose from the disintegration of the USSR. Nor was it easy to create the new national histories of the American countries that won their independence from Spain. These had to link colonial emancipation with a past of indigenous peoples who had not even participated in the fight for independence, nor felt themselves integrated into the newly-minted states. The aim of the school is to inculcate patriotic sentiments through a history understood as a kind of biography of the homeland and not as a critical instrument for understanding the students’ social surroundings. As Parenti wrote, “To say that the schools fail to develop a well-informed citizenship, critically mentalised and democratic means forgetting that the schools have never had this aim. Their mission is to produce loyal subjects who do not place the existing social order in doubt”.28 The role of patriotism is fundamental for this purpose. That explains the vigilance and censorship that governments exercise over this branch of education. We need only remember the case of Mrs. Thatcher, promoted a “patriotic” reform of history teaching, that was so clearly defined in her speech in the House of Commons, where she said, “Instead of teaching generalisations and great themes, why do we not return to the good old times when one learned the names of the kings of England, battles and all the glorious events from our past off by heart?”29 Other examples include the textbook history wars in Japan nowadays,

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that underwent constant movements and revolts. Christopher Harvie also placed these theses in doubt in “Uncool Britannia. Linda Colley’s Britons reconsidered”, Times Literary Supplement (8 January 1999), p.12. Anne-Marie Thiesse, La création des identités nationales…, p. 21. Michael Parenti, La historia como misterio (Hondarribia: Hiru, 2003), p. 48. Quoted from the Spanish version in: Pilar Maestro, “El modelo de las historias generales y la enseñanza de la historia”, Usos públicos de la historia, Juan José Carreras, Carlos Forcadell, eds. (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2003), p. 219. About these questions it is worth referring to the three volumes, edited by: Raphael Samuel, Patriotism: The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity (London: Routledge, 1989).

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where a so-called “Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform” proposes to “inculcate a sense of pride in our nation’s history”, denying the aberrations committed during the Second World War30 or Italy, where the right-wing MPs from Berlusconi’s party have defended the positive recuperation of the record of Fascism.31 A history is always the genealogy of a determined social project, and not the objective biography of a human community. In this sense, any community has as many possible histories as it has projects for the future. Consequently, it should not surprise us that when a group does not feel represented by the kind of history that they feel is being imposed on them, it reacts by considering an alternative, that can be global on occasions, like the history of the United States by Howard Zinn or that of Great Britain by Edward Vallance,32 or referring to nations that differ from those that hold the central power of the state. We are now at a time when the outlooks that centred everything in the nations-state are in crisis. From the point of view of history, we are living through the rise of a “world history” that is claimed to be “transregional, trans-national and trans-cultural”. It is the result of the need to adapt to a wider world not served by that sort of miscellany of national histories organised with a Eurocentric criterion that we called “universal history”. This is a phenomenon parallel to the growing importance of interconnections, a phenomenon that goes far beyond the cliché of globalisation. In what is aimed to be a document to identify the future directions in the terrain of international relations, two north-American soldiers who signed simply as Y, with the clearly exaggerated pretension of recording that founding document of the Cold War that George Kennan signed with an X, tell us, “In the second half of the 20th century, a new internationalist awareness began to dominate political thought. This notion of communities of nations and regions was reinforced by globalisation. However, the frontierless nature of Internet, and the proliferation of organisations 30

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John W. Dower, Embracing defeat. Japan in the wake of Wold War II (New York: Norton, 1999), pp. 246–251 (literal quote on p. 249); Paul J. Bailey, Postwar Japan. 1945 to the present (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), pp. 49, 81–82, 155–160; Gavan McCormack, “Japan’s uncomfortable past”, History today, 48/4 (1998), pp. 5–7; Rikki Kersten, “Coming to terms with the past: Japan”, History today, 54/3 (2004), pp. 20–22. Gabriele Turi, “Una storia italiana”, Passato e presente, 21/59 (2003), pp. 89–98. Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (New York: Harper Perennial, 1995); Edward Vallance, A Radical History of Britain (London: Little Brown, 2009).

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and ideologies separate from of the state has led to a new appreciation of the interconnected nature of the actual strategic ecosystem. In this “New World Order” the convergence of interests creates interdependencies”.33 However, when they signed this, shall we say ‘internationalist’, manifesto at the beginning of that same year, they almost certainly failed to envisage the other interconnections occurring at this moment among the young generations, those who do not accept the future that is being prepared for them by the actual established order, in whose service and for whose preservation they wrote this document. Militants of the Arab Springs, that in many places have ended up becoming autumns of unrest, young rebels in sub-Saharan Africa, the Spanish indignados and North-American occupiers of Wall Street share many things. In May of this year, a group of “Young Pan-African revolutionaries” in Senegal reflected about what all these revolts that were occurring almost simultaneously in Africa, Europe and Latin America had in common. They reached the conclusion that the fundamental element was the common rejection of the neo-liberal canon that it is impossible to transform society; that, as Mrs. Thatcher said, there is no alternative.34 What kind of identity would this common sentiment represent, that is not really either class or nationality? This is a situation that that should remind us of the historic character–in the sense of changing, as determined by various social and cultural factors – of the networks of identities we move in, and should prepare us to face the future with a mind open to the creation of new interpretative models and new concepts better to reflect the realities that are arising, instead of conforming, as so often do those who deal with nationalism, with moulding the reality to the old schemes of Anthony Smith, Gellner, Hroch and company. A changing world, that will generate new identities, needs a mind ready to look at the society we live in through other eyes.

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Mr. Y (Captain Wayne Porter and Colonel Mark Mykleby), A National Strategic Narrative (Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center, 2011), p. 11. Guy Marius Sagna, “An African response to ‘There is no alternative’: revolutions from Tunis to Ouagadougou”, Pambazuka News, 542 (27 July 2011).

The Lineage of Hybrid Identity Andrew Vincent Cardiff University

Introduction: Language and Culture The roots of the idea of hybrid identity can be found in humanity’s continuing fascination with its own nature. Hybridity though relates very specifically to the connection between culture and identity. This latter linkage has, comparatively, a much shorter history. The heritage of this latter connection dates approximately from the late eighteenth century in European thinking. This is particularly the case via the speculations on language in writers such as Jean Jacques Rousseau, J.G. Fichte, Johann Peter Süssmilch and Gottfried Herder. These writers, amongst others, identified language with culture. Language was seen as integral to the conscious activity and development of all human beings. Language, particularly for writers such as Herder, did not just record or designate external objects, but conversely had a constitutive role. Humans both make and were made within language. Humans perceived nature through the expressive medium of speech.1 Language, as developed human speech, was also viewed as the essential medium of human freedom, reflecting the totality of human energies. The human capacity for self-awareness was thus seen to be formed in language. Further, for Herder, language was built out of sense impressions. Sense impressions of one’s locality formed the basis of language itself. It followed that local conditions – geography, climate and traditions of a community – generated differing linguistic responses. As languages developed in different settings, so also did different cultures. Yet each language formed the essential historical continuity of a community. In Herder the 1

Frederick M. Barnard, “Introduction”, J.G. Herder on Social and Political Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), p. 119; see also: Hans Aarsleff, From Locke to Saussure: Essays on the Study of Language and Intellectual History (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1992), p. 151.

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notion of cultural identity was linked decisively with the concept of the Volk. In summary, human identity was rooted in cultures, cultures were expressed in languages, languages reflected the particular qualities of localities, therefore human identities were split into separate language groups. Human beings sense of themselves, their self-consciousness, their sense of freedom, were all reflected through the medium of particular linguistic cultures, cultures denoted as distinct Volk. In other words, each Volk forms a distinct language community, which was not biological or racial, but rather a “cultural continuum”.2 For Herder, it was part of the immense richness of the world that we find such individually distinct cultures.

1. Culture, Volk and Nation The surge of interest in folk art, poetry and music, from the mid to later nineteenth century, had its roots in the same cultural soil. This interest entered deeply into the educational curricula, festivals, and even the monuments of nineteenth century states.3 Each culture was seen to possess a unique cultural spirit, expressed in language. Many scholars of the time, committed to these ideas, dedicated themselves to the task of uncovering the apparent antiquity of a culture within language and folklore (hence the popular disciplinary growth of etymology and lexicography in the nineteenth century). This whole discourse resonated with the nineteenth century understanding of nationalism. It is hardly surprising in this context that Herder, in particular, is often seen as founding figure of nationalist thought. Important consequences flow from the “centrality of culture argument”: to deny recognition to a culture (national in this case) was, by inference, to deny the identity of human beings. This, in turn, was to reject the localised (but nonetheless deeply felt) understanding of freedom and self-consciousness. In effect, the failure to acknowledge a culture was a failure to respect the dignity and autonomy of the human beings within that locality. Denial of cultural recognition was therefore a form of oppression. 2 3

Frederick M. Barnard, “Introduction…”, p. 31. John Christopher Eade, Romantic Nationalism in Europe (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1983).

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Each culture had a fundamental right to exist. This latter demand was configured in the early twentieth century as the “right of self-determination”. This latter argument is often filtered, in twentieth century discussion, through the concept of legal sovereignty, however the argument has other important cultural components which can be missed. The logic of the above argument implies: first, that culture is intimately linked with identity; second, denying recognition to an individual culture is a form of oppression. It rejects the identity, freedom and individuality of national units and fails to acknowledge their right of self-determination. Third, the fact that denial of recognition entails oppression also informs us, by default, of the necessary requirement of respect for cultures. There is a direct parallel here in the manner that respect is required for autonomous human persons. Respecting a person entails respecting that which constitutes their personhood, namely, their national culture.

2. The Internal Fragmentation of National Cultures The above understanding of national culture and its significance, although immensely influential to the present day, has been subject to deep pressures. A number of questions arose around the whole issue of national culture. For example, did it even exist? Could there actually be a unified culture in any modern societies? In most modern states, as a simple matter of empirical fact, there are an array of social practices, belief groups, associations and institutions which are constitutive of human identity. This entails that the factors that shape human beings must come from a diversity of directions. This is what Michael Walzer has called the idea of the divided self.4 There is therefore no all-encompassing “national culture”. Humans are far more complicated and mixed than can be covered in any singular notion of national culture. The writings of the political theorist Iris Marion Young, in the late 1990s, took this sense of complexity another step. She accepted the nationalist logic that culture was constitutive of human identity. However “affinity groups” – as she referred to cultural 4

Michael Walzer, Thick and Thin: Moral Arguments at Home and Abroad (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), pp. 85–86.

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groups – were in fact multiple and incredibly diverse within all states. In this context, she saw complex cultural difference within all states. Young’s more general argument here is that many cultural groups in contemporary states – because they are different – are frequently marginalised, subjected to violence or simply ignored. Thus, she sought “to show how … a denial of difference contributes to social group oppression, and to argue for a politics that recognises rather than represses difference”.5 She therefore suggested that we should respect the identity of all oppressed groups, who are disadvantaged in the political process. Emancipation, for groups, would arise therefore through genuine recognition of difference and the realization of groups rights. National culture would be seen here as another mode of oppression. The upshot of this argument is that culture is still seen to be constitutive of identity and a denial of recognition is still seen to oppress, however a critical shift had been made. It was no longer a national culture which was crucial, rather cultural disintegration had taken place. Young’s argument is simply taken here as emblematic of a much broader movement in the 1980s and 1990s. This movement took on the label of “multiculturalism”. Multiculturalism uses the basic “culturalist” logic of earlier nationalist or Völkisch argument, but then fragments it within state boundaries. In this case it frequently stands opposed to nationalist culture as form of unjust oppression.

3. Why Multiculturalism? The 1990s saw the end of the cold war, the opening up of global markets and societies, considerable growth of international population movement, acceleration of trade, communication and capital flows across the globe, coupled with the rediscovery of older idiosyncratic national, ethnic and religious affiliations. The fortuitous combination of globalizing forces and the mixing of populations, together with the renewed interest in culture, has underpinned a more general, if diffuse, return of interest in culture and 5

Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (New Jersey: Princeton University Press), p. 10.

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identity. This interest has identified (as in Young above) multiple cultures within states. Yet, one important point to mention here is that it is far from clear that multiculturalism is a consistent or coherent phenomenon. Whether the more recent European experience has anything to learn from, or to teach, North American, New Zealand or Australian forms, remains unclear. As Homi Bhabha has remarked on multiculturalism, it is a “portmanteau term for anything from minority discourse to postcolonial critique”.6 Multiculturalism is not alone here, there have been a constellation of cognate terms inhabiting this domain. One problem is that each term – whether it be difference theory, transnationalism, polyethnicity or multiculturalism – have become rallying points for heated debate. Usually more heat than light is generated by such debates since there is little clarity in terminology.

4. The Colonial Face of Cultural Fragmentation There is one other important offshoot of the multicultural movement. The period 1950–1980 was one of the closing of older European empires. Both internally, within older colonial states, and externally, from within the formerly colonised societies, one finds repeatedly the idea that recovery of the occluded culture is the master “theme”. Thus, not only has the argument on cultural fragmentation generated a passionate literary (and policy-related focus) on multiculturalism within states, it has also generated, by default, an intense series of related debates on what might be called externalized difference in the former colonised states. There are – as Bhabha noted above – strong intellectual affinities between external cultural differences and the internal multi-cultural themes. The core external argument is that colonial hegemony suppressed indigenous cultures. This was not just an outward suppression, but also an inward one, determining modes of thought, self-awareness and evaluative criteria. This form of cerebral hegemony carried on after material decolonisation. Thus, the argument maintains the post-colonial world saw 6

Homi Bhabha, “Cultures in Between”, Multicultural State: Rethinking Difference and Identity, David Bennett ed. (London: Routledge, 1998), p. 31.

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a continuance of a veiled ideological hegemony. Consequently, there developed a novel branch of “cultural” recovery – postcolonial theory. This has been defined as a “theoretical resistance to the mystifying amnesia of the colonial aftermath… a disciplinary project devoted to the academic task of revisiting, remembering and, crucially, interrogating the colonial past”.7 Postcolonial theory is concerned with the power that is embedded in texts and discourse. The locus classicus example is Edward Said’s idea of “oriental discourse”. Colonialism therefore represents a textual and epistemological domination. As a result postcolonial theory sees itself as the negative resistance to the colonial mentality and a recovery of the occluded culture. In summary, the first world of Western societies, the ex-colonial powers, are seen to dominate the “cultural identity” of the former colonies. An attempt is therefore made to undermine the cultural identity foisted by the former colonizers. For Gyan Prakash, this “requires the rejection of those modes of thinking which configure the third world in such irreducible essences as religiosity, underdevelopment, poverty, nationhood, non-Westerness”.8 For Prakash, postcolonial theory wishes to “undo the Eurocentrism produced by the institution of the West’s trajectory, its appropriation of the other as History.”9

5. Postcolonialism as Neo-Essentialism There are problems with the postcolonial position. First, there is tendency to “essentialize” cultures. The culture – that usually dominates – is very imprecisely described as Eurocentric or Western. This is a massive conceptual blunder which tells us little or nothing. Further, the apparently occluded pre-colonial cultures remain totally inchoate. This postcolonial argument is put together with breathtaking legerdemain. Edward Said’s 7 8 9

Leela Gandhi, Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998), p. 4. Gyan Prakash, Bounded Histories: Genealogies of Labour Servitude in Colonial India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 384. Gyan Prakash, Contesting Power (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), p. 8

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and subaltern work, thus commit the opposite error of the colonial writings they criticize (namely those writings that “essentialize” the Orient). They assume an essential Occident, which a moment of thought will tell one is farcical. It is hard enough to make any sense of a national culture as a meaningful concept, let alone a generalisation such as Eurocentric culture. A second problem concerns the attempt to valorise “cultural difference” – which has become a somewhat dreary mantra within cultural studies. One of the problems postcolonial writers encounter, is that their rediscovery of the subaltern or suppressed voice is surreptitiously cast in terms of a familiar vocabulary of valuing the particular (nation, culture, ethnicity and the like). As one commentator notes here, “nationalism, more specifically exemplified by the argument of the subaltern studies scholars of India… is an ideological humanism engendered from colonial discourse”.10 The notion of rediscovering a subaltern, pre-colonial identity, reeks of Herderian, romantic and communitarian terminology. It exoticizes the local. The West (whatever that implies) has no patent on this language. However, it is embarrassingly obvious that this language does exist within European theorizing. The recovery of occluded histories of subaltern cultures is expressed through the academicized vocabulary of communitarian, nationalist or neo-Marxian theory. Prioritizing national culture is thus not an answer to colonial discourse. It is rather a reaffirmation of it.

6. The Elusive Mestizo With the growth of the globalization many have noted the considerable acceleration of an interdependence amongst humans, which has geographically compressed the world. There has been a blending of the histories of colonizers and colonized in terms of processes of emigration, demographic movement, diasporas and economic globalization. In this context, to search for pure essentialist cultures (occidental or oriental) becomes an increasingly futile exercise. It is in this context that we see the rise of the concept of cultural hybridity. 10

Pheng Cheah, Cosmopolitics (Minneapolis-London: University of Minnesota, 1998), p. 21.

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Hybridity is one important aspect of, for example, Homi Bhabha’s idiosyncratic postcolonial writings. Bhabha maintains, for example, that the “postcolonial perspective forces a recognition of the more complex cultural and political boundaries that exist on the cusp of those often opposed political spheres”.11 The colonial mentality, in Bhabha’s view, is more incoherent and ambivalent than many postcolonial critics will acknowledge. It is far simpler intellectually to posit a unified colonial perspective, exemplifying say Eurocentrism or Westcentrism, than to do the really hard work and to recognize significant multifaceted cultural differences and interweaving within that perspective. Part of that internal difference is uniquely explained by the interlacing of colonized and colonizers’ perspectives. This is the distinctive insight of hybridism. Consequently, for Bhabha, colonial identity “lies between colonized and colonizer. It is an ambivalent identification containing both fear and desire”.12 Hybridity therefore represents the blending and complex overlap and intermingling between cultural perspectives. Bhabha, in effect, tries to “problematize the authority of colonial discourse”, denying its discreteness. The key theme here is therefore a more nuanced interweaving between colonizer and colonized. There is a quite unexpected logic at work in this argument. Cultural difference appears often in the same – often postcolonial – context as hybridity. Thus, a self-conscious valorising of cultural difference might appear, prima facie, to be linked with hybridity. However, there are two deep-rooted internal problems with this argument. First, hybridity, per se, actually undermines all claims for cultural distinctness. It is not possible, logically, to hold that all identity (particularly of colonizers and ex-colonial peoples) are indissolubly mixed and hybrid, and then try to maintain an argument for purity or occluded cultural identity. There is no occluded culture to be found anywhere. Second, to try to uphold the cultural difference, it is necessary to revalorize the despised (apparently) Eurocentric language of cultural nationalism. This again is an unsound trajectory for postcolonial argument. Hybridity undermines claims to discrete cultures. All cultures are messy. Further, it suggests that “if we view culture as something constructed by discourses… then the subject of culture becomes the site of 11 12

Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 175. Peter Childs, An Introduction to Post-Colonial Theory (London-New York: Prentice Hall-Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1997), p. 125.

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permanent contestation”. This argument is favoured by exponents of hybridity because it implies the continual possibility for subversion.13 Cultural identity to such theorists only exists in contested discourses. Culture is contingent and always the temporary result of complex negotiations within discourse. This is what the anthropologist James Clifford referred to as the “predicament of culture”, namely, the fluid and negotiated character of cultural identity.14

Conclusion One of the key concepts that has been invoked frequently in argument surrounding the local and particular has been culture. Culture in turn has been linked to identity. The basic pattern of such argument is that communities are characterized by a culture. That is to say, culture marks out the apparent unity of a community. It can also form the root to the identity of individuals within the community. However, the nature of the communities has changed markedly. There are nationalist, multicultural, ethnic and like, and little or no agreement amongst such categories. In fact, there is often mutual condemnation. Into this contemporary melee enters hybridity. In effect, it undermines all the other categories by seeing culture as always contingent, mixed, impure and continuously contested. However some critics remain suspicious of hybridity theory itself, seeing it as confined to a “metropolitan migrant group”. The migrant metropolitans who value this hybridity are, in fact, a limited elite group of academics who travel, try to find common norms in the midst of cultural differences and write about their nomadism. These are the ones who construct postcolonial theories and the ethnographic material. They are the cultivators of intellectual fashions. There is, in other words, something autobiographical and self-referential about such hybrid theories. It is not wholly surprising in this context that culture and cultural mutability become the central themes, not so much of reality, as of the migratory preoccupations of these academics. Culture (and its mutability) become bywords 13 14

Pheng Cheah, Cosmopolitics…, p. 293. James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture (Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press, 1988).

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for a certain freedom from national traditions. To be intellectual today is to be, de riguer, “transnational”, even if you earn a living from making an intellectual case for cultural particularity.15 Yet, how many humans travel in this relaxed and reflective manner, sensing their own hybridity? Very few one suspects.

15

Bruce Robbins, “Comparative Cosmopolitanism”, Cosmopolitics…, p. 248. This also leads to an unease with writers such as Salman Rushdie, V.S. Naipul, Edward Said and Homi Bhabha who are seen as metropolitan academic cosmopolitans, trading on their “apparent” exile and reflecting on the postcolonial nations for rapt European audiences.

Hybridization, Transculturation, and Translation. Europe through the Lens of Latin America Christiane Stallaert University of Antwerp – Catholic University of Leuven

Una lucha de fronteras / A Struggle of Borders Because I, a mestiza, Continually walk out of one culture And into another, Because I am in all cultures at the same time, Alma entre dos mundos, tres, cuatro, me zumba la cabeza con lo contradictorio. Estoy norteada por todas las voces que me hablan Simultáneamente. Anzaldúa, Borderlands / La Frontera. The new mestiza1

Introduction It is commonplace to consider Latin America as “the other West” and to analyze this continent’s history and reality under the Eurocentric lens of a process of “Westernization”. In a compilation of essays edited by Miguel Angel Centeno and Fernando López-Alves under the title of The Other Mirror. Grand Theory through the Lens of Latin America this vision is inverted to analyze and critically rethink the grand theories of Social

1

Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa, Borderlands / La Frontera. The new mestiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987), p. 77.

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Sciences from a Latin American reality.2 Starting with the confirmation that in recent decades references to Latin America in the most influential academic publications on Social and Political Sciences are few and far between, the editors seek to encourage dialogue between the Social Sciences and Latin American Studies in order to examine what Latin America can contribute to the grand theories. Through this exercise it was ascertained that when the latter are placed in front of the Latin American mirror new facets are revealed which encourage innovative readings of the classic theories devised in Europe. According to the editors of this work the interest of this exercise goes beyond the strictly academic, in that the new vision of the world it reveals to us influences the way in which we interact with the world.

1. Europe through the Lens of Latin America It is clear today, in the early years of the 21st Century, that Europe needs to rethink itself in terms of the social, the cultural and identity. The profound demographic transformation brought about by the presence of inhabitants of immigrant origin is a challenge facing the major European cities. Although the ideal of the homogenous nation characteristic of the Modern Age was never more than a Utopia, the situation in which Europe finds itself today is a challenge for the Social Sciences and their traditionally Eurocentric reference framework. We can ask ourselves how, in times of globalization, we should study and interpret a European culture that is currently engaged in an intense process of “hybridization” with part of its population entering and leaving modernity. This appears to be the right moment to proceed to a critical review of the concept of “hybridization” as defined by the Argentinean Néstor García Canclini in his work Hybrid Cultures. Strategies for entering and leaving modernity: Hybridization, as a process of intersection and transaction, is what makes it possible for multicultural reality to avoid tendencies toward segregation and to become cross-cultural reality. Policies of hybridization can serve to work democratically with 2

Miguel Ángel Centeno, Fernando López-Alves, The Other Mirror: Grand Theory through the Lens of Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).

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differences, so that history is not reduced to wars between cultures, as Samuel Huntington imagines it. We can choose to live in a state of war or in a state of hybridization.3

Following Miguel Angel Centeno and Fernando López-Alves, we propose to invert the traditional World System paradigm with Latin America at the periphery and the West at the centre, and to rethink processes of mestizaje in today’s Europe from Latin America. Our analysis has the backdrop of the multicultural European society of the 21st Century urgently in need of viable alternatives to the binary schemes of classification characteristic of modern analytical thought.4 Departing from Canclini’s definition of the concept of “hybridization”, in this paper we will highlight, by means of some seminal ideas, the innovative potential for Europe represented by the Latin American perspective on two related concepts, namely: transculturation and translation. It is obvious that, with regard to the social reality and the study of mestizaje, Latin America historically occupies the centre and Europe the periphery.

2. Hybrid Cultures Firstly let us look at how Canclini defines the concept of “hybridization” in his introduction to the English edition of 2005: I understand for hybridization socio-cultural processes in which discrete structures or practices, previously existing in separate form, are combined to generate new structures, objects, and practices.5

García Canclini emphasizes that each hybridization results from previous hybridizations and that, therefore, the structures or practices underlying the process should not be considered as pure or homogenous points of origin, and that in this sense it is preferable to speak of “hybridization cycles”. The object of study is not the state to which this cycle leads (i.e. hybridization

3 4 5

Nestor García, Hybrid Cultures. Strategies for entering and leaving modernity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), p. 31. Nestor García, Hybrid Cultures…, p. 32. Nestor García, Hybrid Cultures…, p. 25.

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itself) but rather the “process” of hybridization itself.6 In order to avoid the trap of essentialist or fundamentalist concepts of identity, Canclini proposes locating the concept of hybridization within a network of associated concepts such as mestizaje, syncretism, creolisation, fusion or transculturation, in other words, concepts that evoke different modalities of mixing or mixture and for which the very term of “hybridization” would work as a “translation term”.7 Thus, Canclini confers translation a key role in the analysis of hybridization processes. For García Canclini it would be about “constructing theoretical principles and methodological procedures that can help us make the world more translatable, which is to say more cohabitable in the midst of differences, and to accept at the same time what each of us gains and loses through hybridizing”.8 It is noteworthy that García Canclini, whose theory of multiculturalism and hybridization was “thought” from Latin America, adopts the canonical assumptions of Western translation theory faithful to the adage Tradittore, traduttore, which places the hybrid in the category of the “unfaithful” copy and analyzes the process of hybridization in terms of a game of gains and losses.9 García Canclini’s complacent acceptance of the typical Western theory of translation also explains his moderately sceptical attitude towards mestizaje: It is useful to warn against the overly pleasant versions of mestizaje. That is why it is best to insist that the object of study is not hybridity, but the processes of hybridization. In this way one can acknowledge the extent to which these processes are destructive, and recognize what is left out of the fusion. A theory of hybridization that is not naive requires a critical awareness of its limits, of what refuses or resists hybridization.10

6 7

8 9

10

Nestor García, Hybrid Cultures…, p. 27. Nestor García, “Introduction”, Hybrid Cultures… Here Canclini establishes an analogy with the term “travel” as “translation term” which includes the modalities of “displacement, nomadism, pilgrimage” in accordance with the anthropologist James Clifford in his book Routes: James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (London: Harvard University Press, 1997). Nestor García, Hybrid Cultures…, p. 43. Here Nestor García (Nestor García, Hybrid Cultures…, p. 42) quotes James Clifford: All translation terms, he [Clifford] clarifies, “get us some distance and fall apart. Tradittore, traduttore. In the kind of translation that interests me most, you learn a lot about peoples, cultures, and histories different from your own, enough to begin to know what you’re missing” (James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation…, p. 256). Nestor García, Hybrid Cultures…, p. 31.

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Two quotes in García Canclini’s introduction refer to the concept of “counterpoint”, which inevitably remits us to the work of the Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz and his term “transculturation”. 11 As we have already seen, for Canclini both “transculturation” and mestisation belong to the same semantic and conceptual field as “hybridization” which is considered the “translation term” of both.

3. Transculturation The trajectory of the term transculturation since it was coined by Fernando Ortiz in 1939 until its diffusion and adoption in Social and Cultural Sciences outside of Latin America is the example par excellence of the epistemological hegemony of the West and the dependency of Latin America until at least 1992. This date marks an important turning point, which is obviously linked to the entrance to a new era characterized by globalization and the acceleration of hybridization processes. From 1939 to 1992 the concept of “transculturation” remained virtually unknown to Western anthropology and its interest was restricted to Latin America, where it helped understand the transformation of European models that had been translocated to the American context12. It is through the work of Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing and Transculturation, published in 1992 that the concept acquires a more universal resonance. In the introduction to her work, Mary Louise Pratt 11

12

Nestor García, Hybrid Cultures…, p. 42: “Edward W. Said explains: “Seeing ‘the entire world as a foreign land’ makes possible originality of vision. Most people are principally aware of one culture, one seeing, one home; exiles are aware of at least two, and this plurality of vision gives rise to an awareness of simultaneous dimensions, an awareness that – to borrow a phrase fromo music – is contrapuntal… For an exile, habits of life, expression or activity in the new environment inevitable occur against the memory of these things in another environment. Thus both the new and the old environments are vivid, actual, occurring together contrapuntally.” James Clifford, commenting on this paragraph by Said, argues that discourses of diaspora and hybridization allow us to think contemporary life as “a contrapuntal modernity” (James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation…, p. 256). See: Angel Rama, Transculturación narrativa en América Latina (Mexico, D. F.: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 1982).

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explains the appearance of the term “transculturation” in the title as a term that “ethnographers have used to describe how marginal or subordinate groups select and invent from the materials which are transmitted to them by a dominant or metropolitan culture”.13 In Pratt’s definition transculturation is the task of indigenous, “subalternized” populations (very much in accordance with the Western vision of Latin America as a subalternized continent) and emphasis is placed on the “agency” (or capacity to act) of the subaltern. Pratt’s understanding of the concept connects more with a postcolonial and subalternity studies framework than with Ortiz’s definition of 1939. For Ortiz the processes of transculturation include and affect all the categories of population, be they black, white or Indian. The idea of “agency” is not present in the initial definition, an element introduced by Pratt. On the contrary, according to Ortiz the catalyst of transculturation are the migrations which set in motion “transitive” processes between cultures. Ortiz’s definition stems from a critique of the Western ethnocentric understanding of acculturation as a one-way process of cultural change. In his Introduction to Fernando Ortiz’s Cuban Counterpoint, Malinowski emphasizes this innovative view: Take, for example, the word acculturation, which not long ago came into use and threatened to monopolize the field, especially in the sociological and anthropological writings of North American authors. Aside from the unpleasant way it falls upon the ear (it sounds like a cross between a hiccup and a belch), the word acculturation contains a number of definite and undesirable etymological implications. It is an ethnocentric word with a moral connotation. The immigrant has to acculturate himself; so do the natives, pagan or heathen, barbarian or savage, who enjoy the benefits of being under the sway of our great Western culture. The word acculturation implies, because of the preposition ad with which it starts, the idea of a terminus ad quem. The “uncultured” is to receive the benefits of “our culture”; it is he who must change and become converted into “one of us”. It requires no effort to understand that by the use of the term acculturation we implicitly introduce a series of moral, normative, and evaluative concepts which radically vitiate the real understanding of the phenomenon. The essential nature of the process being described is not the passive adaptation to a clear and determined standard of culture. Unquestionably any group of immigrants coming from Europe to America suffers changes in its original culture; but it also provokes a change in the mold of the culture that receives them. Germans, Italians, Poles, Irish, Spaniards always bring with them when they transmigrate to the nations of America something of their own 13

Mary Louise Pratt, Ojos imperiales. Literatura de viajes y transculturación (Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2011), p. 32.

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culture, their own eating habits, their folk melodies, their musical taste, their language, customs, superstitions, ideas, and temperament. Every change of culture, or, as I shall say from now on, every transculturation, is a process in which something is always given in return for what one receives, a system of give and take. It is a process in which both parts of the equation are modified, a process from which a new reality emerges, transformed and complex, a reality that is not a mechanical agglomeration of traits, nor even a mosaic, but a new phenomenon, original and independent. To describe this process the word trans-culturation, stemming from Latin roots, provides us with a term that does not contain the implication of one certain culture toward which the other must tend, but an exchange between two cultures, both of them active, both contributing their share, and both co-operating to bring about a new reality of civilization.14

In spite of his unconditional support and his compromise to disseminate the term transculturation in Western anthropology, Malinowski does not use it in his later work, except for one small exception. The term remained forgotten and practically unknown until its reintroduction to the West by Mary Louise Pratt from 1992. In a sole reference – as a footnote – Pratt recognizes the authorship of Fernando Ortiz. Nevertheless, Pratt’s interpretation of the concept deviates from the meaning given by Ortiz, the title of Ortiz’s work is incorrectly cited (at least in the “Spanish retranslation”) and does not appear in the final version of Pratt’s bibliography.15 This lack of accuracy fully confirms the “risks” that Antonio Cornejo Polar warned against regarding the use that is made in cultural and literary studies of categories taken from other disciplines. In this context Cornejo Polar cites not only the categories of mestizaje and hybridization disseminated in cultural studies through the work of García Canclini, but also Ortiz’s concept of “transculturation”, which has been divulged in literary studies through the work of Angel Rama and which “has become more and more the most sophisticated disguise of

14 15

Fernando Ortiz, Harriet de Onis, Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar (Durham-London: Duke University Press, 1995), pp. 58–59. Mary Louise Pratt, Ojos Imperiales…, p. 32: La palabra “transculturación” fue acuñada en la década de los cuarenta por el sociólogo cubano Fernando Ortiz, en una innovadora descripción de la cultura afrocubana (Contrapunto cubano [1947, 1963]). El crítico uruguayo Angel Rama incorporó el término a los estudios literarios en la década de los sesenta. Ortiz propuso la adopción de este término para remplazar los conceptos de aculturación y desculturación que describían la transferencia de cultura realizada de una manera reduccionista, imaginada desde dentro de los intereses de la metropolis.

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the category of mestizaje”.16 Cornejo Polar criticises the centre-periphery mechanism which places Latin America at the peripheral pole, as the “raw material” for a West that poses as the centre of critical thought and the creator of theory. The main reason for the persistence of this mechanism is, according to Cornejo Polar, the deficiency and lack of translation (in both directions) and the linguistic hegemony of English over Spanish, including in Latin American studies. Convincing evidence of the situation reported by Cornejo Polar can be seen in the case of Mary Louise Pratt’s own book. It was almost two decades before this text was translated into Spanish, despite it being a classic in the area of cultural studies.17 Paradoxically, the concept of “transculturation” is now being propagated around Latin America in a “transculturated” form through the Spanish translation of Pratt’s work.

4. Translation In other publications and conferences we have repeatedly emphasized the importance of the year 1992, the 5th centennial of the “Discovery of America” (or “encounter of two worlds”) and the 50th anniversary of the Holocaust (which was set in motion in 1942). The new world order that erupts at the end of the cold war is characterized by a new historical wave of migration and hybridization. The rapprochement between the concepts of translation and transculturation provides us with an interesting tool in order to analyse cultural and social change in times of globalization. Earlier we saw how García Canclini considers “hybridization” as a possible “translation term” of transculturation. At the same time it should be noted that the concept of ‘transculturation’ is increasingly gaining terrain as a “translation term” of translation.18 16

17 18

Antonio Cornejo, “Mestizaje and Hybridity: The Risks of Metaphors–Notes”, The Latin American Cultural Studies Reader, Ana del Sarto, Alicia Ríos, Abril Trigo, eds. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), pp. 760–764, especially, p. 761 [Antonio Cornejo, “Mestizaje e hibridez: los riesgos de las metáforas. Apuntes”, Revista Iberoamericana, 180 (1997), pp. 341–344]. The first edition in Spanish of Ojos imperiales. Literatura de viajes y transculturación, was published by the Fondo de Cultura Económica, in Mexico, in 2010. In her Historia de la Traducción, published in 1997, Brigitte Lépinette defines translation literally as an anthropological process of transculturation: “Translation

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In his work Culture as Praxis, Zygmunt Bauman provides us with a definition of the concept of translation, which almost literally paraphrases Malinowski’s definition of the concept of “transculturation”: Translation is an ongoing, unfinished and inconclusive dialogue which is bound to remain such. The meeting of two contingencies is itself a contingency, and no effort will ever stop it from being such. The act of translation is not a one-off event which will put paid to the need of further translation effort. The meeting ground, the frontierland, of cultures is the territory in which boundaries are constantly obsessively drawn only to be continually violated and re-drawn again and again – not the least for the fact that both partners emerge changed from every successive attempt at translation. Cross-cultural translation is a continuous process which serves as much as constitutes the cohabitation of people who can afford neither occupying the same space nor mapping that common space in their own, separate ways. No act of translation leaves either of the partners intact. Both emerge from their encounter changed, different at the end of act from what they were at its beginning – and so with the translation left behind the moment it has been completed, in need of “another go” – and that reciprocal change is the work of translation.19

The rapprochement between both concepts – translation and transculturation – lies in the idea of mobility, the break with a static vision of society, the change of focus from the result or the product of ethnic and cultural contact to the process itself (hybridization) and the capacity to simultaneously encompass multiple perspectives in a single vision.20 In his essay “Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-sited Ethnography”, George Marcus advocates a “multi-sited” ethnographic practice which breaks with the tradition established by Malinowski in the 1920’s, of fieldwork located in a single place studied by the anthropologist by means of the participant observation of a supposedly homogenous community historically rooted in a well-defined territory. According to Marcus, ethnography in the era of globalization should

19 20

primarily constitutes a process of transculturation or mutation of the cultural meanings of the translated texts, which cannot be evidenced without the history of translation. […] The history of translation should therefore be the history of a cultural transformation” (Brigitte Lépinette, La historia de la traducción: metodología; apuntes bibliográficos (Valencia: Universitat de València, 1997). Zygmunt Bauman, Culture as praxis (London: Sage, 1999), p. 48. The same focus uniting mobility and translation is found in the work of James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation…, cited by García Canclini in his introduction of 2005 (see above).

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consist of strategies which make it possible to analyse and reconstruct connections, dynamics and relationships: Strategies of quite literally following connections, associations, and putative relationships are thus at the very heart of designing multi-sited ethnographic research. […] This move toward comparison embedded in the multi-sited ethnography stimulates accounts of cultures composed in a landscape for which there is as yet no developed theoretical conception or descriptive model. 21

In this reconstruction translation occupies a central position: The function of translation (from one cultural idiom or language to another) is enhanced since it is no longer practiced in the primary, dualistic “them-us” frame of conventional ethnography but requires considerably more nuancing and shading as the practice of translation connects the several sites that the research explores along unexpected and even dissonant fractures of social location. Indeed, the persuasiveness of the broader field that any such ethnography maps and constructs is in its capacity to make connections through translations and tracings among distinctive discourses from site to site.22

The Actor-Network Theory – also called the Sociology of Translation –, which was established by Bruno Latour, Michel Callon, John Law and Andrew Rip, also puts the main emphasis on translation.23 This theory favours two concepts: “translation” and “network”, and defines itself as anti-essentialist par excellence. The concept of “translation” is taken as the process of relating or creating convergences, homologies or equivalents between initially disparate elements, passing through four moments of translation, namely: 1) Problematisation (definition of the problem and the possible actors), 2) Interessement (the capture of actors), 3) Enrollment (the actors accept or assume the roles that were assigned to them in the previous phase), and 4) Mobilization of allies. Let us briefly return to the concept of “hybrid identities” and revisit it from the Sociology of Translation or Actor-Network Theory. This theory 21

22 23

George E. Marcus, Ethnography through Thick and Thin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 81 and 86. See also: James Clifford, George Marcus, Writing Culture. The poetics and politics of ethnography (Berkley: University of California Press, 1986). Chapter 8: “Contemporary Problems of Ethnography in the Modern World System”, by George E. Marcus. This latter work also includes a chapter by Mary Louise Pratt (“Fieldwork in Common Places”) as well as the influential essay of Talal Asad on “The Concept of Cultural Translation in British Social Anthropology”. Geroge E. Marcus, Ethnography through Thick…, p. 84. Jhon Law, Actor Network Theory and After (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999).

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offers an alternative model to the binary vision on the hybrid as the result of two disparate elements as it emphasises action (the verb) rather than product (the noun). This provides a polygenetic and multichronic reading of hybridization, as a rhizomatic process of simultaneous horizontal sprouting without a centre or hierarchy. This epistemological model offers us the key for reading the human landscape of 21st Century Europe. In terms of collective identities we can represent the current European space as an extensive area, composed, on one side, of “deserts” large areas where the supposedly “homogenous” (national and/or local) identities still predominate, historically “located” in the territory and, on the other side, the “nodes”: the big cities with a majority of population resulting from processes of mobility (national or international migrations). Here it should be observed that this “transplanted” population, which has been geographically cut off from its local roots and identity, does not necessarily subscribe to a cosmopolitan and “post-modern” project of identity. In many cases this urban population tries to keep its modern (national) or pre-modern (ethnic/ethno religious) identity alive by preserving or even consolidating its traditional social and cultural practices: rituals and festivities, language or religious beliefs. Here we would like to introduce a novel concept from the aesthetic theory of the French art critic Nicolas Bourriaud.24 Speaking of art in the era of globalization, characterized by a process of “creolisation”, Bourriaud seeks a compromise between a “radical” concept of identity (the ethnic and national identity symbolized by the roots of a tree) and the rhizomatic one of Deleuze. Bourriaud uses the neologism “radicant”, which evokes the image of the successive temporal implantations of the migratory subject. In this way a “radicant space” starts taking form, born “of a diaspora of signs implanted in a circumstantial soil”.25 The contemporary artist is, for Bourriaud, a “semionaut”: “the creator of trajectories within a landscape of signs”.26 The elements that constitute the identity of 24 25

26

Nicolas Bourriaud, Radicant. Pour une esthétique de la globalisation (Paris: Denoël, 2009). La créolisation produit des objets qui expriment un trajet et non pas un territoire, qui relèvent à la fois du familier et de l’étranger; un espace mental radicant, né d’une diaspora de signes implantés sur un sol circonstanciel, (“The ‘creolisation’ made the objects which does not show a territory, but a journey and that reflect whatever is familiar or stranger; it’s a radical mental space, born from a diaspora of signs leaved over a circumstantial ground”). Nicolas Bourriaud, Radicant. Pour une esthétique…, pp. 84–85). Pour désigner cette nouvelle figure de l’artiste, j’ai forgé le terme de sémionaute: le créateur de parcours à l’intérieur d’un paysage de signes. Habitants d’un monde

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the “radicant” subject are not the “roots” themselves but rather the “trajectory”, the upheaval and the organization of the exodus, which all leave their respective marks on successive areas of settlement.27

5. TransThe key to the new anthropological focus for capturing and studying this human reality in times of globalization can be found in the prefix TRANS-: translation, transculturation, transit, transportation, transformation. It is the TRANS-perspective that makes it possible to relate multiple distinct and distant elements and to focus, at the same time, on the relationship itself instead of the related parts. Here the concept of “transmodernity” should be introduced. Unlike the alternatives of post-, sur- or alter-modernity, the notion of “transmodernity” does not reject but rather embraces the inheritance of modernity, albeit transforming and transcending it. In this respect, transmodern reality includes modern sociocultural (national), pre-modern (ethnic) and postmodern (hybrid or mestiza) identities. While the “radical” identity characteristic of modernity has always been averse to translation, this (translation) is the characteristic and constitutive mode of transmodern, hybrid and creolized identities in the era of globalization. The Spanish philosopher Rosa María Rodríguez Magda coined the concept of “transmodernity” in her book La sonrisa de Saturno. Hacia una teoría transmoderna published in 1989.28 According to Magda’s definition,

27 28

fragmenté, dans lequel les objets et les formes sortent du lit de leur culture originelle pour se disséminer dan l’espace global, ils ou elles errent à la recherche de connexions à établir. Indigènes d’un territoire sans limites à priori, ils se voient placés dans la position du chasseur-cueilleur d’autrefois, du nomade qui produit son univers en arpentant inlassablement l’espace (“I created the expression ‘semionaute’ in order to express this new figure of the artist: the creator of routes into a landscape of signs. There are inhabitants of a fragmented world, where the objects and forms go away from their original culture to their dissemination around the global space, roaming looking for connections. They are native of an original unlimited territory who reach a hunter-gatherer position, such as a nomads who generate their universe striding along the space”). Nicolas Bourriaud, Radicant. Pour une esthétique…, p. 118. Nicolas Bourriaud, Radicant. Pour une esthétique…, p. 88. Rosa Maria Rodríguez, La sonrisa de Saturno. Hacia una teoría transmoderna (Barcelona: Anthropos, 1989).

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Transmodernity prolongs, continues and transcends Modernity, it is the return of some of its lines and ideas, perhaps even the most ingenuous, but also the most universal. […] Transmodernity is the return, the copy, the survival of a weak, light Modernity, downgraded. The contemporary area criss-crossed by all tendencies, memories, possibilities; transcendental and apparential at the same time, voluntarily syncretic in its “multichrony”. Transmodernity is a fiction: our reality, the copy that supplants the model, eclecticism both mean and angelic.29

The locus where trans-modern processes should be observed are today’s cities, place of mestisation, a space where cultures reencounter and clash, multiracial mosaic that zones its skin from exchange to the violent ghetto. Cities are the tip of the iceberg where national identities begin to break up or, paradoxically, to assert themselves as a defence mechanism against the other, the foreigner.30

Unlike the solid or opaque vision characteristic of Modernity – a panoptic view (Bentham) which watches over and disciplines (Foucault)-, or the fragmented vision of post-modernity, the “transmodern” vision means capacity to assemble at a distance, transmission and transparency. The object disappears in favour of the movement and the “translation” prevails over the original. As Rodríguez Magda writes, transmodern panopticism offers us the hyperesthesia of the complete view: the painless transparency that is permanently present through its absence’.31 Gradually, the “proliferation of the copy over the copy” eventually leads to a culture of the copy without original.32 In this long chain of “copy over copy”, it is not difficult to recognise the process of successive transculturations and a chain of hybridizations in which each original becomes a copy, which in turn serves as an original version for other future copies. Original and copy become interchangeable and are mistaken for each other. This is a theory of translation which radically departs from Western tradition, in which the original version has always been regarded as sacred. At this point it should be noted that García Canclini’s concept of “hybrid cultures” does not renege on this Western tradition, according to which a translation is always an “unfaithful copy” which carries losses compared to the original (see above). 29 30 31 32

Rosa Maria Rodríguez, Transmodernidad (Barcelona: Anthropos, 2004), p. 8. Rosa Maria Rodríguez, Transmodernidad…, p. 95. Rosa Maria Rodríguez, Transmodernidad…, p. 179. Rosa Maria Rodríguez, Transmodernidad…, pp. 181–182.

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6. Hybridization/Transculturation/Translation The theory of “transmodernity” designed by Rodríguez Magda connects with the innovative contributions that Latin America has made to the theory of translation, above all the “canibalistic focus” from Brazil with the modernist anthropophagous movement of Oswald de Andrade and the “subversive focus” contributed from Agentina by Jorge Luis Borges. In both cases the supposed “imperfections” or “contaminations” of the copy (the product of translation) are extolled and the original/copy hierarchy is inverted. This occurs to such an extent that the original version becomes almost completely superfluous. Knowledge stems from reconstructing connections between the copies (see Borges: the Homeric versions), while the “original” is swallowed by the copy (Manifesto Antropófago, Oswald de Andrade, 1928) and disappears from view. We recall our initial approach of reversing the directionality of European/Latin American vision and we observe that these novel, or alternative, translation concepts, which were imported from Latin American to European Translation Studies, are useful for studying the processes of hybridization (=transculturation=translation) in “transmodern” Europe. Europe is standing at a new crossroads and has effectively become a frontier territory. Entering and leaving Modernity is characteristic of the hybrid cultures that are becoming ever more present in 21st Century Europe, which is a Europe in the process of transculturation, in which the distinction between what is original and what is a copy has become more and more difficult to distinguish. Thus Europe becomes the apprentice of Latin America and the traditional hegemonic relationship of Europe with the Latin American continent is inverted. Now it is the turn of the “Other West” to show the Old Continent how to develop a “mestiza consciousness” recalling the lesson of Gloria Anzaldúa: The new mestiza copes by developing a tolerance for contradictions, a tolerance for ambiguity. She learns to be an Indian in Mexican culture, to be Mexican from an Anglo point of view. She learns to juggle cultures. She has a plural personality, she operates in a pluralistic mode – nothing is thrust out, the good the bad and the ugly, nothing rejected, nothing abandoned. Not only does she sustain contradictions, she turns the ambivalence into something else. […] In attempting to work out a synthesis, the self has added a third element which is greater than the sum of its severed parts. That third element is a new consciousness – a mestiza consciousness – and though

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it is a source of intense pain, its energy comes from continual creative motion that keeps breaking down the unitary aspect of each new paradigm. En unas pocas centurias, the future will belong to the mestiza. Because the future depends on the breaking down of paradigms, it depends on the straddling of two or more cultures. By creating a new mythos – that is, a change in the way we perceive reality, the way we see ourselves, and the ways we behave – la mestiza creates a new consciousness.33

33

Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa, Borderlands / La Frontera…, p. 79.

Hybrid Identities: the case of Medieval Spain Adeline Rucquoi Centre de Recherches Historiques – École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales

Historians are the product of their time, and great historical topics are closely linked to the contexts in which they are created. These include both personal experiences and the social, political and cultural contexts in which historical works are elaborated.1 Identity is one of the issues that have recently emerged in the field of medieval history. What is identity? The Webster’s Dictionary defines the word as “The condition or fact of being the same or exactly alike” as its first entry. The same definition was given by Medieval Latin authors: actio quaevis repetita, allowing the author of the Miracula S. Adalberti Egmundani to say in chapter 11: Identitas satietatis mater est. Identitas as a repetition of the same leads to boredom or discouragement, to acedia, a capital sin. Although identity, as we understand it, does not seem to be a medieval concept, at the end of the thirteenth century idemptitas appears as synonymous of aequalitas, parilitas.2 The current sense of the word dates back to the nineteenth century and emerged within the fields of psychology and sociology as both the individual construction of the self and the set of features that distinguish an individual or a collectivity from the others. The “social identity” comes from markers, such as language, age, dress, behaviour, race, that allow individuals to be divided into distinct, easily recognizable groups, a classification not always conscious.3 This concept of social identity results from 1

2 3

Norman F. Cantor, Inventing the Middle Ages. The Lives, Works and Ideas of the Great Medievalists of the Twentieth Century (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1991). This book, which closely links the major works, themes and treatment to the personal circumstances of the medievalist of the first half of the twentieth century, highlighted this point. Du Cange, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis (Niort: L. Favre, 1883–1887), vol. 4, pp. 283–284. Pierre Bourdieu, La Distinction. Critique sociale du jugement (Paris: Minuit, 1979). Pierre Bourdieu, Questions de sociologie (Paris: Minuit, 1981).

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the great intellectual undertaking of classifying sciences and knowledge that characterizes European thought from the late sixteenth century, producing the classification of plants (Linnaeus), animals (Cuvier) or human races within the theory of evolution (Darwin).4 To define an identity, it is necessary to determine its characteristics opposite to that of others, thus creating separate elements. Yet, once established, the differences and clearly defined elements of each category – the problem of multiple identities – leads to multiculturalism5, and “hybrid identities”, concepts created by Homi K. Bhabha, one of the most outstanding theoreticians of post-colonalism studies. For him, the concept of hybridity is useful “to describe the construction of cultural authority within conditions of political antagonism or inequity”. He states that The hybrid strategy or discourse opens up a space of negotiation where power is unequal but its articulation may be equivocal. Such negotiation is neither assimilation nor collaboration. It makes possible the emergence of an “interstitial” agency that refuses the binary representation of social antagonism. Hybrid agencies find their voice in a dialectic that does not seek cultural supremacy or sovereignty. They deploy the partial culture from which they emerge to construct visions of community, and versions of historic memory, that give narrative form to the minority positions they occupy: the outside of the inside; the part in the whole.6

4 5

6

Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World. A History of the Modern Sensibility (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983). Sheldon Stryker, Peter Burke, “The Past, Present, and Future of an Identity Theory”, Social Psychology Quarterly, 63/4 (2000), pp. 284–297; Diana de Vallescar, Cultura, Multiculturalismo e Interculturalidad. Hacia una racionalidad intercultural (Madrid: Perpetuo Socorro, 2000); Carlos Forcadell, “La historia social, de la ‘clase’ a la ‘identidad’”, Sobre la historia actual. Entre política y cultura, Helena Hernández, ed. (Madrid: Abaa Editores, 2005), pp. 14–37; Alain de Benoist, Nous et les autres: problématique de l’identité (Paris: Krisis, 2006); Jean-Paul Rocchi, dir., Dissidences et identités plurielles (Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy, 2008). The concept of multiculturalism was criticized by: Amartya K. Sen, Identidad y violencia: la ilusión del destino (Madrid: Katz Barpal Editores, 2007). Homi K. Bhahba, “Culture’s in Between”, Artforum 32/1 (1993), pp. 167–168 and 211–212; Homi K. Bhahba, The Location of Culture (London-New York: Routledge, 1994); Rufel F. Ramos, “Homi Bhabha: The Process of Creating Culture from the Interstitial, Hybrid Perspective”, Nov. 2000, ; Pnina Werbner, Tariq Modood, eds., Debating Cultural Hybridity: Multi-Cultural Identities and the Politics of Anti-Racism (London: Zed Books, 1997).

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Alongside the specialists in post-colonial studies, medievalists and modernists have also raised the problems of self identity and of the relationship between social identities. Some of them dated the emergence of the individual self between 1050 and 1200 with the development of Western philosophy, while others, according to Burckhardt, chose to place this “discovery” in the Renaissance.7 Self-awareness would not be one of the elements inherent in man who, for a long time, would have lived without it; Burckhardt wrote in 1860, in The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, that man was aware of himself only as a member of a race, a people, a clan, a family or a corporation. Medievalists raised the question of the relevance of this approach from two stances, “culturalism” and “evolutionary historicism”.8 However, we must not forget that Greek philosophy and the three religions of the Book – Judaism, Christianism and Islam – emphasized the individual, either as the measure of the world or as a one being facing a one God. Assuming that the concept of individual identity existed during the Middle Ages, and that, according to Burckhardt, men were aware of themselves as members of a race, a people, a clan, a family or a corporation, some historians, under the influence of post-colonial studies and multiculturalism topics, looked for parallelisms in the history of medieval Mediterranean countries, more specifically in medieval Spain, a preferred locus for testing the validity of this idea.9 In fact, more than other regions, Spain 7

8

9

Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (London: Penguin Books, 1990); Walter Ullman, The Individual and Society in the Middle Ages (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1966); Colin Morris, The Discovery of the Individual 1050–1200 (New York-London: Harper and Row, 1972); John Martin, “Inventing Sincerity, Refashioning Prudence: the Discovery of the Individual in Renaissance Europe”, American Historical Review, 102/5 (1997), pp. 1309–1342; Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak, Dominique Iogna-Prat, eds., L’individu au Moyen Âge. Individuation et individualisation avant la modernité (Paris: Aubier, 2005). Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak, Dominique Iogna-Prat, “L’individu au Moyen Âge”, Bulletin du Centre d’études médiévales d’Auxerre | BUCEMA, 9 (2005), . Charles M. Radding, A World Made by Men. Cognition and Society, 400–1200 (Chapel Hill-London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1985); Peter Burke, What is Cultural History? (Oxford: Polity Press, 2004); Ian Chambers, Mediterranean Crossings (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008); Peregrine Horden, “Cultural Hybridity in the Medieval Mediterranean: A Concept in Search of Evidence?”, conference given in Conversations on Europe, Michigan University, March 10, 2011 .

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lends to the study of co-existence among diverse communities, and the historians who address the issue range between the description of conflicts and the search for convivencia.10

1. Identity in Spain Were Spaniards in the high Middle Ages aware of themselves as individuals? Early medieval libraries never counted, among the many works of St. Augustine they carefully kept, with copies of the Confessions of St. Augustine. However, the existence of a sense of individual identity in the Peninsula can be traced in extant documentary preambles where grantors sometimes explained the reasons for a donation or sale, or give some details of their lives. This is also the case in the colophons of the manuscripts when the scribe addresses his unknown readers with a plea or a warning. And this awareness is evident in several autobiographical works such as the memoirs of the last emir of Granada, Ibn Ziri, written in the late eleventh century, or the Llibre dels feyts of King James Ist of Aragon, nearly two centuries later.11 Regarding the concept of collective identity, chronicles offer a first distinction: to the chroniclers of the circle of Alfonso III around 900, the inimici are “Saracens”, “Arabs”, “Chaldeans”, whereas they are “Christians”, 10

11

David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence. Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); María Rosa Menocal, Ornament of the World. How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain (New York: Little, Brown and Co., 2002); Chris Lowney, A Vanished World. Muslims, Christians and Jews in Medieval Spain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Wendy Davies, “The Early Middle Ages and Spanish Identity”, Power and Identity in the Middle Ages: Essays in memory of Rees Davies, Huw Pryce, John Watts, eds. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 68–84; Adam J. Kosto, “Reconquest, Renaissance and the Histories of Iberia, ca. 1000–1200”, European Transformations: the Long Twelfth Century, Thomas F. X. Noble, John Van Engen, eds. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011), pp. 93–116. Évariste Lévi-Provençal, Emilio García Gómez, eds., El siglo XI en 1ª persona. Las “Memorias” de ‘Abd Allah, último rey zirí de Granada, destronado por los almorávides (1090) (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1980); Mariano Flotats, Antonio de Bofarull, eds., Historia del rey de Aragón D. Jaime I, el conquistador, escrita en lemosín por el mismo monarca (Barcelona: Viuda e Hijos de Mayol, 1848).

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“Galicians” or “infidels” to their peers of al-Andalus.12 In the mid-eleventh century, to this distinction, easily understandable for its simplicity, new elements are added by a series of distant disciples of Al-Farabi. Among them was the qadi Sa’id al-Andalusi of Toledo, author of a Kitab al-umam Tabaqat, a universal history of science, the History of Philosophy and Science or Book of the Categories of Nations.13 The work begins with a list of the seven “primitive nations” that includes all the peoples of the earth, and distinguishes between them who “cultivated the science” and those who did not show any interest in it. Indians, Persians, Babylonians, Greeks, Ru¯ m [Romans], Egyptians, Arabs and Jews are the only nations who cultivated the sciences, according to Sa’id of Toledo; therefore, they are “the quintessence of the Creation and the choicest of all creatures of God Most High”, because “they have put all their attention on acquiring the rational virtues of the soul constitutive of the human species and corrective of its nature.”14 These sciences in turn are divided into two sections: the sciences common to all civilized nations, essentially those based on numbers – arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy –, and those that are specific to each people, in other words, those who found their collective identity in law, history, language.15 In accordance with this proposal, one that focuses on language, history and (religious) law as the factors for the identification of nations, we will easily distinguish three “identities” in the Peninsula. They have recently been called “cultures”, a word which acquired the meaning of “religions” for all the followers of Américo Castro who stress the “Spain of three cultures”. Christians, Jews and Muslims are identified by their specific sacred language – Latin, Hebrew, Arabic –, their religious law – based on the New Testament and the Fathers of the Church, on the Talmud and the Torah, or the Qur’an and the Muwatta of Malik –, and the history 12

13

14 15

Juan Gil, José L. Moralejo, Juan I. Ruiz de la Peña, Crónicas asturianas (Oviedo: Universidad de Oviedo, 1985); Ibn Hayyan de Córdoba, Crónica del califa ‘Abdarrahman III an-Nasir entre los años 912 y 942 (Al-Muqtabis V), Mª Jesús Viguera, Federico Corriente, eds. (Zaragoza: Anúbar, 1981). Alfarabi, Catálogo de las ciencias, ed. Ángel González (Madrid: Estanislao Maestre, 1932); Sa‘id al-Andalusi, Historia de la filosofía y de las ciencias o Libro de las categorías de las naciones, Eloísa Llavero, Andrés Martínez, eds. (Madrid: Trotta, 2000). Sa‘id al-Andalusi, Libro de las categorías…, p. 63. Gabriel Martinez-Gros, “Classifications des nations et classifications des sciences: trois exemples andalous du V/XIe siècle”, Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez, 20 (1984), pp. 83–114.

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they write which allow them to give a different name to the same Peninsula: Hispania for Christians, Sepharad for Jews, al-Andalus for Muslims.

2. Language It’s quite easy to find examples of interest in language in the Peninsula. Latin was the religious and intellectual language of the Visigothic kingdom; Hebrew was still used by the Jewish communities. Arabic quickly spread throughout the territories dominated by Muslims in the eighth century, leading to Alvar of Cordoba’s complaints in the mid-ninth century.16 Nonetheless, Christians in Al-Andalus retained their liturgy in Latin, a school in Seville where a Bible was offered by a former student in the tenth century, and often turned to Latin in their funerary inscriptions.17 A romance dialect in the Andalus survived until the twelfth century, though increasingly marginal, as bear witness the jarchas in romance put at the end of the moaxajas.18 Language is the first sign of distinction and as such was cherished by every community. In the tenth century, the Jews of Al-Andalus felt the need to restore the Hebrew which had lost its biblical “purity”.19 The midtenth century controversy between the Cordobese Menahem ben Saruq and Dunash ben Labrat, and later enjoined by their disciples, shows the high interest in looking for the language of God, given by Him to men: “Even before the intelligence had been granted to the inhabitants of the earth, God had chosen this language”, writes Ben Saruq in the preface to his Mahberet, “He carved it with engraved writing and He spoke it the day of His manifestation.”20 Half a century later, the exegete Abu l-Farag in 16 17 18 19 20

Feliciano Delgado, Álvaro de Córdoba y la polémica contra el islam. El ‘Indiculus luminosus’ (Córdoba: Cajasur Publicaciones, 1996), pp. 184–185. Manuel C. Díaz y Díaz, Manuscritos visigóticos del sur de la Península (Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla, 1995), pp. 94–104. Federico Corriente, Poesía dialectal árabe y romance en Alándalus (cejeles y xarajat de murwassahat) (Madrid: Gredos, 1997). Carlos del Valle, “Sobre las lenguas de los judíos en la España visigoda y al-Andalus”, Sefarad, 63 (2003), pp. 183–193. Carlos del Valle, La escuela hebrea de Córdoba. Los orígenes de la escuela filológica hebrea de Córdoba (Madrid: Editora Nacional, 1981), pp. 87–132 and 379.

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Jerusalem says the same and, in Zaragoza in the eleventh century, Yonah ibn Yanah describes the biblical Hebrew in his Book of the Detailed Investigation, a lexicographical work that draws on comparisons with Arabic and Aramaic.21 Therefore, the Jewish poets of Andalus wrote in Hebrew their liturgical and secular poems. Solomon ibn Gabirol in the eleventh century, Moses ibn Ezra and Yehudah ha-Levi in the next generation took the Hebrew poetry up to a level never before reached. Abraham ibn Ezra (d. 1164) dedicated a poem to the poetry of every people: while those of the Israelites are “songs and praises to the God of hosts”, those of the Arabs poured on “love and pleasure” and the Christians’ ones are about “wars and revenge.”22 In the second half of the thirteenth century Kabbalist Abraham Abulafia, a native of Zaragoza, who mastered Greek, Latin and Arabic as well as Italian and Basque, again settled on Hebrew as the most perfect language over any other.23 Muslims at that time show the same interest in language. Based on the fact that the Qu’ran was the word of God, dictated by Him to Muhammad, they argued that Arabic was the language of God.24 In al-Andalus, both Ibn Hazm of Cordoba and Ibn Sida of Murcia pointed out before 1050 the superiority of Arabic, as divine language, a view also supported shortly later by the philosopher al-Ghazzali in the East. In mid-eleventh century Ibn Hazm of Cordoba, in his Fisal, writes about the language: In the same way the language, without which no education can be conceived, neither the survival of individual life and social relations, it is impossible that it was invented by mutual agreement of men, if not through another language; thus it is evident that a very beginning of any language was necessary (…) we must necessarily say that there must have been, by necessity, a man or more whom God taught all this in the beginning, without the intervention of human teacher, but by direct inspiration.

21

22 23 24

María Ángeles Gallego, “Orígenes y evolución del lenguaje según el gramático y exegeta caraíta Abu l-Farag Harun ibn al-Farag”, Sefarad, 63 (2003), pp. 43–67; Ángel Sáenz, Literatura hebrea en la España medieval (Madrid: Fundación Amigos de Sefarad, 1991), p. 116; Irene E. Zwiep, Mother of Reason and Revelation. A Short History of Medieval Jewish Linguistic Thought (Amsterdam: E. J. Brill), 1997. Ángel Sáenz, Literatura hebrea en la España…, pp. 79–115 and 125–153. Moshé Idel, L’expérience mystique d’Abraham Aboulafia (Paris: Le Cerf, 1989); Umberto Eco, La recherche de la langue parfaite (Paris: Seuil, 1994), pp. 45–50. Bernard G. Weiss, “Medieval Muslim Discussions of the Origin of Language”, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, 124/1 (1974), pp. 33–41.

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The lexicologist Ibn Said of Murcia, after a long reflection on the theories concerning the origin of language, concludes: When we cogitate on what is this Arabic language, so noble, so perfect and elegant, we find in it such philosophical depth, such delicacy, subtlety and finesse, which subdues the mind up to enthral us at the excess of its charm (…) through its demonstrations and the cult they devoted to language and their long-range projects and plans in this study, we have truly understood that God helped them with His grace and benevolent help in order to make up of the language the judgment they did; and if we add to all this the traditions which attest that it comes from God, it is natural that in our souls the belief that its origin has been through divine teaching, i.e. through inspiration, will strengthen.25

Language thus appears as one of the main elements that create identity. It does not seem that Christian Spain felt the same desire to look for the origin of languages. Obviously, Latin was not an original language, although it could be considered the language of the Incarnation, in so far as it was considered, by Orosius and followers, to be coetaneous with the beginning of the Roman empire and the pax necessary for the expansion of the Gospel. Writing in 1420 about his Christian education, Anselm Turmeda still mentioned that he “studied the languages of the Gospel.”26 Nevertheless, in the Etymologies, the more widespread encyclopedia throughout the Middle Ages, Isidore aknowledged Hebrew as the oldest and only language of humanity up to the construction of the tower of Babel. According to him, after the multiplication of languages, there are three sacred ones: Hebrew, Greek and Latin: On the cross of the Lord the charge laid against Him was written at Pilate’s command in these three languages. Hence, and because of the obscurity of Sacred Scriptures, the knowledge of these languages is necessary so that, whenever the wording of one of the languages presents any doubt about a name or an interpretation, recourse may be had to another language.27

Anyway, between these three languages, Western Christians chose Latin and turned to Donatus, Priscian and Isidore of Seville to maintain its purity. The desire to keep Latin as required by the grammatical rules of 25 26

27

Miguel Asín, “El origen del lenguaje y problemas connexos, en Algazel, Ibn Sida e Ibn Hazm”, Al-Andalus, 4 (1939), pp. 253–281. Mikel de Epalza, Fray Anselm Turmeda (‘Abdallah al-Taryuman) y su polémica islamo-cristiana. Edición, traducción y estudio de la Tuhfa (Madrid: Hiperión, 1994), pp. 204. San Isidoro de Sevilla, Etimologías, IX, 1–3, José Oroz, ed. (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Clásicos, 1982), pp. 738–739.

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Donatus – with “k” for hard sounds or “g” –, found in texts from Castile in the tenth century, or the linguistic games in the Codex Calixtinus in the middle of the twelfth century28, not to mention the love for grammar showed by Diego Garcia de Campos in his Planet, written in the early thirteenth century29, attest the interest of Hispanics in Latin. However, during the thirteenth century, one of the vernaculars, Castilian, was chosen by King Alfonso the Wise as a universal language, i.e. able to express the communication of both everyday life and sciences. The new common language quickly supplanted the old sacred languages and became the lenguaie of Espanna or el nuestro lenguage de Castiella.30 From the second half of the thirteenth century on, the lengaje de Castilla is in use in poetical, juridical, historical, literary, scientific works, in the documents of the royal chancery and the notarial deeds, and numerous Latin works are translated, as well as Arabic, Italian or French ones.31 Variants of Castilian were adopted in Navarre, Galicia and Aragon. The Jew Sem Tob de Carrión, the conversos Pablo de Santa Maria and Alfonso de Cartagena, or the translator of the Bible Mosé Arragel of Guadalajara32 and many others wrote their works in Castilian. Following this example, the Portuguese first, then the Catalans also adopted their own vernaculars as “perfect” and “national” language. Widely used by the minstrels and authors of cantigas, Portuguese language is used by the royal chancery at the end of the reign of Afonso III (1248–1279);33 28 29

30

31 32 33

Christopher Hohler, “A Note on Jacobus”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 35 (1972), pp. 31–80. Diego García de Campos, Planeta, Manuel Alonso, ed. (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1943); José Martínez Gázquez, “Alegorización de la declinación latina en el Planeta de Diego García de Campos”, Revista de Estudios Latinos, 2 (2002), pp. 137–147; José Martínez Gázquez, Cándida Ferrero, “El uso simbólico-alegórico de los números en el Planeta (1218) de Diego García de Campos”, Boletín de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona, 50 (2006), pp. 365–377. Alfonso X el Sabio, Setenario, Kenneth H. Vanderford, ed. (Buenos Aires: Instituto de Filología, 1945), p. 7; Alfonso el Sabio, General Estoria, Antonio G. Solalinde, ed. (Madrid: Centro de Estudios Históricos, 1930), p. 7. Antonio Alatorre, Los 1001 años de la lengua española (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1989), pp. 113–151. Sonia Fellous, Tolède 1422–1433. Histoire de la Bible de Moïse Arragel. Quand un rabbin interprète la Bible pour les chrétiens (Paris: Somogy, 2001). Leontina Ventura, António Resende de Oliveira, Chancelaria de D. Afonso III, Livro I (Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade, 2006), vol. 2 (docs. nº 685, 688, 689, 692, 728, 730, 732, 736, 739 and 740).

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during the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries, as well as translations from Arabic, Castilian, French or Latin, historical, legal, poetic, hagiographic, philosophical and moral works are written in Portuguese.34 From the late thirteenth century on, when Raymond Lull composes his work in both Latin and Catalan, Catalan in turn experiments a notable summit that leads it to rivalling other languages of the Peninsula in its variety of fields and semantic wealth.35 Meanwhile, none of the three communities gave up their sacred language: Latin, Hebrew and Arabic were still taught at school, in the yeshivas and madrasas. But people felt love for their common Castilian, Portuguese or Catalan. The vibrant praise dedicated to “the mother tongue Spanish” by Enrique de Villena in his preface to the translation of the Aeneid of Virgil leads him to say in 1428 that “God took such pleasure to beautify the Spanish language,” as an echo of the Latin, Hebrew and Arabic lexicographers, his predecessors.36 “And here, in the sweet Castilian style, the obedient wording of my mouth, with knee in the soil, the hands of your royal majesty never stop kissing with humility,” writes Pedro Gracia Dei when he offers to the king of Portugal his Blasón general y nobleza del universo, published in 1489 in Coria. Three years later, the foremost Latinist Nebrija, addressing his Gramática de la lengua española to Queen Isabel of Castile, argues that: One thing I find and extract for certain, that language was always the companion of empire, and in such a way it followed it that together they began, grew and flourished, and afterwards both felt together.37

Hence language seems to have been a strong factor of identity in medieval Spain, just as described by the qadi Ibn Sa’id of Toledo in the eleventh century, and Christians, Jews, Muslims, as well as Castilians, Portugueses or Catalans in later centuries. 34 35

36 37

Giulia Lanciano, Giuseppe Tavani, Dicionário da litratura medieval galega e portuguesa (Lisboa: Editorial Caminho, 1993). Rafael Alemany, Guía bibliográfica de la literatura catalana medieval (Alicante: Universidad de Alicante, 1997); Albert Soler, Literatura catalana medieval (Barcelona: Editorial Pòrtic, 2004). Jean Lemartinel, “Marquis de Villena, ‘Carta-Prohemio’ (édition)”, Cahiers de linguistique hispanique médiévale, 13 (1988), pp. 35–51. Antonio de Nebrija, Gramática de la lengua castellana, Antonio Quilis, ed. (Madrid: Editorial Centro de Estudios Ramón Areces, 1989).

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3. History History is another contributing factor to the construction of identity. And indeed the making of a specific history express the awareness of itself. The three communities wrote their own histories in different times, with the purpose of showing that the present was the logical continuity of a long past. In the seventh century, scholars like Isidore of Seville and Ildefonsus of Toledo adopted the Roman and Christian heritage, and added the missing last centuries to works such as Eusebius of Cesarea’s Ecclesiastical History or Paulus Orosius’s History against the Pagans, not to mention Livy and the Bible. They inserted the history of the Peninsula in a long world history which began with the Creation as related in the Genesis, and deemed the Roman empire as the fourth and last empire. Thanks to Orosius and Jordanes’s History of the Goths, they were able to present the Goths as a divine instrument against the renewal of paganism, and thus the real successors and supports of the Roman empire they contributed to maintain.38 At the same time, orthodoxy was one of the most important elements of Visigothic Spain after Recared’s conversion in 589, and a policy against heresy and Judaism was promoted, similar to what happened in Byzantium, within a climate of eschatology.39 The Muslim invasion at the beginning of the eighth century temporarily ended the making of history to the benefit of a more moral and pastoral literature. But around the year 900, chroniclers of the royal court started again writing history and began giving explanations for events from the eighth century on: Christians lost Spain because of the king’s sins or the people’s sins, and God allowed the Muslims to invade it as a punishment. Therefore, the Christians should do penance, getting the Peninsula back to Christianity at the cost of their blood, pain, and money.40 This explanatory framework would be deployed for centuries, any victory against the Moors showing that the Christians were good, any defeat that they were sinners. 38

39 40

Suzanne Teillet, Des Goths à la nation gothique. Les origines de l’idée de nation en Occident du Ve au VIIe siècle (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1984); Peter Linehan, History and the Historians of Medieval Spain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). Céline Martin, La géographie du pouvoir dans l’Espagne visigothique (Lille: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2003). Juan Gil, José L. Moralejo, Juan I. Ruiz de la Peña, Crónicas asturianas…, pp. 118–121.

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In the thirteenth century, histories of Spain from the beginning of the world were newly written in Castile, at a time when other nations, such as France or England, wrote their own, usually chosing the Troyan War as a starting point. Whereas the Leonese canon Lucas de Tuy inserted Spain within a classical world history divided into six ages, Archbishop Rodrigo Ximenez de Rada of Toledo vindicated a Gothic origin which allowed him to explain that Spain did not follow the common patterns found in other countries. In the second half of the century, King Alfonso the Wise merged all these works and endowed his kingdom with a official history in which Spain’s antiquity was stated through Hercules’s works, and the Romans as well as the Goths or the Muslims wanted to subdue it because of its virtues.41 This explanation of Spain’s history since the Creation, although elaborated in Castile, was adopted by all the Christian kingdoms of the Peninsula. Portugueses, Navarreses and Aragoneses as well as Catalans grafted their own history into this official one, while trying to vindicate their towns’ greater antiquity.42 In Cordoba, when the caliphate began in the tenth century, historians also gave an explanation of what had happened in Spain. Of course, part of the history of Spain developed in the ninth and tenth centuries in Al-Andalus was based on Roman, Greek and Christian sources, such as Apianus, Orosius or Isidore of Seville.43 Keeping the original frame, they stated that because of the Christians’ sins God gave the Peninsula to the Muslims as a reward.44 Therefore they were the right successors to the 41

42

43 44

Lucae Tudensis, Chronicon mundi, Emma Falque, ed., Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Medievalis, 74 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003); Roderici Ximenii de Rada, Historia de rebus Hispaniae sive Historia gothica, Juan Fernández, ed., Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Medievalis, 72 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1987); Ramón Menéndez Pidal, Diego Catalán, eds., Primera crónica general de España, 2 vols. (Madrid: Gredos, 1977); Inés Fernández-Ordóñez, Las “Estorias” de Alfonso el Sabio (Madrid: Istmo, 1992). Adeline Rucquoi, “Les villes d’Espagne: De l’histoire à la généalogie”, Memoria, communitas, civitas. Mémoire et conscience urbaines en Occident à la fin du Moyen Âge, Hanno Brand, Pierre Monnet, Martial Staub, eds. (Paris: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2003), pp. 145–166; Adeline Rucquoi, “Le héros avant le saint: Hercule en Espagne”, Ab urbe condita… Fonder et refonder la ville: récits et représentations (Second Moyen Âge – premier XVIe siècle), Véronique Lamazou-Duplan, ed. (Pau: Presses Universitaires de Pau, 2011), pp. 55–75. Roberto Matesanz, Omeyas, bizantinos y mozárabes en torno a la ‘Prehistoria fabulosa de España’ de Ahmad Al-Razi (Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 2004). Ajbar machmuâ (Colección de tradiciones) Crónica anónima del siglo XI, dada á luz por primera vez, ed. Emilio Lafuente (Madrid: M. Rivadeneyra, 1867).

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Goths or the Romans. Nevertheless, Muslims knew that Spain was not part of the the Dar al-Islam, the land promised by God to the believers, and the caliph’s scholars developed a specific ideology to show that the Ommeyas living in a jihad’s land were better Muslims than the other caliphs quietly housed in Bagdad or Cairo.45 “The door to Paradise”, as seen by many Muslims, Spain / al-Andalus was only a promise, as it was always coveted by foreign people like the Almoravids and the Almohads. In the fourteenth century, Ibn al-Khatib still grafted his Brightness of the full Moon or History of the Kings of the Alhambra in the history of the conquest of Spain and showed Granada as a sort of a paradise.46 Jews also worked out a specific history of Spain /Sepharad where they had settled many centuries before, during the Exile, as Hasday ibn Shaprut, who was the naši of the Jewish community in Cordoba, wrote to the King of Khazars around 960.47 Which Exile? Muslim geographers at that time, like Razi or Bakri, recounted that a king of al-Andalus named Ishban, son of Titus, destroyed Jerusalem with Nabuchodonosor, killed hundred thousand Jews and made slaves of other hundred thousand which he brought back to Spain, as well as a great treasure.48 Therefore, the exile quoted by Ibn Shaprut followed the first destruction of the Temple. In the middle of the tenth century the gaon of Pumbedita pointed out that there were Jewish scholars in Spain at the time of Alexander the Great.49 This version of a very ancient settlement of Jews in Spain ran through all the centuries and we can still find it at the end of the fifteenth century in the Sefer Shebet Yehudah by Selomoh ibn Verga who associates Pyrrhus, Ishban and Nabuchodonosor in his story of the destruction of Jerusalem.50 In his Sefer ha-Qabbalah, Abraham ibn Daud provides his readers with a 45 46 47 48

49 50

Gabriel Martinez-Gros, L’idéologie Omeyyade. La construction de la légitimité du Califat de Cordoue (Xe-XIe siècles) (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 1992). Ibn al Jatib, Historia de los Reyes de la Alhambra (Al Lamha al-badriyya), José María Casciaro, Emilio Molina, eds. (Granada: Ediciones Universidad de Granada, 2010). Carlos del Valle, La escuela hebrea de Córdoba…, pp. 319–346. Évariste Lévi-Provençal, La Péninsule ibérique au Moyen Âge d’après le Kitab al-Rawd al-mitar d’Ibn Abd al-Mun’im al-Himayari (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1938), p. 5–6 and 8–10; Al-Bakri, Kitab al-Masalik wa-l-Mamalik, quoted by Emmanuelle Tixier-Caceres, Géographie et géographes d’Al-Andalus (PhD thesis, Université de Rouen, 2003), pp. 369–371 and 374. Carlos del Valle, La escuela hebrea de Córdoba…, p. 329, n. 22. Selomoh ibn Verga, La Vara de Yehuda (Sefer Sebet Yehudah), María José Cano, ed. (Barcelona: Riopiedras Ediciones, 1991), pp. 48–49.

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history of the rabbinic tradition, from the beginning of the world, through the “thirty eight generations from Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi until Joseph ha-Levi, of blessed memory”; furthermore this Book of Tradition, written in 1161, emphasizes a movement from East to West such that Sepharad appears as the culmination of this history.51 Centuries later, in 1487, Yosef ben Saddiq drew up a brief treatise on Jewish history in which, from the eleventh century on, he mixed the memory of great Jewish scholars and rabbis up with the history of Castile, showing that Sepharad and Castile were the same.52 Three communities and three histories. Although they had many items in common, these histories were specific and aimed at showing that Spain, Al-Andalus or Sepharad was the fatherland of each one and all of them.

4. Law Law in medieval Spain means religious laws in so far as the norms are always based on religion. From the very moment when Emperor Theodose gave to Christianism the status of official religion in the empire, he became the pontifex maximus and defensor fidei as well as the defensor Ecclesiae of the new religion which henceforth dictated the norms. Jewish civil norms were prescribed by the Talmud meanwhile the Muslims in Spain adopted the al-Muwatta of Malik ibn Anas (d. 795), a compendium of accepted principles and precepts spread by Yahya ibn Yahya al-Laythi (d. 848). Christian kings in Spain followed the traditional imperial rules and were the “defenders of the faith” since the visigothic times53, whereas the caliphs in Cordoba were the “commanders of the faithful” since their proclamation as such in 929. Each community had its “book of laws”: Christian law was compiled in the Liber Iudicum, completed by the Hispana 51 52 53

Abraham ibn Daud, Sefer ha-Qabbalah. The Book of Tradition, Gerson D. Cohen, ed. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), p. 91. Yolanda Moreno, ed., Dos crónicas hispanohebreas del siglo XV (Barcelona: Riopiedras Ediciones, 1992), pp. 21–65. Adeline Rucquoi, “Cujus rex eius religio: Ley y religión en la España medieval”, Las representaciones del poder en las sociedades hispánicas, Óscar Mazín, ed. (México: El Colegio de México, 2012), pp. 133–174.

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collectio, Jewish law in the Torah, the Mishna and the Talmud, and Muslim law in the Muwatta. At the end of the twelfth century, Maimonides gave 613 mitvots to its Jewish coreligionists, to which they added many responsa given by outstanding rabbis. Collections of jurisprudence were written and spread all over Al-Andalus to help the faqih or experts in fiqh. And in Castile in the thirteenth century, King Alfonso X worked out a complete legal work, similar to the Justinian’s Corpus iuris civilis in use in the Roman empire, consisting of the Fuero Real, the Espéculo and the Siete Partidas.54 Kings and caliphs were responsible for compliance with laws, first of all with the dominant law according to their religion, but also with the other laws. In Muslim Spain, Jews and Christians were tolerated, considered as “protected people” – dhimmis –, who could and should observe their own laws within their respective communities. The emirs and caliphs named the main persons in charge of these groups of dhimmis, groups who kept their book of law, judges and clerics. From the twelfth century on, in Christian Spain kings named the persons in charge of the Jewish and Moorish aljamas, and stipulated that Jews and Muslims had to observe their laws within these aljamas.55 Actually, medieval documents never mention the religion as such but report that one lived “under the law of Muhammad”, or “under the law of Moses”, if not “under the Christians’ law”. Of course, for the caliph or the king, to be the guarantor of the laws did not mean they considered them as equal. The thruth lies in the defender of the faith or the commander of the faithful, whereas the other laws were tolerated, that is to say, not forbidden and persecuted waiting for their followers to convert to the true law. In the middle of the fifteenth century, the Franciscan Alfonso de Espina still presented faith as a besieged fortress, whose ennemies were the Jews, the Moors “and others”.56 But, as law was a divine attribute, for the rulers it was important to be the unique 54

55 56

Jeremy Craddock, “The Legislative Works of Alfonso el Sabio”, Emperor of Culture. Alfonso X the Learned of Castile and His Thirteenth-Century Renaissance, Robert I. Burns, ed. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), pp. 182–197. Real Academia de la Historia, ed. Fuero Real del Rey D. Alonso el Sabio (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1836), IV, ii, pp. 118–120. Fortalicium fidei contra judeos, saracenos aliosque christiane fidei inimicos (Nürnberg: Antonius Koberger, 1494); Alisa Meyuhas, La forteresse de la foi. La vision du monde d’Alonso de Espina, moine espagnol (?-1466) (Paris: Cerf, 1998).

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source of all the laws within the kingdom since there is only one God and one Creation in which everything is included and makes sense. Therefore the law that they observed appears as one of the most visible criterion of collective identity, in addition to those of language and history, supporting the statements given in the eleventh century by Sa’id of Toledo. Until the end of the Middle Ages and the discovery of America, each one of the three communities living in Spain kept its own law, wrote commentaries or compilations, ordenanzas and jurisprudence in all areas of law.57

5. Hybrid Identity in Spain? The three criterions used to classify the nations pointed out by Muslim thinkers in eleventh century Al-Andalus indeed were obvious in medieval Spain. In the fifteenth century foreign travellers were amazed at the presence of Jews in Castilian towns, or at the “Moorish” way of life of King Henri IV, not to mention the mudejar architecture all over the Peninsula.58 More than a quarter of a century after Jews had left Spain, Erasmus refused to visit the country in which “there were more Jews than Christians”.59 But during the Middle Ages, were these criterions considered as constitutive of a thoroughly different identity, leading to think of the other “identities” as colonialists or colonized? If this was the case, was there a phenomenon of acculturation and of “hybrid identity”?

57

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María Isabel Fierro, Repertorio bibliográfico de derecho islámico. An Annotated Bibliography of Islamic Law (Murcia: Universidad de Murcia, 1999); María Magdalena Martínez, “Estudios e investigaciones sobre las fuentes, derecho privado, penal y procesal islámico en Al-Andalus. Una aproximación historiográfica”, Interpretatio, 8 (2002), pp. 19–173; Isadore Twersky, Studies in Jewish law and philosophy (New York: KTAV Publishing House, 1982); Menachem Lorberbaum, Politics and the Limits of Law: Secularizing the Political in Medieval Jewish Thought (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001). José García, Viajes de extranjeros por España y Portugal, 6 vols., Agustín García, ed. (Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León, 1999), vol. 1, p. 246 and 278. Marcel Bataillon, Érasme et l’Espagne (Paris: E. Droz, 1937); Carlos G. Noreña, Juan Luis Vives (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970), p. 140.

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As numerous and various as the distinguishing factors which settle a specific identity are so were the common factors that seem to prove that nor the language, neither the history or the law played an essential role in medieval Spain. In Al-Andalus, Christians always maintained their sacred language, Latin, although in everyday life they spoke in Arabic, much to the chagrin of Alvar of Cordoba in the ninth century.60 As pragmatic people, in order to avoid the Qu’ran as the first reading book, for Christians in the south of the Peninsula they translated the Psalms into Arabic at the end of the century.61 Their skillness both in Latin and in Arabic enable them to play an important role as ambassadors of the emirs and caliphs to the kings of Oviedo, León, Pamplona, Barcelona or King Otto of Germany; one of them, Bishop Recemundus also was the author of an Arabic calendar which reported Christian celebrations.62 When they migrated to the north, Christians from Al-Andalus often kept Arabic as a learned language, as seen in many explanations and commentaries along the margins of Latin manuscripts from León, Barcelona, Toledo, Urgel, Cordoba, Lorvão or Seville.63 Among those who lived in Al-Andalus, there are several Christian poets who versified in Arabic.64 During the first centuries of medieval Spain, other testimonies show that northern Christians knew some or much Arabic. Besides well known people such as count Sancho García of Castile (d. 1017), Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, the Cid (d. 1099) or King Peter Ist of Aragon (d. 1104) who didn’t require any interpreter, tradesmen sale Andalusian goods all over the kingdom of León, while many unknown Christians served as mercenaries or spent years and years as captives or slaves in Al-Andalus, hence getting opportunities to learn the language. At the end of the eleventh century, Bishop Paternus of Coimbra left a series of books in Arabic as well as in Latin, and in Seville Ibn Abdun complained 60 61 62 63

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Feliciano Delgado, Álvaro de Córdoba… Marie-Thérèse Urvoy, ed., Le Psautier mozarabe de Hafs le Goth (Toulouse: Presses universitaires du Mirail, 1994). Reinhardt Dozy, Charles Pellat, eds., Le Calendrier de Cordoue (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1961). Cyrille Aillet, Les mozarabes. Christianisme, islamisation et arabisation en Péninsule ibérique (IXe-XIIe siècle) (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2010); Cyrille Aillet, Mayte Penelas, Philippe Roisse, ¿Existe una identidad mozárabe? Historia, lengua y cultura de los cristianos de al-Andalus (siglos IX-XII) (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2008). Marie-Thérèse Urvoy, “Que nous apprend la poésie arabe des chrétiens d’al Andalus?”, ¿Existe una identidad mozárabe?…, pp. 159–165.

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that Christians and Jews bought Arabic works to translate them as theirs.65 In Toledo, during two centuries after the Christian conquest of the city, the indigenous “mozarabs” kept Arabic as their common language, while the Jews maintained it until the end of the fourteenth century.66 Knowledge of other languages continued to exist among Christians after the twelfth century when vernaculars were chosen as national languages. The royal courts hosted troubadours from Occitania or Galicia and poetry was song in these languages. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, writers and poets from Castile, Portugal or Catalonia were able to read and sometimes write in the other languages of the Peninsula. So did for example the Constable Pedro of Portugal in the fifteenth century.67 As for Hebrew and Arabic, dominating Christians do not seem extremely interested in their teaching, although some outstanding scholars as Ramón Martí and Raymond Lull at the end of the thirteenth century or Alfonso de Zamora at the beginning of the sixteenth century argued for maintaining it. A trilingual chair, teaching Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic, had been endowed in Salamanca in 1252, and an other one was created by Cardinal Cisneros in his university of Alcalá in 1508.68 Also noteworthy are the conversos who, like the Franciscan Anselm Turmeda 65

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Gonzalo Martínez Díez, El condado de Castilla (711–1038). La historia frente a la leyenda (Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León, 2005), pp. 644–645; Claudio Sánchez Albornoz, Una ciudad de la España cristiana hace mil años (Madrid: Rialp, 1995); Felipe Maíllo, Crónica anónima de los reyes de taifas (Madrid: Akal, 1991), pp. 50–54; Pierre David, Torquato de Sousa Soares, Liber anniversariorum Ecclesiae cathedralis Colimbriensis (Livro das Kalendas) (Coimbra: Universidade de Coimbra, 1948), vol. 2, p. 122; Évariste Lévi-Provençal, Séville musulmane au début du XIIe siècle. Le traité d’Ibn Abdun sur la vie urbaine et les corps de métiers (Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, 2001). Jean-Pierre Molénat, “Mudéjars et mozarabes à Tolède du XIIe au XVe siècle”, Minorités religieuses dans l’Espagne médiévale, Revue du Monde Musulman et de la Méditerranée, 63–64 (1993), pp. 143–153; Jean-Pierre Molénat, “Le problème du rôle des notaires mozarabes dans l’oeuvre des traducteurs de Tolède (XIIe-XIIIe siècles)”, En la España Medieval, 18 (1995), pp. 39–60. Andrés Balaguer y Merino, D. Pedro, el Condestable de Portugal: considerado como escritor, erudito y anticuario (1429–66). Estudio histórico-bibliográfico (Gerona: Imprenta de Vicente Dorca, 1881). David Gonzalo, “La enseñanza del hebreo en las antiguas universidades españolas”, Miscelánea de Estudios Árabes y Hebráicos, 14–15/2 (1965–1966), pp. 3–21; Richard Kagan, Universidad y Sociedad en la España moderna (Madrid: Tecnos, 1981), p. 31; Dominique Reyre, “Cuando Covarrubias arrimaba el hebreo a su castellano”, Criticón, 69 (1997), pp. 5–20.

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from Mallorca, turned to Islam and wrote a treatise against Christians in Arabic, the Tuhfa.69 As for the Muslims in al-Andalus, they don’t seem to have been interested in learning Latin, Greek or Hebrew and preferred to employ Christians or Jews as translators or ambassadors when dealing with other languages. When Emperor Constantin VII Porphyrogennetos sent Dioscorides’s treatise to Caliph ‘Abd al-Rahman III, a Greek monk named Nicolas had to go to Cordoba and translate it into Arabic as well as other Greek works kept in the caliphal library.70 Nevertheless, many Muslims were descendents of Christians, and they maybe kept some knowledge of the family language. The great philosopher Ibn Hazm of Cordoba (d. 1064) had a huge knowledge of Jewish and Christian sacred texts that allowed him to point out all the incoherencies and errors he saw in them.71 Centuries later, in Christian Spain, when the vernacular was the common language, Muslim jurists wrote their treatises in Castilian, Aragonese or Catalan, although some times through an Arabic script (aljamiado). That were the cases of the Llibre de la Çuna e Xara dels Moros made in 1408, the Suma de los prinçipales mandamientos e devedamientos de la ley y Çunna o Breviario Çunni, written by Iza de Gebir of Segovia in 1462, al-Qayrawani’s Risala fi l-fiqh, al-Tulaytuli’s al-Muhtasar, and Ibn al-Gallab’s al-Tafri.72 Within the Muslim communities, notaries and scribes – alfaquies – were able to translate the documents from Arabic into vernacular and inversely.73 But those who always mastered several languages were the Jews. At the time they gave Hebrew a grammar and a lexicon, and stated that 69 70

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Mikel de Epalza, Fray Anselm Turmeda… Ildefonso Garijo, “El tratado de Ibn Yulyul sobre los medicamentos que no mencionó Dioscórides”, Ciencias de la naturaleza en al-Andalus. Textos y estudios, Expiración García, ed. (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1990), pp. 57–70, especially, p. 64. Miguel Asín, Abenházam de Córdoba y su Historia crítica de las ideas religiosas (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1928–1932); Camilla Adang, Muslim writers on Judaism and the Hebrew Bible: from Ibn Rabban to Ibn Hazm (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996). Soha Abboud-Haggar, El Tratado jurídico de Al-Tafri de Ibn al-Gallab. Manuscrito aljamiado de Almonacid de la Sierra, 2 vols. (Zaragoza: Instituto Fernando el Católico, 1999), pp. 11–16. Asunción Blasco, “Notarios mudéjares de Aragón (siglos XIV-XV)”, Aragón en la Edad Media, 10–11 (1993), pp. 109–133.

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Hebrew was God’s language, they thoroughly knew Arabic and were able, not only to use it in their philosophic or scientific works, but also to versify in Arabic. Samuel ibn Nagrella ha-Nagid (d. 1056) and Moses ibn Ezra (d. 1135) from Granada, as well as Yehuda ha-Levi (d. 1141) from Tudela, wrote moaxajas in Hebrew with jarchas in Arabic or in romance, and wrote in Arabic some of their works in prose but in Hebrew their liturgical poems.74 Under Christian ruling, they used vernacular in everyday life and also knew some Latin. In 1430, Rabbi Moses Arragel from Guadalajara, asked by the Great Master of Alcántara to translate the Bible from Hebrew into Castilian, explains in the prologue that it’s much more difficult to translate from Hebrew than from Latin because the roots of both languages were so different.75 But Jews converted to Christianity knew enough Latin to be able to use the Christian Scriptures and Fathers of the Church against their old coreligionists or to write their own works, as did Alfonso de Valladolid, Juan de Valladolid or Pablo de Santa María.76 When powerful Samuel Najarí of Teruel converted to Christianism after 1416 and took the name of Gil Ruiz, he had no problem to fit into Christian society and was knighted caballero; some years before, in 1382, he had been allowed to open his own synagogue in his house.77 These few examples show that language was not that important and that identity was not threaten by the skills in several languages, sacred or vernacular. The opening of schools and studia where it was possible to learn other languages, or the mere everyday life, are characteristic of medieval Spain. It will lead to the knowledge of absolutely different languages when Spaniards settled in America from 1520 on. Then what about history? In the high Middle Ages, both Christians and Andalusian Muslims wrote their peculiar version of the conquest of Spain. While Christian chroniclers pointed out the sins of King Witiza, 74

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Ángel Sáenz-Badillos, Literatura hebrea en la España medieval…, pp. 86–87, 128 and 136–137; Ángel Sáenz-Badillos, Judit Targarona, Poetas hebreos de Al-Andalus (siglos X-XII). Antología (Córdoba: Ediciones El Almendro, 2003), pp. 9–22. Sonia Fellous, “Cultural hybridity, cultural subversion: text and image in the Alba Bible, 1422–33”, Exemplaria, 12 (2000), pp. 205–229. Francisco Cantera, Alvar García de Santa María y su familia de conversos. Historia de la judería de Burgos y de sus conversos más egregios (Madrid: Instituto Montano, 1952); Abner of Burgos/Alfonso of Valladolid, Mostrador de Justicia, 2 vols., Walter Mettmann, ed. (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1994–1996). Asunción Blasco, “Nuevos datos sobre la judería de Teruel con especial estudio de sus sinagogas”, Studium. Revista de Humanidades, 3 (1997), pp. 13–43, especially, p. 29.

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who supposedly had obliged the priests to fornicate, as a cause for the “lost of Spain”, Cordobese ones developed the story of Count Julian’s wife (or daughter) dishonoured by King Rodrigo, a capital sin that led to the conquest by the Arabs. Moreover, Andalusian historians recounted that King Rodrigo’s first sin had been to open the forbidden doors of misterious house in Toledo, that kept the precious Salomon’s Table, taken by Ishban back to Spain after the destruction of Jerusalem.78 This version of the treachery of Count Julian was adopted by the Christians who lived in Al-Andalus, as seen in the so-called Pseudo Isidoriana, written in the mid-eleventh century79, and later became the official version of the Estoria de España developed by King Alfonso X of Castile, who added the legend of Ishban/Espan as the eponym hero and that of the House opened by Rodrigo in Toledo.80 At the same time, in the General Estoria, the history of the Peninsula was intimately linked to the history of the Jews as related in the Ancient Testament.81 King Denis of Portugal, grandson of King Alfonso of Castile, put a “master Muhammad” and a priest, Gil Peres, in charge of translating into Portuguese the great chronicle of Spain written by al-Razi in the tenth century; it was inserted in the Cronica geral de Espanha de 1344, attributed to Count Pedro de Barcelos, and later translated into Castilian.82 On the basis of common sources – Greek, Roman and Visigothic – Muslim and Christian historians created or elaborated specific legends which were merged in a unique history. Eventually, the last years of King Rodrigo and the treachery of Count Julian were related in the fifteenth century as a novel of chivalry by Pedro de Corral: the Crónica sarracina was taken later as true history.83 78

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Juan Gil, José L. Moralejo, Juan I. Ruiz de la Peña, Crónicas asturianas…, pp. 118–119; Julia Hernández, La Península imaginaria. Mitos y leyendas sobre Al-Andalus (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1996), pp. 163–248. Fernando González, La Chronica gothorum pseudo isidoriana (Ms. Paris BN 6113) (A Coruña: Editorial Toxos Outos, 2000), pp. 182–185. Ramón Menéndez Pidal, Diego Catalán, eds., Primera crónica general de España…, pp. 11–12 and p. 307–308. Alfonso el Sabio, Prosa histórica, ed. Benito Brancaforte (Madrid: Cátedra, 1984), pp. 20–29. Diego Catalán, María Soledad de Andrés, eds., Crónica del moro Rasis. Versión del Ajbar muluk al-andalus de Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Musa al-Razi, 889–955; romanzada para el rey don Dionís de Portugal hacia 1300 por Mahomad, alarife, y Gil Pérez, clérigo de don Perianes Porçel (Madrid: Gredos, 1975); Diego Catalán, María Soledad de Andrés, eds., Crónica de 1344 (Madrid: Gredos, 1971). James D. Fogelquist, Crónica del rey D. Rodrigo, postrimero rey de los godos (Crónica Sarracina), 2 vols. (Madrid: Castalia, 2001).

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Therefore, these examples of the knowledge and use of other historiographies support the conclusion that history could be shared, and was not considered as a differential factor of identity in Spain. There remains the problem of law/religion, first criterion of identity according to those who focus on three cultures in medieval Spain, three religions, three different people on the same soil. Each law had its book, judges, temples, clergymen. Priests, rabbis and alfaquíes forbade to their flock to mix with the other ones. Marriages were prohibited and conversions elicited rejection, as well from former coreligionists as from new ones, besides being forbidden under pain of death. Communities tended to share a designated space, sometimes walled both for protection from the others and control of their members. At the end of the fifteenth century, Christian thinkers elaborated the idea of purity of blood in order to distinguish the good Christians – characterized by nobility and wealth – of the other ones – recognizable by the lack of nobility, poverty, or their non-Christian ancestry –.84 Despite these facts, many examples show that religion or law was not an impediment in everyday life. There were many conversions from a religion to the other, for religious, social or economical motives. Prohibitions were violated when necessary and members of the three religions lived together, much to the chagrin of the communities’ rulers. Promiscuity seems to have been the norm. From the thirteenth century on, legal codes and Christian synods complain about Christians taking part in Jewish or Muslim celebrations, consulting Jewish or Muslim physicians, employing non-Christians in churches and home, or giving their infants to Jewish or Muslim nurses.85 On the other hand, the Jewish Takkanot of Valladolid in 1432 forbade to keep Christian maidservants 84

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Adeline Rucquoi, “Être noble en Espagne aux XIVe-XVIe siècles”, Nobilitas. Funktion und Repräsentation des Adels in Alteuropa, Otto Gerhard Oexle, Werner Paravicini, eds. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997), pp. 273–298. Manuel Dualde, Fori antiqui Valentiae (Madrid-Valencia: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas–Instituto Jerónimo Zurita, 1950–1967), p. 21 and 154–155 [Valencia, 1238]; Antonio García y García, ed., Synodicon Hispanum. Portugal (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Clásicos, 1982), vol. 2, p. 309 [Lisbon, 1307]; Antonio García y García, ed., Synodicon Hispanum. Astorga, León y Oviedo (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Clásicos, 1984), vol. 3, p. 289 [León, 1318]; Antonio García y García, ed., Synodicon Hispanum. Burgos y Palencia (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Clásicos, 1997), vol. 7, pp. 141–142 [Burgos, 1411]; Rodrigo Pita, Lérida judía (Lérida: Dilagro Ediciones, 1973), pp. 60–62 [Lérida, 1436]; José Sánchez Herrero,

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in Jewish houses and any recourse to Christian authorities.86 Christian and Jewish butchers used to exchange the meat in spite of different practices when slaughtering the animals, while Muslims were sometimes obliged to buy Jewish meat.87 There were loans between communities and commercial contacts, common urban or rural spaces, specialization in certain tasks, such as lending money, building houses or taking charge of public works.88 As for the prayer houses, they were successively occupied by Christians, Moors or Jews. The Muslims bought the Cordobese cathedral of St. Vincent from the Christians in order to turn it into their Great Mosque, as they did with many churches in Al-Andalus.89 In Al-Andalus many of the Christian shrines, such as St. Vincent in Algarve, were also visited by Muslim pilgrims; when Al-Mansur took and destroyed St. James of Compostela, he respected the Apostle’s tomb.90 In Toledo, the Great Mosque was made a church by Queen Constantia and Archbishop Bernard shortly after the conquest of the city and for almost a century and a half moorish architecture hosted Christian liturgy; the Ibn Shushan synagogue, built c. 1180, was occupied by Christians in the fifteenth century and given

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Concilios provinciales y sínodos toledanos de los siglos XIV y XV (La Laguna: Universidad de La Laguna, 1976), p. 304 and 316–317 [Alcalá, 1480]. Yolanda Moreno, De iure hispano-hebráico. Los Taqqanot de Valladolid de 1432. Un estatuto comunal renovador (Salamanca: Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca– Universidad de Granada, 1987), p. 71. David Nirenberg, Communities of violence…, pp. 169–172. Asunción Blasco, La judería de Zaragoza en el siglo XIV (Zaragoza: Instituto Fernando el Católico, 1988), nº 8–11, 13–15, 17, 20–21, 33; Adeline Rucquoi, Valladolid en la Edad Media, 2 vols. (Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León, 1987), vol. 2, pp. 450–471; Maria Filomena Lopes de Barros, Tempos e espaços de Mouros. A minoria muçulmana no reino português (séculos XII a XV) (Braga: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 2007), pp. 239–251. Jerrilynn D. Dodds, Architecture and Ideology in Early Medieval Spain (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), pp. 58, 94 and 106; Jerrilynn Dodds, “Mudejar Tradition and the Synagogues of Medieval Spain: Cultural Identity and Cultural Hegemony,” Convivencia: Jews, Muslims, and Christians in medieval Spain, Vivian Mann, Thomas F. Glick, Jerrilynn D. Dodds, eds. (New York: Jewish Museum and George Braziller, 1992), pp. 113–131. Christophe Picard, “Sanctuaires et pèlerinages chrétiens en terre musulmane: l’Occident de l’Andalus (Xe-XIIe siècles)”, Pèlerinages et croisades (Paris: Comité des Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques 1995), pp. 235–247; Soha Abboud-Haggar, “Saint-Jacques de Compostelle et son ‘chemin’ dans les sources arabes”, Compostelle. Revue du Centre d’Études Compostellanes, 4 (2000–2001), pp. 22–33.

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the name of Santa María la Blanca.91 In Cordoba and Seville, the Great Mosques were consecrated as Christian churches after the conquest of the towns in the mid-thirteenth-century, and in Granada many mosques became churches after the Muslims’ conversion to Christianism in 1502. Obviously, sacred places, as in Roman law, were considered as sacred places whatever the religion. Law would then be the most evident criterion of identity in medieval Spain. But thinkers as Maimonides in the second half of the twelfth century and Gerondi almost two centuries later stated the autonomy of politics from religion, therefore the necessity of acknowledging the “civil” laws of the kingdom; moreover there was a crisis of the Jewish faith at the end of the fourteenth century.92 In this context, it seems that the inhabitants of the Peninsula resorted to justice which suits them best. King James II of Aragon in 1303 intervined in a suit between the Jews of Tárrega and those of Lérida. In 1356, a Muslim woman became Jewish in order to live with a Jewish man; to avoid the punishment of such a transgression, they turned to King Peter of Aragon. In Valladolid, at the end of the fifteenth century, to escape justice Ysaque de Leyra became Christian and accused Rabbi Simuel Amigo of adultery with a Christian woman. In Zamora, the Jews often appealed to royal justice to resolve their conflicts with other Jews or Christians. The Takkanot of 1432 reiterated the prohibition to apply to Christian justice, without success.93 On the other hand, when Christians 91

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Roderici Ximenii de Rada, Historia de rebus Hispaniae…, p. 203–205; Otto Czekelius, “Antiguas sinagogas de España”, Arquitectura: órgano de la Sociedad central de Arquitectos, 150 (1931), pp. 327–341. Menachem Lorberbaum, Politics and the Limits of Law…; Michael Glatzer, “Crisis de fe judía en España a fines del siglo XIV y principios del XV”, Judíos, Sefarditas, Conversos. La expulsión de 1492 y sus consecuencias, Ángel Alcalá, ed. (Valladolid: Ámbito, 1995), pp. 55–68. Rodrigo Pita, Lérida judía…, p. 139; David Nirenberg, “Love between Muslim and Jew in Medieval Spain: A Triangular Affair”, Jews, Muslims and Christians in and around the Crown of Aragon. Essays in Honor of Professor Elena Lourie, Harvey J. Hames, ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2003), pp. 127–155; Archivo de la Real Chancillería de Valladolid, Ejecutorias, legajo 27 moderno, febrero de 1490; María Fuencisla García, El pasado judío de Zamora (Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León, 1992), pp. 131–134; Flocel Sabaté, “Les juifs au Moyen Âge. Les sources catalanes concernant l’ordre et le désordre”, Chrétiens et juifs au Moyen Âge: Sources pour la recherche d’une relation permanente, Flocel Sabaté, Claude Denjean, eds. (Lleida: Editorial Milenio, 2006), pp. 91–166; Adeline Rucquoi, Aimer dans l’Espagne médiévale. Plaisirs licites et illicites (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2008).

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wanted to escape justice, they often fled to Muslim areas, as did the Franciscan Alonso de Mella, instigator of a heretical movement in Durango in 1442.94 From the thirteenth century on, the Nasri sultan’s personal guard was composed of Christians converted to Islam; many other “new Muslims” also occupied important positions in the government of Granada during the next two centuries.95

In Conclusion Identity, alterity, cultural exchanges or “influences”, hybrid identity are current topics aimed to “examine the ways in which religious and ethnic differences were either embraced through the assimilation or appropriation of distinctive visual languages and artifacts, or explicitly distinguished and condemned in religious and secular iconographies”96. These topics undoubtedly reflect current concerns in the field of social and political sciences. Are they indeed useful to understand medieval Spanish societies? Did the individuals feel as essentially different from each other, and therefore condemned to a rejection or a more or less coerced assimilation? From an outside point of view, and using medieval criterions of differenciation as those offered by the qadi Sa’id of Toledo – language, history, law –, we would not have any problem distinguishing between the three communities. As we have seen, they were proud of their own language. On a common basis they wrote specific histories, and under the caliphs’ or kings’ rule they kept their own laws. From this statement, historian can build a pattern, partly based on current facts, that focus on the differences in order to better define the characteristics of each community. This approach 94

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Darío Cabanelas, “Un franciscano en la Granada nasrí, fray Alonso de Mella”, Al-Andalus, 15/1 (1950), pp. 233–250; Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce, “Los herejes de Durango”, Homenaje a Rodríguez-Moñino (Madrid: Castalia, 1966), vol. 1, pp. 39–55. Rachel Arié, “Les minorités religieuses dans le royaume de Grenade”, Minorités religieuses dans l’Espagne médiévale, Revue du Monde Musulman et de la Méditerranée, 63–64 (1993), pp. 51–61. As described by Wisconsin University Prof. Thomas Dale’ Syllabus: “Cultural Appropriation and Alterity and Medieval Art and Architecture” .

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results in terms such as “Spain of three religions” or “Spain of three cultures”, each of them seen as an “Other” to both the other ones. Once defined as thoroughly different, this rises the topic of relations between these entities. Obviously, there were not egalitarian relationships: Jews were not considered equal to Christians or Muslims in Christian or Muslim Spain, as well as Christians were not equal to Muslims in Al-Andalus and Muslims to Christians in Christians kingdoms. They always were dhimmis, “protected” people, not having the same rights or duties as the other ones. On the other hand, they usually were minorities among the inhabitants of the kingdoms, emirate or caliphate. Therefore, according to current trends, the relationships between these human groups have to be expressed in terms of power, opression, colonization and violence, as well as of exchanges or influences leading to a crossbreeding or métissage, although the desire of not being confused with the others or not having to recognize part of other culture induces some contemporary scholars to refuse the mere idea.97 As they are defined, such topics are easily understood by modern readers. They would not have been by medieval readers. Medieval philosophy, developed since the twelfth century by Christian and non-Christian scholars, sought to understand the unity of the world, the Nature or Creation, work and reflection of the unique God, in which therefore every part was connected to the other ones.98 “Concordance” was the major word, leading to encyclopedias such as those by Vincent of Beauvais, Bartholomeus Anglicus or Juan Gil de Zamora, or to legal compilations like Raymond of Penyafort’s Decretals, in the thirteenth century. Lunar world and sublunar world were intimately connected, to the point that heaven influenced earthly life as studied by astrology. Universal history included the Bible as well as Greek and Roman mythology, history of the Goths or of the Arabs. The legal Partidas incorporated Castilian, Roman, Canon laws as well as Arabic jurisprudence. Even the strangest cases or events were seen as “marvels” and found their place within the great divine design.99 In such a world, there is no place for differences, if not superficial and accidental. What could seem foreign to the observer had its reason for being. At the end, all these differences will disappear, there will only

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Homi K. Bhahba, Culture’s in Between… Marie-Dominique Chenu, La théologie au XIIe siècle (Paris: J. Vrin, 1957). Jacques Le Goff, Un autre Moyen Âge (Paris: Laffont, 1999), pp. 455–491.

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be one religion, one law, one language, one people.100 Observing or describing other people does not mean categorizing them and does not lead to a hierarchy between them. If the “others” exist, it is because they have a role to play in the divine design. They can be considered as “enemies”, but not essentially different from other enemies of the same religion or language. Therefore, there is a profound, philosophical equality between the members of the three laws. According to Averroes and Maimonides, philosophy or “love of Wisdom” is love of God, unique and reflected with some differences in the human laws. The choice of a common language, vernacular, in the thirteenth century by Castile, Portugal and Catalonia showed this desire for unity. The imposition of the Catholic faith upon Jews and Muslims by Queen Isabel of Castile at the end of the fifteenth century aimed to the same purpose. All the inhabitants of the kingdom were called naturales, meaning their relation to the soil belonged, not to human laws but to natural or divine law. Of course, this essential equality did not mean that they all had the same rights, condition, wealth, and so on. Creation is diverse and the destiny of each one depends on God’s will. There is no medieval claim of equality, except by “heretics” such as the Lollards, the Husites or through messianistic philosophers like Isaac Abravanel. Accepting the fate God has alloted to each one is part of medieval mentality which considered that nobility, health or wealth only were earthly rewards. Therefore, if there is “political antagonism” between kingdoms, emirates, taifas, and “inequity” within the inhabitants of the Peninsula, whatever their religion, we cannot use the concept of hybridity as stressed by post-colonial studies, unless from an outside point of view which doesn’t take into account the cultural context. Looking for “identities” and for the bridges between different identities amounts to having an outside view of the reality, as the Europeancentered vision of many anthropologists of the first half of the twentieth century when studying “primitive” people. It is a transposition of current trends to history, an anachronistic frame of interpretation. Indeed useful, but too distant to really explain how Christians, Jews and Muslims for centuries shared a same space and felt as belonging to this space, not so different of the other occupants of the land. This is maybe the only identity they were aware of, not “hybrid” but Spanish. 100 Jean Delumeau, Une histoire du Paradis. Mille ans de bonheur (Paris: Fayard, 1995), pp. 15–229.

Outer Appearance and the Construction of Identities Gerhard Jaritz Central European University

The vagrant student John Butzbach from Miltenberg in Germany left home in 1488, went to Bohemia, and came home again after only six years. No one recognized him any longer; people reacted uncertainly. He had adopted many strange customs which one finds in his description as elements of partly well-known images and stereotypes:1 “I came home – no longer a German, as I had left, but as a Bohemian, a barbarian, quasi a pagan, from my way of dressing, my customs, with long, blond hair which I had started to grow there, going down over shoulders and back unto the belt. Nobody knew me any longer… [they] shied away from all my changes.” The new image and recognizably changed identity clearly worked intensely and influenced the perceptions of the repatriate. The problems of one’s own appearance versus that of the other and change from the well-known to the unacquainted lie in the tensions between a familiar personal, social or cultural identity and something from outside its boundaries – the unfamiliar, not normal, not accepted, etc. This may touch very different aspects: native vs. foreign, old vs. new or young, clean vs. dirty, good vs. bad, Christian vs. heathen, civilized vs. barbarian, friendly vs. threatening, and so on – to name only some possibilities of the multifold system of relations and contrasts. The signs which visualize, demonstrate or define such identifications, relations, and contrasts are regularly those in the context of the outer appearance and material culture of the person(s). They are seen as part of the daily life of their wearers and their beholders. 1

Johannes Butzbach, Odeporicon: Eine Autobiographie aus dem Jahre 1506. Zweisprachige Ausgabe, trans. Andreas Beriger (Weinheim: VCH, Acta Humaniora, 1991), pp. 244–245: … ymmo nec Germanus, qualis ab ipis discesseram, sed Bohemus, sed barbarus et quasi paganus habitu, moribus, cincinisque longissimis et albis, quos ibi summo cum studio eorum more accurate nutrieram, ad balteum fere undique per humeros et dorsum defluentes, … ignotus… verecundus ex tante immutatione… revertor.

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If one is interested in late medieval daily life, its routine, its repetitiveness, and its stereotypes, one has to concentrate on tracing and analyzing patterns that occur in the sources. Their appearance, role, and meaning depend on aspects of social order, space, intended messages, the variants of sign language applied, and so on. Such context-bound “daily life” patterns can be found through the qualitative and quantitative analysis of very different source corpora. Recognizing and comparing patterns of material culture and outer appearance also lead to identifying the various distinct meanings, functions, values, and legitimacy that objects had for their owners and users, as well as the items’ role and position in the socio-economic system. This can produce clearer results regarding their connotation in the context of various social groups. In all these cases, one may also discover patterns of reaction: acceptance and agreement on the one hand, and denial on the other, sometimes in a kind of quasi “simultaneity of the unsimultaneous”. The construction and perception of “me and you”, which may be “identity” and “otherness” have to be seen in the close context(s) of these phenomena. In this contribution, I deal with aspects of outer appearance and their connection with identity construction in daily life, mainly with the help of late medieval and sixteenth-century German and Central European sources. Let me start with another Central European example: “In the Kingdom of Bosnia, there are three nations and religions: the old Bosnians of Roman Christian religion; the Serbs of Saint Paul’s religion [meaning the Orthodox faith], and the true Turks. The Christians are allowed to keep their religion, their priests, churches and other habits.”2 The author of this description, Benedict Curipeschitz, a Carinthian Slovene who was sent to the Turkish sultan with a message of Emperor Ferdinand I in 1530, did not deal with any other kind of important religious or ethnic differences in Bosnia. He just added one, for him clearly a decisive fact and sign: He emphasized that the Christians of both religions used the same dress as the Turks; the only difference was that “the Christians wear their hair, and the hair of Turks is completely cut, and they are bald-headed. By that, you recognize their difference.”3 Albeit, at first view the seeming marginality of this – the only mentioned sign of a difference of appearance – would 2

3

Benedict Curipeschitz, Itinerarium oder Wegrayß Küniglich Mayestät potschafft gen Constantinopel zu dem Türckischen Keiser Soleyman. Anno 1530, Gerhard Neweklowsky, ed. (Klagenfurt: Wieser Verlag, 1997), pp. 56–57. Benedict Curipeschitz, Itinerarium oder Wegrayß Küniglich…, p. 59; Gerhard Jaritz, “The Multiplicity of Frontiers”, Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU, 6 (2000), p. 167.

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have clearly influenced the evaluations of the readers or audience of the text at home as it fitted an old stereotype well. Benedict Curipeschitz’s report would have led to the perception of an easily recognizable, negative connotation of the Turks based on their outer appearance, a contrast to the outer appearance and identity of the good Christians. In Central and Western European society, bald-headedness was a clear sign of lower-class people, criminals, as well as the torturers of Christ or saints that one knew from the images in church.4 Therefore, this small but decisive distinction in outer appearance also defined and constructed part of the frontier between different peoples and religions, between positive and negative perceptions of them, between oneself and the others. Generally, one has to emphasize that the “other” is a relatively complex abstract concept, difficult to objectify. It can regularly become manifest in difference, contrast or opposition, and sometimes determined exclusively by the construction and observation of signifying material patterns of outer appearance – of a person, a social group, or a people. Self-performance and identity construction, as well as differences, contrasts, and “otherness” – in their textual and visual representations and arrangements – could concern ethnic aspects,5 social status,6 gender,7 religion, qualities of character, and so on. With regard to all of them, material distinctions were indispensable and had to be mediated. Often the distinctions concerned specific details of the material culture.8 Identity and “otherness” were constructed and made visual by means of physiognomy, complexion, dress, behaviour, 4 5

6

7 8

Harry Kühnel, Bildwörterbuch der Kleidung und Rüstung. Vom alten Orient bis zum ausgehenden Mittelalter (Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner Verlag, 1992), p. 98. Concerning ethnic aspects, see: Kate Fleet, “Italian Perceptions of the Turks in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries”, Journal of Mediterranean Studies, 5 (1995), pp.159–172; Kyril Petkov, “Die ‘Orientalisierung’ des Balkans in der deutschen Vorstellung des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts. Eine Untersuchung spätmittelalterlicher und frühneuzeitlicher Wahrnehmungsmuster in Deutschland,” Medium Aevum Quotidianum, 37 (1997), pp. 40–57. For the area of social status, see: Wim Blokmans, “The Feeling of Being Oneself ”, Showing Status: Representations of Social Positions in the Late Middle Ages, Wim Blokmans, Antheun Janse, eds. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), pp. 1–16; Raymond van Uytven, “Showing off One’s Rank in the Middle Ages”, Showing Status: Representations of Social Positions…, pp. 19–34. With regard to gender, see: Valerie R. Hotchkiss, Clothes Make the Man. Female Cross Dressing in Medieval Europe (New York-London: Garland Publishing Inc., 1996). Gerhard Jaritz, “ ‘Seiden Päntel an den Knien’ oder: Die Hoffart liegt im Detail”, Ut populus ad historiam trahatur. Festgabe für Herwig Ebner zum 60. Geburtstag,

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or other features of (material) culture. The mediation of “otherness” sometimes followed known stereotypes. The intensity of the contrast of oneself vs. the “other” depended on the existing or constructed levels or degrees of distance from the “other world” from one’s own. Such constructions may have led to stereotypical evaluations and connotations that were far from reality. John Butzbach, who had left Germany for Bohemia and was no longer recognized when he returned after six years, connected this “identity change” with a long-lasting stereotype that had already lost any real existence centuries before. He stated that he came back “like a Bohemian, a barbarian, a pagan, from my way of dressing, and my customs, …” At the end of the fifteenth century, the Bohemians were certainly no longer barbarians or pagans, and had not been for a very long time, but in Germany such a connection was apparently still alive for “defining” and evaluating the neighbours. This connection can also be seen in rather different contexts, for instance, a mid-fourteenth-century cookbook, the so-called bu˚ch von gu˚ter spise (Book of Good Food). There, we find a recipe for a dessert, mainly out of almonds and honey, called “heathen peas.” The recipe itself starts by saying “If you want to make Bohemian peas, take almonds …”9 This means that, when being recognized as Bohemian, one could at the same time become identified as heathen, although certainly not really such. When traveling from one country to another one, like John Butzbach, a change of identity with the help of one’s outer appearance seems to have become regularly advantageous or even necessary. Let me give another example of this kind: Matthew Schwarz, born in 1497, son of a successful Augsburg merchant burgher family who later became the accountant of the famous Fugger family, had a costume book produced for himself in which he is depicted in a large number of images at the different stations of his life, starting from his birth, represented in the actions in which he was then involved and clad in the dress which he wore at that time.10

9

10

Gerhard Dienes, Gerhard Jaritz, Ingo Kropac, eds. (Graz: Leykam Verlag, 1988), pp. 63–74. Melitta Weiss, Das bu˚ch von gu˚ter spise (The Book of Good Food). A Study, Edition, and English Translation of the Oldest German Cookbook) (Krems: Medium Aevum Quotidianum, 2000), p. 105. August Fink, Die Schwarzschen Trachtenbücher (Berlin: Deutscher Verein für Kunstwissenschaft, 1963). See also: Ulinka Rublack, Dressing Up. Cultural Identity in Renaissance Europe (Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 33–79.

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In 1514, he went to Italy for two years to train as a merchant and accountant. First he stayed in Milan, where one finds him still represented in typical German fashion with tight striped hose and an open gown (fig. 1) on 2 July 1515, at the age of “18 years 4 months 10 days,” as the caption states.11 All the other visual representations of his stay in Milan show him in the new fashion of knee-length pleated gowns (fig. 2), as on 11 October 1515, at the age of “18 years 8 months 19 days,” on the occasion of the French king’s visit to Milan.”12

Fig. 1: Matthew Schwarz, wearing German dress in Milan.

11 12

August Fink, Die Schwarzschen…, p. 112. August Fink, Die Schwarzschen…, p. 113.

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Fig. 2: Matthew Schwarz in Milan on the occasion of the French king’s visit.

In June, 1516, Matthew Schwarz went from Milan to Venice, and clearly prepared himself for this trip by changing to the high fashion black Spanish style of Venice (fig. 3).13

13

August Fink, Die Schwarzschen…, p. 114.

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Fig. 3: Matthew Schwarz in Milan and Venice in “trendy” Spanish fashion.

In Venice, he stayed with the fashionable black colour but moved to a completely different prestigious style, a long robe (fig. 4). The caption of the image refers to 15 August 1516, at the age of “19 years 5 months and 23 days,” in Venice, before he went back to Germany, “ala zentilhomo, but not often worn …”14 14

August Fink, Die Schwarzschen…, pp. 114–115.

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Fig. 4: Matthew Schwarz in Venice as a zentilhomo.

In the next image (fig. 5), he is again back in Augsburg, completely differently clad: again with striped and tight hose reaching to the knees and a tight doublet. The caption refers to 2 October 1516, at the age of “19 years 7 months 10 days: This was my first dress, again in German style, at Augsburg. I wanted to become a hunting squire.”15 15

August Fink, Die Schwarzschen…, p. 115.

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Fig. 5: Matthew Schwarz, back in Germany, as a fashionable hunting squire.

These examples show clear differences and modifications in Matthew Schwarz’s outer appearance. Between 1514 and 1516, he changed his dress style and, in so doing, also his identity, three times. From a fashionable young German burgher’s son he developed into someone following the fashion trends in Milan, then adopted the prestigious Venetian style, only to become German again when he returned to Augsburg in 1516. He clearly adapted himself and assimilated – to be accepted and successful – in

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Augsburg, as well as in Milan, Venice, and again back in Augsburg. Thus, being himself and, at the same time adapting his status and affiliation, were particularly relevant for him and an indispensable part of his (social) performance.16 This and a number of other examples show generally the extent to which outer appearance played an important, sometimes decisive, role in identity creation and definition and that, in this context, the principle of assimilation can be seen as particularly relevant. The research problem of late medieval outer appearance and its connection with identity (construction) is also connected with norms and regulations to a large extent. To display, to maintain and to, let us say, “improve” one’s identity as well as to recognize and to evaluate the other’s identity can only be analyzed in connection with a consideration of the existence, development, change, and observance of any kind of rules. The late medieval and early modern normative source corpora that played the most important role with regard to outer appearance, identity construction, and differentiation were certainly the urban and territorial sumptuary regulations.17 There, the recognizability of differences in public outer appearance concerning social status, economic wealth, and national affiliation (the latter mainly from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries onwards18) became especially relevant for the performance of self, group 16

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18

See also, generally: Susan Crane, The Performance of Self. Ritual, Clothing, and Identity during the Hundred Years War (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002). See, in particular: Liselotte Constanze Eisenbart, Kleiderordnungen der deutschen Städte zwischen 1350 und 1700. Ein Beitrag zur Kulturgeschichte des deutschen Bürgertums (Göttingen-Berlin-Frankfurt am Main: Musterschmidt Verlag, 1962); Neithard Bulst, “Zum Problem städtischer und territorialer Kleider – Aufwands – und Luxusgesetzgebung in Deutschland (13. – Mitte 16. Jahrhundert)”, Renaissance du pouvoir legislatif et genèse de l’état, André Gouron, Albert Rigaudière, eds. (Montpellier: Société d’Histoire du droit et des institutions des anciens pays de droit écrit, 1988), pp. 20–57; Neithard Bulst, Robert Jütte, eds., Zwischen Sein und Schein. Kleidung und Identität in der ständischen Gesellschaft, Saeculum 44/1 (Freiburg-Munich: Verlag Karl Alber, 1993); Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, Antonella Campanini, eds., Disciplinare il lusso. La legislazione suntuaria in Italia e in Europa tra Medioevo ed Età moderna (Rome: Carocci, 2003); Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, “Reconciling the Privilege of a Few with the Common Good: Sumptuary Laws in Medieval and Early Modern Europe”, Journal of Medieval & Early Modern Studies, 39 (2009), pp. 597–617. Liselotte Constanze Eisenbart, Kleiderordnungen der deutschen Städte…, pp. 84–87; Gerhard Jaritz, “Kleidung und Prestige-Konkurrenz. Unterschiedliche Identitäten in

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affiliation, and visualizing the distance from others. I do not want to repeat the important general results that have already been presented in various analyses of sumptuary laws, so will only mention some of the aspects that are relevant to the context of regulating public outer appearance and the fields of identity construction, identity change, and identity loss. When analyzing such regulations, one must be aware of the fact that just the existence of norms could lead to new and increased incitements to infringe the set borderlines, as Neithard Bulst, the specialist in German urban sumptuary laws, already remarked in 1988.19 Increased and more detailed regulation was necessary, when – in the context of processes of individualization and differentiation – the existing system became less clear and more difficult to survey and manage.20 This was particularly important concerning the labeling and demarcation of the ranks of social identity. The regulations regularly reflect a polarization between immutability and change. On the one hand, there was the desideratum to maintain one’s prestige and identity by keeping up the status quo, that is, a visible difference and distance from the others. On the other hand, however, many people clearly endeavored to decrease the distance to the ranks above themselves and to increase it to the ranks below. Thus, immutability might have guaranteed stability and security, but changes were more or less unavoidable. The answer to such a situation in the late medieval and early modern norms showed conservative reactions stating that everything should stay as it had been since time immemorial. It is only emphasized occasionally that the times had been changing; but then mostly concerning general developments and not with regard to different groups in the population and their identity construction. In such a general argument, for instance, the sumptuary law of Nuremberg from before 1480 stated that one would be allowed to wear one’s clothes shorter now, as the course of the world had shown that one no longer followed the old law.21 Although the national element in the sumptuary laws was a particular element of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century regulations, one can recognize the first aspects in this direction as early as the late Middle Ages,

19 20 21

der städtischen Gesellschaft unter Normierungszwängen”, Zwischen Sein und Schein. Kleidung und Identität in der ständischen Gesellschaft, Neithard Bulst, Robert Jütte, eds. (Freiburg-Munich: Verlag Karl Alber, 1993), p. 26. Neithard Bulst, “Zum Problem städtischer und territorialer…”, p. 56. Gerhard Jaritz, “Kleidung und Pestige-Konkurrenz…”, p. 15. Liselotte Constanze Eisenbart, Kleiderordnungen der deutschen…, p. 80.

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for instance, in Nuremberg, already in the fourteenth century, the use of silver cloth from Venice was forbidden.22 In the seventeenth century this was formulated much more explicitly; for instance, the Leipzig sumptuary law from 1640 says that the former regulations had always been given to maintain the honourable German costume and to avoid any foreign manners. Nevertheless, now almost monthly a new fashion of dress was introduced.23 This statement went in a direction that appears in other types of sources as early as the late Middle Ages and the beginning of the sixteenth century. Matthew Schwarz from Augsburg made one of the most interesting remarks of this kind in the 1520s. He criticized that: “we Germans always have been like monkeys. What we saw, we had to copy in the style of multifarious nations.”24 If the sumptuary laws were not obeyed, social, economic or national identities were in danger of no longer being presented correctly, which would lead to problems inside the community. It has to be emphasized again that the decisive material objects that might have initiated such situations could be rather small parts or accessories that might, at first sight, seem rather irrelevant, for example, in particular, borders on clothes. But, one has to take into consideration what Michel Pastoureau emphasized so well some time ago: Dans le vêtement médiéval tout est significant.25 One case from the northern German Hanseatic League town of Wismar shows the problems that the necessary control could lead to.26 The Wismar sumptuary law prohibited maidservants from wearing borders on their clothes. The town’s executioner and his servant were to cut them off if any maidservant was found to be wearing such edgings on her dress. It is clear that such identity control could become difficult, as the controller needed to know everyone in order to decide how to act. In Wismar this did not work well. The sources reveal that the hangman cut the edgings 22

23 24 25

26

Joseph Baader, ed., Nürnberger Polizeiordnungen aus dem XIII bis XV Jahrhundert (Amsterdam: Edition Rodopi, 1966), p. 67: Ez sol auch ein ieclich burger, er sei alte oder junk, niht mer furbas kaine silberin tuch mer tragen von Venedig, bei aller vorgenanten puz. Liselotte Constanze Eisenbart, Kleiderordnungen der deutschen…, p. 81. Liselotte Constanze Eisenbart, Kleiderordnungen der deutschen…, p. 81. Michel Pastoureau, “Du bleu au noir. Éthiques et pratiques de la couleur à la fin du Moyen Age”, Médiévales 14 (1988), p. 17. See also: Gerhard Jaritz, “Kleidung und Prestige-Konkurrenz…”, p. 30. Liselotte Constanze Eisenbart, Kleiderordnungen der deutschen…, p. 47.

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off the clothes of some honest daughters of officials. Moreover, he did not cut them off the clothes of two girls who could clearly be identified as maidservants. A similar example of the loss of identity difference by this type of object of outer appearance is also mentioned by the well-known German preacher and harsh critic of different life situations of his period, Geiler von Kaisersberg. In 1506, he offered particular criticism concerning women’s shoes.27 He stated: “There is no more differences concerning shoes. The common women wear the same shoes as the noble women. There is no difference between the pious women and the whores.” Identity construction, identity loss, and identity change because of or with the help of outer appearance were also popular topics in literature. One of the best-known cases in medieval German literature is the thirteenth-century tale Von dem blôzen keiser (“The Naked Emperor”) by Herrand von Wildonie.28 The arrogant emperor is punished by God. While taking a bath, his clothes are stolen by someone (later revealed to have been an angel), and he is naked. No one recognizes him any longer, as he has lost his identity by having lost his outer appearance. The “thief ” becomes emperor and rules better than the naked “real” one, who was only able to get the clothes of a servant to cover himself. At the end, however, the real emperor repents of his bad rule, is recognized again, and, from then on becomes a good ruler. Another literary example of this kind was offered by the author called Muskatblut (c. 1390- c. 1438).29 He stated: When a peasant with money moves into town, he will get into the town council; he will wear headgear of marten, fox, or lynx fur, and will no longer call himself peasant; he will wear a gown with borders. Who will be able to tell the difference? This statement fits a large number of other pieces of medieval literary evidence dealing with peasants trying to become burghers or noblemen. Visual sources also sometimes referred to this phenomenon or to a constructed mixed identity of peasants and noblemen, like an Austrian example of an illustrated calendar from the second half of the fifteenth century

27 28

29

Gerhard Jaritz, “Kleidung und Sozial-Prestige…”, p. 12. Herrand von Wildonie, Vier Erzählungen, ed. Hanns Fischer (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1969), pp. 22–43. See also: J. W. Thomas, trad., The tales and songs of Herrand von Wildonie (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1972). See: Gerhard Jaritz, “Kleidung und Prestige-Konkurrenz...”, p. 14, note 33.

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(fig. 630). There, the grain harvest is done by young men who are certainly not peasants in their outer appearance but try – not really successfully – to be young members of the nobility.

Fig. 6: Peasants at work trying to show off as young noblemen.

In late medieval visual representations, other identity constructions of depicted figures could also be based on such firmly established stereotypes. Another example of this is the representation of the torturers of Christ or of saints as figures with oriental or orientalizing characteristics on their clothes and physiognomy. However, this could be established in such a way that it no longer mattered whether the action depicted had happened in the Orient or not. Thus, for instance, the execution of Saint Thomas Becket in Canterbury could clearly become an event in which figures with constructed oriental characteristics (fig. 731) in their dress acted as executioners of the saint, because the visual representation of their negative connotation seems to have worked best if shown thus. Saint Thomas (fig. 8) was killed in a situation that represented a mixture of familiar and stereotypical oriental space. 30 31

Vienna, Austrian National Library, cod. 3085 (South German, 1475), fol. 7r: Labours of the Month, August, grain harvest. Murder of Saint Thomas Becket (detail: the oriental[ized] judge and executioner, panel painting, Michael Pacher, 1470/80. Graz (Austria), Alte Galerie am Universalmuseum Joanneum, inv. 326. See: Gottfried Biedermann, Katalog Alte Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum. Mittelalterliche Kunst: Tafelwerke – Schreinaltäre – Skulpturen (Graz: Alte Galerie, 1982), pp. 113–116.

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Fig. 7: Oriental judge and murderer of Saint Thomas Becket.

Fig. 8: The murder of Saint Thomas Becket: Orientals in a Western Christian environment.

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Conclusions To summarize: There are various images in chronicles, laws and regulations, autobiographies, sermons, costume books, cook books, travel accounts, romances as well as tales and poetry, and so on that relate information in a comparable way about the influence of different aspects of one’s outer appearance and material culture on identity, identity construction and perception of identity, as well as on the development, change, loss, and mixture of identity. They show a variety of similar codes, patterns, and stereotypes. In the epilogue of her recent study on Dressing Up. Cultural Identity in Renaissance Europe, Ulinka Rublack has offered the example of Margrave Sibylla Augusta of Baden-Baden in the first decades of the eighteenth century. In the margrave’s summer residence, Favorite, one still can see a display of 46 paintings ordered by her, portraying her, her husband, Ludwig Wilhelm, and their children, dressed as Turks, Persians, Moors, Slaves, Chinese, Indians, and Romans. In this way, Sibylla Augusta showed: “that global national dress was now known so comprehensively that it might be put on and taken off to explore how materials could continually re-make identities in different ways.”32 There is certainly an enormous difference between the late medieval and sixteenth-century, let us say, games of identities that I have presented here and that Margrave Sybilla Augusta ordered to decorate her castle. However, her paintings can still be seen as having had their forerunners and beginnings in the medieval constructions of outer appearance influencing the creation of identities, stereotypes, and hybridities.

32

Ulinka Rublack, Dressing Up. Cultural Identity…, p. 284.

Quivi hanno refugio tutte le nationi come commune domicilio del mondo (Here all the Nations have Refuge as Shared Home of the World). The Cosmopolitan Identity of Rome between the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries Anna Maria Oliva CNR, Istituto di Storia dell’Europa Mediterranea

1. Introduction It is not easy to speak of identity for a city like Rome that is symbolic par excellence. Identity is a complex institutional, political, social, cultural, and anthropological concept. It is not an objective reality, or a piece of cold data, but the sum of several elements. It is a phenomenon of flow, closely connected to the concept of movement and change, because the identity of a given people alters over time, as well as being linked to processes of construction, since it is the result of a number of social, economic, and cultural elements that are both individual and collective1. An analysis of Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which inspired the movie Blade Runner and which deals with androids that are intended to be “more human than human”, shows how the existential drama of these artificial life units is connected to the “lack of memory and thus of identity”2. The link between memory and identity, since there can be no identity without memory, strongly influences any reflection on the identity of Rome, a city where memory has some particularly profound symbolic and ideological aspects (in 1 2

Francesco Remotti, Contro l’identità (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1996), pp. 3–5. Maria Luz Mandingorra Llavata, Conservar las escrituras privadas, configurar las identidades, VII Seminari Internacional d’Estudis sobre la Cultura Escrita (València: Universitat de València, 2000).

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this respect one has only to think of its definition as the eternal city) and where identity derives from accumulation, perhaps more than in any other place. The sources that have defined the image of Rome between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries have two almost opposite registers: per maggior et alta miseria è tolta […] la libertà e […] sottoposta a qualunque piaccia. Oh Roma infelice, oh patria disgraziata […] sei rovinata, conquassata depopulata e data in preda a tutto il mondo (“causing most great and high misery liberty is removed […] and is subjected to anyone who chooses. Oh unhappy Rome, oh wretched homeland […] you are ruined, destroyed, depopulated and given up as prey to the whole world”)3, preda ad huomini forastieri et mezzo barbari (“a prey to foreign and half barbarian men”) who are diradicando l’antica stirpe del sangue romano (“uprooting the ancient lineage of Roman blood”)4, a city submitted to a persone oziose, ignave e forestiere spesso ignobilissime non meno di sangue che di costumi (“lazy and slothful people and foreigners often most ignoble, no less in blood than in their morals”)5 are the judgements made by the Roman cives, or citizens, but the foreigners living there, for whom the city was a reference point, even if they had lived there only for a relatively brief period, used terms such as: patria commune (“shared homeland”),6 plaza del mundo7 (“square of the world”), and “here all the nations have refuge as a shared home of the world”8. The true identity of Rome in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries lies somewhere between these very distant judgements. The meaning of the foreign presence in the city should be

3 4

5 6 7 8

Marco Antonio Altieri, Li Nuptiali di Marco Antonio Altieri pubblicati da Enrico Narducci (Rome: Roma nel Rinascimento, 1995), p. 17. Clara Gennaro, “La pax romana del 1511”, Archivio della Società Romana di Storia, ser. III, 90 (1967, but 1968), pp. 17–60; Alessandro Serio, “Stranieri e cittadini a Roma”, Il Mediterraneo delle città: scambi, confronti, culture, rappresentazioni, Franco Salvatori, ed. (Rome: Viella, 2008), pp. 323–341. Francesco Guicciardini, Storia d’Italia, 2 vols. (Milan: Borroni e Scotti, 1843), vol. 1, p. 199. Francisco Delicado, Ritratto della Lozana Andalusa, Teresa Cirillo, ed. (Rome: Roma nel Rinascimento, 1998), p. 223. Antonio Rodriguez, “D. Francisco de Rojas, embajador de los reyes católicos”, Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia, 28 (1896), p. 373. Marcello Alberini, Il Sacco di Roma. L’edizione Orano de I ricordi di Marcello Alberini (Rome: Roma nel Rinascimento, 1997), p. 279.

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investigated and the role of the Roman cives should be outlined, as well as their legal, institutional and political profile9. What unites these different and conflicting definitions is certainly the shared perception of an ongoing presence of many foreigners in the city. The citizens of Rome perceived the phenomenon with a great deal of concern. They had a critical, almost hostile attitude towards foreigners, whom they saw as barbarian usurpers who had occupied the most important roles and positions in the life of the city and the spaces of municipal existence. The native Romans felt that the foreigners, or forenses, had marginalized their civic role and reduced their prerogatives and powers based on “ancient honours”10, which in the end had become no more than empty simulacra. Instead the of contemporary accounts of foreigners refer to the atmosphere of the city with a mixture of admiration and a strong sense of being welcomed and belonging to a wider societas that transcends the boundaries of people’s countries of origin and appeals to universal values that produce a perception of a communis patria or shared homeland11.

2. Rome, the “Plural City” Rome has been defined as a città plurale (“plural city”), which very aptly expresses the social, cultural and political complexities of the urban environment in the Middle Ages12. It was a city of many identities, with many different profiles and voices, as is clearly evident from the different perspectives that are expressed in the many sources of the past. Several protagonists contributed to construct le molte identità della Roma quattrocentesca (“the many identities of fifteenth-century Rome”)13, a city that

9 10 11 12 13

Alessandro Serio, “Stranieri e cittadini a Roma…”, pp. 324–325. Clara Gennaro, “ La pax romana del 1511…”, p. 24. A concept that was introduced by Modestino and then adopted by the medieval Christian juridical tradition. Luigi Fiorani, Adriano Prosperi, “Una città ‘plurale’”, Roma, la città del papa, Luigi Fiorani, Adriano Prosperi, eds. (Turin: Einaudi, 2000), pp. 23–31. Massimo Miglio, Scritture, Scrittori e Storia. Città e Corte a Roma nel Quattrocento (Manziana: Vecchiarelli, 1993), p. 33.

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was unique among the cities of Europe14 and that was always characterized by an intense influx of different peoples, as well as by its universalistic past that had deeply defined its identity. In fact, as it proceeded with its territorial conquests the Roman Empire had opened its cultural confines and broadened its identity by incorporating various new peoples and new cultures15. Rome, the capital of the empire, was the living and tangible image of that attitude of eclectic syncretism. In imperial times the city was thus an international metropolis, and it welcomed and accepted many widely differing religions, cultures and ethnic groups in a crucible of identity that constituted the foundation of modern Europe16. The enormous significance and attraction of Rome as the centre of Christianity, the seat of the Vicar of Christ, was then added to the strong symbolic value of imperial Rome. In the 14th and 15th centuries Rome became a sort of new Jerusalem. The city of Jerusalem itself was too far away from Europe and fraught with dangers due to its occupation by the Arabs. But Rome was home to the tombs of the Apostles, the most important relics of the martyrs and a large number of symbolic objects connected with the Passion of Christ. In Rome l’accumulo di sacralità è ormai impressionante (“the accumulation of sanctity was by now overwhelming”)17. Rome was thus a complex location with its own identity and it had a cultural and symbolic significance that the city did not lose even in the period of decadence and decline when the papacy had moved to Avignon. Even at that time the city never quite lost its role as the centre of Christianity and the symbol of the Church in the world, which had a very profound significance for all Christians. The strength of the city’s religious values persisted over time, as is clearly shown by the many pilgrims who constantly flocked to Rome, starting from the Early Middle Ages, also on the occasion of the Jubilees of 1390 and 140018, during the years of the Western Schism while there was no pope in Rome.

14 15 16

17 18

Marino Berengo, L’Europa delle città (Turin: Einaudi, 1999), p. 559. Already Seneca pointed out how people came to Rome from all over the world: Massimo Miglio, In viaggio per Roma (Bologna: Pàtron, 1999), p. 9. Luigi Salerno, Roma communis Patria (Rome: Cappelli, 1968), p. 10; Anna Esposito, “Pellegrini, stranieri, curiali ed ebrei”, Roma medievale, André Vauchez, ed. (Bari: Laterza, 2010), pp. 213–239. Massimo Miglio, In viaggio per Roma…, p. 23. Anna Esposito, “Fondazioni per forestieri e studenti a Roma nel tardo medio evo e nella prima età moderna”, Roma, la città del papa…, p. 67; Arnold Esch, “Immagine

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In the mid-fourteenth century the radical political events closely connected with the city’s identity brought about by Cola di Rienzo19 and encouraged by Francesco Petrarca in the literary field20 had a very profound effect on Roman identity since both of these personages referred to the values, politics and imagery of classical Rome, at a time when for some time these factors did not yet have a precise political relevance, as they would have in the Renaissance period21. During the period in which the Curia resided in Avignon (1305–1378), Rome suffered a profound economic, demographic, social, cultural, and political decline. The scathing and almost irreverent descriptions of the Florentine humanist and librarian Vespasiano da Bisticci give a good picture of the city: Era tornata Roma, per l’assenza del Papa, come una terra de vaccai (“Due to the absence of the Pope Rome once more became a domain of cowherds”)22, while Giovanni Boccaccio referred to: Roma, la quale, come è oggi coda, così già fu capo del mondo (“Rome, which was once the world’s head as it is now its tail”)23 and Platina stated: Urbem Romam adeo diruptam et vastam invenit, ut nulla civitatis facies in ea videretur (“The city of Rome is so broken and laid to waste that one can no longer even see it as a city”)24. On the religious level the Great Western

19

20 21 22 23

24

di Roma tra realtà religiosa e dimensione politica nel Quattro e Cinquecento”, Roma, la città del papa…, pp. 7–29. Andreas Reheberg, Anna Modigliani, Cola di Rienzo e il Comune di Roma, 2 vols, 1. Andreas Rehberg, Clientele e fazioni nell’azione politica di Cola di Rienzo; 2. Anna Modigliani, L’Eredità di Cola. Gli statuti del Comune di popolo e la riforma di Paolo II (Rome: Roma nel Rinascimento, 2004). Maria Grazia Blasio et alii, eds., Petrarca e Roma. Proceedings of the conference (Rome, 2–4 december 2004) (Rome: Roma nel Rinascimento, 2006). Massimo Miglio, “1304–1374: storie di Roma”, Petrarca e Roma…, pp. 7–48; Anna Modigliani, “Petrarca e il comune romano”, Petrarca e Roma…, pp. 61–73. Vespasiano da Bisticci, Vite di Uomini illustri, 3 vols., Ludovico Frati, ed. (Bologna: Romagnoli-Dall’Acqua, 1892–1893), vol. 1, p. 24. Giovanni Boccaccio, Il Decamerone, ed. Michele Scherillo (Milan: Ulrico Hoepli, 1914), p. 241 (quinta giornata, terza novella); Giuseppe Lombardi, “La città, libro di pietra. Immagini umanistiche di Roma prima e dopo Costanza”, Alle origini della nuova Roma. Martino V (1417–1431). Atti del Convegno (Roma, 2–5 marzo 1992), Maria Chiabò et alii, eds. (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il medio evo, 1992), pp. 17–45. Platynae Historici, Liber de vita Christi ac omnium pontificum (AA 1–1474), Giacinto Gaida, ed., Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, 3/1 (Città di Castello: S. Lapi, 1932), p. 310.

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Schism, which began in 1378, greatly undermined the image of the City as the seat of the papacy25 and thus at the end of the fourteenth century Rome could not be considered né città eternal né città santa (“either the eternal city nor a holy city”)26.

3. Roman Identity and the Pontiffs The return of Pope Martin V and the Curia to Rome in 1417 radically changed this scenario, revitalizing the city in economic, social and demographic terms. The Curia became a political interlocutor for Italy and for Europe and thus more attention was attracted to Rome. The city was called to fulfil its new function as a capital27 and the process of transformation and growth, due to la centralità che Roma assume nel contesto italiano (“the central position that Rome had adopted in the Italian context”)28 as well as the city’s international role as a point of reference for a vast world outside, had a profound effect on the structure of urban society and on the identity of the Romans themselves. This process of change revolved around the relationship between members of the Curia, courtiers, laymen, clergy, Roman citizens and foreigners (the most commonly used contemporary term is forenses, which refers to anyone from outside the city, whether Italian or not), as well as the changes in the numbers and identities of those arriving in the city or leaving it, the differences in their legal status and their respective degrees of integration or exclusion. In addition to these dynamics it should be emphasized that the city was not only the political capital of a state, but it was 25 26 27

28

Giuseppe Lombardi, “La città, libro di pietra…”, p. 19. Arnold Esch, “Immagine di Roma…”, p. 7. Massimo Miglio, “Come introduzione. Marco Antonio Altieri tra curia e municipio”, Metafore di un pontificato. Giulio II (1503–1513) (Roma, 2–4 dicembre 2008), Flavia Cantatore et alii, eds. (Rome: Roma nel Rinascimento, 2010), pp. 1–14. Paolo Brezzi, “La funzione di Roma nell’Italia della seconda metà del Quattrocento”, Un pontificato ed una città. Sisto IV (1471–1484). Proceedings of the Conference (Rome, 3–7 december 1984), Massimo Miglio et alii, eds. (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il medio evo, 1986), pp. 1–18; Giorgio Chittolini, “Alcune ragioni per un convegno”, Roma capitale (1447–1527), Sergio Gensini, ed. (Pisa: Pacini Editore, 1994), pp. 1–14.

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so because the pope, in his role as pontifex/imperator, considered himself to be the ruler of an super-national entity29. Thus the impulse towards cosmopolitanism became one of the key points of the papal ideology. Papal Rome has some features that have structurally contributed towards the construction of Rome’s cosmopolitan identity. The history of the power system in the Curia is deeply marked by the discontinuity that characterizes its development30. The papal monarchy was elective and not dynastic and there was thus a lack of continuity in its political, cultural and social aims. With every new papal election there was a radical change in policies, but also in the structure, consistency, articulation, and predominant nationality of the Curia and the papal court. In the fifteenth century, while the other courts and kingdoms of Europe were being structured, also on a national basis, the Curia always remained fluid and changeable as regards its progress and direction31. The appointment of a new pontiff, especially if he was not a Roman (the Borgia papacies of Alexander VI and Calixtus III are emblematic in this respect) typically led to the establishment of his countrymen in the Curia and in Rome, as well as his family, their connections, and his extended networks of patronage. The presence of foreigners in the Curia became increasingly significant, and Thomas Frenz has recorded this process in a very precise and detailed way. The inflow of forenses corresponded to an analogous outflow, but even if they stayed for relatively short periods these foreigners always left a mark of some kind on the social fabric of the city32. Especially the Cardinals who were called to reside in Rome and to carry out their activities in the Curia deeply affected the identity of Rome, by means of their many different types of princely courts. Their presence constituted an important force for cosmopolitanism, which had a direct impact on the city33. For a cardinal, as Enea Silvio Piccolomini pointed 29

30

31 32 33

Massimo Miglio, “Il ritorno a Roma. Varianti di una costante nella tradizione dell’antico: le scelte pontificie”, Città e Corte a Roma…, pp. 139–148; Massimo Miglio, “Città e corte. Pretesti per una conclusione”, Roma capitale…, pp. 581–592. Amedeo de Vincentiis, Battaglie di memoria. Gruppi, intellettuali, testi e la discontinuità del potere papale alla metà del Quattrocento. Con l’edizione del Regno di Leodrisio Crivelli (Rome: Roma nel Rinascimento, 2002), pp. 10–13. Paolo Prodi, Il sovrano pontefice. Un corpo e due anime: la monarchia papale nella prima età moderna (Bologna: il Mulino, 1982). Thomas Frenz, Die Kanzlei der Päpste der Hochrenaissance (1471–1527) (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1986). Luigi Fiorani, Adriano Prosperi, “Una città ‘plurale’…”, p. 23.

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out sola Roma patria est34. (“Rome alone is home”). The multiplicity of the courts of the cardinals and princes of the church led to radical changes at the moment of every election of a new pontiff and, with their cultural, social and economic influence and profound effects upon the lives of the city’s citizens, these courts effectively enhanced the cosmopolitan image of the city and by extension the Church itself35. Rome was also a reference point for many people who came there either for short or long periods, attracted by the role of the Curia. They were extremely varied and diverse both socially and culturally, ranging from sovereigns, princes, archbishops, bankers, merchants, the attorneys of clergymen and nobles, to the ambassadors of the various European powers who came to the Curia to discuss various issues with the pontiff. And of course we must not forget the pilgrims whose presence increased significantly following the institution of the Jubilee in 1300. In fact the influx of the romei (pilgrims who came to Rome) eventually came to surpass the numbers of pilgrims travelling to Santiago de Compostela and Jerusalem, the other two main destinations of Christian pilgrimage. The evolution of the identity of the city can thus be considered as having various aspects. For example, there is a juridical-institutional and ultimately political aspect, marked by papal interventions that aimed to deprive the municipal magistracies of power and authority, as well as to weaken and marginalize the core of Roman society, favouring foreigners within the Curia, especially on a legal and political plane. There is a cultural move, which also became a political strategy with the opening of the papal court and Curia, and ultimately the city in general, to humanists, artists, and men of culture. But the papacy also promoted various social and economic transformations, which in many cases encouraged deeper and more radical economic and financial processes. These various factors are all pieces of the same mosaic and they constitute different perspectives from which to consider the cosmopolitan identity of Rome. The overall picture is one of transformation from a provincial and municipal Rome to Rome as a capital, and from the Rome of the Romans to the Rome of the popes and to Rome as the shared home of the world.

34 35

Concetta Bianca, Da Bisanzio a Roma. Studi sul cardinale Bessarione (Rome: Roma nel Rinascimento, 1999), p. 4. Gigliola Fragnito, “Le corti cardinalizie nella Roma del Cinquecento”, Rivista Storica Italiana, 106/1 (1994), pp. 5–41.

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Upon the return of the popes two different situations arose in the city, which do not seem to have had a direct relationship or interaction between them: that of the genuine Romans and that of the laymen and clergy who were closely connected to the Curia36. Already at the time of the installation of Boniface IX in Rome the Resignatio pleni dominii, which was signed by the representatives of the municipality on the 5th of July 1398, established that the lay and clerical courtiers were to have their own law court. Moreover, the Roman ruling class agreed that all public life should be under the control of the pontifical administration, all the municipal magistrates should be appointed by the pope, and that the Camera Urbis (“City Chamber”) should be under the complete control of the Camera Apostolica (“Apostolic Chamber”). Formally, the municipal structure remained unchanged, but it was now devoid of any real power37. During the pontificate of Martin V the opposition and conflict between the Papal Court and the municipality, the roots of which were already apparent in the legislative measures of Boniface IX, came increasingly to the fore. In 1422 the pope reiterated the juridical autonomy of the lay and clerical members of the Curia, both men and women38. There was thus a consolidated basis for the establishment of two separate Romes: a municipal Rome and a curial Rome. Also the contemporary chronicles refer to these two different components of Roman society, li Romani armata mano […] perseguitanno lo papa e li cortesciani (“the Romans, with weapons in their hands […] persecute the pope and the courtiers”)39. The history of the fifteenth and early sixteenth century is marked by the confrontation between these two elements of which the municipal Rome was ultimately the loser, crushed by the papal Rome, when practically the city, the Curia and the papal court became a single united entity40. In 1425 there was a purely formal ratification of the municipal statutes of 1363, but this was in fact

36 37

38 39 40

Michele Franceschini, “‘Populares, cavallerocti, milites vel doctores’, consorterie, fazioni e magistrature cittadine”, Alle origini della nuova Roma…, pp. 291–300. Anna Esposito, “I ‘forenses’ a Roma nell’età del Rinascimento”, Un’altra Roma. Minoranze nazionali e comunità ebraiche tra Medioevo e Rinascimento, Anna Esposito, ed. (Rome: Il Calamo, 1995), pp. 75–92. Anna Esposito, “Pellegrini, stranieri…”, p. 232. Gentile Delfino, Diario romano (1370–1410) attribuito a Gentile Delfino, Francesco Isoldi, ed. (Città di Castello: S. Lapi, 1909–1919), p. 77. Paola Farenga, “‘I Romani sono periculoso populo …’. Roma nei carteggi diplomatici”, Roma capitale…, pp. 289–315.

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a virtually complete delegation of political power to the pope, involving a near-total loss of municipal autonomy for the city. Also the sumptuary laws approved by the popes, ranging from those of Martin V (1425) to those of Clement VII (1532), reveal the conditions of Roman society, since they made a strong distinction between native Romans and foreigners, and between Romans and courtiers. The sumptuary laws thus reveal the conditions of Roman society. In the legislative texts of the last years of the 15th century the social articulation of the Romans was lost, and the ancient distinctions were removed: the nobility of the city, the cavallerotti (the middle classes of Rome), the ancient popular classes and the populace or common people. The Romans thus remained as an indefinite group distinguished only from the barons and the Papal Court. Tutto questo dimostra la perdita e la rovina politica di un intero gruppo sociale (“All of this indicates the loss and the political ruin of an entire social group”)41. The lucid awareness of this ruination eventually triggered off the bitterness of the city’s nobility for an onerous and humiliating social condition and the nostalgia for an era and a status that had been lost42. These are the basic themes of the literary work Li Nuptiali that Marco Antonio Altieri, a member of the Roman municipal nobility, wrote at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Inspired by a marriage, seen as a social bond between different family groups, Altieri, in an attempt to regenerate a social class, writes an epic of contemporary Roman society in which he describes the bitter reality of those years while looking back with regret to an ancient time when honour and the social role of the Roman cives were the mainstay of society43. In order to reflect upon the identity of Rome in an economic and financial sense we need to clear the field of the traditional images of the city as a parasitic entity that lived only in the shadow of the Papal Court, and thanks to the economic movements encouraged by the latter. Such an image is far from reality and has now been invalidated by various studies44. The new economic situation brought about by the return of the Curia 41

42 43 44

Anna Esposito, “La normativa suntuaria romana tra Quattro e Cinquecento”, Economia e società a Roma tra Medioevo e Rinascimento, Anna Esposito, Luciano Palermo, eds. (Rome: Viella, 2005), pp. 147–179. Anna Esposito, “I ‘forenses’ a Roma…”, pp. 80, 83, 90. Massimo Miglio, “Introduzione’, Altieri, Li Nuptiali…, pp. 10–11. Luciano Palermo, “Espansione demografica e sviluppo economico a Roma nel Rinascimento”, Popolazione e società a Roma dal medioevo all’età contemporanea, Eugenio Sonnino, ed. (Rome: Il Calamo, 1998), pp. 299–326.

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caused a movement of capital, especially Florentine, which was managed by the pontifical overlords papal dominion but that, in terms of its effects, especially gave a new impulse to the local artisan and mercantile class and a stimulus to the immigration of specialized and skilled workers. The growing presence of foreigners is thus connected to the expansion of the offices of the Curia and to the role of the Papal Court, but it has been shown how that role acted as a stimulus to a broader economic and commercial development with the immigration of many foreigners attracted by the demand for skilled labour that a city undergoing such a substantial expansion called for and protected by the policies of Pope Martin V, who did not limit himself to attracting humanists and men of culture, but, thanks to tax relief and tributary exemptions, favoured the entrance of qualified foreign workers into the main productive sector, that of the textile industry45. The social, economic and cultural renewal that revitalized the city was also characterized by a strong recovery in the city’s population largely due to immigration and to the presence of forenses. Within the Roman sources in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries there is a lack of censuses, land registers, and parish records. The only texts available consist in a survey made during the pontificate of Leo X and the Descriptio Urbis, a survey of the city’s population carried out in 1527 just before the sack of Rome, perhaps for tax purposes. At the time of the return of the Curia from Avignon the city had about 30,000 inhabitants, a figure which rose to 60,000 shortly before the sack, and dropped back down to 30,000 after the dramatic imperial occupation. After that there was a continuous population growth and in the 1580s Rome had as many as 100,000 inhabitants. This phenomenon can be explained by three factors: firstly the growth of the number of genuine Romans, i.e. those that traditionally resided in the city; secondly the transfer from the countryside to the city of the inhabitants of the Papal States who had been affected by the changes in the agricultural sector and by the attraction exerted by the capital; and finally the arrival of people from other Italian regions and from the rest of Europe46. The Roman identity in the fourteenth century was largely shaped by the political actions of the popes on the cultural level. From the early 45 46

Ivana Ait, “Mercato del lavoro e ‘forenses’ a Roma nel XV secolo”, Popolazione e società a Roma…, pp. 335–358. Egmont Lee, Habitatores in Urbe. La popolazione di Roma nel Rinascimento (Rome: Università la Sapienza, 2006).

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fifteenth century onwards there was a slow but all-pervasive reconstruction also on a cultural plane. L’esplicita volontà [di Martino V] di chiamare a Roma gli uomini culturalmente più prestigiosi è una delle linee portanti di tale ricostruzione (“The explicit intention [of Martin V] to call the most culturally prestigious men in Rome is one of the fundamental policies of this reconstruction”)47 and consequently of the renewal of Rome’s identity. One of the characteristics of the men of culture who came to the city in those years, was to renew the memory of the ancient Roman citizens, based on their moral qualities, cultural education and their attitudes and ways of behaving. Rome, the capital of culture and thus a refuge for those seeking intellectual freedom, introduces a frequently repeated idea of Rome as a new Athens48. The link with the culture of ancient Rome is not merely cultural, but it also takes on a political significance49, becoming transformed over time into an element of identity. Humanism and the Renaissance, international movements with connections all over Europe, acted as a sounding board for the values of ancient Rome, giving them a universal and cosmopolitan meaning. For this reason romanitas and therefore being a citizen of Rome was no longer a value rooted in the city and in the urban context, but they took on a universal value. In 1428 Poggio Bracciolini stated that “the Roman Curia is the true homeland that is to be preferred to the natural one”. For the humanists who were called to Rome by the pope or who came to the city in the entourage of a cardinal, the members of cultural associations or the teachers in the Studium Urbis, Rome became domicilium et eruditionis eloquentiae50. In the middle of the fifteenth century, at the time of the election of Pope Nicholas V (1447), Rome was a centre with a great cultural importance, dove si trovano tutti i singulari uomini (“where all the singular men can be found”), which reinforced its political role. In Rome, political history and cultural history are therefore intertwined51. In the fifteenth century the 47 48

49 50 51

Concetta Bianca, “Dopo Costanza: classici e umanisti”, Alle origini della nuova Roma…, pp. 85–110. In 1438 Lapo da Castiglionchio presented Rome as a new Athens in his work on the benefits of life in the Curia, written in 1438, see: Massimo Miglio, “Città e corte. Pretesti…”, p. 583. Massimo Miglio, “L’immagine dell’onore antico. Individualità e tradizione della Roma municipale”, Città e Corte a Roma nel Quattrocento…, pp. 149–161. Concetta Bianca, “Dopo Costanza…”, pp. 89–92. Massimo Miglio, “Materiali e ipotesi”, Città e Corte a Roma nel Quattrocento…, pp. 30–32.

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theory of Rome as a communis patria (“common home or fatherland”) became popular once more (the concept was introduced by Modestino and then adopted by the medieval Christian legal tradition), and the humanistic meaning was developed and elaborated of the duplex patria of the foreigners, courtiers, who lived in Rome but who came from other towns. There was a discrepancy between their natural home and what was felt and perceived as a new home. Rome came to be seen as “free and a refuge for all the foreigners”52. At the beginning of the fifteenth century Roman society was divided into the populace, the middle-classes, the artisans and shopkeepers, and the nobiles viri who were the municipal aristocracy. Then there were the baronial families. Between the fifteenth century and the first decades of the sixteenth century there was a profound transformation of social status and of class: the municipal aristocracy of Roman origin was marginalized from the spaces of power by the action of the pope, while its ranks were opened to new social typologies. This is the distinction between real Romans and new Romans described by Marco Antonio Altieri in Li Nuptiali. There was also the decline and decadence of some noble Roman families, while the families of the non-Roman nobility who were by now established in Rome rose in importance. These were families of provincial origin and forenses whose fortune was based mainly on networks of patronage within the factions of the Curia and on their relationships with the pontiff. There was thus a process of internationalization of the nobility, which altered and distorted its sense of belonging53.

4. The Forenses and Roman Identity The social transformations that marked Rome in the early fifteenth century are linked to the presence of many foreigners. “It is a phenomenon that is striking for its breadth, the capillary force of attraction that the city exercised”54 and for the ability to penetrate deep into the very fibre and 52 53 54

Massimo Miglio, “Città e corte. Pretesti…”, pp. 588–589. Anna Esposito, “La città e i suoi abitanti”, Roma del Rinascimento, Antonio Pinelli, ed. (Rome: Laterza, 2001), pp. 3–47. Giorgio Chittolini, “Alcune ragioni per un convegno…”, p. 9.

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fabric of the composition of the city’s inhabitants55. The most significant population increase can be attributed to the arrival of foreign immigrants, who moved into the city centre56. In those years the Roman chronicler Stefano Infessura identified the principal components of the population as the romani cives, the members of the Curia the populace, and finally the alienigenae consisting of all those people who were not integrated within the urban categories, but who resided in Rome57. The presence of foreigners has too often been limited to the environment of the Curia, where they gained importance as the holders of offices, who were typically merchants and bankers of a high social level. Recent studies, based on notarial documents and other sources, have however revealed a significant presence of foreigners also in the low and average strata of society, especially artisans, tradesmen, labourers and even among the marginalized and courtesans58. The most recent analyses of the Descriptio urbis indicate that on the eve of the sack of Rome the cit’s population consisted of about 60 per cent Romans while the remaining 40 percent were Italians (from other regions of the peninsula) and non-Italian forenses. This data seems to confirm the strong feeling that emerges from various sources, that Rome was a city of non-Roman. In his memoirs of the Sack of Rome Alberini says that perché in Roma la minor parte del popolo sono i Romani, l’altri come sono de diverse nationi e patrie (“in Rome the lesser part […] are the Romans, while the others are of different nations and homelands”). One piece of information that speaks for all is that at the court of Pope Leo X, which has been closely studied with regard to the presence of foreigners, 700 people are recorded only 3 or 4 of whom were Romans59. 55 56 57

58

59

Alessandro Serio, “Stranieri e cittadini a Roma…”, p. 330. Luciano Palermo, “L’Economia”, Roma del Rinascimento…, pp. 49–91. Anna Esposito, “La città e i suoi abitanti…”, p. 4; Stefano Infessura, Diario della città di Roma di Stefano Infessura scriba senato, Oreste Tommasini, ed. (Rome: Forzani, 1890), p. 174 Anna Esposito, “La città e i suoi abitanti…”, pp. 4–9; Matteo Sanfilippo, “Roma nel Rinascimento: una città di immigrati”, Le forme del testo e l’immaginario delle metropoli, Benedetta Bini, Valerio Viviani, eds. (Viterbo: Sette Città, 2007), pp. 73–85; Anna Esposito, “‘… La minor parte di questo popolo sono i romani’. Considerazioni sulla presenza dei forenses nella Roma del Rinascimento”, Romababilonia (Rome: Bulzoni, 1993), pp. 41–60. Marcello Alberini, Il Sacco di Roma …, pp. 237–238; Anna Esposito, “I ‘Forenses’ a Roma…”, pp. 75–78.

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The Spanish were one of the largest groups of ultramontani (literally “those from beyond the mountains”), a term used in Rome to indicate those who came from outside Italy. There were already many Spanish during the pontificate of Callistus III in the mid fifteenth century and they became even more numerous in the years of Alexander VI’s reign60. Recent studies on those from Iberia, particularly from Catalonia, who lived in Rome in the offices of the Curia, in the top ranks of urban society, in the army, as manpower in the shipyards, and as craftsmen have showed the consistency and relevance of the Spanish at all social levels61. The Catalan presence was a deeply rooted, complex and significant phenomenon for Roman society as a whole62. It was the largest community among the residents of Rome and the only one, apart from that of the Florentines63, which established a commercial consulate in the city. It was also the first to establish a permanent diplomatic representative at the Papal Court with a resident ambassador. The way the Roman people felt about the intrusive Catalan presence at the time of Calixtus III is recorded in the sources, “in Rome all you can see is Catalans” reads a contemporary Roman chronicle64 and Pietro Bembo stated that at the time of the Borgia popes “Valencia had occupied the Vatican hill”65. Also the Teutonic colony was quite substantial, consisting mainly of artisans, craftsmen, innkeepers, the managers of public baths and saunas, bakers, shoemakers and weavers. Their activities regarding the new craft 60

61

62 63

64 65

For a historiographic update on the presence of foreigners in Rome, see: Matteo Binasco, “Migrazioni nel mondo mediterraneo durante l’età moderna. Il case-study storiografico italiano”, RiMe. Rivista dell’Istituto di Storia dell’Europa mediterranea, 6 (2011), pp. 45–113 . The studies regarding the Iberian presence in Rome also had a significant boost following the initiatives promoted on the occasion of the fifth centenary of the pontificate of Alexander VI, see: Roma di fronte all’Europa all’epoca di Alessandro VI, 3 vols., Maria Chiabò et alii, eds. (Rome: Roma nel Rinascimento, 2001). Anna Maria Oliva, “Percezioni di identità catalana in fonti italiane”, Bullettino dell’Istituto storico italiano per il medio evo, 114 (2012), pp. 199–219. Irene Polverini Fosi, “I Fiorentini a Roma nel Cinquecento: storia di una presenza”, Roma capitale…, pp. 389–414; Claudia Conforti, “La ‘nation florentine’ à Rome pendant la Renaissance”, Les Étrangers dans la ville, Jacques Bottin, Donatella Calabi, eds. (Paris: Éditions de la Maison des science de l’homme, 1999), pp. 93–105. Francesco Isoldi, ed., Il “Memoriale” di Paolo di Benedetto di Cola dello Mastro del Rione di Ponte (Città di Castello: S. Lapi, 1910–1912), pp. 97–98. Pietro Bembo, Le prose di messer Pietro Bembo cardinale nelle quali si ragiona della volgar Lingua (Venice: Guglielmo Zerletti, 1761), p. 46.

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of printing were also particularly significant. There was also a certain number of Corsicans, who mostly worked as sailors and soldiers but also as maidservants and nannies, as well as immigrant populations of Slavs, Albanians, Muslims and Greeks66, who had been present in the city since the fall of Constantinople, but had become more and more numerous after the Turkish conquests67. The presence of so many foreigners in Rome naturally led to the setting up and development of organisations and facilities for the accommodation and assistance of their compatriots, especially pilgrims. These structures were organised according to a national basis and they contributed in various ways to the entry of foreigners into the contexts and environments of daily life in the city and Roman society, and helped them to become firmly established and accepted within the urban fabric. In the fifteenth century, the schole and the hospitals, which were already active in the Early Middle Ages, changed their profile, and started to address not only the transient pilgrims, but also their countrymen who were by now well established in the city. Thus, in the course of the fifteenth century many national churches, fraternities and corporations became established68. Over time all of these institutions become points of reference for the ambassadors who were active in Rome at the Curia, as a first step towards the establishment of permanent diplomatic missions69. During the fifteenth century and then more broadly and definitively in the sixteenth century the cosmopolitan identity of Rome gradually became established. Within the city the distinction between foreigners and Romans remained: the ongoing daily osmosis did not favour the formation of a common identity, but it allowed for the formation of a mutual understanding of the different respective spheres, the boundaries of which became most evident at times of conflict70.

66 67 68

69 70

Heleni Porfyriou, “La présence grecque en Italie entre XVIe et XVIIe siècle: Rome et Venise”, Les Étrangers dans la ville…, pp. 121–136. Anna Esposito, “La città e i suoi abitanti…”, p. 7. Luigi Fiorani, ed., Le confraternite romane: esperienza religiosa, società, committenza artistica. Proceedings of the Colloquium of the Caetani Foundation, Roma 1982 (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1984); Storiografia e archivi delle confraternite romane, Luigi Fiorani, ed. (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1985). Anna Esposito, “La città e i suoi abitanti…”, p. 13. Alessandro Serio, “Stranieri e cittadini a Roma…”, p. 330.

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5. Romanitas in the Sixteenth Century The radical changes that Rome underwent, transforming it into the capital city of the Church, the location of a Renaissance court with strong connotations of internationalism, in which the ancient social articulation of the Romans had by now disappeared so that they were now an indistinct category, as opposed to the barons and members of the curia, had already occurred by the end of the fifteenth century71. In fact, as we have seen, in the early sixteenth century, Marco Antonio Altieri denounced these changes in his Li Nuptiali72. In 1511 the radical social transformations in Rome were confirmed and ratified by the signing of the Pax romana by the representatives of the citizens of Rome and the pope. Due to the international context and the balance of power in Rome, the final years of the pontificate of Julius II were marked by political and religious turmoil. In August 1511 the Pope became seriously ill and it was believed that he would soon die. The conditions typical of periods of the vacancy of throne of St. Peter were therefore created: popular unrest, riots and a general state of insecurity. At that period some of the basic themes of the discontent of the barons and the Roman people emerged: a civic power of which only le immagini degli honori antichi (“the images of ancient honours”) remained, and a city that was tutta preda a huomini forestieri e mezzo barbari (“a prey to foreign and half barbarian men”). During the armed uprising they criticized the papal policy that favoured a foreign college of cardinals that was less sensitive to the pressures of Roman society and asked to the college of cardinals for concessions, namely: to reserve four cardinalships for families “with Roman blood”, and to promulgate a law according to which i benefici di Roma si conferissero agli antichi romani o a quelli che fossero creati cittadini prima che cardinali (“the benefits of Rome should be conferred to the ancient Romans or to those that were created citizens before being cardinals”). It was a political plan that aimed to restore honours, a political role and economic importance to the city magistrates who had gradually lost these things. The Pax Romana was the last attempt for survival of the genuinely Roman forces. The episode did not, however, prevent the collapse of the 71 72

Anna Esposito, “La normativa suntuaria romana…”, pp. 152–153. Massimo Miglio, “Come introduzione. Marco Antonio Altieri…”, pp. 7–8.

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ruling class in the city73. Nevertheless one must avoid making too simple a reading of that period and that society: it was not only a contrast between two forces that coexisted in the city: the Roman Curia and the Roman citizens; municipal culture and courtly culture. If one looks at the contemporary accounts referring to specific individuals one can see that there was still a continual osmosis between these two worlds74 and that the situation was much more complex. During the sixteenth century the social, political and cultural state of affairs consolidated this trend, Rome’s identity as the centre of Christianity was combined with its role as the capital of a great Renaissance state. The cosmopolitan identity of the city and its relationship with foreigners were consolidated so that in 1580 in the journal of his journey in Italy Michel de Montaigne declares that Rome is still i benefici di Roma si conferissero agli antichi romani o a quelli che fossero creati cittadini prima che cardinali (“the city with the most cosmopolitan character in the world and where the least attention is paid to whether one is a foreigner and from other nation”). It is a city where ognuno ci sta come a casa sua (“everyone stays there as if they were at their own home”) and where gli stranieri sono nelle loro proprie funzioni in mezzo ai loro beni (“foreigners carry out their own functions in the midst of their possessions”). By comparing the situation in Venice and in Rome Montaigne himself seems to identify the elements that are peculiar to the latter. In Rome, much more than in Venice, the foreigners are resident and domiciled. These two facts indicate that they were able to establish deeper and more lasting roots in the city and indicates the possibility of foreigners in Rome, more than in those Venice, to enter into the social and productive fabric of the city and become integrated with it. The juridical relevance and significance of the definition cives romani as a means of participation in the life of the city and the municipal administration was gradually lost due to the interventions of the popes and of the magistrates they appointed. During the sixteenth century Roman citizenship became accessible to an increasing number of foreigners who considered it to be an honorary title associated with the memory of the city’s greatness in ancient times, but also one that was a means for entering into the social fabric of the city. There was thus a distortion of the concept of romanitas, which by now was devoid of juridical implications 73 74

Clara Gennaro, “La Pax romana del 1511…”, pp. 19, 24–25, 39. Massimo Miglio, “Mesticanze”, Città e Corte a Roma nel Quattrocento…, p. 35.

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or a civil and municipal dimension. Instead it had become the patrimony of the papacy, with a universal value, which everyone could identify with. The roots of the cosmopolitan identity of modern Rome should therefore be sought within these contexts and these issues, a romanitas that is neither based on any national connection or affiliation, nor bound to the municipal administration of the city, but that is a significant stage in the integration of foreigners into a universal identity or koine, an instrument that gives the city the appearance of an open and pluralistic society, a frontier town seen as a space of political, social and cultural interaction, to some extent hybrid and amalgamated. For the elite classes this romanitas corresponded to an ideological and cultural programme of a humanistic and curial nature, while for the lower and middle classes it was linked to an open and cosmopolitan identity of the citizens. Neither of these two conceptions led to the construction of a common identity and the Romans, both ancient and new, increasingly became subjects of the pope and never developed into true cives, as citizens of the State of the Church75.

75

Alessandro Serio, “Stranieri e cittadini a Roma…”, pp. 325–326, 329–330 and 340–341.

Plurilingualism and Identity in Sardinia (XVI–XVII centuries): Some Thoughts* Maria Eugenia Cadeddu CNR, Istituto per il Lessico Intellettuale Europeo e Storia delle Idee

Law No. 26 of the Region of Sardinia on the Promozione e valorizzazione della cultura e della lingua della Sardegna was promulgated in 1997 in recognition of the equal distinction of Sardinian to Italian. It gave the Sardinian language a stronger identity and importance compared to other forms of cultural expression, as indicated in the following article of law: Art. 2 Oggetto l. Ai sensi della presente legge la Regione assume come beni fondamentali da valorizzare la lingua sarda – riconoscendole pari dignità rispetto alla lingua italiana – la storia, le tradizioni di vita e di lavoro, la produzione letteraria scritta e orale, l’espressione artistica e musicale, la ricerca tecnica e scientifica, il patrimonio culturale del popolo sardo nella sua specificità e originalità, nei suoi aspetti materiali e spirituali. 2. La Regione considera tale impegno parte integrante della sua azione politica e lo conforma ai principi della pari dignità e del pluralismo linguistico sanciti dalla Costituzione e a quelli che sono alla base degli atti internazionali in materia, e in particolare nella Carta europea delle lingue regionali e minoritarie del 5 novembre 1992, e nella Convenzione quadro europea per la protezione delle minoranze nazionali del 1 febbraio 1995. 3. Pertanto la Regione considera la cultura della Sardegna, la lingua sarda e la valorizzazione delle sue articolazioni e persistenze, come caratteri e strumenti necessari per l’esercizio delle proprie competenze statutarie in materia di beni culturali – quali musei, biblioteche, antichità e belle arti – di pubblici spettacoli, ordinamento degli studi, architettura e urbanistica, nonchè di tutte le altre attribuzioni proprie o delegate che attengono alla piena realizzazione dell’autonomia della Sardegna. *

The present study was carried out within the Progetto Migrazioni of the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR).

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4. La medesima valenza attribuita alla cultura ed alla lingua sarda è riconosciuta con riferimento al territorio interessato, alla cultura ed alla lingua catalana di Alghero, al tabarchino delle isole del Sulcis, al dialetto sassarese e a quello gallurese.1

However, have the Sardinian identity and the Sardinian language always been so closely associated? Can this association be attributed to other eras, or backdated in terms of identity values to the nineteenth or twentieth century? And what was the linguistic situation of Sardinia, kingdom of the Crown of Spain, in the modern age? Without wishing to trace the evolution of Sardinian through the centuries nor present any definitive answers, here are some reflections, concerning research still in progress,2 on the phenomena of plurilingualism registered in Sardinia during the modern period and their possible relationship with Sardinian identity. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the linguistic repertoire of Sardinia consisted of Sardinian, Catalan, Spanish, Italian and Latin, with differences for each language regarding timing and means of extension, geographic scope, usage and functions, diffusion between social classes and communication skills of the peoples. Yet present studies struggle to define the various aspects of this repertoire due to the need to obtain more data on written documentation and due to the general complexity of the linguistic landscape of the island. Consider as an example the testimony of the Jesuit Balthasar Pinyes, in a letter of 1561, concerning the city of Sassari: En lo de la lengua sarda, sepa vuestra paternidad que en esta ciudad no la hablan, ni en el Alguer, ni en Cáller: más sólo la hablan en las villas. En esta ciudad se hablan quatro o sinco lenguas: quién catalán, quién castellano, quién italiano, quién corso,

1 2

. Please refer to my articles: Maria Eugenia Cadeddu, “Gli atti parlamentari sardi del XVII secolo: una fonte alternativa per lo studio della storia medievale?”, Corts i Parlaments de la Corona d’Aragó. Unes institucions emblemàtiques en una monarquia composta, Remedios Ferrero, Lluis Guia, eds. (València: Publicacions de la Universitat de València, 2008), pp. 613–619; Maria Eugenia Cadeddu, “Scritture di una società plurilingue: note sugli atti parlamentari sardi di epoca moderna”, Reperti di plurilinguismo nell’Italia spagnola (sec. XVI-XVII), Thomas Krefeld, Wulf Oesterreicher, Verena Schwägerl-Melchior, eds. (Berlin-Boston: De Gruyter, 2013), pp.  13–26; Maria Eugenia Cadeddu, “Alla periferia dell’impero: echi del Nuovo Mondo in Sardegna”, Il Tesoro messicano. Libri e saperi tra Europa e Nuovo Mondo, Maria Eugenia Cadeddu, Marco Guardo, eds. (Firenze-Rome: Olschki, 2013), pp. 277–296.

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quién sardo: de modo que no hay lengua cierta sobre que el hombre pueda hazer fundamento; todavía se pone algún cuidado en que se hable sardo; pero no es posible que se haga como en Italia o Flandes y Francia, que hablan todos los de una ciudad una lengua y acá no es assí. Y assí he procurado de yr por los medios, procurando de aprender el sardo medianamente; aunque, como digo, en esta ciudad no le hablan, más tienen lengua por sí quasi como corcesca; y en lo común hablamos todos castellano. Y para·l predicar en la ciudad no hay otra lengua con que poder predicar, sino fuese la italiana. Aunque más se huelgan de la castellana, máxime en Cáller y en el Alguer. (…) Y si en esta tierra hablaran todos una lengua, yo pusiera más diligencia en que la aprendiéramos. Que yo cierto no sé de quál hechar mano; porque si de la sarda, ya digo que no la hablan en esta ciudad, ni en Cáller, ni en el Alguer, que son las ciudades principales; quanto más que ningún predicador prédica en sardo, aunque sea natural de la tierra; más todos en italiano o castellano; y cierto es una confusión en esta tierra acerca de las lenguas.3

In this text Pinyes’ statements about Sardinian are contradictory, but taking into account other documentary and literary sources, it can be said that the language had spread throughout the island, to cities and to rural areas, and was particularly used as colloquial sermo. For those who were not native to the island, it was not easy to understand, and many Bishops appointed in Sardinia, but from other countries, for example, had to use an interpreter during their pastoral visits. The Portuguese Bishop of Ales from 1585 to 1601, Pedro Clement, asked to give up his position because not understanding Sardinian non poteva comunicare direttamente con i suoi preti e i suoi fedeli, ciò che lo costringeva a delegare ad altri lo svolgimento di funzioni specifiche del suo ministero.4 The Sardinian language was not without a written tradition, as evidenced by ecclesiastical texts, legal codes, deeds, literary works, etc. However, the expectations expressed by scholar Gerolamo Araolla were not fulfilled. In his poem Sa vida, su martiriu et morte dessos gloriosos martires Gavinu, Brothu et Gianuari (Cagliari, 1582) he called for an evolution of the language, in an erudite fashion, to be achieved through the 3

4

Raimondo Turtas, “La questione linguistica nei collegi gesuitici in Sardegna nella seconda metà del Cinquecento”, Studiare, istruire, governare. La formazione dei letrados nella Sardegna spagnola (Sassari: Editrice Democratica Sarda, 2001), pp. 255–256, note 9. Raimondo Turtas, “L’applicazione del Concilio di Trento in Sardegna”, Pregare in sardo. Scritti su Chiesa e lingua in Sardegna, Giovanni Lupinu, ed. (Cagliari: Cooperativa Universitaria Editrice Cagliaritana, 2006), p. 79; see also: Raimondo Turtas, “Pastorale vescovile e suo strumento linguistico: i vescovi sardi e la parlata locale durante le dominazioni spagnola e sabauda”, Studiare…, p. 274.

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acquisition of vocabulos et epithetos from other languages, not linguistically far from Sardinian.5 Nor were the indications of Gian Matteo Garipa achieved, who in Legendariu de santas virgines et martires de Jesu Christu (Rome, 1627) highlighted the benefits that could be drawn from the teaching of Latin grammar in the Sardinian language.6 In fact, as Araolla noted, Sardinians themselves did not prove diligentes et curiosos in cultivating their own language, preferring instead to ischrier in limbas foristeras and helping to maintain the Sardinian language impolida et ruggia.7 Therefore if it is true that during the Parliament of 1553–54 the representatives of the island’s clergy asked the king that ecclesiastical benefits be attributed only to people born in Sardinia and thus able to understand Sardinian,8 it is also true that most of the Sardinian Bishops, who evidently did not need an interpreter, non dovette servirsi del sardo se non per rivolgersi alle plebi analfabete: non si spiega altrimenti che, in oltre 300 anni, essi non abbiano lasciato, nella loro stessa lingua, se non rarissimi scritti di una certa rilevanza e fra questi nessuno di carattere dottrinale.9 Pinyes’ letter attests the persistence of Italian in Sardinia in usual communication, in conversations as well as in sermons, this due to long-standing relationships with Pisa and Genoa, the presence of Genoese merchants and the attendance of Italian Universities – particularly Pisa, Siena, Bologna and Rome – by Sardinian students. As indicated by Raimondo Turtas, it is also likely that in the Jesuit college of Sassari lessons were also taught in Italian, at least for a certain period. Indeed in 1565 the play Carnevale a Roma was given in this language by the students of the college.10 5 6

7 8

9 10

Salvatore Tola, La letteratura in lingua sarda. Testi, autori, vicende (Cagliari: Cooperativa Universitaria Editrice Cagliaritana, 2006), p. 51. Giovanni Pirodda, Sardegna (Brescia: Editrice La Scuola, 1992), pp. 120–121; Giuseppe Marci, In presenza di tutte le lingue del mondo. Letteratura sarda (Cagliari: Cooperativa Universitaria Editrice Cagliaritana, 2006), p. 104. On the literary use of Sardinian in the modern age see also the works of Antonio Lo Frasso, Salvador Vidal and Antonio Maria da Esterzili (Salvatore Tola, La letteratura…, on the corresponding pages). Salvatore Tola, La letteratura…, p. 51. The request was not upheld and was resubmitted in 1601. It was motivated by the difficulties involved in learning the Sardinian language and thus by the deficient language skills of foreign clergy, who could not provide the proper administration of the sacraments (Raimondo Turtas, “Pastorale vescovile…”, pp. 271 and 275). Raimondo Turtas, “Pastorale vescovile…”, p. 283. Raimondo Turtas, “La questione linguistica…”, pp. 238–239.

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Italian in Sardinia was also a literary language, used by Araolla in his work Rimas diversas spirituales (Cagliari, 1597), with parts also in Sardinian and Spanish, by the nobleman Pietro Delitala, an admirer of Tasso and author of Rime diverse (Cagliari, 1596) and by the philosopher Carlo Buragna, who lived in the seventeenth century and who wrote poetry in Latin and in Italian. With regard to Catalan Pinyes seems to confirm that it spread especially in urban areas, also as a result of migration, occurring from the first period of the Catalan-Aragonese conquest, from the Iberian territories of the Crown of Aragon in Cagliari, Alghero and Sassari. As wrote Jordi Carbonell, until the sixteenth century Catalan in Sardinia was the lingua del potere,11 of its civil and ecclesiastical administration, the aristocracy and the elite in general, with a use that was not, however, limited only to the city and the ruling classes but also extended to rural areas and all levels of society. Catalan language and culture pervaded the language and culture of the island, as evidenced by the numerous Catalanisms present in Sardinian dialects, even in remote areas,12 by land deeds, by the Quinque libri registered in different localities13 and by the varied traditions of the gosos, the characteristic religious songs of Catalan origin composed throughout the island.14 The statements of Pinyes show how Castilian, since the mid-sixteenth century, not only had a colloquial use but was also a rather appreciated language, preferred to others in certain contexts. In 1562, for example, 11

12 13

14

Jordi Carbonell, “La lingua e la letteratura medievale e moderna”, I Catalani in Sardegna, Jordi Carbonell, Francesco Manconi, eds. (Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 1984), p. 94. Giulio Paulis, “Le parole catalane dei dialetti sardi”, I Catalani…, pp. 155–163. Joan Armangué, “L’us del català a les actes notarials de la ‘Tappa di Insinuazione’ de Lanusei (Sardenya) durant els segles XVII-XVIII”, Miscel·lània Antoni M. Badia i Margarit, 7 (1987), pp. 103–124; Jordi Carbonell, “L’ús del català als quinque librorum en algunes diòcesis sardes”, Estudis Universitaris Catalans, 26 (1984), pp. 17–33; Jordi Carbonell, “La lingua…”, pp. 94–95; Maria Giuseppina Cossu, “Questioni di storia linguistica della Sardegna con riferimento alla diocesi di Bosa nel XVII secolo”, La Grotta della Vipera, 16/50–51 (1990), pp. 9–29; Anna Rita Pau, “Nuovi documenti sull’uso linguistico in Sardegna nei secoli XVI-XVIII: la zona nord-orientale della diocesi di Ales”, La Sardegna e la presenza catalana nel Mediterraneo, Paolo Maninchedda, ed. (Cagliari: Cooperativa Universitaria Editrice Cagliaritana, 1998), vol. 1, pp. 334–350; Marina Romero Frías, “Note sulla situazione linguistica a Cagliari (Sardegna) nel periodo 1598–1615”, Estudis Universitaris Catalans, 25 (1983), pp. 453–465. August Bover i Font, “I goigs sardi”, I Catalani…, pp. 105–110.

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the principales of Sassari turned to the king asking that Castilian be used in the local Jesuit college as the language of teaching. Indeed they wished that their children would learn it properly and on the other hand they were showing their support for the general Hispanicization policy of Philip II.15 The spread of Castilian in Sardinia is also reflected in literary and editorial production. Regarding the latter, if in the sixteenth century only 25% of the printed books were in Castilian, compared to 48% in Latin and 22% in Catalan, in the following century this proportion would reach first 77% and finally almost 87% of the total.16 With regard to literature, numerous and varied works were produced, among which there were Los mil y dozientos consejos y avisos discretos (Barcelona, 1571) and Los diez libros de la fortuna de amor (Barcelona, 1573) by Antonio Lo Frasso, El Forastero (Cagliari, 1636) by Jacinto Arnal de Bolea, Cima del monte Parnaso español (Cagliari, 1672) by José Delitala y Castelvì and finally Engaños y desengaños del profano amor (Naples, 1687–88) by José Zatrillas y Vico.17 Castilian also spread to inland areas of Sardinia and its use was prolonged in time, so that Piedmontese policy, during the eighteenth century, intent on effacing it fu faticosa e procedette lentamente.18 In Sardinia, as in other places, the use of Latin in the modern period was primarily related to religion, religious services, the solemnity of the chancery writings and teaching. Its widespread use, however, did not mean an equivalent and adequate understanding. In this regard the opinion of judge Sigismondo Arquer of Cagliari is known, according to which the Sardinian clergy were indoctissimi and qui Latinam intelligat linguam could hardly be found.19 The Benedictine Antón Parragues de Castillejo, 15

16

17 18 19

The Jesuits – according to their rules – had to learn the local language and use it for everything they did, so they should have opted for the dialect of Sassari, Sardinian or Italian. After a period of adaptation to local dialects, in 1567, General Francisco Borja finally imposed the adoption of Castilian (Raimondo Turtas, “La questione linguistica…”, pp. 237–243). Bruno Anatra, “Editoria e pubblico in Sardegna tra Cinque e Seicento”, Oralità e scrittura nel sistema letterario, Giovanna Cerina, Cristina Lavinio, Luisa Mulas, eds. (Rome: Bulzoni, 1982), pp. 237, 239 and 241. In addition to novels and poetry there are theatrical plays, histories, legal sentences, etc., for which we may refer to Marci and Pirodda cited above. Giovanni Pirodda, Sardegna…, p. 164. Sigismondo Arquer, Sardiniae brevis historia et descriptio, ed. Maria Teresa Laneri (Cagliari: Cooperativa Universitaria Editrice Cagliaritana, 2007), p. 40.

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Archbishop of Cagliari, during the years 1558–73, also complained about the lack of preparation of the Sardinian clergy, stating, among other things, that they often did not go beyond the recitation of Pater noster, Ave Maria and confessions en sardesco.20 Latin was also used in Sardinia in literary works and scientific scholarship, example of which are the Sardiniae brevis historia et descriptio (Basel, 1550) by Sigismondo Arquer, inserted into Sebastian Münster’s Cosmographia universalis, the works De rebus Sardois and De chorographia Sardiniae by Giovanni Francesco Fara, composed in the second half of the sixteenth century, De bello et interitu marchionis Oristanei (Cagliari 1592) by Proto Arca, and Karalis panegyricus by Roderigo Hunno Baeza, also from the sixteenth century. The linguistic situation of Sardinia in the modern era, as already noted, is complex, varied, seemingly lacking in rules regarding the use of the languages and also different from that of other Italian territories belonging to the Crown of Spain.21 A mixture of spoken and written languages that transmits an image of Sardinia which is discordant with the image of an island considered marginal and refractory to any outside influence, as long described by historians, and on the contrary reveals a particularly receptive environment, able to assimilate and rework in an original way that which came from other places.22 In this context, in addition to the widespread social and territorial plurilingualism, there was an individual plurilingualism – of clergymen, jurists and writers, but not only – which indicates expressive skills, practices in moving between different geographical and cultural environments but also non univocal feelings of belonging and thus identity. And Sardinian, to which Sardinians themselves show contradictory attitudes, is one representative piece of a composite, hybrid identity, not necessarily conflictual, and therefore is not reductive to the interpretive frameworks of colonial history. 20 21 22

Palmira Onnis Giacobbe, Epistolario di Antonio Parragues de Castillejo (Milan: Giuffrè, 1958), p. 131 (n. 25). On this theme see the most recent volume: Thomas Krefeld, Wulf Oesterreicher, Verena Schwägerl-Melchior, eds., Reperti di plurilinguismo nell’Italia spagnola… Regarding this see several articles by Alberto Mario Cirese, from the 60s and 80s of the last century, in: Alberto Mario Cirese, All’isola dei Sardi. Per un anniversario. 1956–2006 (Nuoro: Il Maestrale, 2006).

Identities in Exile from the War of the Spanish Succession (1713–1747): Some Notes Agustí Alcoberro Universitat de Barcelona

1. The Places of Sociability: The Case of Vienna The War of the Spanish Succession was, at the same time, a continent-wide and global conflict, and the first civil war in the Iberian Peninsula. It should come as no surprise that its end saw the first large-scale Hispanic political exile. A wide chronology of this phenomenon has been presented on other occasions together with the corresponding figures.1 According to my calculations, between 25,000 and 30,000 people were forced into exile. Approximately half were Catalans, and the rest from other Hispanic kingdoms (Valencians and Aragonese, but also Basques, Navarrese and “Castilians” in a wide sense) who had taken refuge in Catalonia during the later years of the war. A large number of these exiles ended up in the lands of the Hispanic Monarchy incorporated into the domains of Charles III (the emperor Charles VI) under the Treaty of Utrecht. Naples and Milan were the main host countries, although there were also considerable numbers exiled in Sardinia, Sicily and Flanders. After 1735, a group of Hispanic exiles founded a new colony that they called Nova Barcelona in the Banat of Temesvar.2 However, the place where the clearest remains of that diaspora have survived is Vienna. Bear in mind that there had been a continuous Hispanic presence in Italy since the 15th century, so the social circles frequented by the exiles had been forged centuries before. On the other extreme, it should be remembered that the Catalan presence in the Banat 1 2

Agustí Alcoberro, L’exili austriacista (1713–1747), 2 vols. (Barcelona: Fundació Noguera, 2002). Agustí Alcoberro, La “Nova Barcelona” del Danubi (1735–1738). La ciutat dels exiliats de la Guerra de Successió (Barcelona: Rafael Dalmau, 2011).

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was ephemeral and had no continuity. Vienna, in contrast, shows the vitality and power of a newly-arrived group with enough resources to generate its own infrastructure. Furthermore, the imperial capital was by definition a cosmopolitan city and the centre of a compound multinational and multilingual monarchy.3 In Vienna, the monastery of Montserrat and the convent of the Discalced Trinitarians were rebuilt. These two Hispanic ecclesiastical institutions founded in the 17th century were demolished by the city’s defenders during the 1683 Turkish siege. The new buildings, finished in 1708 and 1727 respectively, enjoyed imperial patronage and were endowed with donations from the exiled families. Moreover, in 1717 work began on the building of the Spanish Hospital, which, according to the chronicler Francesc de Castellví, took in 2,427 patients in its first fifteen years.4 The attached church was designed by the great architect Anton Ospel, and consecrated in 1724 under the protection of the Mare de Déu de la Mercè (Our Lady of Mercy), the patroness saint of Barcelona, and who gave it its name of Santa Maria de Mercede. The contribution of the exiles also extended to other fields, among which the bibliographic stands out. This is shown by the fact one of the funds that make up the Imperial Library in Vienna was collected by the archbishop of Valencia, Antoni Folch de Cardona, who was the first president of the Spanish Council in Vienna.5

3

4

5

Françoise Knopper, “Le cosmopolitisme viennois”, Dix-huitième siècle, 25 (1993); John P. Spielman, The City and the Crown. Vienna and the Imperial Court, 1660–1740 (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1993). Francesc de Castellví, Narraciones históricas, 4 vols., Josep M. Mundet, José M. Alsina, eds. (Madrid: Fundación Francisco Elías de Tejada y Erasmo Pèrcopo, 1997–2002), vol. 4, pp. 589–593. Miguel Nieto, Fondos hispánicos en la Biblioteca Nacional de Viena (Madrid: Universidad Complutense, 1989). In fact, the enormous library the the archbishop of Valencia left behind in Spain, like other libraries by Habsburg supporters, was seized by Phillip V and became one of the collections used to found the National Library in Madrid. See: Elena Santiago, dir., La real Biblioteca Pública, 1711–1760. De Felipe V a Fernando VI (Madrid: Biblioteca Nacional, 2004). See also: Agustí Alcoberro, “Conseqüències de la Guerra de Successió en el patrimoni artístic i cultural: repressió interior i continuïtat a l’exili”, Conflictes bèl·lics, espoliacions, col·leccions, Immaculada Socias ed. (Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, 2009), pp. 13–30.

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2. Crossed Identities All exiles are formed around the conviction of a difficult return and the nostalgia for what is lost, but also around the hope of change and, thus, a permanently provisional state, which supposes a will to avoid full integration into the host societies. Exile is steeped in an air of shared sociability, where a culture and identity with distant roots are apparently maintained. In reality, however, the cultural distance between the exiled community and the country of origin continually widen. The memory of the Barcelona of 1714 that the exiles could maintain was no longer like the real Barcelona of the post-war repression that followed the Bourbon occupation. Probably it also harked back less and less to the Barcelona they had abandoned, and about which the memory, always treacherous, built an ever more selective discourse tinged with nostalgia – and mixed with the new experiences. At one time, I set the end of the concept of the Austrian exile in 1747. That was the date I found for the last specific list of exiles who were paid an imperial pension and the last reference to the death of a Spanish soldier in a list dedicated to the officers who died for the Empire. From then on, there were no more references to the presence of a homogenous group of Spaniards in books by travellers who visited Vienna.6 Thus, by that time, the exiles, understood as a structured group, was in clear decline. This does not mean that there were no exiles, or rather descendents of the exiles, who very probably asserted and took pride in their origins. However, there were no longer significant places of cohesion, links that indicated a conscious belonging, and an otherness regarding their immediate surroundings. Exile had become a genealogical and individual affair. Between 1713, the date of the first exiles who left with the withdrawing imperial troops, and 1747, the year beyond which they became invisible, the exiles lived through moments of great collective presence and reinforcement of their identities. The end of that world started, but only very timidly, with the Treaty of Vienna (1725), that first put an end to the state of war between Phillip V and Charles III (the Emperor Charles VI), and the establishment of a reciprocal amnesty. A very hard blow was the occupation of Naples and Sicily by the troops of Phillip V (1734–1735), which meant, among other questions, the closing of the Council of Spain, 6

Agustí Alcoberro, L’exili austriacista…, vol. 1, pp. 243–244.

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and a new exodus by those who had gone into exile in 1714 and settled in Italy to Vienna and the Banat. The final blow came in the 1740s, with the death of Charles III and the outbreak of the War of the Austrian Succession, which affected the heart of the Habsburg lands. More was lost with every move. Each of these episodes revived the two main factors that lead to the loss of all exiles: mixed marriages, which meant the definitive integration of later generations into the host countries; and return. From the identity point of view, the Hispanic exile reflected the varied reality of the Habsburg cause. In any civil war, more than in any other, the old principle that “your enemy’s enemies are your friends” is valid. In civil wars, the sides are not made up of a shared, and more or less closed, political project. What really unites and brings people together is a common enemy. And here, the enemy was Phillip V and the Bourbon dynasty, a model that meant the more or less postponed (but inevitable) destruction of the constitutions of Catalonia and the other kingdoms of the Crown of Aragon, but also the rupture of the affective ties built up over centuries with a dynasty, and unconditional surrender to the historical enemy. The former argument is more visible in the Catalan historical and juridical texts written in exile. The latter appears more clearly and directly among the Castilian intellectuals and politicians. Thus, in 1716, a text of great historical and political interest was published in Milan. Very probably written by a Castilian supporter of the Austrian claimant, who had spent all the siege in Barcelona, and who later had been banished to Italy (like the rest of non-Catalans who were living in the Principality at that time) by the new Bourbon authorities. The title, steeped in Baroque aesthetics, is in itself the justification of the thesis: Teatro de desdichas, gemidos y lágrimas de España y de los verdaderos españoles que por concurrir a la libertad de su patria se declararon por el partido austríaco y han sido abandonados por los aliados. Manifiéstase el ningún motivo que han tenido para dexar al emperador y rey Carlos y desamparar a los españoles, dexándolos expuestos al furor enemigo, quien ha executado con ellos horrorosas crueldades. Anímase a los afligidos españoles para que, puesta en Dios su confianza, esperen de la divina misericordia el deseo de ver recuperada la España por el césar y rey Carlos, para que su gloriosa posteridad se siente en el solio español perpetuamente y todos seamos restituidos a nuestra patria.7 7

Agustí Alcoberro, “Una visió de la Guerra de Successió des de l’exili: el Teatro de desdichas (Milà, 1716)”, Butlletí de la Societat Catalana d’Estudis Històrics,

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Theatre of misery, wailing and tears of Sain and the true Spaniards that who for desiring the freedom of their homeland declared themselves for the Austrian side and have been abandoned by the allies. Manifest that they have had no grounds to leave the Emperor and King Charles and abandon the Spaniards, leaving them exposed to the fury of the enemy, who has inflicted horrible cruelty on them. We encourage the bereaving Spaniards that they, trusting in God, hope for the divine mercy the desire to see Spain recovered by the caesar and king Charles, for whose glorious posterity he sits on the Spanish throne perpetually and the qwe are all returned to our homeland.

The title expresses exactly the perception of the sides in the war from the Castilian Habsburg-supporting point of view. The cause of Charles was “that of Spain and the true Spaniards”. In the text, the enemy are repeatedly called gallispanos, “[a] horrible name and a dishonour to the Spanish nation”. For that reason, the author of the Teatro considered that the Bourbon rule in Spain (which he qualified as “absolute, despotic and arbitrary […] like the Turk”) indicated the high point of Spanish decadence. Thus, the text repeatedly contrasts the Spanish hegemony of other times with their actual condition as a colony in the hands of a foreign power: Pues, aviendo sido la princesa de las gentes, la señora del mundo (en cuyas cuatro partes se extendía la Monarquía), a quien obedecían dos orbes y pagaban tributo; hoy gime y padece el yugo de una tirana servidumbre, hoy está oprimida de tributos, desierta, sola y despoblada, y los hijos que le han quedado en su seno gimen entre cadenas y prisiones de su servidumbre, entre opresiones y tiranías, sin hallar consuelo ni descanso, como ni la gran multitud que anda peregrina entre las gentes, avergonzada de verse tributaria la que imponía tributos. As, having been the princess of the peoples, the mistress of the world (to whose four corners the Monarchy extended), who obeyed two orbs and paid tribute; today groans and suffers the yoke of tyrannical bondage, today is oppressed by tributes, barren, alone and depopulated, and the children she has been given lament between chains and imprisonment of his servitude, between oppressions and tyrannies, without finding consolation nor peace, like in the great multitude who wander among the peoples, ashamed to find themselves tributaries those who imposed tributes. 18 (2007), pp. 9–31; Agustí Alcoberro, “‘Monarquia moderada’ and ‘llibertat de la pàtria’. Notes sobre el pensament polític de l’austriacisme castellà a l’exili”, Pedralbes. Revista d’Història Moderna, 27 (2007), pp. 173–196.

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Thus, the author adds, “all the Spanish majesty and sovereignty have been transferred to France, and in Versailles the consultations are decided, the posts and dignities are covered, peace or war are declared, and so, that is where the life or death of the Spaniards depends on”. French dominance over the Spanish Monarchy not only had political consequences. The worst were the moral effects. Thus, while detailing the cruelties of Phillip V’s rule, the author concludes, “this and the other that will have to be noted in the annals of the Spanish nation in this century, has been imbued with the conversation and dealings with the French”. The author of the Teatro repeatedly compares the Spanish Habsburg exile with the exodus of the people of Israel under Babylonian rule. Another author starts from other roots. This was the Catalan jurist Josep Plantí, who was a professor in the University of Barcelona and judge in the High Courts of Sardinia and Milan. Plantí, who builds his discourse from republican political thought, wrote a chronicle of the War of the Succession, in Latin, and a project for an ideal city to be settled by the exiles, written in Castilian and addressed at the circle of the Council of Spain.8 In the text, the Catalan jurist used classical, imperial and lay comparisons. Thus, Barcelona became the new Troy, destroyed by its enemies. Charles III has the role of Aeneas and guiding the survivors to a new Latium, which the author identifies with Hungary. There, the exiles would have to found a new Rome, which they would have to supply with fair laws and extensive freedoms. The “virtue” of the newcomers must confer on them all equally the condition of nobles, which is why the institutions of government should be chosen by universal suffrage. Furthermore, all its citizens, “presently poor”, are, according to Plantí, “nobles by birth or merits, and all equally honourable”. However, Plantí proposed that the establishment of the new colony had to be based on a prior constitutive reality: the existence of four national realities, that correspond respectively to the four kingdoms of Castile, Valencia, Aragon and Catalonia. Accordingly, Plantí proposes the naming of 8

The text is published in: Agustí Alcoberro, L’exili austriacista…, vol. 2, pp. 155–205. About Plantí, see: Agustí Alcoberro, L’exili austriacista…, vol. 1, pp. 210–218; Agustí Alcoberro, “Memòria històrica i pensament polític a l’exili austriacista. La crònica de la Guerra de Successió de Josep Plantí”, Pedralbes. Revista d’Història Moderna, 23/2 (2003), pp. 325–344; Joaquim Albareda, El ‘cas dels catalans’. La conducta dels aliats arran de la Guerra de Successió (1705–1742) (Barcelona: Fundació Noguera, 2005), pp. 219–231 and 303–321.

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cuatro sujetos, uno respective de las cuatro principales naciones que se supone formarán dicha nueva provincia, esto es, de castellanos, valencianos, aragoneses y catalanes,para que incurriendo a cada uno nombrado los de su respective nación, tomando la nota y explicación de su ánimo, formen las listas de los sujetos se notarán y procuren como ya diputados por dichas naciones. four subjects, one for each of the four main respective nations that are supposed to form this new province, that is, Castilians, Valencians, Aragonese and Catalans, each appointed by their respective nation, taking note and explanation of its mood, form lists the subjects who note and act as representatives of these nations.

The new colony designed by Plantí was essentially a “composite state”, on a republican basis, but also confederal in nature. The jurist started from the observation that the peoples that made it up were “not very similar in character”, and that only through respect for this plural reality (while avoiding “having a nation superior to the others”) would “the greatest union and conformity among them” be possible. A confederal model that was also inclusive as, in Plantí’s opinion, it should be open to the exiles “from other kingdoms held for some time by Your Majesty, such as the Sards and Majorcans” and to the German soldiers “who followed and served Your Majesty in Spain and who are married to women originally from said kingdoms”. We could find many other texts by Catalan Habsburg exiles that follow the same line. Probably, however, the best constructed is the one that heads the Narraciones históricas by Francesc de Castellví, the great encyclopaedic work about the War of Spanish Succession and the immediate post-war period. The text was partially omitted by the editors of the chronicler from Montblanc, and rescued by Joaquim Albareda.9 I have extracted some paragraphs from this that I believe to be highly significant. Castellví starts with a statement: He advertido con el trato de diferentes naciones (no hablo con los que fundamentalmente están noticiosos de la historia) que muchos que son considerados instruidos en la historia, reciben notorias equivocaciones respecto a la España, y no pocos creen que los reinos y provincias que continene la España (a la excepción del reino de Portugal) tienen un mismo idioma, las mismas leyes, exenciones, costumbres y los mismos trajes.

9

See note 4. Joaquim Albareda, “¿Qué cosa es la España? L’Espanya composta segons l’austriacista Francesc de Castellví”, Butlletí de la Societat Catalana d’Estudis Històrics, 15 (2004), pp. 113–123.

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I have seen with the treatment of the different nations (I am not talking about those that are fundamentally news in history) that many that are considered educated in history, receive notorious mistakes regarding Spain, and more than a few belive that the kingdoms and provinces that Spain contains (with the exception of the kingdom of Portugal) have a single language, the same laws, exemptions, customs and the same costumes.

To correct this error, Francesc de Castellví drew a journey through peninsular history, at the end of which he concluded: Eran estas naciones, en el continente de la España, distintas en leyes, costumbres, trajes y idiomas. En leyes, como es de ver en sus particulares estatutos; en costumbres y trajes, lo advertirá el que viajare; en idiomas, son 4 distintos, esto es portugués, vizcaíno, catalán y castellano o aragonés, que es el mismo idioma. It was these nations, in the continent of Spain, distinct in laws, customs, costumes and languages. In laws, as is seen in their particular statutes; in customs and costumes, will be clear to he who travels; in languages, there are four distinct, these are Portuguese, Vizcaino (Basque), Catalan and Castilian or Aragonese, which are the same language.

From the point of view of the political nations, Castellví differentiated and enumerated the following realities: Los portugueses, castellanos, leoneses, vizcaínos, asturianos, gallegos y navarros son distintas naciones dentro del continente de la España. Asimismo, los aragoneses, catalanes y valencianos no son todos unos. The Portuguese, Castilians, Leonese, Vizcainos, Asturians, Galicians and Navarrese are distinct nations within the continent of Spain. Also, the Aragonese, Catalans and Valencians are not all one.

The authors and texts mentioned are but a few examples (but emblematic ones) of a line of thought that had reached a high level of maturity in 1714, and that survived in exile for several decades. However, despite the clandestine links between the exile and the internal resistance,10 and the role played in the Principality by some of the exiles who returned,11 this line gradually died out. A line that we are only now, in recent decades, rediscovering.

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11

Agustí Alcoberro, “Exili exterior i exili interior: una correspondència austriacista inèdita (1721–1724)”, Estudis històrics i documents dels Arxius de Protocols, 21 (2003), pp. 321–360. Pere Serra, Lo perquè de Barcelona y memòrias de sas antiguedats (Barcelona: Curial, 2006).

Hybridité ou les femmes en littérature Martine Reid Université de Lille 3

Pour illustrer le sujet qui nous réunit, j’ai choisi d’appliquer le concept d’hybridité au champ littéraire. J’ai plus précisément choisi de suivre le cheminement d’une opposition sémantique entre toutes déterminantes – masculin/féminin – et de voir, par le biais de quelques exemples, comment cette opposition fonctionne en littérature. Ce fonctionnement induit-il quelque porosité, échange et passage entre les deux termes, produisant cette hybridité que nous cherchons à penser ensemble? Quelles formes prend alors cette hybridité, si elle existe? C’est le sujet des observations qui vont suivre. Le dictionnaire Robert rappelle l’usage de l’adjectif hybride, courant en français à partir de 1831, et le définit de la manière suivante : le « composé de deux éléments de nature différente anormalement réunis; qui participe de deux ou de plusieurs ensembles, genres, styles ». Voilà qui, au seul plan lexical, fait parfaitement mon affaire et répond même idéalement au sujet que je vais traiter. Mon exposé recoupe des questions qui relèvent de l’histoire littéraire mais qui lui demeurent peu familières, pour le moins en France. Il comprendra deux temps : le premier va faire entendre quelques positions propres aux femmes auteurs françaises; le second prendra en compte des questions de réception critique. Ces deux temps me permettront de conclure sur les modalités spécifiques de l’hybridité telle qu’elle peut s’observer en littérature. Mon premier point concerne donc la manière dont les femmes auteurs se situent vis-à-vis de la différence sexuelle en littérature et sur l’éventuelle hybridité qui s’observe(rait) à cet égard. La réponse à cette question n’est pas univoque; elle se transforme et se complique au fil des siècles, et ce qui s’observe à ce propos avant la Révolution ne ressemble guère, on va le voir, à ce qui s’observe ensuite. La fin du XVIIe siècle confirme la présence de romancières dans le champ littéraire (parfois en nombre supérieur aux romanciers si on regarde les publications année par année); elle confirme aussi la présence de quelques exceptions, de femmes auteurs au théâtre et en poésie. Le

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siècle suivant va voir cette situation évoluer : les publications augmentent assez considérablement et les femmes auteurs sont toujours majoritairement auteurs de romans, ce genre que la tradition a fait leur mais dans lequel pourtant leurs publications représentent moins de 10% tout au long du XVIIIe siècle; les femmes sont extrêmement peu nombreuses dans les autres genres littéraires (poésie, théâtre ou essai). Et si on se rapporte aux seuls nombres avancés par l’historien américain Robert Darnton, en 1789 la France compte 3% de femmes auteurs, tous genres littéraires cette fois confondus. D’autres pays européens font-ils mieux? Je l’ignore. On dispose rarement à l’époque de correspondance ou d’œuvres dites «  intimes  », la seule correspondance connue d’une femme auteur étant celle de Françoise de Graffigny. Dans les préfaces des contes, des nouvelles et des romans (quand elles existent), les femmes auteurs n’hésitent pas à faire état de leur sexe (je rappelle que la moitié environ des ouvrages publiés sont anonymes ou portent quelques initiales qui signalent qu’il s’agit d’un homme ou d’une femme). On voit parfois les femmes plaisanter sur le fait qu’elles écrivent; on les voit aussi reprendre, sur le mode ironique, quelques-uns des préjugés en circulation contre leur capacité à faire œuvre littéraire et à publier. Certaines femmes auteurs font état d’une discrétion qui frise le déni de tout intérêt véritable pour cette activité. A l’évidence, l’idée selon laquelle les femmes ne sont pas faites pour la littérature, que pour des raisons qui tiennent à leur «  état  » elles ne peuvent prétendre à la publicité et à la gloire qui en découlent, a été parfaitement introjectée par nombre d’entre elles, qui ne songent pas à la contester. Ainsi, dans une lettre à son ami Devau datée du 28 février 1745, Françoise de Graffigny déclare-t-elle : […] je tâche de faire le mieux qu’il m’est possible parce qu’au pis-aller, si on sait que c’est moi, j’ai l’amour propre là-dessus pareil à celui de ne pas aller dans le monde avec une robe tachée. […] C’est assurément par vanité que j’y prends tant de peine, mais c’est de la même qui me fait défaire une feuille mal nouée dans ma tapisserie autant de fois qu’elle n’est pas à mon gré, et non pas cette sottise de faire parler de moi à laquelle je ne songe en vérité jamais directement.1

Dans le discours préliminaire aux Conseils à une amie (1750), Madeleine de Puisieux reprend elle aussi les préjugés accompagnant le plus généralement les femmes qui font œuvre littéraire (elles ne savent pas écrire, elles font trop long, elles sont incapables de mener correctement une intrigue 1

Marcel Proust, Choix de lettres (Oxford : Voltaire Foundation, 2001), p. 109.

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un peu solide). Elle n’exprime pas moins sa franche détermination à ne pas se faire aider par quelque homme de lettres bien intentionné pour améliorer son ouvrage et à publier quelque chose dont elle sera incontestablement l’auteure : Si jamais je fais un Roman, ce qui pourra m’arriver quand je m’ennuierai, j’avertis d’avance que ce sera moi qui l’aurai mal arrangé, mal conduit et mal écrit, s’il l’est. Ce n’est pas que je connaisse de beaux esprits […] qui rendraient mes ouvrages très peignés, très jolis, si je voulais qu’ils ne m’appartinssent pas. Ces Messieurs […] ne toucheront à rien de tout ce qui est à moi.2

En réalité, la plupart des femmes auteurs (dont je gomme ici la singularité à des fins de généralisation) ont conscience que dès qu’il s’agit de littérature, deux questions se posent : celle de leur légitimité et celle de leur savoir-faire. Elles répondent à ces questions de toutes sortes de façon, qui vont de la plus extrême modestie à la plus grande satisfaction. C’est le cas, rare à vrai dire, de Gabrielle de Villeneuve : De tous les ouvrages, ceux qui devraient le plus épargner au public la peine de lire une préface, et à l’auteur celle de la faire, ce sont sans doute les romans […], écrit l’auteure de La Belle et la Bête; mais mon sexe a toujours eu des privilèges particuliers, c’est assez dire que je suis femme, et je souhaite que l’on ne s’en aperçoive pas trop à la longueur d’un livre composé avec plus de rapidité que de justesse. […] Mais le moyen de supprimer l’envie de se faire imprimer?.

Dans tous les cas, on mesure la force de l’injonction à ne pas écrire que la société véhicule avec force en dépit des multiples preuves du contraire, et de bien des discours favorables d’ailleurs aux femmes en littérature. De manière significative, ce qui vaut pour le roman, genre considéré comme féminin (assignation générique qui relève de la construction critique, comme je l’ai montré ailleurs), ne vaut pas pour d’autres types de publications. La critique a observé que Marie de Gournay, fille spirituelle de Montaigne et auteure de l’ouvrage intitulé Egalité des hommes et des femmes (1626), a pris le parti d’endosser une voix masculine, c’est-à-dire, puisqu’il s’agit de l’écrit, les marques grammaticales du masculin, quand il s’agit d’ouvrages savants et une voix féminine quand il s’agit d’œuvres de fiction. La même chose s’observe au siècle suivant. Madeleine de Gomez, par exemple, conserve les marques grammaticales du masculin lorsqu’elle préface son 2

Madeleine de Puisieux, « Discours préliminaire », Conseils à une amie (Frankfurt : Varrentrapp, 1750).

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ouvrage historique, Anecdotes ou histoire secrète de la maison ottomane (1722), mais déclare en revanche dans la préface du roman Crémentine, reine de Sanga, histoire indienne (1727) : Pour moi, j’avouerai que je n’ai pu me défendre d’une satisfaction intérieure en voyant […] une personne de mon sexe digne de l’admiration des hommes. J’en ai même tiré une espèce de vanité.

Cette partition, scission, schize genrée, qui a pour effet d’inviter, ou de contraindre, les femmes à changer de sexe selon le genre littéraire qu’elles illustrent, semblent disparaître dans la deuxième moitié du XVIIIe siècle. Auteure de plus d’une centaine d’ouvrages, dont de nombreux essais historiques et des ouvrages pédagogiques, et des romans en nombre (un tiers environ de l’ensemble de sa production), Félicité de Genlis est certainement l’auteure la plus prolixe du temps et ne manifeste pas cette sorte d’hybridité littéraire, qui conjoint ou disjoint au gré des genres le masculin et le féminin – pour autant que l’auteur soit une femme. Genlis fait davantage : elle prend fait et cause pour les femmes auteurs et publie De l’influence des femmes sur la littérature comme protectrices des arts et comme auteurs en 1811, c’est-à-dire tard dans une carrière littéraire commencée en 1779. Elle y plaide pour la présence des femmes en littérature, mais à certaines conditions – pour autant en effet qu’elles veuillent bien respecter les qualités que l’on est en droit d’attendre de leur sexe : la modestie, la vertu, le respect de la morale et de la religion. Cette limite manifeste à l’exercice de la littérature ne peut pourtant pas passer un conservatisme obtus. En réalité, Genlis plaide pour une sorte d’écriture féminine avant la lettre. De manière significative, la Révolution va permettre de distinguer des positions qui appartiennent encore à l’Ancien Régime, telle celles de Mme de Genlis que je viens de mentionner, de celles qui succèdent à la célèbre « Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen ». En effet, un changement de discours s’opère au cours des années révolutionnaires dont Germaine de Staël et son fameux essai sur la littérature vont témoigner exemplairement. Dans De la littérature, paru en 1800, Staël ne revendique pas l’appartenance au sexe féminin. Dans ses fictions comme dans ses ouvrages de réflexion, Staël s’exprime en tant qu’auteur, et non en tant que femme auteur. Ses positions en matière de littérature diffèrent absolument à cet égard du geste accompli par Genlis, qu’une génération sépare de Staël. Dès la préface de son ouvrage, Staël cite exclusivement des auteurs masculins et les rares noms de femmes auteurs qui figurent dans le volume apparaissent en note

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d’un chapitre consacré à ce qu’elle appelle « les ouvrages d’imagination ». Ce sont quelques noms de romancières du moment, dont certaines d’ailleurs sont suisses, et fort peu connues en France (Mme de Montolieu ou Isabelle de Charrière); ces quelques noms ne rendent d’ailleurs compte de la présence de femmes en littérature que de manière très limitée. De quelque façon qu’on la considère, la littérature telle qu’elle est pensée par Germaine de Staël n’intègre pas l’idée selon laquelle hommes et femmes, diversement et semblablement, produisent des œuvres de toutes sortes. Pour elle la littérature comporte de grandes œuvres (d’hommes) et très accessoirement des fictions, mineures et sentimentales, de femmes. La chose est entendue – et je renvoie ici aux analyses de Geneviève Fraisse dans Muse de la Raison. Démocratie et exclusion des femmes en France (1989) – de même que la chose publique, les pratiques artistiques qui précipitent dans la sphère publique, sont masculines, et le sont désormais à l’exclusion du féminin. C’est d’ailleurs ce dont Staël convient elle-même dans un chapitre de De la littérature consacré aux femmes qui écrivent; c’est encore ce qu’elle va raconter dans son roman Corinne ou l’Italie (1807), et ce n’est pas le moindre des paradoxes dont elle est prisonnière. D’une part, elle mesure la situation calamiteuse dans lesquelles les femmes auteurs se sont retrouvées après la Révolution; d’autre part, elle refuse de penser cette situation, d’appeler au changement, de valoriser la production pourtant alors bien connue des œuvres de femmes. Elle s’obstine à concevoir la littérature sur un mode « universaliste », comme quand elle parle de l’homme et de sa destinée après la Révolution. Elle est toutefois la première victime de cette situation. En effet, une fois publié cet essai littéraire, Staël subit des attaques de toute nature qui l’obligent à « répondre ». Elle le fait consciencieusement dans la préface à la deuxième édition. Mais si elle répond à des objections « savantes », elle se voit aussi forcée de répondre à des attaques d’une autre nature, celles qui à vrai dire relèvent de la misogynie pure et simple. La chose lui répugne manifestement puisqu’elle y répond dans une simple note (le féminin est décidément marginal à ses yeux), note qui figure à la fin de la préface et où elle observe ceci : Après avoir réfuté les diverses objections qui ont été faites contre mon ouvrage, je sais fort bien qu’il est un genre d’attaque qui peut éternellement se répéter; ce sont toutes ces insinuations qui ont pour objet de me blâmer, comme femme, d’écrire et de penser.3

3

Gérard Gengembre, Jean Goldzink, éds., De la littérature (Paris : Garnier-Flammarion, 1995), p. 64.

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Suivent quelques vers bien connus tirés de L’Ecole des femmes de Molière : «  Femme qui compose en sait plus qu’il ne faut […]. C’est assez pour [ma femme], déclare Arnolphe, que savoir prier Dieu, m’aimer, coudre et filer ». Ceux-ci constituent sans doute l’une des citations les plus volontiers utilisées contre les femmes en littérature, avec quelques autres tirées des Précieuses ridicules. Staël se demande qui peut encore se servir dans la France de 1800 de ces plaisanteries qu’elle qualifie d’« usées ». Le fait est qu’elles sont loin d’avoir fait long feu. La suite va le prouver. On ne saurait dire combien Molière a nui aux femmes auteurs et aux femmes savantes : ses vers seront citées tout au long du XIXe siècle. Staël est donc la première (r)attrapée par le parti-pris universaliste qu’elle croyait bon de défendre : elle est bien vue, par les autres, les critiques masculins, comme une anomalie, non comme un auteur mais comme une femme qui écrit. Staël est ainsi la première à faire valoir et à illustrer une tension que l’on va retrouver chez les femmes auteurs du XIXe siècle. On va voir en effet les quelques grands talents littéraires du temps tenter de conjuguer coûte que coûte leur sexe avec celui, « neutre », en réalité masculin, de la littérature. Tel sera le cas de George Sand, plus tard de Rachilde, de Colette, puis de Marguerite Yourcenar ou de Simone de Beauvoir. Ce qui était possible au XVIIIe siècle, écrire une épopée (ainsi Anne-Marie Du Bocage avec La Colombiade), écrire une pièce de théâtre à succès (la même avec Les Amazones ou Françoise de Graffigny avec Cénie), écrire un roman à succès (ceux de Graffigny ou de Riccoboni avant ceux de Cottin) tout en ne dissimulant pas, dans le texte, son appartenance au sexe féminin, ne l’est plus au XIXe siècle. De relativement « mixte » qu’il était sous l’Ancien Régime, le champ littéraire, à l’image de la chose publique, politique et citoyenne, se masculinise et il ne reste plus aux femmes d’exception que de se penser comme des êtres doubles, homme en littérature, femme dans la vie privée. Cette hybridité étonnante, qui installe ainsi la femme auteur dans une démarche de nature bisexuelle, s’observe particulièrement bien dans le cas de George Sand. Toute sa vie, Sand va en effet revendiquer les deux sexes à la fois et prouver ainsi la force d’une conception du génie, du talent et de la littérature comme propre au masculin qu’elle a parfaitement introjectée. On ne la verra ni contester cette situation, ni manifester à l’égard de ses contemporaines femmes de lettres le moindre « esprit de corps » comme c’était le cas pour Félicité de Genlis qui défendait toutes les femmes auteurs, y compris les femmes auteurs de son temps, malgré

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de grandes réticences à l’égard de certaines œuvres. Rien de semblable chez Sand, qui, comme Staël, ne se lancera jamais d’ailleurs dans aucune considération historique sur les femmes auteurs. Si pour Staël le passé de la littérature est masculin, si elle-même se considère comme une exception, elle en va de même pour Sand qui n’imagine pas une seule fois de prendre la parole au féminin dans les dizaines de préfaces qu’elle a rédigées pour ses romans. On sait que, pour entrer en littérature, Sand choisit un pseudonyme masculin, un prénom masculin pour le moins, opérant d’entrée de jeu une permutation qui n’est ni du ressort de la simple fantaisie, ni du ressort d’une quelconque obligation. Nombre de femmes publient sous leur nom sous la monarchie de Juillet et n’auront recours au pseudonyme que dans la pratique journalistique où cet usage prévaut le plus habituellement. Tel est le cas de Delphine de Girardin, d’Hortense Allart ou de Marceline Desbordes-Valmore. Lors de la publication d’Indiana en 1832, on voit Sand s’amuser beaucoup du quiproquo provoqué par ce pseudonyme masculin. Dans une lettre à l’une de ces amies, elle rapporte le dialogue qu’elle vient d’avoir à ce propos avec un visiteur : – M. Georges Sand? – C’est ici. – Peut-on lui parler? – Il est à vos ordres. – Où estil? – Devant vous. – Quoi, Madame, c’est vous qui êtes M. G. Sand? – Avec votre permission.4

Pendant la liaison avec Musset, Sand, dans une lettre, avoue qu’elle l’aime « avec une force toute virile et aussi toutes les tendresses de l’amour féminin  ».5 Dans une autre lettre, cette fois à son ami avignonnais Scipion du Roure, elle plaisante de la sorte : Madame Sand a dit à M. George tout ce que vous avez de bienveillance et de sympathie pour lui. Madame Sand est une bête que je ne vous engage pas à connaître et qui vous ennuierait mortellement; mais George est un excellent garçon, plein de cœur et de reconnaissance pour ceux qui veulent bien l’aimer.6

Loin d’être anecdotique, ce partage d’Aurore Dudevant en deux entités distinctes, cette hybridité constitutive à ses yeux de son activité littéraire 4 5 6

C II, p. 118, 6 juillet 1832, à Laure Decerfz. C II, P. 562, 15 avril 1834. C III, p. 490, 18 juillet 1836.

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se retrouve en réalité partout; dès son entrée en littérature, celle qui vient d’être baptisée « George Sand » écrit à l’une de ses meilleures amies : « A Paris, Mme Dudevant est morte. Mais George Sand est connu comme un vigoureux gaillard ».7 Il est tout à fait significatif que Sand, qui pourtant réfléchit sur la condition des femmes, et en fait la pierre angulaire de sa matière romanesque, tient à distance et laisse à l’état d’impensé ce que pourtant sa propre position ne cesse d’interroger, à savoir le sexe de la littérature. C’est d’autant plus frappant sans doute que, bien plus que Staël encore, Sand est engagée dans la vie politique, et qu’elle fait imprimer journaux et brochures à compte d’auteur au moment de la Révolution de 1848; c’est d’autant plus frappant également qu’elle refuse de se porter candidate à l’Académie française et que dans le pamphlet qu’elle écrit pour expliquer son choix – Pourquoi des femmes à l’Académie? en 1863 – elle ne répond pas à la question de savoir pourquoi les femmes doivent éviter l’Académie mais pourquoi quiconque a du talent se doit de ne pas rejoindre des gens de lettres profondément conservateurs. On peut aller plus loin et remarquer qu’au fur et à mesure qu’elle avance dans la carrière littéraire Sand refuse de plus en plus clairement de considérer la question. Exception elle est, exception elle demeure, tenant à sa double appartenance sexuée au nom du génie, qui, dit-on, n’a pas de sexe (ou plus exactement qui n’en a qu’un), ce que les. La même position se retrouve à bien des égards chez Rachilde, à la fin du siècle : choix d’un pseudonyme – dans le cas de Marguerite Eymery d’un véritable «  nom de guerre  » qu’elle aurait emprunté à un noble suédois ayant vécu au XVIe siècle et qui a en réalité été inventé de toutes pièces; refus de s’exprimer en littérature autrement qu’au masculin, pliant la langue à cet usage. Rachilde fait imprimer des cartes de visite portant la mention « homme de lettres » et ne déroge, ni dans les préfaces de ses romans ni dans les propos critiques qu’elle tient pendant les trente-cinq années dans la section de critique littéraire de la prestigieuse revue Le Mercure de France, à l’habitude qu’elle a prise de s’exprimer au masculin. Les femmes de lettres? Rachilde les brocarde sans ménagement dans ses articles : Toutes ces femmes de lettres, avec ou sans lettres, sont en général sorties de leur intimité pour monter sur les planches de la littérature en des costumes de commères de revue. Elles sont amusantes, troublantes, intéressantes, quelquefois navrantes, 7

C II, p. 120, 7 juillet 1832, à Laure Decerfz.

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déconcertantes, exaspérantes, jamais touchantes dans la bonne acception du mot, parce que, pour être touchantes, il faut que l’on porte en soi une pureté absolue d’intention, quoi qu’on entreprenne.8

Aucune solidarité donc, à l’égard de celles auxquelles Rachilde, comme Sand, prête toutes sortes de défaut. Rachilde publie d’ailleurs en 1929 un recueil de portraits d’auteurs contemporains intitulés Portraits d’hommes, dont elle n’envisage pas, on s’en doute, de donner un pendant féminin. Dans la préface à son roman Madame Adonis, elle déclare : On a tort d’être femme de lettres. Il y a toujours mieux à faire. Pour les unes, la prostitution, hygiène de la société. Pour les autres, le mari […]. Je suis androgyne des lettres.

On pourrait, à propos de Colette, trouver des affirmations très semblables et pour quelques femmes auteurs de grand talent au début du XXe siècle, mais ceci allongerait par trop l’exposé. J’en viens maintenant à mon second point qui sera plus court. Il a pour souci principal de montrer que la critique littéraire, exclusivement masculine, conforte cette hybridité telle que j’ai tenté de la décrire, construisant ainsi en miroir une image de la femme auteur comme double, masculine et féminine, un discours expliquant et renforçant l’autre. Dans cette perspective, il faut naturellement distinguer les arguments du XVIIIe siècle de ceux du siècle suivant. Le siècle de Voltaire tient un fort discours de différenciation des sexes en matière de littérature et  ce discours de la différence s’accompagne systématiquement d’une hiérarchie que rien ni personne ne remet en cause – malgré quelques ouvrages connus de tous qui ont parlé d’égalité dès le début du XVIIe siècle. Autrement dit, la critique s’extasie et déclare que telle ou telle œuvres est très bien… pour une œuvre de femme. Il est entendu par ailleurs, et mes quelques citations d’il y a un instant l’ont fait entendre, que les ouvrages « de femmes », des romans essentiellement, ne peuvent manquer de comporter toutes sortes de défaut : la longueur étant la plus manifeste (ce point étonne quand on sait les succès des romans anglais à la même époque, ceux aussi de Prévost ou de Marivaux), à quoi s’ajoute la question du style (autre point qui étonne, puisqu’on voit systématiquement ou presque les auteurs d’une génération donnée trouver que ceux qui les 8

Mercure de France, 16 février 1912 ; cité par Claude Dauphiné, Rachilde (Paris  : Mercure de France, 1991), p. 57.

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précèdent manquent de style). Les œuvres de femmes ne sont d’ailleurs jamais comparées, autre caractéristique intéressante, qu’à d’autres œuvres de femmes. Toute femme qui taquine le vers et risque un poème voire une épopée ou une tragédie est immanquablement qualifié de Sapho française ou de Sapho moderne. Personne pour comparer Anne-Marie Du Bocage, auteure de l’épopée La Colombiade, à Voltaire (qui pourtant se répand en éloges «  galants  »), pour comparer Françoise de Graffigny, auteure des Lettres d’une Péruvienne, à quelque auteur de roman par lettres. L’hybridité que l’on pouvait apercevoir quand il s’agissait de genres littéraires distincts ne se retrouve pas, à ma connaissance, dans la critique qui tient exclusivement le discours de la différence et se trouve au total confortée dans ses a priori sur la « nature » des deux sexes dans leur rapport à la littérature. Aux yeux des critiques, y compris aux yeux de Jean-François La Harpe qui va donner l’un des premiers aperçus historiques d’envergure dans son Lycée ou cours de littérature ancienne et moderne à partir de 1798, la présence des femmes en littérature demeure dans tous les cas mineur. Elles ne peuvent disposer au mieux que de cet art du détail qui s’observe dans les romans dont elles sont les auteurs. Les romans sont de tous les ouvrages de l’esprit, celui dont les femmes sont le plus capables. L’amour, qui en est toujours le sujet principal, est le sentiment qu’elles connaissent le mieux. Il y a, dans la passion, une foule de nuances délicates et imperceptibles, qu’en général elles saisissent mieux que nous.

Il poursuit en expliquant que les femmes ne sauraient évidemment faire grand, fort, violent, tragique et que d’ailleurs il ne s’est est pas trouvé une seule pour produire une œuvre de quelque intérêt dans d’autres genres littéraires, vues fausses et biaisées qui servent de témoignage à l’éradication des femmes auteurs de la tradition littéraire se met en place peu après la Révolution. Le XIXe siècle a dans ce domaine d’autres vues et opère une distinction entre le peu de talent et le talent véritable – c’est pour le moins l’argument-alibi que l’on entend partout. Ou bien l’œuvre est jugée médiocre, et ce n’est pas étonnant puisque c’est une œuvre de femme (à l’évidence, les œuvres médiocres écrites par des hommes ne les renvoient pas aux supposées insuffissances de leur sexe). Ou bien l’œuvre est jugée remarquable, et dans ce cas son auteur est « sortie de son sexe », opération assez curieuse si on veut bien la prendre au pied de la lettre. Dans Portraits de femmes publié en 1844, Sainte-Beuve fait bien la différence

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entre ces œuvres de femmes charmantes, émouvantes et écrites comme par distraction par quelques belles personnes, et ces œuvres fortes, qui manifeste par leur « mâle pensée » qu’elles sont « au-dessus de la destinée de leur sexe ». Sainte-Beuve voit en Staël « un génie cordial et bon » et la compare à quelque « grand orateur athénien ». Quand il songe à Mme Roland, il salue « la finesse de la femme » alliée à « la fermeté d’une mâle intelligence ». Autrement dit… le génie est masculin, la médiocrité charmante est féminine et si d’aventure il se trouvait quelque femme pour avoir du génie, alors, elle serait double, monstre, ou appartiendrait à quelque « troisième sexe », comme l’imagine Flaubert quand il évoque Sand. Quelques années plus tard, c’est toujours la position de la critique. En témoigne le très volumineux Cours familier de littérature d’Alphonse de Lamartine, qui paraît entre 1856 et 1869. Très soucieux d’ordre et de morale, Lamartine affirme : Il y a eu, il y aura des femmes illustres par le talent littéraire, sans que cette célébrité n’ait coûté rien aux vertus de leur sexe, témoins Vittoria Colonna en Italie et Mme de Sévigné en France. […] elles n’ont été écrivains que parce qu’elles étaient épouses et mères. […] leurs œuvres ne sont que leurs tendresses, seules œuvres qui conviennent au sexe fait pour aimer.

Et de conclure  : «  On ne sort pas impunément de sa nature  : ce qu’on gagne en gloire, on le perd en amour ». Une trentaine d’années plus tard, en 1895, Gustave Lanson, auteur de la célèbre Histoire de la littérature française qui fonde l’enseignement moderne de la littérature nationale, ne dira pas autre chose. Quelques femmes en littérature? Sans doute, mais bien modestes, à l’exception de Mme de Staël à la « mâle pensée ». Quelques pétroleuses soucieuses de défendre leurs droits? Hélas, dès le XVe siècle, Christine de Pizan devait écrire à ce sujet, inaugurant ainsi « la première de cette insupportable lignée de femmes auteurs à qui nul ouvrage ne coûte et qui […] n’ont à faire que de multiplier les preuves de leur infatigable facilité, égale à leur universelle médiocrité. » En réalité, les conséquences d’une telle attitude sont encore visibles aujourd’hui, les enseignants de littérature dans leur ensemble demeurant extrêmement peu favorables à l’idée d’une sexuation du champ littéraire, au nom d’une littérature sans sexe, qui a pour effet de ne pas déranger les discours tenus à ce propos depuis trois siècles désormais. En guise de conclusion à ce qui a été sommairement exposé, j’en reviens à l’hybridité que je n’ai pas perdue de vue.

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On l’a vu, les femmes auteurs d’Ancien Régime indexent le plus généralement leur sexe sur celui du genre littéraire que la tradition a fait leur; elles utilisent une position « neutre », c’est-à-dire masculine, quand il s’agit d’ouvrages savants, reconduisant ainsi en toute connaissance de cause une hiérarchie des productions littéraires qui recoupe et reproduit la hiérarchie des sexes. Dans tous les cas, elles se font discrètes, modestes, et décident de publier quand même, ayant introjecté les consignes et mises en garde abondamment prodiguées par toutes les formes de pouvoir existantes, y compris religieux. Pour des raisons éditoriales liées au goût de la deuxième moitié du XVIIIe siècle, on trouve quelques pseudo-mémoires de comédiennes, de religieuses ou de prostituées dont les auteurs sont des hommes mais qui n’hésitent pas à se faire passer pour des femmes – c’est-à-dire à imprimer sur la page de titre un « Mme de *** », comme en compte nombre de romans de femmes. Cette situation qui consiste, pour un auteur masculin, à se faire passer pour une femme est intéressante car elle n’a pas pour l’instant retenu l’attention de la critique. Pourtant, elle rejoint des questions d’hybridité de la forme romanesque (qui ne cesse pas de vouloir passer pour vraie) et recoupe forcément des questions d’hybridité regardant le sexe des auteurs. A partir du XIXe siècle, pour des raisons qui relèvent cette fois d’une plus stricte délimitation des sphères (la sphère publique aux hommes, la sphère privée aux femmes), des raisons qui relèvent aussi de choix politiques entérinés par la Révolution, l’hybridité accidentelle qui s’observait sous l’Ancien Régime se précise. Ainsi va-t-on voir les quelques grands talents féminins du temps, Staël, Sand, puis Rachilde ou Colette, s’engager beaucoup plus nettement dans une hybridité genrée, une double appartenance sexuelle, qui atteste la force de l’idée selon laquelle talent et activité littéraire ne peuvent être conçus qu’au masculin et ce, alors même que ces femmes auteurs, c’est le cas pour Sand, ont adopté par ailleurs une conscience proto-féministe qui hante puissamment leurs écrits mais aussi leur conduite dans la vie privée et/ou publique qu’elles peuvent avoir. Hybridité imposée par une situation singulière et qui, à mon sens, relève des multiples effets d’une domination masculine d’autant plus efficace qu’il n’est personne, ou presque, pour la penser et la contester – dans le domaine littéraire tout particulièrement. Parallèlement à ces affirmations de talent réservé au masculin, on voit croître et se multiplier une foule de talents mineurs jouissant d’une

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certaine réputation de leur vivant, parfois d’un certain succès. Certaines de ces femmes sont féministes et tentent, en vain, d’obtenir quelque marque de soutien des grands talents. La fin du XIXe siècle verra paraître quelques ouvrages donnant un fondement scientifique à l’affirmation selon laquelle le génie est masculin. C’est le cas des ouvrages de Max Nordau (Psycho-physiologie du génie et du talent, 1897) ou Cesare Lombroso (l’Homme de génie, 1889). Une littérature hybride? Masculin et féminin comme « deux éléments de nature différente anormalement réunis », ainsi que le définit le Robert? En réalité, on l’a compris, la situation n’est pas claire. Aucun auteur masculin pour rêver d’avoir les deux sexes pour les besoins de la littérature; aucune femme pour en rêver avant le XIXe siècle et encore leur situation est-elle en tout point exceptionnelle. Si elle fait sens en littérature au niveau des sexes, l’hybridité, quand elle s’observe, sert essentiellement d’indice à la toute-puissance du masculin dans ce domaine.

Hybrides et Surgeons : Naissance des Genres Populaires Daniel Compère Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3

L’envie de classer correspond certainement à un besoin très profond. Dans l’Antiquité, un philosophe comme Aristote ressent la nécessité de distinguer des genres littéraires. Son traité intitulé Poétique en indique trois : l’épopée, le théâtre et la poésie lyrique. Pour les poéticiens d’aujourd’hui, ce ne sont pas des « genres », mais des « types » de textes. Peu importe. Au fil des siècles, les artistes ont inventé des genres nouveaux, croisant parfois des genres existant, comme la comedia que Lope de Vega renouvelle au début du XVIIe siècle ou la comédie héroïque que propose Corneille en 1650, ou, au XIXe siècle le poème en prose inventé par Aloysius Bertrand et perfectionné par Baudelaire dans les années 1860. Le domaine des romans populaires n’échappe pas à cette création de genres nouveaux résultant souvent de la rencontre plus ou moins harmonieuse de deux genres existant. Un mot d’abord sur ce domaine des romans populaires que je définis comme une œuvre de fiction qui, dès sa publication, vise un large public, mais qui ne sera pas nécessairement reconnue comme littérature légitime.1 Ce domaine littéraire est apparu au XIXe siècle. C’est un phénomène de grande ampleur qui s’est manifesté à partir des années 1820 en France et dans d’autres pays européens (l’Espagne n’y a pas échappé, vous le savez2), alors que le livre et la presse s’associaient pour répondre aux attentes des nouveaux lecteurs issus des différentes actions d’alphabétisation et d’éducation. Cette 1 2

Voir : Daniel Compère, Les Romans populaires (Paris : Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2011). Voir par exemple  : José F. Montesinos, Introducción a una historia de la novela en España en el siglo XIX (Madrid : Castalia, 1982); Juan Ignacio Ferreras, La Novela por entregas 1840–1900 (Madrid : Tauras, 1972); Leonardo Romero, La novela popular española del siglo XIX (Barcelone : Fundación Juan-March-Ariel, 1976); Víctor Carillo, L’Infra-littérature en Espagne aux XIXe et XXe siècles. Du roman-feuilleton au romancero de la guerre d’Espagne (Grenoble : Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 1977).

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démocratisation de la lecture entraîne une évolution de la littérature et le développement de nouvelles formes de publication. Une partie de la littérature s’adapte donc pour répondre à la demande d’un public nouveau, et pour paraître sur des supports nouveaux (feuilletons, fascicules). L’adjectif « populaire » ne signifie pas que nous avons affaire à une littérature issue du peuple, mais que cette nouvelle littérature s’adresse à un large public, le peuple (au premier sens du mot). S’ajoute à cela le fait que certains romans sont véritablement « populaires » au sens où ils vont connaître un énorme succès et passer par des formes d’édition destinées à toucher de nombreux lecteurs. Mais il est important de noter que, très souvent, ces romans sont exclus du champ littéraire reconnu et légitimé. On les désignera même parfois comme une « sous-littérature ». Mais ceci est une autre question. J’attache une importance au fait que ce phénomène est lié au développement de la presse, car celle-ci favorise l’éclosion de genres nouveaux. Je vais en examiner quatre exemples assez différents, mais intéressants dans leur diversité : – – – –

« Les Indiens à Paris », ou la rencontre du « western » et du roman de mœurs : Les Mystères de Paris d’Eugène Sue « L’avenir est déjà là », ou la rencontre du roman d’aventures et de la science-fiction : Les Cinq cents millions de la Bégum de Jules Verne « Mais que fait la police? », ou la fusion du roman d’aventures et de l’enquête policière : Le Boucher de Meudon de Jules Mary « L’arrestation du fantôme », ou la rencontre du fantastique et du roman policier : Le Mystère de la chambre jaune de Gaston Leroux

Ces quatre exemples permettent d’observer comment quatre genres littéraires et populaires trouvent leur identité dans l’hybridation.

1. Les Indiens à Paris De la tradition des romans de Fenimore Cooper sont nés au XIXe siècle toute une série de récits qui relèvent du genre de l’aventure et ont pris progressivement leur autonomie. Ces récits d’aventures situés en Amérique du Nord mettent en scène des Indiens, des hors-la-loi, des justiciers, etc. et l’on pourrait les qualifier de « western » (genre qui ne recevra ce nom

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qu’au XXe siècle). En France, on lit d’abord les traductions des romans de Fenimore Cooper dans les années 1820 et il faut attendre quelques années pour lire des récits de ce genre, ceux de Gabriel Ferry (Les Chercheurs d’or, 1848; Costal l’Indien, 1852; Les Peaux-Rouges, 1864) et de Gustave Aimard (Les Trappeurs de l’Arkansas, 1858; Le Grand chef des Aucas, 1858; La Loi de Lynch, 1859). Auparavant, se produit la rencontre de ce type de roman et du roman de mœurs. Balzac le tente déjà dans Le Dernier Chouan (1829, réédité ensuite sous le titre Les Chouans), mais j’estime que c’est Eugène Sue qui en réalise la meilleure fusion avec Les Mystères de Paris (1842–1843). Les Mystères de Paris est un événement littéraire lié à la naissance du roman-feuilleton qui apparaît en France en 1836, au moment où la presse quotidienne, jusqu’alors essentiellement politique et de tirage relativement restreint, décide d’élargir son public en ouvrant ses pages à la publicité et à la littérature.3 Avant ce roman, Eugène Sue a publié des romans d’aventure maritime et des romans historiques. Après une période de crise vers 1837, Sue se tourne vers le roman de mœurs avec Arthur (1837– 1839), un roman encore très balzacien. Puis Sue écrit Mathilde. Mémoires d’une jeune femme (La Presse, 23 décembre 1840–26 septembre 1841) où il met en scène Lugarto, un parvenu, un nouveau riche qui se croit tout puissant, possède une police secrète, achète les domestiques, enlève les femmes. La recette de ce roman est reprise dans Les Mystères de Paris, mais inversée : un homme bon et généreux va utiliser des ruses pour faire le bien parmi les miséreux et punir les bandits. Ce roman, Mathilde d’Eugène Sue, touche déjà deux cent mille lecteurs et suscite aussi un abondant courrier, à en croire Théophile Gautier qui prend en charge le résumé de la troisième partie du roman dans La Presse du 24 juillet 1841.4 La voie est ouverte pour l’âge d’or du roman-feuilleton en France avec l’événement que constitue Les Mystères de Paris.5 3

4 5

Le 1er juillet 1836, Émile de Girardin lance ainsi La Presse et Armand Dutacq qui avait d’abord été associé au projet, lance un journal concurrent, Le Siècle. Il faut préciser que le mot feuilleton désigne d’abord un espace du journal réservé à des chroniques régulières  : causeries mondaines, fragments historiques, critiques littéraires; récits de voyage, etc. La nouveauté de Girardin et Dutacq est de demander à des auteurs d’écrire des romans spécialement prévus pour être publiés par tranches quotidiennes. Voir : Françoise Surdel-Schehr, « Mathilde – Mémoires d’une jeune femme. Histoire du texte – Editions et variantes », Tapis-Franc, 3 (1990). Les Mystères de Paris d’Eugène Sue est paru en feuilleton dans Le Journal des débats, de juin 1842 à octobre 1843.

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Dans ce roman, afin d’expier la faute qu’il a commise en levant la main sur son père le grand-duc de Gérolstein, Rodolphe gagne Paris. Se faisant passer pour un artisan, il explore les lieux mal famés pour récompenser la vertu et punir le crime. Escorté de son tuteur, Murph, il tire une jeune mendiante, Fleur-de-Marie, des mains de son souteneur et entreprend de la réhabiliter. Il ignore alors que celle-ci est la fille née de son mariage secret avec la comtesse Sarah McGrégor. La trame principale du roman relate les multiples péripéties mettant aux prises Rodolphe avec de dangereux malfaiteurs qu’il affronte pour les punir et, par ailleurs, secourir les plus démunis. C’est un roman de mœurs dans lequel vont surgir les Indiens. Dès le début des Mystères de Paris, Sue manifeste une volonté de dévoiler des dessous sociaux ou politiques, de transgresser des frontières. Dans les premières lignes du roman, il écrit : Tout le monde a lu les admirables pages dans lesquelles Cooper, le Walter Scott américain, a tracé les mœurs féroces des sauvages, leur langue pittoresque, poétique, les mille ruses à l’aide desquelles ils fuient ou poursuivent leurs ennemis. On a frémi pour les colons et pour les habitants des villes, en songeant que si près d’eux vivaient et rôdaient ces tribus barbares, que leurs habitudes sanguinaires rejetaient si loin de la civilisation. Nous allons essayer de mettre sous les yeux du lecteur quelques épisodes de la vie d’autres barbares aussi en dehors de la civilisation que les sauvages peuplades si bien peintes par Cooper. Seulement les barbares dont nous parlons sont au milieu de nous; nous pouvons les coudoyer en nous aventurant dans les repaires où ils vivent, où ils se rassemblent pour concerter le meurtre, le vol, pour se partager enfin les dépouilles de leurs victimes. Ces hommes ont des mœurs à eux, des femmes à eux, un langage à eux, langage mystérieux, rempli d’images funestes, de métaphores dégouttantes de sang. Comme les sauvages, enfin, ces gens s’appellent généralement entre eux par des surnoms empruntés à leur énergie, à leur cruauté, à certains avantages ou à certaines difformités physiques.6

6

Eugène Sue, Les Mystères de Paris (Paris : Robert Laffont, 1989), chapitre 1, p. 31 (1re partie).

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Eugène Sue fait bien référence à Cooper et à ses récits, répétant le mot «  sauvage  » et annonçant la représentation de personnages violents qui enlèvent leurs victimes et règlent leur compte avec leurs poings ou avec un couteau. Ce roman met effectivement en scène des «  barbares  »  : le Maître d’école, un escroc devenu criminel (échappé du bagne, il s’est rendu méconnaissable en se brûlant le visage au vitriol); la Chouette, une créature sadique qui arrache les cheveux ou les dents de ses victimes avec des tenailles; Sarah Seyton, une aventurière qui use de sa séduction pour satisfaire ses ambitions; Jacques Ferrand, un notaire escroc qui pousse ses victimes au crime. Sans parler des petits voyous comme Tortillard, des charlatans comme César Bradamanti, ou d’un maton comme le Squelette, etc. La comparaison avec les «  sauvages  » est souvent reprise  dans ce roman : Si l’on frémit déjà des fatales conséquences de telles nécessités, presque toujours inévitablement imposées aux artisans pauvres, mais probes, que sera-ce donc lorsqu’il s’agira d’artisans dépravés par l’ignorance ou par l’inconduite? Quels épouvantables exemples ne donneront-ils pas à de malheureux enfants abandonnés, ou plutôt excités, dès leur plus tendre jeunesse, à tous les penchants brutaux, à toutes les passions animales! Auront-ils seulement l’idée du devoir, de l’honnêteté, de la pudeur? Ne seront-ils pas aussi étrangers aux lois sociales que les sauvages du nouveau monde? 7

Face à ces « sauvages », Les Mystères de Paris amène un nouveau type de personnage, le Justicier. Il se distingue du policier qui agit au nom de la société. Il existe d’ailleurs dans le roman de Sue un enquêteur officiel, Narcisse Borel que l’on voit arrêter deux assassins et s’infiltrer dans la bande de Bras-Rouge.8 Mais son rôle est réduit. La mission de Rodolphe est différente : punir et récompenser. Pour lui, la fin justifie les moyens. Il chasse les criminels et s’assure qu’ils reçoivent le châtiment qu’ils méritent. Rodolphe n’hésite pas à utiliser la violence contre ses ennemis. Ainsi le voit-on punir le Maître d’école de manière particulièrement cruelle, en le rendant aveugle : Je serais aussi criminel que toi si, en te punissant, je ne satisfaisais qu’une vengeance, si juste qu’elle fût… Loin d’être stérile comme la mort… ta punition doit être féconde; loin de te damner… elle peut te racheter… Si pour te mettre hors d’état de 7 8

Eugène Sue, Les Mystères de Paris…, chapitre 8, p. 635 (5e partie). Eugène Sue, Les Mystères de Paris…, p. 68 et 876.

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nuire… je te dépossède à jamais des splendeurs de la création… si je te plonge dans une nuit impénétrable… seul… avec le souvenir de tes forfaits… c’est pour que tu contemples incessamment leur énormité.9

Sue apporte une nouveauté au roman qui, jusque là, est considéré en France comme un genre mineur. Comme l’a souligné le critique Samuel S. de Sacy, Eugène Sue rejette ici la règle classique des trois unités, comme dans le drame romantique, puisque, sur la trame principale qui relate les péripéties mettant aux prises Rodolphe avec ces dangereux bandits, se greffent de nombreux épisodes orientés sur d’autres personnages de différents milieux sociaux : Notons encore […] la règle des trois multiplicités, d’action, de lieu et de temps; et comme l’art du roman est toujours un exotisme et que le feuilleton s’adresse par définition au public sédentaire de la quotidienneté, il y faut un mouvement perpétuel, l’aventure constamment renouvelée et le dépaysement pour tous lecteurs, la pègre pour les bourgeois, le grand monde pour les prolétaires.10

D’ailleurs, le narrateur des Mystères de Paris souligne lui-même cet aspect novateur en parlant à la fin de la troisième partie, des « exigences de ce récit multiple, […] varié dans son unité »11. Deux genres sont donc présents dans le roman de Sue, le western et le roman de mœurs, et leur rencontre aurait pu créer une tension entre deux éléments incompatibles. Au début, la tradition américaine inspirée de Fenimore Cooper reste extérieure elle sert de comparaison. Mais peu à peu, elle se parisianise : non seulement les sauvages sont là à Paris, mais ce sont des habitants de la capitale qui se conduisent comme eux. Une véritable fusion des deux genres se produit : Les Mystères de Paris intègrent les caractéristiques du « western » dans un univers urbain et français. L’hybridation est réussie. Les Mystères de Paris fournit aussi un des premiers exemples de roman à susciter des reprises : adapté au théâtre et en pantomime (avant de l’être au cinéma au XXe siècle), il est réédité sans relâche et suscite surtout des dizaines d’avatars et d’imitations. Le premier est un cas intéressant puisqu’il s’agit d’une demande de la part d’Anténor Joly, directeur 9 10 11

Eugène Sue, Les Mystères de Paris…, 1re partie, chapitre 21, p. 164. Samuel S. de Sacy, «  Trompe-la-mort  », Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes (Paris : Club du Meilleur Livre, 1958), p. 18. Eugène Sue, Les Mystères de Paris…, chapitre 15, p. 385 (3e partie).

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littéraire du Courrier français, au jeune Paul Féval  : Les Mystères de Londres paraît en 1843–44 sous le pseudonyme de Sir Francis Trolopp. Il est suivi par Les Vrais Mystères de Paris (1844) d’Eugène Vidocq, Les Mystères du Temple (1862–63) de Pierre-Alexis Ponson du Terrail, Les Mystères du Lapin blanc (1863) de Jules Boulabert, Les Mystères de Marseille (1867) d’Émile Zola, Les Mystères de Bicêtre (1864) de Pierre Zaccone, Les Mystères du nouveau Paris (1875–76) de Fortuné du Boisgobey, Les Mystères de New York de Jules Lermina (sous le pseudonyme de William Cobb, 1874), etc. En novembre 1845, Victor Hugo commence à écrire Les Misères qui deviendra Les Misérables (1862). Dans la France de l’époque, certains profitent du succès en proposant des produits dérivés (jeux, figurines, etc.). En Espagne, se développe aussi cette envie d’écrire des « mystères » : peu après la traduction des Mystères de Paris, on peut lire Los misterios de Barcelona de José Nicasio Milà de la Roca (Barcelona, 1844), Los Misterios de Madrid (Madrid, 1844–45), Los misterios de Madrid de Carlos García Doncel y Luis Olona (Madrid, Repullés, 1845), Les Mystères de Cordoue (El Coco, n°4, 1er mai 1845), Los misterios de los jesuitas de Joaquín Rodríguez (Madrid, 1845), Les Mystères de Seville (El Jenio [sic] de Andalucia, n°7, 1er février, sans année), Les Mystères de Valence (El Fénix, n°118 du 2 janvier 1848), Les Mystères des Jésuites (La Censura, n°69, mars 1850), etc.12 Pouvons-nous parler d’un genre nouveau? Certains avancent le nom de « mystères urbains ». A mon avis, nous restons ici dans le genre du roman de mœurs, avec une hybridation qui lui donne un exotisme particulier.

2. L’avenir est déjà là Les romans de Verne s’inscrivent dans la longue tradition des voyages imaginaires marquée par  Robinson Crusoe (Defoe), Histoire véritable (Lucien), Voyages dans les Empires de la Lune et du Soleil (Cyrano de Bergerac), Voyages de Gulliver (Swift), Micromégas (Voltaire), etc. 12

Voir : Maryline Lacouture, « L’œuvre d’Eugène Sue en Espagne », Le Rocambole, 42 (2008).

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Mais, le genre est renouvelé au milieu du XIXe siècle par le recours aux connaissances scientifiques. Les voyages verniens se distinguent des prédécesseurs, selon un critique de l’époque, en ce qu’ils « ont sur eux l’avantage de ne pas sortir un instant de la réalité et de s’appuyer jusque dans la fantaisie et dans l’invention sur les faits positifs et sur la science irrécusable »13. L’une des originalités de Verne est là : il reprend les procédés du roman d’aventures, mais toutes les merveilles sont justifiées par des connaissances vérifiables.14 Ceci lui permet d’introduire dans son œuvre une interrogation sur l’évolution de la société et sur l’avenir  : Les Voyages extraordinaires ont la réputation de se présenter comme une littérature d’anticipation. Ce n’est que très partiellement vrai. D’abord, rares sont ceux qui se déroulent dans le futur. Il n’y a que L’Île à hélice qui est censé se situer au milieu du XXe siècle, La Journée d’un journaliste américain en 2889 et L’Eternel Adam qui se passe dans vingt mille ans. Plus fréquents sont les romans qui évoquent l’avenir, mais vu du XIXe siècle. Dans Vingt mille lieues sous les mers, à Nemo qui se demande « si, dans cent ans, on verra un second Nautilus! Les progrès sont lents », Aronnax répond que « son navire avance d’un siècle, de plusieurs peut-être, sur son époque ».15 Dans Robur-le-Conquérant, le personnage de Robur incarne aussi « la science future, celle de demain peut-être. C’est la réserve certaine de l’avenir ».16 Le roman Les Cinq cents millions de la Bégum  (1879) est intéressant de ce point de vue  : en 1871, le docteur français Sarrasin apprend qu’il hérite d’une colossale fortune laissée par un parent lointain émigré aux Indes. Il décide d’utiliser cet argent pour édifier une ville idéale aux Etats-Unis, dans l’Oregon, France-Ville. Un second héritier se présente, l’ingénieur allemand Herr Schultze qui conçoit un projet concurrent, faisant de sa cité, Stahlstadt, une sorte d’immense usine à canons. Quelques années plus tard, en 1876, Marcel Bruckmann, l’ami d’Octave, 13 14

15 16

L.M., « Bibliographie », Revue des deux mondes, 43 (1863), p. 769. Parmi les nombreuses études consacrées à l’œuvre de Jules Verne, je signale : Lucian Boia, Jules Verne, les paradoxes d’un mythe (Paris : Les Belles Lettres, 2005); Daniel Compère, Jules Verne. Parcours d’une œuvre (Amiens : Encrage Edition, 2005); François Raymond, Jules Verne (Paris : Presses Pocket, 1986). Jules Verne, Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (Paris  : Hetzel, 1870), chapitre 4 (2e partie). Jules Verne, Robur-le-Conquérant (Paris : Hetzel, 1886), chapitre 18.

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fils du docteur Sarrasin, se fait embaucher à Stahlstadt afin de découvrir ce qui s’y prépare. Il apprend effectivement que Herr Schultze envisage de détruire France-Ville à l’aide d’un obus tiré par un canon géant. Marcel regagne France-Ville, mais Schultze a déjà envoyé son engin meurtrier. Heureusement, l’obus a été projeté si fort qu’il se satellise autour de la Terre… Peu de temps après, l’activité de Stahlstadt s’arrête. Marcel et Octave se rendent dans la ville désertée et découvrent, dans un laboratoire, le cadavre congelé de Schultze, victime de l’explosion d’un de ses engins. Marcel qui épouse Jeanne, la fille de Sarrasin, décide de reprendre l’activité de Stahlstadt à des fins pacifiques.17 J’ai retenu ce récit comme un exemple du mélange du roman d’aventures et de la science-fiction. J’emploie ce terme, même s’il est un peu anachronique : le nom de science-fiction est apparu dans les années 1920 par l’éditeur américain Hugo Gernsback qui crée en 1924 le magazine Scientifiction puis Amazing stories. Le genre ne reçoit son nom qu’en juin 1929 dans l’éditorial de Science Wonder Stories et le mot « sciencefiction » n’arrive en France qu’après la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Mais le genre existe déjà et on trouve des exemples depuis la fin du XVIIe siècle. En France, c’est dans la seconde partie du XIXe siècle et plus précisément à partir des années 1880 que la science-fiction s’affirme en tant que genre avec les récits d’Albert Robida (Le Vingtième siècle, 1883; La Vie électrique, 1890), d’André Laurie (Les Exilés de la Terre, 1888; Atlantis, 1895; Spiridon le muet, 1906–1907), de Georges Le Faure (Aventures extraordinaires d’un savant russe, 1889–1896, avec Henry de Graffigny; La Guerre sous l’eau, 1892), de J.-H. Rosny (Les Xipéhuz, 1887) et du capitaine Danrit (La Guerre de demain, 1889–1891; La Guerre au vingtième siècle. L’invasion noire, 1895). À ces romans français vont se joindre les traductions des romans de l’anglais H. G. Wells, La Guerre des mondes (1897–98) ou Les Premiers hommes sur la Lune (1901). Un autre genre apparaît aussi dans Les Cinq cents millions de la Bégum : l’utopie. Dans les romans de Verne, nous rencontrons peut-être 17

Ce roman paraît en feuilleton dans le Magasin d’Education et de Récréation du 1er janvier au 15 septembre 1879, puis en volume chez Hetzel en 1879. Il faut préciser que Les Cinq cents millions de la Bégum a une origine particulière : comme cela se pratique parfois, le sujet de ce roman a été acheté par l’éditeur Hetzel à André Laurie (il devait plus tard devenir un auteur de sa maison d’édition) et Verne s’est livré à un gros travail de remaniement de l’intrigue et de récriture pour donner à ce roman les caractéristiques de sa série des Voyages extraordinaires.

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autant de villes imaginaires que de machines étranges. Les unes sont des villes idéales, les autres des lieux concentrationnaires. France-Ville appartient à la première catégorie. Sa conception et son fonctionnement s’inspirent de principes hygiénistes de l’époque. Le docteur Sarrasin qui en est le fondateur a édicté des règles de salubrité et de propreté, y a créé des jardins publics avec des œuvres d’art. C’est « la Cité du Bien-Etre »18. Lorsqu’il présente son projet, le Sarrasin affirme : Messieurs, reprit le docteur, lorsqu’il eut pu réintégrer sa place, cette cité que chacun de nous voit déjà par les yeux de l’imagination, qui peut être dans quelques mois une réalité, cette ville de la santé et du bien-être, nous inviterions tous les peuples à venir la visiter, nous en répandrions dans toutes les langues le plan et la description, nous y appellerions les familles honnêtes que la pauvreté et le manque de travail auraient chassées des pays encombrés. Celles aussi – vous ne vous étonnerez pas que j’y songe –, à qui la conquête étrangère a fait une cruelle nécessité de l’exil, trouveraient chez nous l’emploi de leur activité, l’application de leur intelligence, et nous apporteraient ces richesses morales, plus précieuses mille fois que les mines d’or et de diamant. Nous aurions là de vastes collèges où la jeunesse élevée d’après des principes sages, propres à développer et à équilibrer toutes les facultés morales, physiques et intellectuelles, nous préparerait des générations fortes pour l’avenir!19

France-Ville est donc construite selon ces principes. Un article de presse décrit la ville lorsqu’elle est construite : On ne finirait pas si l’on voulait énumérer tous les perfectionnements hygiéniques que les fondateurs de la ville nouvelle ont inaugurés. Chaque citoyen reçoit à son arrivée une petite brochure, où les principes les plus importants d’une vie réglée selon la science sont exposés dans un langage simple et clair. Il y voit que l’équilibre parfait de toutes ses fonctions est une des nécessités de la santé; que le travail et le repos sont également indispensables à ses organes; que la fatigue est nécessaire à son cerveau comme à ses muscles; que les neuf dixièmes des maladies sont dues à la contagion transmise par l’air ou les aliments. Il ne saurait donc entourer sa demeure et sa personne de trop de « quarantaines » sanitaires. Eviter l’usage des poisons excitants, pratiquer les exercices du corps, accomplir consciencieusement tous les jours une tâche fonctionnelle, boire de la bonne eau pure, manger

18 19

Jules Verne, Les Cinq cents millions de la Bégum (Paris : L.G.F., 1966), chapitre 3, p. 39. Jules Verne, Les Cinq cents millions…, chapitre 3, p. 37.

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des viandes et des légumes sains et simplement préparés, dormir régulièrement sept à huit heures par nuit, tel est l’ABC de la santé.20

Et à la fin, le narrateur souligne bien que France-Ville est sur la voie de l’avenir : On peut donc assurer dès maintenant que l’avenir appartient aux efforts du docteur Sarrasin et de Marcel Bruckmann, et que l’exemple de France-Ville et de Stahlstadt, usine et cité modèles, ne sera pas perdu pour les générations futures.21

Dans le même roman, le narrateur présente son contraire, la ville-usine de Stahlstadt où Herr Schultze fabrique des armes redoutables : Cette masse est Stahlstadt, la Cité de l’Acier, la ville allemande, la propriété personnelle de Herr Schultze, l’ex-professeur de chimie d’Iéna, devenu, de par les millions de la Bégum, le plus grand travailleur du fer et, spécialement, le plus grand fondeur de canons des deux mondes. Il en fond, en vérité, de toutes formes et de tout calibre, à âme lisse et à raies, à culasse mobile et à culasse fixe, pour la Russie et pour la Turquie, pour la Roumanie et pour le Japon, pour l’Italie et pour la Chine, mais surtout pour l’Allemagne. Grâce à la puissance d’un capital énorme, un établissement monstre, une ville véritable, qui est en même temps une usine modèle, est sortie de terre comme à un coup de baguette. Trente mille travailleurs, pour la plupart allemands d’origine, sont venus se grouper autour d’elle et en former les faubourgs. En quelques mois, ses produits ont dû à leur écrasante supériorité une célébrité universelle. Le professeur Schultze extrait le minerai de fer et la houille de ses propres mines. Sur place, il les transforme en acier fondu. Sur place, il en fait des canons.22

Les Cinq cents millions de la Bégum est un roman fort, chargé d’inquiétudes sur l’évolution de l’humanité. Il entre d’ailleurs en résonance avec notre époque de manière étonnante : course aux armements, cité concentrationnaire, affirmation d’une race saxonne supérieure et destinée à dominer le monde. Même s’il s’inscrit directement dans le prolongement de la guerre de 1870, ce n’est pas un roman revanchard. L’auteur y aborde la question du progrès scientifique et les dangers de l’utilisation de la science lorsqu’elle est mise au service de la force armée. 20 21 22

Jules Verne, Les Cinq cents millions…, chapitre 10, pp. 155–156. Jules Verne, Les Cinq cents millions…, chapitre 20, p. 241. Jules Verne, Les Cinq cents millions…, chapitre 5, p. 62.

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C’est un « roman scientifique », genre nouveau dont l’appellation est due au critique Marius Topin en 1876 : Outre le roman des sentiments et des passions, qui est le roman par excellence, nous avons déjà étudié avec Gabriel Ferry le roman du nouveau monde, avec M. Louis Reybaud le roman satire, avec M. Marmier le roman du voyageur, avec M. Ferdinand Fabre le roman du moraliste, avec M. Daudet le roman du poète, avec Gaboriau le roman judiciaire, avec Dumas, Chavette, Paul Féval, le roman d’aventures. Voici maintenant le roman scientifique.23

Verne utilisera aussi cette appellation « faute d’un meilleur terme », ainsi qu’il le précise dans un entretien avec Marie C. Belloc en 1895.24 Ce genre du roman scientifique m’apparaît comme un surgeon du roman d’aventures, de même qu’une branche pousse sur une souche et peut être séparée avec une partie de la racine, afin de former ainsi une nouvelle plante. D’autres romans de Verne comme Robur-le-Conquérant (1886) ou L’Ile à hélice (1895) appartiennent à ce genre, ainsi que les récits d’auteurs contemporains : Les Mangeurs de feu (1885–87) de Louis Jacolliot avec son sous-marin volant; De New York à Brest (1888) d’André Laurie où un tube sous-marin permet de franchir l’Océan Atlantique; Le Rubis du Grand-Lama (1892) du même Laurie qui met en scène un « aéroplane » baptisé la Gallia, gigantesque cerf-volant qui emmène ses passagers au-dessus des terres inexplorées; Cousin de Lavarède (1896) de Paul d’Ivoi où le Gypaète permet de survoler le pôle Nord; La Princesse des airs (1902) de Gustave Le Rouge où, à la suite d’un sabotage, un aéroscaphe dérive vers l’Himalaya; Les Gratteurs de Ciel (1907) de Louis Boussenard avec des dirigeables modernisés qui deviennent des engins de communication, mais aussi d’attaque et de défense; etc. 23

24

Marius Topin, « M. Jules Verne », La Presse, 25 avril 1876, repris dans : Romanciers contemporains (Paris : Charpentier, 1876), chapitre 19, et réédité dans : Jean-Michel Margot, ed., Jules Verne en son temps vu par ses contemporains francophones (1863– 1905) (Amiens  : Encrage Edition, 2004). Je note que Topin présente ce nouveau genre après avoir cité le « roman du nouveau monde » (qui est pour nous le western), le « roman judiciaire » (appellation aujourd’hui remplacée par « roman policier »), et le roman d’aventures. Marie A. Belloc, « Jules Verne at Home », The Strand Magazine, 9 (1895), traduit sous le titre « Jules Verne chez lui » : Daniel Compère, Jean-Michel Margot, eds., Entretiens avec Jules Verne. 1873–1905 (Genève : Slatkine, 1998). Dans un article de La Plume en octobre 1903, Alfred Jarry utilise également cette appellation de « romans scientifiques ».

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3. Mais que fait la police? On considère en France que le premier roman policier est L’Affaire Lerouge d’Émile Gaboriau (1865).25 L’enquête porte sur la mort de la veuve Lerouge et elle est menée par M. Daburon, juge d’instruction, qui est accompagné du policier Gévrol. L’adjoint de Gévrol, nommé Lecoq, qui deviendra un personnage récurrent dans les romans de Gaboriau, prend plaisir à critiquer les méthodes de son chef, Gévrol. Ce qu’il fait, en particulier, en faisant appel pour cette affaire Lerouge à Tabaret. Surnommé Tirauclair, celui-ci est un détective amateur qui va apprendre ses techniques à Lecoq. Les soupçons se portent sur Albert de Commarin qui est arrêté. Toutefois, c’est un peu grâce à une coïncidence que Tabaret va découvrir la vérité, et faire arrêter le vrai coupable. Si L’Affaire Lerouge est considéré comme le premier roman policier, c’est qu’il est construit selon une progression qui va de la découverte du crime à celle du coupable en passant par un recueil des indices et une enquête qui reconstitue le passé. Le lecteur partage les démarches de l’enquêteur et peut chercher aussi à deviner qui est le coupable, mais celui-ci a souvent prémédité son crime et s’est efforcé de brouiller les pistes. Une sorte de jeu entre le criminel et l’enquêteur se met ainsi en place. Et une nouvelle figure littéraire apparaît, un justicier qui n’agit plus pour lui ni pour des intérêts particuliers, mais au nom du droit. Il est donc différent du Rodolphe des Mystères de Paris. Jules Mary est aujourd’hui un peu oublié. Ses romans, publiés de 1875 à 1921, ont cependant été beaucoup lus : Mary est l’un des grands feuilletonistes de la fin du XIXe siècle, avec Georges Ohnet, Charles Mérouvel et Emile Richebourg. Mais, du point de vue critique, il existe très peu de travaux.26 25 26

L’Affaire Lerouge, paru en feuilleton dans Le Pays, septembre 1865, repris dans Le Soleil en avril 1866, puis en volume chez Dentu, 1866. René Guise, « Nos enquêtes : Jules Mary », Bulletin des Amis du Roman Populaire, 10 (1989); Maurice Dubourg, « Jules Mary », Désiré, 20 (1969); Hélène Millot, « La Pocharde…!! de Jules Mary – Histoire d’une intoxication », Du côté du populaire (Saint-Etienne : Centre Interdisciplinaire d’Etudes et de Recherches sur l’Expression Contemporaine, 1994); et un séminaire de recherche que j’ai mené à l’université de Paris III-Sorbonne nouvelle en 2002–2004 qui a permis d’avoir une vision d’ensemble de son œuvre et donc d’avancer sur la bibliographie de Jules Mary.

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Les romans de Jules Mary se présentent sous une forme assez variée du point de vue de leur étendue, mais se rattachent au mélo, c’est-à-dire à cette tendance des romans populaires de la fin du XIXe siècle qui mettent en scène des héroïnes féminines, victimes d’infortunes de plus en plus graves jusqu’à être finalement récompensées. Ce genre est proche du roman d’aventures, mais s’en distingue en mettant l’accent sur les malheurs d’une victime plus que sur un héros. La particularité de Jules Mary est qu’il construit souvent des intrigues sur une affaire policière (crime, vol, détournement d’argent, enlèvement, etc.). Je considère que Le Boucher de Meudon participe d’un genre nouveau  : le roman d’aventures policières qui se développe en parallèle à l’émergence du roman policier dans la période 1850–1880 et se constitue en genre mixte.27 Proche du roman policier, il lui associe des éléments venant d’autres genres et Le Boucher de Meudon nous en offre un exemple intéressant.28 Une première différence entre le roman policier et le roman d’aventures policières tient à la répartition des rôles des personnages (victime, enquêteur, innocent accusé, coupable). Le personnage central, souvent, n’est pas l’enquêteur, mais l’innocent accusé du méfait. Voici la différence fondamentale avec le roman policier dont Claude Aveline écrivait : « Le roman policier est le roman d’une enquête et le héros celui qui la mène. »29 Dans le roman de Jules Mary, Le Boucher de Meudon, Jacques Lauriot est accusé du meurtre de Charlotte, une jeune fille qui a été recueillie par sa mère et qui vient l’aider à la boucherie en tenant la caisse. De nombreux indices sont réunis contre Lauriot : les traces laissées près du corps par ses chaussures et son fouet taché de sang qui est l’arme du crime. Et il n’a pas d’alibi au moment du crime. Bien que le boucher soit enfermé, la maison des Lauriot est surveillée car le magistrat doute de la culpabilité du jeune homme. Un soir, l’agent Méronvel voit la mère Lauriot prise d’une crise de somnambulisme, refaire le geste de traîner le cadavre de Charlotte depuis la maison jusqu’au 27

28 29

Je renvoie à mon article  : Daniel Compère, «  Le roman d’aventures policières au XIXe siècle », Poétiques du roman d’aventures, Alain-Michel Boyer, Daniel Couégnas, dirs. (Nantes : Université de Nantes – Ed. Cécile Defaut, 2004). Le roman est paru en feuilleton dans Le Petit Journal en 1881, puis en volume chez Rouff en 1882. Claude Aveline, « Introduction », La Double mort de Frédéric Belot (Paris : Grasset, 1932).

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jardin. D’où la conclusion : elle connaît les détails de l’assassinat. Mais est-elle alors complice de son fils? La deuxième partie du roman ramène le lecteur en arrière et a pour fonction d’expliquer le pourquoi du meurtre  : la mère Lauriot, Justine, a eu une liaison avec un fermier nommé Gélibert. Après la naissance de Jacques Lauriot, elle a accouché d’une petite Denise, dont Gélibert est le père. Mais Justine Lauriot était alors brouillée avec son amant. Puis, Gélibert est mort, confiant sa fille Charlotte aux soins de sa propre sœur. Plus tard, cette sœur est venu à Meudon, a proposé de se réconcilier avec les Lauriot et d’accepter que Charlotte, maintenant âgée de dix-huit ans, vienne à Meudon. Nourrissant toujours une rancune à l’égard de Gélibert, la mère Lauriot ne pense plus qu’à se venger sur sa fille. D’autant plus que Jacques est tombé amoureux de Charlotte. Le narrateur s’attache ensuite à décrire comment, peu à peu, va se développer dans l’esprit de la mère Lauriot le désir de tuer Charlotte. Dès lors, le lecteur en sait plus que les enquêteurs et le narrateur peut ouvrir ainsi le dernier chapitre de cette deuxième partie : « Les péripéties de ce drame une fois connues, il est facile de s’expliquer l’erreur dans laquelle tombèrent les agents de police. »30 C’est alors Denise, la sœur de Jacques Lauriot qui va mener l’enquête et parvenir à démontrer l’innocence de son frère. Elle seule, en effet, peut réussir à convaincre sa mère d’avouer son crime. On voit bien que la distribution des rôles n’est pas celle d’un roman policier. D’abord, l’enquêteur officiel voit son rôle réduit. Le juge mène son instruction, mais, même s’il éprouve des doutes, il ne va pas au-delà de ses démarches officielles (interrogatoire, arrestation). Ensuite, un enquêteur officieux œuvre pour révéler la vérité, mais sans avoir les pouvoirs de la police. Bien au contraire, ce sont souvent des êtres faibles, voire marginaux, comme Denise Lauriot. Enfin, on constate un dédoublement de la victime : Charlotte qui est assassinée et Jacques Lauriot injustement accusé du meurtre. La manière dont le second est innocenté devient plus importante que la découverte du vrai coupable. Le critique canadien Marc Angenot estime que ce genre de récit qu’il appelle « roman de l’erreur judiciaire » serait « une variante significative du roman prométhéen à redresseurs de torts »31. Ceci ne me paraît 30 31

Jules Mary, Le Boucher de Meudon…, p. 164. Marc Angenot, Le Roman populaire. Recherches en paralittérature (Montréal  : Presses de l’Université du Québec, 1975), p. 13.

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pas exact : nous sommes en présence d’un autre genre qui est le roman d’aventures policières. Une deuxième différence entre le roman policier et le roman d’aventures policières est que, dans celui-ci, l’intrigue se complique d’autres intrigues qui viennent s’enchevêtrer dans l’enquête. Dans Le Boucher de Meudon, on voit que l’aventure amoureuse de Justine Lauriot avec Gélibert vient donner une justification à la haine que la mère du boucher va développer à l’égard de Charlotte. Une troisième différence significative entre roman policier et roman d’aventures policières est que ce dernier se revendique réaliste (Mary a eu l’ambition d’appartenir au mouvement naturaliste initié par Emile Zola). Au début de la deuxième partie du Boucher de Meudon, il le dit clairement : […] il nous paraît utile de dire ici que ce drame, auquel assistent nos lecteurs, n’est pas imaginaire. […] il est des choses de la vie réelle que ne trouveront jamais les imaginations même les plus fécondes.32

D’où l’importance laissée au hasard, coïncidence, rencontres fortuites qui jouent un rôle important dans la vie réelle, mais qui seront condamnées par les théoriciens du roman policier.33 Le Boucher de Meudon n’est pas le premier exemple de roman d’aventures policières. Avant lui, il existe une série de récits qui mettent en scène des organisations secrètes ayant souvent un but de malfaisance. Je cite Les Mohicans de Paris (1854–55) de Dumas où le policier Jackal lutte contre une mystérieuse association et Les Invisibles de Paris (1866–67) de Gustave Aimard et Henry Crisafulli où une association secrète est l’objet d’une enquête par un personnage proche de Vidocq. De même, Paul Féval s’en rapproche dans l’ensemble romanesque des Habits noirs (1863–75) où l’on se livre à des vols, assassinats, détournements d’héritage, études de traces, empreintes, etc. Et après ce Boucher de Meudon, Jules Mary en fournit un autre bon exemple avec Roger-la-Honte (1886–87). Faisant ainsi de l’innocent accusé le héros du récit, construisant une intrigue complexe et accordant une place importante au hasard, le roman d’aventures policières joue sur d’autres effets que le roman policier dont 32 33

Jules Mary, Le Boucher de Meudon…, pp. 81–82. Voyez, entre autres, les vingt règles édictées par S. S. Van Dine dans The American Magazine, septembre 1928.

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il se distingue. Curieusement il rejoint les deux critères qu’Aristote définissait pour la tragédie dans sa Poétique : une construction complexe qui imite des événements propres à susciter la crainte et la pitié, et un récit centré sur un homme qui, sans être absolument vertueux, tombe dans le malheur du fait de quelque erreur. Au lieu de viser l’intellect du lecteur à qui une sorte de jeu est proposée, le roman d’aventures policières joue davantage sur le pathétique et cherche à toucher la sensibilité du lecteur. Certains critiques ne voient pas dans ces romans de Jules Mary un genre nouveau et les classent dans une tendance mélodramatique du roman populaire. Cela me paraît réducteur : nous avons affaire à un genre autonome qui naît en parallèle au roman policier dont il est comme un frère : il lui ressemble, mais est différent.

4. L’arrestation du fantôme  Nous assistons ici à la rencontre de deux grands genres populaires : le roman policier et le fantastique que certains critiques comme Jean-Baptiste Baronian posent comme incompatibles ou, au moins, regrettent, lorsque la rencontre se produit, que le fantastique se « signale presque toujours de façon médiate et allusive, et ce n’est que très rarement qu’il forme le support principal d’une narration. »34 Or, plusieurs romans réussissent bien cette association et Gaston Leroux  nous en fournit de bons exemples. Avocat, chroniqueur judiciaire au Matin, il y débute dans le roman-feuilleton avec L’Homme de la nuit (1897, signé Larive), puis La Double Vie de Théophraste Longuet qui, sous le titre Le Chercheur de trésors, fait l’objet d’un grand concours (1903). Ce roman mêle à la fois l’histoire de Cartouche dont le héros est la réincarnation, et l’évocation d’une vie souterraine dans les catacombes de Paris. Leroux devient célèbre en 1907 en publiant Le Mystère de la chambre jaune35  : son héros, le reporter Rouletabille, crée un nouveau type de détective qui s’appuie sur le raisonnement logique. Confronté 34 35

Baronian Jean-Baptiste, Panorama de la littérature fantastique de langue française (Paris : Editions de La Table Ronde, 2007), p. 81. Le roman est paru en feuilleton dans L’Illustration en 1907, puis en volume chez Laffitte.

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d’abord à l’énigme d’un meurtre en chambre close, Rouletabille doit souvent affronter des énigmes qui semblent insolubles (Le Parfum de la dame en noir, 1908; Rouletabille chez le tsar, 1912). Journaliste et enquêteur, Rouletabille devient peu à peu un héros d’aventures (Rouletabille à la guerre, 1914; Rouletabille chez Krupp, 1917–18). Leroux aime le mélange des genres : Le Roi mystère (1908–9) est une variation sur le thème du Comte de Monte-Cristo de Dumas; La Reine du sabbat (1910); l’angoisse s’associe à l’humour dans Le Fauteuil hanté (1909); Le Fantôme de l’Opéra (1910) est un drame romantique qui flirte avec le fantastique; La Poupée sanglante (1923), enfin, est un étrange roman où des thèmes fantastiques se conjuguent à un récit policier.36 Déjà Le Mystère de la chambre jaune illustre bien la rencontre de plusieurs genres. D’abord, le monde de la presse y est présent : le lecteur est d’abord confronté à un fait divers dont il prend connaissance par un article du journal Le Matin – dont Leroux a été un collaborateur – qui raconte en détail « le crime du château du Glandier »37. Cet article cite longuement le témoignage du Père Jacques, le domestique de M. Stangerson, qui raconte l’agression mystérieuse dont la fille de celui-ci a été la victime et introduit la part de mystère, voire de fantastique. En pénétrant dans la chambre, M. Stangerson se précipite d’abord vers sa fille. Quant à nous, nous cherchions l’assassin, le misérable qui avait voulu tuer notre maîtresse, et je vous jure, monsieur, que, si nous l’avions trouvé, nous lui aurions fait un mauvais parti. Mais comment expliquer qu’il n’était pas là, qu’il s’était déjà enfui?… Cela dépasse toute imagination. Personne sous le lit, personne derrière les meubles, personne! Nous n’avons retrouvé que ses traces; les marques ensanglantées d’une large main d’homme sur les murs et sur la porte, un grand mouchoir rouge de sang, sans aucune initiale, un vieux béret et la marque fraîche, sur le plancher, de nombreux pas d’homme. […] Par où cet homme était-il passé? Par où s’était-il évanoui? N’oubliez pas, monsieur, qu’il n’y a pas de cheminée dans la Chambre Jaune. Il ne pouvait s’être échappé par la porte, qui est très étroite et sur le seuil de laquelle la concierge est entrée avec sa lampe, tandis que le concierge et moi nous cherchions l’assassin dans ce petit carré de chambre où il est impossible de se cacher et où, du reste, nous ne trouvions personne. La porte défoncée et rabattue sur le mur ne pouvait rien dissimuler, et nous nous en sommes

36 37

Je renvoie en particulier à : Alfu, Gaston Leroux, parcours d’une œuvre (Amiens : Encrage Edition, 1996), et au dossier de la revue Europe, 626–627 (1981), « Gaston Leroux ». Gaston Leroux, Le Mystère de la chambre jaune (Paris  : Librairie Générale Française, 1960), p. 10.

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assurés. Par la fenêtre restée fermée avec ses volets clos et ses barreaux auxquels on n’avait pas touché, aucune fuite n’avait été possible. Alors? Alors… je commençais à croire au diable.38

La chambre elle-même est près du laboratoire de Stangerson dans une propriété isolée où le savant mène des recherches sur « la dissociation de la matière »39 L’assassin a-t-il réussi à traverser les murs comme un fantôme? Si oui, comment arrête-t-on un fantôme? Le mystère de la chambre close paraît inexplicable. Et les superstitions contribuent aussi à créer une atmosphère fantastique. Mais si le récit flirte avec le fantastique (disparition fantomatique de l’assassin, dissociation de la matière, cadavre incroyable, etc.), les explications finales débouchent sur un mystère fort naturel et satisfaisant pour la logique. L’intervention de Rouletabille, le jeune journaliste et détective amateur, va ramener le mystère à une énigme policière. Rouletabille se pose en concurrent du policier Frédéric Larsan, mais il va se trouver confronté à deux autres énigmes qui reposent sur la même question : comment le coupable parvient-il à disparaître? Après le mystère de la chambre jaune, Rouletabille est confronté à deux autres mystères celui de «  la galerie inexplicable  » et celui du «  bout de cour  ». De la chambre jaune, l’assassin semble être sorti alors que deux personnes se tenaient devant la porte. Poursuivi par quatre personnes venant de directions différentes, le coupable disparaît de la galerie. Encore poursuivi, il s’échappe du bout de cour, laissant derrière lui un « cadavre incroyable ». Ces trois mystères, à la fois semblables, et différents, s’éclairent : expliquer l’un, c’est les expliquer tous les trois. Par recoupement, Rouletabille peut découvrir l’identité de l’assassin. La méthode de Rouletabille s’appuie sur le raisonnement : Il s’agit d’être logique, mais logique, entendez-moi bien, comme le bon Dieu a été logique quand il a dit : 2 + 2 = 4! … IL S’AGIT DE PRENDRE LA RAISON PAR LE BON BOUT!40

Dans tout mystère il existe des marques, des traces, mais elles doivent être interprétées avec précaution. Comme le déclare Rouletabille, « les traces 38 39 40

Gaston Leroux, Le Mystère de la chambre…, pp. 16–17. Gaston Leroux, Le Mystère de la chambre…, p. 10. Gaston Leroux, Le Mystère de la chambre…, p. 105. Je respecte la typographie de Gaston Leroux.

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sensibles n’ont jamais été que mes servantes… Elles n’ont point été mes maîtresses. »41 Ces traces peuvent être dangereuses « parce qu’elles vous font dire ce qu’elles veulent!  »42 Dans le mystère de la chambre jaune, chacun a cru que l’assassin était dans la pièce à cause des traces de son passage. Cependant la preuve est faite que la chambre était absolument close et qu’il n’a pu en sortir. Les marques se trouvent donc apparemment contre la logique. Or, il suffit d’imaginer que l’assassin est passé dans la pièce à un autre moment. Et Rouletabille de « reconstituer l’affaire en deux phases, deux phases bien distinctes l’une de l’autre de quelques heures »43. En effet, il y a eu d’abord une véritable agression de Mathilde Stangerson qu’elle a cherché à dissimuler, puis un cauchemar au cours duquel elle s’est agitée, a tiré un coup de révolver et s’est blessée en se heurtant à sa table de nuit. Donc, pour Rouletabille, « il faut raisonner d’abord! Et voir ensuite si les marques sensibles peuvent entrer dans le cercle de votre raisonnement.  »44 D’où son rejet des méthodes policières traditionnelles  : par exemple, pour Rouletabille, suivre la méthode de Sherlock Holmes ne mène donc à rien. C’est ce qu’il reproche à Larsan : « Tu as trop lu Conan Doyle, mon vieux!… Sherlock Holmes te fera faire des bêtises, des bêtises de raisonnement plus énormes que celles qu’on lit dans les livres. »45 A noter que ce roman s’apparente aussi à une tragédie : à plusieurs reprises, le terme de tragique ou de tragédie est employé et nous renvoie donc à un genre dramatique où les relations familiales amènent les personnages à se déchirer. Rouletabille fait ce constat : « Maintenant, je jure qu’il s’est passé là une tragédie effroyable. »46 Il faut souligner que le mystère de la chambre jaune ne peut exister que grâce à une double supercherie. Le roman se présente en surenchère à deux illustres prédécesseurs dans le domaine du crime en local clos  : Poe (Double assassinat dans la rue Morgue) et Conan Doyle (la Bande mouchetée). Mais il s’oppose à eux de deux manières : d’abord en se posant comme réel par rapport à ces récits renvoyés dans le domaine de la fiction, et surtout en étant plus fort  : chez Poe «  il y avait encore cette fenêtre 41 42 43 44 45 46

Gaston Leroux, Le Mystère de la chambre…, p. 268. Gaston Leroux, Le Mystère de la chambre…, p. 409. Gaston Leroux, Le Mystère de la chambre…, p. 411. Gaston Leroux, Le Mystère de la chambre…, p. 409. Gaston Leroux, Le Mystère de la chambre…, p. 268. Gaston Leroux, Le Mystère de la chambre…, p. 103.

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par laquelle pouvait se glisser l’auteur des assassinats qui était un singe! » Quant à Sherlock Holmes, il découvre «  une prise d’air […] suffisante pour laisser passer […] le serpent assassin ». Pour Leroux, dans son roman, « il ne saurait être question d’aucune ouverture d’aucune sorte »47 : la chambre jaune est hermétiquement close. Mais, première supercherie, il n’y a pas de meurtre. Il n’y a qu’une tentative et c’est précisément parce que la victime reste en vie et a un cauchemar que le mystère de la chambre jaune peut exister. Seconde supercherie : c’est le coupable qui mène l’enquête officielle, ayant la possibilité d’être sur place, d’orienter les soupçons à sa guise et de disparaître « mystérieusement » grâce à son habileté. Le Mystère de la chambre jaune de Gaston Leroux est une réussite dans la rencontre du roman policier et du fantastique, même si celui-ci est finalement rejeté et que c’est le premier qui domine. Toutefois, le lecteur ne peut s’empêcher d’être marqué par tous ces détails étranges dont les phrases que Rouletabille utilise et qui ressemblent à des formules magiques. C’est parce qu’il a surpris une conversation que Rouletabille répète la fameuse phrase : « Le presbytère n’a rien perdu de son charme, ni le jardin de son éclat. » Ce véritable sésame lui ouvre toutes les portes et l’explication n’est donnée qu’au dernier chapitre. Tragique, logique, fantastique, énigmatique, poétique : le roman policier s’ouvre avec Gaston Leroux à bien d’autres genres et registres.

Conclusions Sur ces quatre exemples, nous avons donc vu une hybridation réussie entre deux genres dans Les Mystères de Paris d’Eugène Sue donnant naissance à une variante au roman de mœurs. De même, le roman d’aventures s’unit à la science-fiction pour donner naissance à un véritable genre autonome, le roman scientifique dans les années 1860 avec Jules Verne. Dédoublement du roman judiciaire, le roman d’aventures policières devient aussi un genre à part entière dans les années 1880 et sous la plume de Jules Mary en particulier. Enfin, le roman policier apparaît, dès le début du XXe 47

Gaston Leroux, Le Mystère de la chambre…, p. 101.

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siècle, comme un genre capable d’en intégrer d’autres  : Gaston Leroux nous en fournit une belle démonstration en jouant avec le fantastique. Je me suis limité ici à quatre exemples pour examiner ces phénomènes d’identité hybrides dans le roman populaire. J’aurais pu en prendre d’autres. Ils nous montrent déjà pourquoi des auteurs éprouvent l’envie de créer des genres hybrides et nouveaux. Il s’agit d’abord de renouveler un genre déjà bien exploré, ainsi du roman d’aventures, un genre qui a plusieurs millénaires d’existence, qui évolue constamment et se subdivise en genres hybrides. Il existe aussi un plaisir de la surprise, de provoquer chez le lecteur une attente qui va être déçue parce que détournée, par exemple en lui faisant croire d’abord qu’il lit un roman fantastique, puis en venant tout expliquer de manière logique. Il y a également un plaisir de transgresser les règles et de franchir les frontières entre les genres en proposant, par exemple, une histoire qui raconte des amours mélodramatiques et la délivrance d’un innocent injustement accusé. J’ajoute un plaisir de la surenchère : tous ces romanciers s’appuient sur des auteurs qui les ont précédés et dont ils citent parfois le nom dans leurs ouvrages, mais pour souligner qu’ils font mieux ou différemment. Un genre littéraire est comme une personne. Il naît, vit et disparaît. Mais il se reproduit aussi et de plus en plus, au fil des siècles, par hybridation. Comme l’espèce humaine et comme nos sociétés, les genres littéraires évoluent. Et cette hybridation est toujours un enrichissement.

The Rule of Osha in Cuba. A Hybrid Identity? Ndèye Anna Gaye Fall Université Cheikh Anta Diop

Introduction The terrible slave trade and its consequences of the enslavement of millions of black Africans in the South American and Caribbean colonies had, and still has, effects on the cultural profile of these areas of the world. The case studied here is that of the African presence in the Caribbean and, more precisely, in Cuba. There were two African presences that especially influenced Cuban cultural heritage. These were the Bantu, from Ghana or the Congo and the Yoruba, originally from present-day Nigeria. The forced movement to unknown and hostile lands from the 16th century on to, first defend the Cuban fortifications against English corsairs, then evolved into a process of slave labour to work on the plantations and the estates of the owners as servants.

1. Syncretism and Religious Synthesis 1. 1. The Inter-African Syncretism The black bozales, the recent arrivals on the island, clung to, and passed on, their ancestors’ cultural tradition to keep their memory alive and to cover gaps in this provoked by the proximity of various black cultural groups on the island who had their own cultures. This struggle, was not with the Spanish owners, but between the slaves who attempted to preserve what was their own. A notable element in this fight to conserve or impose their heritage, depending on the balance of power, was the Rule of Osha or Santeria that finally was imposed by the presence of the Orishas. Simultaneously,

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corresponding to the same process of inter-African syncretism, there was the Rule of Palo or Palo Monte, of Bantu origin, identified through the worship of the ancestors and the dead.

1. 2. The Synthesis The synthesis between the Rule of Osha and the religion of the owners led to what is commonly known as Santeria (The Way of the Saints). This is a synthesis in the sense of a process of matching and not of identification by the Africans in this law of similarity that governs the recognition of kinship between the Catholic saints and the Orishas. If we understand hybrid cultural identity as belonging simultaneously to two or more distinct cultural groups, this is not the case of the Santeria. With this, the Yoruba bozales knew about a frequent practice in the treatment of the slaves acquired in the wars of expansion in Africa, which was to select elements from among the beliefs of the vanquished, with magical effects that had to make the victors more powerful. This inheritance was applied with the Spanish who were the victors from the military point of view but the Yoruba disguised their beliefs, as the French ethnologist Roger Bastide stated, as divinities that already existed in their own religion. The law of similarity prevailed and at the same time, established a de facto social compensation between the slaves who saw in it the confirmation of the rightness of their beliefs, despite their situation. Thus, the Orisha existed and as such, protected its African children while the saints helped the owners. Under the appearance of a hybrid cultural identity, a religion of African origin implanted, in a foreign land, a fatum, to which complementary magical elements were added.

2. The Peculiar Historical Evolution of Cuba, Creolism and “Rule” of Osha 2. 1. In the Colony The colonial process maintained the system of slavery until the moment, at the beginning of the European industrial revolution, when the colonists

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realized that slave labour was much more expensive than paid labour. The claims, at first timid, by a certain class of Cuban politicians for autonomy from Spain, evolved into a drive for independence. Certain slaves were manumitidos thanks to the Law of the Twenty Pounds, in other words not immediately free; others became free on their own through cimarronaje. The Spanish colony entered a ten-year war (from1868 to 1878) and then the War of Independence from 1895 to 1898. The hybrid identity appeared among the descendents of African origin when they realized that a return to Africa was a vain dream and that the new land, which had taken them in under such bad conditions, was theirs. In the battles, the mambís, freed blacks, invoked Changó, the divinity of war and thunder to help them win. They fought for the country’s independence side by side with the Spaniards but also, and especially, they fought for their own freedom in this new land. The sense of nation and belonging to the Island of Cuba grew amongst the descendents of the Africans. The Creolism was white but also black and the biological mixing between Spaniards and blacks bred a new national identity.

2. 2. In the Mediated Republic For African-origin Cubans, North American intervention in Cuban affairs after Spain’s loss of monopoly over a country weakened by the two wars, led to a long period of suffering with the connivance of the mediated republic. Among the white and assimilated mixed races, the successive dictatorships generated a racial prejudice against the blacks who, after slavery, suffered poor living conditions caused by the continuation of seasonal work in the country (farmhands or plantation workers) and in the city, by the lack of access to education, which made it impossible for them to reach a decent level of living. In this period, from 1910 to 1959, with a succession of dictators following each other in power, the laws and social practices favoured one culture over the other. The Spanish or North American cultures wanted to make the culture of the African descendents invisible. On the religious level, the spiritualism of Allan Kardec from the United States began a syncretism with the religions of African origin known by the name of crossed rules. The Cuban spiritualists adapted and reinterpreted Allan Kardec’s spiritualism in African terms. They were called cobblers of orilé. In Yoruba, the word orilé means family tribe or nation. Cuban spiritualism was a system of equating various religions of African origin with Catholicism and spiritualism.

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On the social level, there was a folklorisation of the religions that appeared on festive occasions for the enjoyment of foreigners. The introduction of certain African instruments, like percussion, into Spanish-origin music was accepted. These instruments had been imposed by the slaves themselves who could thus celebrate the sound of the drums at night after work was over. Society remained fragmented and those of African origin remained on the bottom of the social scale. Here is something we note as interesting and that should be retained. Whether in the period of slavery or the mediated republic, despite biological mixing, the descendents of the Africans maintained their links to the African-origin religious tradition. In music and the recording industry, singers evoked the divinities and thus participated in spreading part of their black culture. The black movement in literature and the arts in Europe in the 1930s spread among the few black intellectuals, who began to assess black culture despite the censorship imposed by the white circles. For example, in poetry there was Changó, Oshún, Yemayá, Elegguá among others. The people of African origins, and particularly the Yoruba, knew how to conserve their identity through history by assimilating new elements that helped to confirm it. The hybrid identity, if there was one, was not presented as the creation of a new identity from a cross of two identities to produce a third, but rather as a desire to maintain the values that first constituted this identity. There is no conflict, but rather adaptation that did not challenge the fundamental beliefs. As a founding element of the descendents of Yoruba origin, the Rule of Osha adapted by renouncing the ancestors who remained in Africa and favouring the worship of the Orishas, which had the advantage of not being attached to a specific geographic area. Thus, any part of the world could accommodate them.

3. The Rule of Osha in the Revolution 3. 1. The Dialectical Relations of Power The 1st of January 1959 marked a rupture from the economic, political and social points of view and the beginning of a new stage between the Rule of Osha and new relations of power in a more ideological than religious

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plain. The church that had wanted to impose the orthodoxy of the Catholic faith had to renounce its hegemonic aims and accept that the government of the revolution considered all religions equal. The followers of the Rule of Osha, being legitimate members of society, participated actively in the revolutionary process just as they had with the mambises troops in the War of Independence. The religious society of the Rule of Osha creates collective reactions and favoured individual relations. The rites that said society visualised established permanent links and exchanges between the members. The reasons for the attachment to the Yoruba religion must be sought in the securitization that the religious heads (babalao and lyalosha) provide for the psychology of the believers. The religious society that lives within a space with which it maintains dialectical relations aims to be the ultimate response to individual and collective concerns and to give meaning to the existence not only of its adepts but also to all members of society. This was the new challenge that the Rule of Osha had to face. The ability to adapt that it showed throughout its history allowed it to accept, in the revolution, the folklorisation of certain external aspects of the faith, maintaining the difference between the sacred and the profane as well as the sense of the consanguineous and ritual family, to penetrate the psyche of a large part of the revolutionary leaders who saw no contradiction between being Marxists and believing in the Orishas.

3. 2. The Conquest of the Rule of Osha The Rule of Osha became more than a religion to reach the level of tradition and culture given its spread throughout the island. The consanguineous family extended to include the ritual family. These are networks that conserve the collective memory of African, and now Cuban, origin. To see this, one need only stroll the streets of Havana or Santiago de Cuba, or get to know some families to realise that that the collective memory is alive among the three ages (the old, adults and the young). The Rule of Osha is a means of identification and belonging. People wear the colours of the Orishas and necklaces made with colours reminiscent of those entities. Within the revolution, the society excuses strange behaviour of a person because they show, through divination, possession and initiation, that he or she is the archetype of their Orisha de cabecera. The profane music does not

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hesitate to use words taken from the cryptic language of the religion of Yoruba origin, orchestras have the name of Orishas, the colloquial language uses the word aseré as a greeting, and to describe a man who has success among women, he is called salao; kué is used to give thanks amid many other examples. On this level of analysis, we reach the conclusion according to which the Rule of Osha, as a religion of Yoruba origin in Cuba, crosses history not as a belief that renounces what it is fundamentally, but works more as an essence that chooses external contributions. In Cuba, the contribution is Spanish and the essence African, resulting in a biological and cultural mixing that grows deeper. If we must talk about hybrid identity in the sense given above, we would say that hybridism allowed then, and still allows now, both the white Creole and the black Creole, to find their intimate peculiarity. A hybrid identity is born from the plurality of cultures that share the same space in which the identity that makes up the hybridism keeps the nucleus that identifies it. The follower of the Rule of Osha has his family surroundings, knows the ilé osha or temple-house in his neighbourhood. His religious education inculcates a depiction of the world where sacrifices, the limpieza and the morning greeting to Elegguá are essential. Divination by the cocos or caracoles is of great importance for elucidating his fate and avoiding obstacles. He consults the notebook where he notes what he should do or avoid in everyday life. His infancy is cradled by the patakkis or myths and legends of the entities.

4. The Rule of Osha, a Hybrid Identity? 4. 1. The Identity as a Centre The Rule of Osha is an identity, first black, because it coincided with pigmentation of the skin of the believers, which then became mixed, and finally Cuban. This phenomenon reflects the expansion of a religion where what the followers share is a centre, a permanent nucleus, despite the external alterations that it can undergo during the evolution of history in a different, and very often hostile, place and context. It seems that in all cases, before talking about hybrid identities, it is necessary to study, whether there is permanence. Then from the characteristics of

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this permanence, see how it has entered in a process of mixing, with the building of strong links with other worlds of varied cultural and geographic entities. Hybridism is not applicable to all identities. The history of the people, the formation of their psyche, their vision of the world, do not disappear, but adapt to strategies that accept the alterations in their way of being, but not their reason for being. To illustrate this, it seems sensible to enter the philosophical domain with the phenomenological approximation under a comprehensive perspective, because we believe that it is through what the believer has experienced, from this inward look, where we must seek the reasons for permanence.

4. 2. The Notion of God and the Multiple Aché As emphasised above, the Rule of Osha is based on the worship of the Orishas. These are intermediary entities between God (Olorún-OlofíOlodumaré) and man. The notion of God exists for the believer of the Rule of Osha. This perception is associated with the forces of nature without confusing them with Him. The meaning of life and death is related to the idea of predestination and reincarnation. The control of the various energies that regulate and determine natural phenomena and the human condition come through symbolic identification and the Ifá oracle. All these factors give a peculiar meaning to life for the follower of Rule of Osha in society. Olodumaré is the most frequently invoked name of God because it is closest to the spirit and soul of men. As the essence of the totality of the cosmos and source of the infinite Spirit, who, through the Soplo, created life, the existence of everything in the universe. This is the origin of man’s spirit, intelligence and free will. It is in each individual’s orí, although this orí is also conceived as the inheritance of the ancestor. The orí, seat of the individual intelligence, the memory and dreams, is in the centre of the cranium and corresponds to the place of thought. To keep it in peace, it needs to be in balance and that is why the follower offers it libations or sacrifices. As to the body, not only does it occupy the space of the outline of its forms and movements, but also integrates a universe where its double, Eleddá, follows it everywhere like a shadow, inspiring its acts and configuring certain characteristics of its personality. For the believer of the Rule of Osha, the human being is a body but also an emanation of Aché. The energies it allows to escape, the things that belong to it, are all its prolongations.

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So, sometimes water serves to appease its orí or the otá of the Orisha or the obí of the oracle. Water, shadow and the image all represent concepts in the Rule of Osha and Yoruba religious awareness. These concepts stimulate a whole system of thoughts and ideas that spread a conception of the human as one and multiple. Forces and their identification require permanent and renewed communion of the individual’s orí with them. This should capture, in a single totality, the multiplicity of the events that occur during its life.

4. 3. Initiation and the Conception of the Human Being The religious community of the Rule of Osha that recognises that the initiated has behaviour directly and indirectly linked to his or her orisha of cabecera, thus identifies it and then recognises it. The individual singularity is not exclusionary, but rather shows that each element participates in the formation of the totality. Through a social recognition of individual behaviour, the archetype is identified and this, in turn, confirms the presence of the Orisha among the people. The conception of the world and the visualisation of individual and collective practices are structured to maintain a connection between the invisible and visible worlds through a kind of essential nexus to ensure a religious and cosmic balance. The Rule of Osha is socially structured, and established relations between men where the hierarchy is determined by their level of wisdom about the mystery of the genesis of the world created by Olofí-OlorúnOlodumaré. They all obey rules determined by the orisha de cabecera on the occasion of the ceremony of kariosha. This religion attracts because it soothes the difficulties of everyday life. Through the revelation of his or her new identity and the progressive dominion of his or her aché, the protection of the eleddá and orisha, the adept feels safe, protected. The initiation establishes vertical relations, as the follower refers to the results of the horoscope elucidated by the babalawo to establish a true knowledge of himself and that world that surrounds him. On the horizontal plain, the religious manifestations open to the profane (bembés, ceremonies of possession) maintain the affirmation of the religious presence. It is precisely in this eternal dynamism where we find the strength of this religion, because it does not exclude. Like all the world’s religions, the Rule of Osha is structured and works as a parallel society to that of the profane world. Thus, it has created a real universe.

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There is austerity through the taboos and prohibitions monitored by the religious family. Belonging to the world of the Rule of Osha means banishing ignorance and approaching the secret. The belief in reincarnation conditions the behaviour of the follower, who, through his acts, prepares for this in this low world with respect for the moral and the taboos. At this level of analysis, it is important to state that the follower of the Rule of Osha knows that the human being is invaded by the multiples that stop him from seeing, in this proliferation, the essential, in other words the centre, and he is tempted to consider almost everything that surrounds him as centres. There are many caminos of the orichas, a great variety of oddunes that are parabolas whose meaning is known through the babalawo, many ewés, many colours that express various realities and thus, an infinity of meanings and even God is One and Infinite. The Rule of Osha is the manifestation of the conscience of man before life. For the orí, the world of the sacred becomes accessible to human intelligence, it contests the multiplicity of the profane world with another multiplicity, that of the achés, as he knows perfectly well that things and beings are vectors of potentialities. This desire to resolve the problems of everyday individual existence, this thirst for knowledge, gives him awareness of his strength, of his aché. In this perspective, the centre is an ideal point, the nucleus of concentric circles. Hybridism in the identity of the Rule of Osha is manifested in the external aspects. Regarding the fundamental belief of its adepts, these seem to remain intact. In modern Cuban society, the laws and the social practices do not favour one culture over another. The only real relation of force is between a dominant ideology that aspires to construct a new man freed from metaphysical beliefs and a prevailing and conquering tradition, of African, and now Cuban, origins. As hybridism is external, accidental and implies having multiple forms, it cannot discuss what identifies and defines humanity.

Conclusion The Rule of Osha shows that there is a paradox in the concept of hybrid identity. Identity being something that identifies us, it supposes the notion of permanence. Hybridism, from the cultural point of view, means simultaneously

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belonging to two or more cultural groups. For us, joining the two concepts means removing the permanent character from identity to dilute it in processes of influence that abuts the globalising ideology against which, finally, the identities will have to fight with survival strategies to avoid losing their souls. It seems to us that the sense we should give to hybrid identity is that of being what builds links with other worlds without denying or giving up what one’s own essence represents. For this to happen, respect and humanism must rule among the identities in contact, these identities being what allow the individual and the community to lay the foundations for its contribution to the development of humanity. A stable identity for each and every one, in a egalitarian hybridism, in the form and in the convergent action, is what could produce a fair globalisation.

Annexe Glossary Aché: (the) Yoruba word that means: Power, potency, virtue, energy. Each orista has aché, as do the plants and human beings. Aseré: Greeting in Yoruba. Babalao: Priest in the Rule of Osha. Bozal: A black recently arrived from Africa and who does not yet speak Spanish. Caracol: (the) The cowrie used for divination among the peoples who share common cultural roots: Western Cameroon, Congo, Gabon, Zaire, Uganda, Kenya and South Africa. Changó: Power of thunder, war and lightning. Its colour is red. Cimarronaje: Flight of slaves into the mountains to escape from slavery. Coco: See obí. Eleddá: The conscience internal that is situated in the orí. The guardian angel. Elegguá: Power of chance. Its colours are black and white. Ewés: Sacred plants used for for cleansing or the ebbós; for good or evil. Ifá: Power of divination whose oracle is called Ifá. Ile osha: The temple-house Iyalosha: Priestess of the Rule of Osha.

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Kariosha: Initiation ceremony where the orisha de cabecera of the initiate is identified. Kué: Thank you in Yoruba. Law of twenty pounds: En 1870, the Moret law, called the Law of Twenty Pounds, declared all blacks born after the 17th of September 1868 emancipated, likewise all slaves over sixty. Limpieza: (the) It serves to remove a spell. Depending on the evil, sacrifices and offerings are prescribed. Santeria: Another name for the Rule of Osha. Obí: The coconut. It is used for divination. Oddún: The sign revealed by the position of the nuts of the Ifá in a consultation. Olodumaré: One of the three names of God. The creator of the universe, the infinite spirit. Orí: The head, seat of intelligence, memory and dreams. Orilé: Yoruba word that means family, tribe or nation. The cobblers of Orilé are followers of spiritualism in Cuba. Orisha: Intermediary power between God and men. There are a large number of Orishas with anthropomorphic characteristics. Oshún: Power of the river. Its colour is yellow. Otá: A stone that is attributed to an Orisha. Palo monte: Another name for the Rule of Palo Patakkís: Myths and legends of the Orishas. Regla de Palo: Religion of Bantu origin that is based essentially on the worship of the ancestors. Salao: 1. Adj. That designates a person who suffers salting or a spell Yemayá: Power of the sea. The Universal Mother: Its colours  are white and blue. 2. adj. that designates a man who has inexplicable success with women.

Brief Bibliography Barreal, Isaac, “Tendencias sincréticas de los cultos populares en Cuba”, Etnología y folklore (1996), pp. 17–24. Bastide, Roger, Les Amériques noires (les civilisations africaines dans le Nouveau Monde) (Paris: Payot, 1967). Bolívar, Natalia, Los orishas en Cuba (La Habana: Ediciones Unión, 1990).

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Bustamante, José Angel, Raíces psicológicas del Cubano (La Habana: Casa de las Américas, 1960). Burt, Ben, The yoruba and their gods (London: British Museum Publications, 1977). Caillois, Roger, L’homme et le sacré (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1950). Carbonell, Walterio, Como surgió la cultura nacional (La Habana: Ediciones Yaka, 1961). Fall, Ndèye Anna, “La regla de osha, tradición y novación. Aproximación al orí y al Eledd”, Mélanges d’archeologie, d’histoire et de litterature (Dakar: Presses Universitaires de Dakar, 2000), pp. 496–508. Fraginals, Moreno, “Apports culturels et déculturation”, L’Afrique en Amérique Latine (UNESCO), pp. 9–25. Fraginals, Moreno, L’Afrique à Cuba: la Regla de Osha, culte ou religion? (Dakar: Éditions l’Harmattan, 2009). Halbwachs, Maurice, La mémoire collective (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968). Herskovits, Melville J., “La estructura de las religiones africana”, Presencia Africana en la cultura de América, Vigencia de los cultos afroamericanos, Jorge Emilio Gallardo, ed. (Buenos Aires: Fernando García Cambeiro, 1986). Idowu, E. Bolaji, Olodumaré: God in yoruba belief (London: Longmans, 1961). Lucas, Jonathan Olumide, The religion of the Yoruba (Lagos: Cms Bookshop, 1948). Moreno, Denis, Cuando los Orishas se vistieron (La Habana: Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo de la Cultura Cubana, 2002). Ortíz, Fernando, Glosario afronegrismo (La Habana: Imprenta “El Siglo XX”, (Sin Paginar), 1924). Santiestebán, Argelio, El habla popular cubana de hoy (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1982). Williams, Eric, L’histoire des Caraïbes de Christophe Colomb à Fidel Castro 1492–1969 (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1975).

Hybrid Identities in Contexts of Minorisation of Citizens: Thinking about the Indigenous Peoples of Latin America1 Joan J. Pujadas Universitat Rovira i Virgili

The debate about the processes of cultural hybridisation is currently of great interest, both in the field of social anthropology, and in cultural and communication studies. There is no doubt that the leading figure in this field is the Argentine-Mexican anthropologist Néstor García Canclini, whose influential book, Culturas híbridas, was published at the end of the 1980s. Other authors have made significant contributions to drawing attention to different aspects related to the use of this new analytical perspective. These include parallelisms with the processes of creolisation in the field of trans-nationalist and post-national epistemology,2 or the ambiguity in the representation of the national and trans-national in the universal exposition in Seville,3 the alliance between national ethnic cultures and those of the metropolis,4 or the parallelisms and metaphoric dimensions of the term in its double biological and symbolic meaning.5 This emphasis on the analysis of the processes of hybridisation, and the contextual dynamics that generate these, has contributed to a loss 1

2

3 4 5

This article was conceived and first drafted as part of the research project of the National Plan for Social and Legal Sciences (SEJ2006–10691), “Trayectorias transnacionales y procesos locales: familia, red social y formas de mediación”. It was later rewritten and has been enriched through the comments by my Mexican colleagues Dr. Antonio Escobar and José A. Flores. Ulf Hannerz, “Fluxos, fronteiras, híbridos: palabras-chave da antropologia transnacional”, Maná, 3/1 (1997), pp. 7–39; Ulf Hannerz, Conexiones transnacionales (Madrid: Cátedra, 1998). Penelope Harvey, Hybrids of Modernity. Anthropology, the Nation State and the Universal Exhibition (London: Routledge, 1996). Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994). Brian Stross, “The hybrid metaphor. From biology to culture”, Journal of American Folklore, 112/445 (1999), pp. 254–267.

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of the essence of the approach of the social sciences to such an important analytical dimension as identity, emphasising its mobile, changing, contextual and multi-referential character. García Canclini6 himself proposed a much wider meaning for cultural hybridisation than the original version at the end of the 1980s, that would also include such historical-colonial processes as ethno-racial miscegenation and the forms of religious syncretism, El concepto de hibridación es útil en algunas investigaciones para abarcar conjuntamente contactos interculturales que suelen llevar nombres diferentes: las fusiones raciales o étnicas denominadas “mestizaje”, el “sincretismo” de las creencias y también otras mezclas modernas entre lo artesanal y lo industrial, lo culto y lo popular, lo escrito y lo visual en los mensajes mediáticos. Vemos por qué algunas de estas interrelaciones no pueden ser designadas con los nombres clásicos, como mestizas o sincréticas.7 The concept of hybridisation is useful in some research as an umbrella term for intercultural contacts that usually have different names: the racial or ethnic fusions called “miscegenation”, “syncretism” of beliefs and also other modern mixtures between craftwork and the industrial, the cultured and the popular, the written and the visual in media messages. We see why some of these interrelations cannot be defined with such classic names as miscegenation or syncretism.

Many of the aspects related to the forms of contemporary cultural hybridisation are linked to the analysis of the media and the businessand mercantile-related dimension with cultural production, distribution and consumption. Undoubtedly, many of the contemporary developments in this field fall within the powerful intellectual tradition of the Frankfurt School and very specially focus on the concept of cultural industry, which dates from the 1940s.8 The leisure industries follow the same logic of capitalist mass-production as the Fordist model. This is 6

7 8

Néstor García, “La Globalización ¿productora de culturas híbridas?”, Conferencia Inaugural del III Congreso Latinoamericano de la Asociación Internacional para el Estudio de la Música Popular (Bogotá, 2000), p. 18. Online: . Néstor García, “La Globalización ¿productora de culturas…”, p. 12. Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, “La industria cultural. Iluminismo como mistificación de masas”, Dialéctica del Iluminismo, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, eds. (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 2001).

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low-quality, serial production, designed for not very demanding mass consumption. At the same time, these cultural products are orientated towards confirming the existing social order, rejecting or annulling the reflexive or critical capacity of the receptors. In this sense, these are practices of alienation. The analytical focus of García Canclini, and the other anthropologists and practitioners of cultural studies, is on the complex field of the phenomena of trans-nationalism and globalisation. There is not always agreement about the use of these terms, which generates a large dose of trivialisation in the analysis of the role that the processes of delocalisation (the preferred theme for the majority of authors) play in the processes of cultural production and, especially, in the analysis of the channels of mercantile distribution and consumption of cultural goods. In recent works, García Canclini has himself assumed some of the criticisms of these post-modern styles of analysis, more concerned with obtaining narratives and imaginary than in the analysis of the substantive processes and understanding the structural dimensions of such processes. With the concept of “tangential globalisations”, the author brings together that set of phenomena marked by trans-nationalism and the circulation of cultural goods and messages, but which does not function exactly like the financial markets. These are phenomena that are only global tendentially.9 This limited globalisation, suggested by García Canclini, led him to quote G. Lins Ribeiro who, referring to the white fascination with the Afro-American, posed the paradox of what could well be called a “process of hybridisation with reserves”: incorporo su música, pero que ese tipo no se case con mi hija (“I accept his music, but I don’t want him marrying my daughter”).10 In the 1990s, in his introductory essay about globalisation11, suggested the need to distinguish between globalisation lato sensu, understood as a set of empirically identifiable processes and, on the other hand, globalism, understood as an ideology and/or apology for the state of globalisation. Since then, when characterising globalisation, most authors insist on the reproductive crisis of the nation state as a regulating and mediating entity in the processes of mercantile exchange in the globalised and world 9 10 11

Néstor García, “La Globalización ¿productora de culturas…”, p. 2. Néstor García, “La Globalización ¿productora de culturas…”, p. 15. Ulrick Beck, ¿Qué es la globalización? Falacias del globalismo, respuestas a la globalización (Barcelona: Paidós, 1998).

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economic systems. There is significant evidence that this statement about the crisis of the state has as much of empirical facts as it does of doctrine or ideology, defined in terms of globalism. My aim in this essay is to focus on the analysis of a phenomenon that could well be situated in the framework of what García Canclini called “tangential globalisation”. I am referring to the phenomenon of transnationalisation and the global impact that certain indigenous movements have acquired, through both their technological capacity to communicate and influence world public opinion, and a current of globalised opinion in favour of indigenous rights, defined in scenarios of the defence of human rights. An example of the point to which trans-national public opinion, above all expressed through international organisms (like the UNO and its different agencies), has lobbied different governments with “problems of indigenous minorities”, especially in Latin America, is the new constitutionalist trend that has arisen from Mexico to Argentina or Chile. The new constitutional texts, all dating from less than twenty years ago, consecrate in different ways the multi-cultural, multi-linguistic character and, in some cases, even the multi-ethnic or multi-national nature of the respective states. This ongoing process would seem to leave behind 350 years of colonialism and 200 of national liberalisms, that meant the indigenous segregation and forced integration into the respective liberal national projects. It should be noted, however, that these legal changes tend to respond more to pressure from international human rights organisms and adapting (“politically correctly”) the “national” legislations to the new doctrines of international law, than to real mutations of the official views in indigenous questions. The latter continue to be characterised by ethno-centrism, when not directly by xenophobic or racist attitudes. I find it interesting to emphasise the enormous influence that the analysis of the historical forms of intercultural contact (miscegenation, syncretism and creolisation) still has on the development of studies into cultural hybridisation as there are two contradictory processes working in parallel in Latin America. On one hand, there are the so-called processes of intercultural hybridisation, derived from the development of the globalised cultural industries and, in parallel, processes of miscegenation, syncretism and creolisation between two very well-differentiated types of actor on the respective state scenes- the indigenous and white-mestizo blocks. The processes known and recognised as hybridisation tend to refer to globalised and supposedly cosmopolitan behaviour that has arisen from

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marketing by the cultural industries. Meanwhile, the endogenous processes of miscegenation appear as blocked and not very dynamic processes, in which recognition of the indigenous cultural personality, beyond the “new constitutionalist trends” is only seriously reached in a few countries, especially those of the Andean area. However, there is the paradox that some of the elements that circulate trans-nationally through the distribution networks of the great cultural businesses are, precisely, displays of indigenous culture. Thus, we can see that some indigenous cultural elements receive greater recognition trans-nationally than nationally, more global than domestic. The analysis of these resistance by the nation states to incorporating the indigenous cultural and civilising contributions “without reservations”, inevitably leads us to analyse the past record of the colonial process, understood as the necessary framework for interpreting the context of the forms of contact between the two, the indigenous and the metropolitan, barbarity and civilisation.

1. The Colonial Legacy and the Society of Castes The legacy of Castilian colonialism in America on the forms of social stratification is solidly based on the system of castes. For the indigenous and African-origin populations, this system has survived two hundred years of liberal reforms and the existence throughout Latin America of a statute of universal citizenship (at least formally) for the whole population of each of the republics. As is known, the social relations in the Castilian colonial society applied the same schemes of ethnic exclusion that had applied in the Iberian Peninsula since the Late Middle Ages to classify the Christians in relation to the Jewish and Islamic population groups. Until the 15th  century, the Crown of Castile was thus made up of three castes. There was coexistence (not free from violence and conflict) between these, as in all systems of rigid social classification, but this never meant real closeness.12 12

Christiane Stallaert, Etnogénesis y etnicidad en España: una aproximación histórico-antropológica al casticismo (Barcelona: Proyecto A Eds., 1998).

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After the expulsion of the Sephardic Jews and the restrictions imposed on the Mudéjar population, the statutes of blood cleansing that came into force in the mid 15th century were used to promote the original Christian population over the new Christian converts. Under these statutes, access to all institutions (municipal administration, religious order or university) was reserved solely for those candidates who could prove they were descended from old Christians. The new or converted Christians were restricted to certain spheres of public life.13 This same segregationist scheme was used to regulate social relations in the territories and viceroyalties of the colonial empire in America and the Philippines. Under the dialectic civilization/barbarity, the Castilian conquistador applied a symbolic double operation of separation and exclusion, built around the term “Indian”. On one hand, applying exaggerated criteria of racial differentiation, the Indian is envisaged as a differentiated race, whose human condition is even placed in doubt. In second place, through the essentialist naturalisation of the linguistic and cultural differences, their worldviews, beliefs, knowledge and practices are debased and classify as inferior, erecting the conquistador culture as a reference for tutelage of the practices and lives of the Indians. This process contains a reductionist and dehumanizing scheme that simplifies the wide differences and variability of the indigenous cultures and societies into a single category, “Indian”, that synthesises the negation of the Christian and hegemonic civilization that the conquistadors introduced. The Indians subordinated and stigmatised condition thus constituted the main defining trait from the genesis of the concept. This inferiorisation of the Indian led to a paternalist and protective attitude, represented by the Castilian Crown, which declared itself “protector of Indians”. The Leyes Nuevas (“New Laws”) of Burgos (1512), followed by the Leyes Nuevas (“New Laws”) of Valladolid (1542) organised the controversy about the justice of the Castilian colonisers’ titles of conquest, together with the statute of the Indians, who acquired a (formal) status as free people in these ordinances. However, they were subjected to two mechanisms of exploitation, the repartimiento de

13

Albert Sicroff, Los estatutos de limpieza de sangre (Madrid: Taurus, 1985); Christiane Stallaert, Ni una gota de sangre impura: la España inquisitorial y la Alemania nazi cara a cara (Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg, 2006).

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indios14 and the encomienda.15 Similarly, the original forms of government were eliminated, except at the local level. The destructuring and destruction of the indigenous way of life was systematic, and went hand in hand with their subordination to, and tutelage by, the new colonial power. There were large-scale population shifts and deportations that meant people not only being separated from their lands but also having their communal social links broken. The difficulties of access to resources, and their exploitation as forced labour, together with diseases the colonisers had brought to America, led to a demographic catastrophe, one that had to be compensated for by importing slave labour from Africa.16 In the 18th century, a period of Bourbon reforms of the colonial administration, intellectual concerns related to the system of castes arose about the representation of the ethnic and social differences, [la sociedad novohispana] se compone de diferentes castas que han procreado los enlaces del español, indio y negro: pero confundiendo de tal suerte su primer origen que ya no hay voces para explicar y distinguir estas clases de gentes que hacen el mayor número de habitantes del reino. Degenerando siempre en sus alianzas, son correspondientes sus inclinaciones viciosas, miran con entrañable aborrecimiento la casta noble del español y con aversión y menosprecio al indio. No se acomodan a las honradas costumbres de aquel ni a las humildes y algo laboriosas de éste, y a la verdad, pudieran bien compararse las castas infestas de Nueva España [coyote, lobo, tente en el aire, salta atrás] a las de los verdaderos o supuestos gitanos de la Antigua.17 14

15

16

17

The repartimiento was a system that assigned Indian manpower for use by the members of the Spanish caste in exchange for negligible remuneration and periodically forced the natives to work, generally for eight days a month, in the homes or estates of the Spanish population. In practice, this was a form of slave-like forced labour. The encomienda, established as a right granted by the King to a Spanish subject (encomendero), consisted of receiving the tributes that the Indians had to pay to the Crown as its subjects. In return, the encomendero had to look after the Indians’ welfare in the spiritual and the earthly, ensuring their maintenance and protection, as well as Christian indoctrination. In many cases, under this system, systematic abuses of power occurred and the tributes were replaced by forced labour by the indigenous people. Steve J. Stern, Los pueblos indígenas del Perú y el desafío de la conquista española (Madrid: Alianza Ed. 1987); Martín Hopenhayn, Álvaro Bello, Francisca Miranda, Los pueblos indígenas y afrodescendientes ante el nuevo milenio (Santiago de Chile: Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe, 2006). HipólitoVillarroel, Enfermedades políticas que padece la capital de esta Nueva España (Mexico: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1994), p. 213.

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[the new Hispania society] is made up of different castes that have procreated the links between the Spanish, Indian and Negro: but confusing their original origin in such a way that there are no longer words to explain and distinguish between these classes of people who make up the main number of inhabitants of the kingdom. Always degenerating in their alliances, they correspond to their depraved inclinations, they look with deep abhorrence on the Spanish noble caste and contempt and aversion for the Indian. They do not adapt to the honourable customs of the former nor the humble and somewhat laborious ones of the latter, and in truth, the castes that infest Nueva España [coyote, wolf, tease in the air, throwback] could well be compared with those of the real or supposed gypsies of old.

In the field of literature, the poetry of Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz contains constant references to the Indian and black population of New Spain, as does the work of Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora. Moreover, the latter, dedicated himself to studying the old Pre-Hispanic codices. The appropriation of the “glorious” indigenous past by the Creole sector of the society in New Spain is clear in an epoch of increasing dissatisfaction of these American elites with the metropolis, both for its voracious exploitation of the natural resources (gold and silver) that the creoles considered their own, and for the frustration of being excluded from access to the high dignities and posts of government, always reserved for the Castilian nobility. The bases were being established for what would become in the early 19th century a nationalistic discourse that would feed the demands for independence. In the field of painting, the icons of pre-conquest Mexico were rediscovered, giving place to an extended iconography that represented the gallery of the Aztec emperors, especially the last, Moctezuma, depicted with luxurious costumes and lavish scenography. In contrast with the Spanish colonial administration, the Creole elite was interested in building up a discourse that valued the past of a territory, of a homeland, that they were part of and, at the same time, as descendents of Spaniards, it was they who mediated and interpreted the relations with the Peninsula. However, the most significant pictorial production of the American baroque is made up of the cuadros de castas, where the artists, through the portrayal of the different physical types and the costumes and their surroundings, tried to show all the combinations of groups and subgroups of castes, thus expressing the advanced state of miscegenation in Latin America.

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Image 1: Anonymous, 18th century, Museo Nacional del Virreinato (Tepozotlan). Castes of origin

Resulting caste Mestizo

Español

India

Mestizo

Española

Castizo

Castizo

Española

Español

Español

Negra

Mulato

Mulato

Española

Morisco

Morisco

Española

Chino

Chino

India

Salta atrás

Salta atrás

Mulata

Lobo

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Lobo

Castes of origin China

Resulting caste Jibaro

Jibaro

Mulata

Albarazado

Albarazado

Negra

Cambujo

Cambujo

India

Sambiaga

Sambiago

Loba

Calpamulato

Calpamulato

Cambuja

Tente en el aire

Tente en el aire

Mulata

No te entiendo

No te entiendo

India

Salta atrás

Table 1: Combinations of the castes from the table above.

The establishment and recognition of sixteen combinations of miscegenation is conventional. However, it must be noted that neither the terminology nor the categories enjoyed universal validity, with alternances and contradictions between the different territories of the Colony. Together with the hierarchy, the main purpose of the cuadros de castas was to show a social stratification determined by race from an apparently rigorous taxonomy. However, at the same time, the iconography of dress, domestic and working environments suggests a very different reality far from the rigidity of a merely racial taxonomy.18 In fact, the 18th-century economic expansion had allowed many groups of colour to climb the social ladder. The element of social differentiation was no longer exclusively racial, but based on trade, legitimacy at birth, the way of dressing or membership of prestigious corporations and guilds. On the other hand, there was a high degree of permeability that allowed people to switch easily from one caste to another. Compared with the relaxation of the previously rigid system of stratification, the 18

It should be noted that, together with the reality of the infinite division and subdivision of castes, as a criterion linked to an unequal access to resources and social prestige, the colonial regime’s control of the distinction of origins between two categories separated by a social abysm persisted: the Republic of Indians, against the Republic of Spaniards. The fragmentation of the categories associated with the native, added to the social and economic mobility of castes, in principle stigmatised, worked against this ethnocentric and simplifying concept. Nor was the situation comfortable on the side of the Republic of Spaniards, with a white and American population, made up of Creoles, who felt ever less identified with the peninsular colonising block and that, with time, would become the economic, social and political elite of independence.

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colonial authorities standardised the dress code, adapting it to each caste, as a means of imposing social limits and avoiding transgressions of the established colonial order.19

2. Liberal Reforms in the Nation States of Latin America Con la Independencia se repuso plenamente el esquema de colonización del “Estado desde arriba”, pese a que los indígenas participaron activamente en la revolución de Independencia, a lo que las élites respondieron en un principio con una resignificación del imaginario indígena, en especial del imaginario “aztequista”, al que atribuían virtudes que ayudarían moralmente en la restauración emprendida por el nacionalismo insurgente. Pero con la ruptura de la estructura centralista del Estado colonial, emergieron los conflictos regionales y con ellos se hicieron evidentes los fragmentos de que estaba compuesta la nación mexicana. Mientras tanto, los indígenas participaban como “carne de cañón” en las guerras contra los invasores norteamericanos o franceses, o engrosaban las filas de las facciones locales que, una vez alcanzada la Independencia del país, luchaban por mantener o conquistar el poder local o regional, como ocurrió en Yucatán, por ejemplo.20 With independence, the colonisation scheme of the “State from above” was fully recovered, despite the natives having participated actively in the struggle for independence, to which the elites first responded with a redefinition of indigenous imagery, especially the “Aztec” imagery, which was attributed with virtues that would help the restoration undertaken by the insurgent nationalism morally. However, with the rupture of the centralist structure of the colonial State, regional conflicts emerged, and with these, the fragments from which the Mexican nation was made up of became evident. Meanwhile, the natives were “cannon fodder” in the wars against the 19

20

Antonio Rubial, “Nueva España: imágenes de una identidad unificada”, Espejo mexicano, Enrique Florescano, ed. (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2005), pp. 72–115; Llona Katzew, “La pintura de castas. Identidad y estratificación social en la Nueva España”, New World Orders. Casta Painting and Colonial Latin America (New York: America’s Society Art Gallery, 1996), p. 110; Enrique Florescano, Imágenes de la patria a través de los siglos (Mexico: Taurus, 2005); Gustavo Curiel, Antonio Rubial, “Los espejos de lo propio. Ritos públicos y usos privados en la pintura virreinal”, Pintura y vida cotidiana en México, 1650–1950 (Mexico: Fomento Cultural Banamex, 1999), p. 149 and following. Álvaro Bello, Etnicidad y ciudadanía en América Latina. La acción colectiva de los pueblos indígenas (Santiago de Chile: Naciones Unidas-Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe, 2004), pp. 163–164.

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American or French invaders, or filled out the files of the local factions which, after the country’s independence had been reached, fought to maintain or conquer local or regional power, as happened in Yucatan, for example.

Independence came to most Latin American countries in a context where liberal ideas dominated. Paradoxically, these emanated from the old metropolis through the Constitution of Cádiz, which declared universal citizenship for all the population of each territory. In the case of Peru, General San Martín solemnly swore in the proclamation of Peruvian independence that, de ahora en adelante los aborígenes no deberán ser llamados indios o nativos, ellos son hijos y ciudadanos del Perú y serán conocidos como peruanos (“from here on, the aborigines should not be called Indians or natives, they are children and citizens of Peru and shall be known as Peruvians”). A formal declaration of universal citizenship that included creoles, mestizos and natives appears, in one form or another, in all the declarations of independence. However, in the native case, the events and policies of the new states did not support these declarations. The Indians were persistently excluded from the right to vote.21 In the Andean area, both the indigenous tribute and slavery persisted until the mid 19th century. Throughout the region, the native populations were submitted to the local power of the large landowners who, with the disappearance of the matrícula de indios,22 seized them as manpower on their the large-scale landholdings. This was, in fact, a process of privatising the Indian populations, confined locally and on the large estates, and which, in the case of Ecuador, Andrés Guerrero23 has called “ethnic administration”. The new Creole republicanism essentially maintained the old, dualist, colonial order, in which the natives constituted a separate category, in fact, a segregated citizenship. Thus, we can call this an oligarchic and exclusionary political system. The paradox of the case, as mentioned above referring to Mexico, is the generalised nature with which the glories of the 21

22 23

In fact, it should be mentioned that the huge majority of the population in the new republics had no right to vote during the 19th century. Voting was restricted to educated and landowning Creole and mestizo men. Thus women, natives, the illiterate and non-property owners were disenfranchised. This was the term for the census of the native population during the Spanish colonial period. Andrés Guerrero, La semántica de la dominación: el concertaje de indios (Quito: Ediciones Libri Mundi, 1991).

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indigenous past are assumed and presented with pride, while the contemporary Indians are denigrated. This was the case in Peru, Tal como fue soñada por los criollos, la ‘comunidad imaginada’ llamada Perú incorporó desde muy temprano en su historia las glorias del Imperio Inca, pero negó tener algo que ver con los indios contemporaneos.24 Just as the creoles dreamed, from an early moment in its history, the ‘imagined community’ called Peru included the glories of the Inca Empire, but denied that in any way linked to the contemporaneous Indians.

The subordination and exclusion of the indigenous peoples is expressed in the absence or annulment of rights to property, rights that although precarious, had been respected during the colonial period, which can be explained, among other reasons, because the forms of indigenous property and production were a functional part to the Spanish colonial economic system. From the 19th century, with the liberal laws and policies, the native populations began to be stripped of their goods and possessions, very often held communally, as were their forms of government and decision-making. Although some of these measures had precedents in the colonial period, it is significant to see that a series of legal frameworks protecting their lands and firms of government were suppressed after the mid 19th century.25 One of the great paradoxes of liberal republicanism in Latin America was the double symbolic operation of exalting the civilising legacy of the great pre-Hispanic empires (Aztec, Maya and Inca) on one hand, and, at the same time, devaluing the contemporaneous indigenous element in the independent states. This devaluation of the indigenous societies, linked to the idea of backwardness and illiteracy, did not impede an instrumental use of the Indians, as manpower or combatants against the Spanish armies or those of other countries interested in seizing the Spanish colonial legacy. In the case of the new Mexican Republic, that was a model for this new field of experimentation with liberal policies, its early decades saw a rapid expropriation of the indigenous communal property that, up to the 24 25

Iván Degregori, “Perú: identidad, nación y diversidad cultural”, Interculturalidad, 1 (2004). . See: José Aylwin, El acceso de los indígenas a las tierras en los ordenamientos jurídicos de América Latina: un estudio de casos (Santiago de Chile: Red de Desarrollo Agropecuario-Unidad de Desarrollo Agrícola-División de Desarrollo Productivo y Empresarial, 2001).

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end of the Colony, had been protected from the voracity of the creoles by metropolitan legislation. As Bello explains, until 1820, a dozen of the states in the Republic had legally eliminated these communal properties. The seizure of indigenous lands continued unabated in the mid 19th century, a convulsive period in Mexican history, with the Laws of Reform.26 The Law of Disentailment (Ley Lerdo) obliged the civil (councils, guilds, etc.) and ecclesiastical corporations to sell the houses and land that they were not occupying to their tenants, and the Indian communities to share out the communal land among their members as private property. The aim was for these goods to generate greater wealth, to benefit more people.27 It could be surprising that this set of liberalising reforms drastically strangulated indigenous autonomy, consolidating poverty, marginalisation and dependence among the native populations, were dictated by Benito Juárez, of Zapotec origin, born in the village of San Pablo Guelatao, in the northern mountains of Oaxaca. However, for an enlightened liberal like Juárez, a firm defender of civil and individual rights, the indigenous communal property holdings and especially the huge estates owned by the church, were obstacles to his project for a civil society and citizenship. Little could he imagine that this territorial dispossession, envisaged as a liberal and progressive measure, would constitute the basis for the oppressive system of the great estates under the dictatorial regime of Porfirio Díaz, and which provoked the social revolution of 1910.28 26

27 28

There were, in principle, three Reform Laws: (1) The Juárez Law (1855), that eliminated the privileges of the clergy and army and declared all citizens equal before the law, (2) The Lerdo Law (1856) that forced civil and ecclesiastical corporations to sell houses and land, and (3) The Church Law (1857), that banned the charging of tithes by the parishes and regulated the costs of church services. In 1859, under the presidency of Benito Juárez, an important series of new liberalising laws were passed, most aimed at combating the material power of the church and strengthening a lay concept of the state. These were the Law for the nationalisation of ecclesiastic properties (that complemented the Lerdo Law), Law of Civil Marriage, Organic Law of the Civil Register, Law of Exclaustration of Nuns and Friars and Law of Freedom of Worship. Enrique Florescano, Etnia, Estado y nación (Mexico: Taurus, 2001); Álvaro Bello, Etnicidad y ciudadanía en América Latina… As Degregori states about Peru, “despite the liberal laws passed around 1827 by Simón Bolívar, the old colonial barriers were reerected intermittently, now to exclude the indigenous population from citizenship. First, there was the native tribute, which existed until 1854. Then, at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th, there

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The 19th-century consolidation of the state in Mexico was problematic. On one hand, there were convulsions in the form of uprisings, military coups and alternance between the liberal and conservative sectors. Over the same period, Mexico was invaded various times by the French and fought a war against the United States that led to the loss of almost a third of its territory. In this warlike context, from the mid century on, the position of the indigenous peoples, excluded by the elites from the process of nation-building, attempted to take advantage of the reigning factionalism to consolidate their own collective purposes. There were innumerable indigenous uprisings and rebellions, especially in the central part of the country – over 100 between 1820 and 1890. In the north, the ongoing struggle by the Yaqui in Sonora lasted throughout the period, and was notable for the brutal repression under Porfirio Díaz’s presidency. In mid century, a large sector of the indigenous population in the Tehuantepec Isthmus lived in revolt for five years, free from the control of the governments of Oaxaca and the Mexican republic. Éste no fue sino uno de varios levantamientos que estallaron en México entre 1846 y 1850 mientras las autoridades gubernamentales estaban ocupadas con la guerra contra Estados Unidos. La Guerra de Castas, que brotó casi simultáneamente, barrió Yucatán en 1847 y 1848, y amenazó durante décadas a esa región. La población indígena de Sierra Gorda, en el inmediato nordeste de Querétaro, también se rebeló en 1848, trayendo a la región central de la república el espectro de la rebelión masiva. Estos levantamientos contemporáneos despertaron temores en las élites respecto a una rebelión india a escala nacional en los momentos mismos en que México se enfrentaba a un enemigo extranjero.29 This was only one of the various uprisings that broke out in Mexico between 1846 and 1850 while the government was occupied with the war against the United States. The Caste War, that broke out almost simultaneously, swept through Yucatan in 1847 and 1848, and remained a threat in this region for decades. The indigenous population of Sierra Gorda, just north-east of Querétaro, also rebelled in 1848, bringing the spectre of a massive rebellion to the central area of the republic. These contemporaneous

29

was the expansion of great landowning estates in the Andes, and the consolidation of what was called gamonalismo in Peru”. (Iván Degregori, “Movimientos étnicos, democracia a y nación en Perú y Bolivia”, La construcción de la nación y la representación ciudadana en México, Guatemala, Perú y Bolivia, Guillermo de la Peña, Claudia Bary, eds. (Guatemala: FLACSO-Guatemala, 1998), p. 165). John Tutino, “Rebelión indígena en Tehuantepec”, Cuadernos Políticos, 24 (1980), pp. 89–101.

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revolts awoke fears of a nation-wide Indian rebellion among the elites just as Mexico was facing a foreign enemy.

Similar processes took place in the South-American republics of the Andean region. As Aylwin explains, “the Mapuche people of southern Chile were forced off 95% of their ancestral lands by military occupation of their territory at the end of the 19th century, with 500,000 hectares being recognised through community grant titles, many of which were seized by non-natives during the 20th century”.30 On the other hand, in the case of the Andean peoples in northern Chile, the ownership of their ancestral lands was not recognised by the state after they were annexed at the end of the 19th century, and most of these are still nowadays considered state owned.31 In Peru, in the context of the liberal reforms, the indigenous tribute was abolished in 1854, while in Ecuador, the decree of abolition dates from 1857. This reform attempted to promote the citizenship of groups and communities, but other decrees that aimed to put native lands on the market were added to this one. In all these cases, the common denominator was the quickening loss of indigenous lands to individuals who thus expanded their private estates.32 The Bolivian case is slightly different, and closer to the Mexican experience. There were frequent indigenous uprisings against the colonial regime around the end of the 18th century. The exclusion and marginalisation of the indigenous groups by the elites was permanent in the 19th century and the latter only remembered the great mass of Indian peasants when they were required for conscription. The end of the Indian tribute in 1866, replaced by the income from nitrates and silver, seemed to set a new path, although the community continued to be the unit used for tax purposes. This allowed the ayllu, the Indian communities, especially the large ones, to exist until the 20th century without suffering the fragmentation of ownership that affected the smaller ones. Together with other factors, this 30

31

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In 1866, Chile passed the Leyes de Propiedad Austral, which declared the lands of the Mapuche public property. However, the natives did not find out until 1883, when their lands were occupied by the army. José Aylwin, Derechos territoriales de los pueblos indígenas en América Latina. Situación jurídica y políticas públicas (Bogotá: CECOIN, 2011), p. 28 . Guillermo de la Peña, Claudia Bary, eds., La construcción de la nación y la representación ciudadana en México, Guatemala, Perú…; José Aylwin, El acceso de los indígenas a las tierras en los ordenamientos…

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meant that the expansion of the large latifundio estates on the altiplano at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th was stopped by the Aymara curacas, who rose to stop the impetus of the elites and defending their properties with the inherited colonial deeds.33

3. Welfare State and Indigenous Policies Throughout Latin America, the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries, especially the first third of the latter, saw a widespread continuity of state policies regarding the indigenous question. Together with factionalism, regional conflicts and struggles between liberal and conservative governments, the social and economic dynamic was generally characterised by the predominance of large estates that, as well as seizing vast tracts of land, had proletarised the majority of the population, not only indigenous, but also mestizo. Such practices as payment in kind were common, and especially a set of coercive and semi-illegal practices for recruiting manpower that, by trickery or adjudication of a nonexistent debt, forcibly “hooked” the future rural or industrial workers.34 Again, with the Revolution that began in 1910, Mexico was the exception to the regional panorama. This was not really a social revolution, but more an all-out civil war, with myriad elements and interests in the different factions in conflict.35 On the other hand, it must be mentioned that some of the territories of the Federation remained untouched by the conflict, as was the case of the State of Chiapas. 33 34

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Álvaro Bello, Etnicidad y ciudadanía en América Latina… Payment in kind, frequent in Latin America, as in Europe in the 20th century, was centred on the so-called tiendas de raya, owned by the patrons and that sold foodstuffs, liquor, clothing and footwear of middling quality. The workers were paid with vouchers that could only be exchanged in the owner’s shop, who thus recovered all the money paid in salaries, as, in general, he resold the products at a higher price. When the workers, who were paid low salaries for backbreaking work, could not afford to pay for the products that allowed them to and their families to survive, forcing them to buy on credit at high interest rates and thus fall into debt that, if not paid back in their lifetime, passed on to their descendants, giving rise to servitude through debt. Luís Garfias, La Revolución Mexicana: compendio histórico político militar (Mexico: Panorama Editorial, 1997); Charles Cumberland, Madero y la Revolución mexicana (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1999).

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The 1910 Revolution meant an immediate recognition, at least formally, of indigenous communal property. On the other hand, a process began to supply land to an enormous number of indigenous communities and families through the creation of the ejido.36 These families had been thrown off their land in the previous period, giving legal legitimacy to the expropriation of indigenous lands by the great landowners. The process of supplying ejido and communal land began with the legal reforms under the first revolutionary governments (Madero and Carranza), consolidated in the 1920s and 30s but ultimately, this was never fully applied. El período de mayor auge en la dotación ejidal se produce durante los gobiernos de Obregón y Calles (1918–1930), pero particularmente en el gobierno populista de Lázaro Cárdenas, un caudillo de la revolución que nacionalizó el petróleo e inició la política indigenista de Estado (“The period of the major rise in the supply of ejido land came about under the governments of Obregón and Calles (1918–1930), but especially under the populist regime of Lázaro Cárdenas, a leader of the revolution who nationalised oil and began the state indigenous policy”).37 Despite the promises of land reform, understood as the restitution of the land seized from the indigenous people, under the impulse of Juárez’s liberal reforms and the policies of Porfirio and, in turn, as recognition of the role that the indigenous people had played in the Revolution, the Mexican state adopted dilatory and ambivalent measures to the demands for land and autonomy, from the beginning of the developmentalist period, initiated by Cárdenas. For the indigenous peoples, etnia y cultura… son simplemente los puntos clave de la lucha por la tierra (“ethnics and culture… are simply the key points in the struggle for the land”).38 In contrast, for the ruling classes, the agrarian subject was linked to economic development and 36

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The ejido was collective public property from the expropriation of the great latifundia estates of pre-revolutionary Mexico. It was consolidated under the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas and was of great importance in the renovation of the agricultural structure. Around 1960, over 20% of agricultural land in Mexico was made up of ejido lands. Álvaro Bello, Etnicidad y ciudadanía en América Latina…, p. 166. Armando Bartra, Gerardo Otero, “Movimientos campesinos indígenas en México: la lucha por la tierra, la autonomía y la democracia”, Recuperando la tierra. El resurgimiento de movimientos rurales en África, Asia y América Latina, Sam Moyo, Paris Yeros, Henry Bernstein, eds. (Buenos Aires: Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales, 2008), p. 402.

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productivity, while the ethnic question was submitted to the homogenising prism of the philosophy of cultural miscegenation, understood as state policy in the service of state nationalism. While land, autonomy and differentiated reproduction cultural form part of a whole for the indigenous peoples, for the state, the agrarian question and the indigenous affairs are two differentiated dynamics, but that come together in a single political strategy orientated towards the acculturation and full integration of the indigenous people as mestizo citizens. For a long time, the indigenous subject was hidden behind the figure of the peasant and was expressed through such organs representing peasants as the National Confederation of Peasants (CNC), which became heavily influenced by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).39 The first steps in the indigenist policies began under the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas, who surrounded himself with a group of intellectuals, ideologues of the Revolution, who established the doctrinal and institutional bases for Mexican indigenism.40 Three of these deserve special mention: Moisés Sáenz, Manuel Gamio and José Vasconcelos.

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It should be noted that, while the Mexican Revolution introduced deep changes, it was not in a strict sense a social revolution that radically transformed the pre-existing structures. Although it seems paradoxical, we should talk more of nationalist reformism than revolutionary transformation. In many places where the revolution did not arrive, especially in the south, in places like Chiapas, most property remained in the hands of small groups of landowners (Rosalva A. Hernández, La otra frontera: identidades múltiples en Chiapas poscolonial (Mexico: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social-Porrúa, 2001). However, under Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–1940), and through an active and coherent agrarian policy, there was a greater supply of ejido lands and more recognition of the communal property of the indigenous peoples than before. In the case of Peru, according to Degregori (1994), indigenism constitutes “a very heterogeneous movement”, including those who wanted to modernise it and integrate it into national society. What all the different viewpoints shared was “an urban view of the Andes” (Kristal 1991), an exogenous vision that emphasises otherness but that fell to a greater or lesser degree into paternalism. In its extreme versions, indigenism essentialises the Quechuas, Aymaras or Amazon populations and extracts them from history. Paraphrasing the “Orientalism” of Sald, in a controversial article Orin Starn (1992) coined the term “andinismo” to criticise the American anthropologists who propagated, “images of Andean life as if this had remained untouched since the times of the Spanish conquest…”. Something similar can be said about certain aspects of indigenism. See criticisms of Starn in the comments that accompany his 1992 article published in Allpanchis, and in Mayer 1992.

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Under the influence of Moisés Sáenz, president Lázaro Cárdenas created the Autonomous Department of Indigenous Affairs (DAAI). In 1940, this organised the First Inter-American Indigenist Congress held in Pátzcuaro (Michoacán).41 Then, in 1938, the National Institute of Anthropology and History, an institution dedicated to the study of the indigenous peoples, was created. These actions set the basis for the indigenous policy of the Mexican state, whose clearest expression, in institutional terms, was the creation of the National Indigenist Institute (INI) in 1948.42 Mexican indigenism did not base its work only on the agrarian question. Its main axis was in education, as this was the path it was believed would lead to the integration of the natives into the nation. Moisés Sáenz stated that the function of education was as a “civilising agency”, whose starting point was the community, the local place where the subjects lived,43 Ante el indio primitivo la tarea es primordialmente, aculturización; en el pueblo campesino el proceso ha de ser de difusión cultural, es decir, el de generalización de informaciones y conceptos, de hábitos y costumbres, hasta que prive en México un tipo de vida satisfactoriamente homogéneo.44 Before the primitive Indian, the task is primordially acculturisation; in the peasant village, the process has to be one of cultural diffusion, in other words, of generalising information and concepts, habits and customs, until a satisfactorily homogeneous type of life prevails in Mexico.

In 1917, Manuel Gamio had published his book Forjando Patria, which expressed the need to build a homogenising project for the modernisation of the country. Gamio also supported the Office of Anthropology and 41 42

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After this first indigenist congress, indigenism became the official policy of the American states. Miguel Ángel Sámano, “El indigenismo institucionalizado en México (1936–2000): un análisis”, La construcción del Estado nacional: democracia, justicia, paz y Estado de derecho, José E. Ordoñez, ed. (México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Méjico-Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas, 2004), pp. 141–158; Álvaro Bello, Etnicidad y ciudadanía en América Latina…; José Velasco, “Investigación antropológica, cultura e indigenismo”, La Palabra y el Hombre, 57 (1986), pp. 41–54. For more about the work and thought of Moisés Sáenz in depth, consult Britton (1972). Sáenz, as the head of the recently created Secretariat of Public Education, carried out fruitful work to develop educational plans, and which he condensed into the books Carapan (1966) and México íntegro (1939), the latter of great influence on Peruvian indigenism. For the Carapan Project, see Schauffhauser (2010). Moisés Sáenz, México íntegro (Lima: Imprenta Torres Aguirre, 1939), p. 117.

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Regional Populations of the Republic, the precursor of the Instituto National Indigenista.45 Similar influence was exerted by the work of José Vasconcelos, who took an active role in drawing up a policy for the natives and wrote the book La raza cósmica, that proposed the forming of a Mexican mestizo race.46 This intellectual deployment, also supported by the sharing out of land and experimental projects, such as those by Sáenz in Carapan, had a great impact throughout the region. After the Congress of Pátzcuaro in 1940, indigenist institutes were founded in Colombia, Ecuador and Nicaragua (1943), Costa Rica (1944), Guatemala (1945), Peru (1946), Argentina (1947), Bolivia (1949), Panama (1952) and Chile (1953). From the 1950s, indigenism was linked to the modernising development trend, whose fundamental purpose was to transform the productive structures to develop a domestic market that could support an overseas market. The emphasis of the policies was then placed on actions of support in the field, with the aim of encouraging the productive development of the Mexican State. To this end, norms were established to protect small-scale property, but this step also promoted the unaffectability of the large holdings, which placed obstacles to their disarticulation and indirectly incentivated the use of manpower from native communities on these properties.47 Between the 1960s and 70s, the income from the oil industry, nationalised by Cárdenas some years earlier, financed an extensive investment programme in infrastructure. In a few years, roads and bridges linked the far-flung indigenous regions with the population centres. Together with this, it was desired to intensify the indigenist work in the field of education and support for production, thus stimulating the development and modernisation of the most distant areas of the country. However, the resources dedicated to these policies in the period between 1940 and 1970 were not managed by the Instituto National Indigenista and, in the long term, the state was seen to show little interest in attending to the needs of the communities.48 45 46

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Rosalva A. Hernández, La otra frontera… The expression raza cósmica (“cosmic race”), formulated in the book of the same name, published by José Vasconcelos in 1925, proposes the notion that the exclusive concepts of race and nationality should be overcome in the name of humanity’s common destiny. The cosmic race would be the “fifth race” on the American continent; an agglomeration of all the world’s races without any distinctions, to build a new civilisation. Álvaro Bello, Etnicidad y ciudadanía en América Latina…, p. 168. Cristina Oehmichen, Reforma del Estado, política social e indigenismo en México (1988–1996) (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Madrid-Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas, 1999), p. 71.

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In the early 1960s, the feeling among the authorities and intellectuals was one of frustration, because the dream of integration was still far from being met, whole regions remained excluded from progress, and the old forms of life and “backwards customs” that the post-revolutionary thinkers had wanted to eradicate still persisted. As a result, new forms of thinking about state indigenism arose.49 This was the context in which the work of Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán (1973) would make a great impact and his idea of “regions of refuge” would influence the new strategy of the Instituto National Indigenista. For Aguirre, the refuge regions were those basically rural, marginal areas in which the communal life and traditional lifestyle have been reproduced.50 The author attributes this form of isolation, of historical encystment and lack of participation in the processes of economic, social and political transformation, to the reproduction of the relations of dependence and colonial submission that were established between the Ladino population of the inland cities and the indigenous population in the hinterlands of these cities. This relation between oppression and exploitation is what had to be tackled, according to Aguirre, if the aim was to improve the conditions of the natives and integrate them into the national society.51 With this in mind, the Instituto National Indigenista created “indigenous coordination centres”, in each urban centre in each of these regions, run by “cultural promoters”, whose mission was to work on communitydevelopment programmes, mediating between the two social and ethnic 49

50

51

According to Marroquín (Alejandro Marroquín,  Balance del Indigenismo (Mexico: Instituto Indigenista Interamericano, 1977), indigenism, as a state policy, has four variants. (1) Political indigenism as a proposal for political participation by the native peoples in projects for national transformation (Mexican and Bolivian revolutions). (2) Communitary indigenism constitutes a variant of the former, focussed on strengthening collective ownership and communitary uses and customs. (3) Developmental indigenism aims to integrate the native peoples into economic development and the market relations, which has led to serious social, economic and environmental impacts. (4) Anthropologic indigenism, as an intellectual current serving all the above. Although the concept tends to focus on the analysis of these rural communities, historically reduced to inhospitable and not very fertile lands, where the indigenous population was confined after the historical processes of appropriation under the system of large estates in the liberal period, Aguirre also recognises as regions of refuge the miserable shanty towns around the large cities. Aguirre Beltrán calls this process of domination of the indigenous peasants, grouped into communities, by the urban Ladinos proceso dominical.

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sectors, in other words, between the representatives of each indigenous culture and the national culture. The ideal profile for these “development agents” was the same as for the bilingual teachers in the indigenous education system implemented by the Instituto National Indigenista: accultured native professionals, able to switch from one language to another, from one symbolic system to the other.52 In contrast with other earlier political ideologies, from the egalitarianism of the liberals to the racism of the Porfirio period, indigenism recognises both the specific nature of the indigenous societies and their right to be compensated for the discrimination and abuse they were subjected to historically. However, this positive attitude to the Indians does not contemplate the cultural specificity in positive civilising terms.53 Rather, they consider that the “indigenous cultures” constitute part of their problem of marginalisation and backwardness. Thus, indigenism practices paternalist policies aimed at “redeeming” or “saving” the Indians through their integration into the national society, which supposes acculturation as a prior and inevitable step.54 These undoubtedly controversial approaches were widely debated over the years, especially when they were expressed as the official policy of the Instituto National Indigenista in the 1960s. At that same time, there was a deep debate about the legitimacy and effectiveness of the indigenist policy, spurred on by the growing opposition of Marxist inclined 52

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In his work, Aguirre does not restrict his analysis to the indigenous conditions in Mexico, but also includes examples from indigenous communities in Guatemala, Peru and Bolivia. Gonzalo Aguirre, Regiones de refugio: el desarrollo de la comunidad y el proceso dominical en Mestizo-América (Mexico: Instituto National Indigenista, 1973); Gonzalo Aguirre, “El indigenismo y la antropología comprometida”, Boletín Bibliográfico de Antropología Americanista, 39/48 (1977), pp. 33–59. Luís Villoro, Los grandes momentos del indigenismo (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1996); Willem Assies, Gemma van der Haar, André Hoekema, eds., El reto de la diversidad: pueblos indígenas y reforma del estado en América Latina (Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacán, 1999). Gonzalo Aguirre, “La polémica indigenista en México en los años setenta”, La Palabra y el Hombre, 51 (1984), pp. 17–30 ; Gonzalo Aguirre, “Derecho indígena de Rodolfo Stavenhagen”, La Palabra y el Hombre, 71 (1989), pp. 133–137 ; Pedro Arrieta, “El pensamiento de Aguirre Beltrán respecto a la autonomía indígena”, Sotavento, 3/5 (1998), pp. 197–204 ; Rodolfo Stavenhagen, Conflictos étnicos y Estado nacional (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 2000).

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peasant and workers’ organisations, that began to criticise the model of the PRI openly.55 Nevertheless, the action of the Instituto National Indigenista on this level had probably unexpected effects. In first place, the Instituto National Indigenista centres became places for dialogue between the communities and the state. Through this, and a process of redefinition and appropriation, many communities began to rebuild their ethnic identities.56 Furthermore, the promoters and bilingual teachers became agents of acculturation for community leaders who made up the main base of the new indigenous leaderships of the 1970s and 80s. The bilingual teachers played a very important role as active participants in setting up new organisations and at the same time contributing their discourses and viewpoints on the relations between the communities and the state. The example below illustrates this in the words of Manuel Ríos, a Nahua teacher from Veracruz: En la actualidad somos un grupo de no más de 300 profesionistas indígenas egresados de los programas específicos de educación superior en las especialidades ya señaladas; algunos colaboramos en programas de docencia, otros de investigación y también en la administración. Creemos firmemente que la implementación de programas educativos diferenciales constituye una condición necesaria más no suficiente, para garantizar el libre derecho de sobrevivencia y autodeterminación de nuestros pueblos. La educación diferencial que reclamamos se sustenta en la manera particular en que entendemos el desarrollo, la vida, el mundo, el trabajo, la comunidad, la nación, la producción, la distribución o el consumo.57 We are currently a group of no more than 300 indigenous professional graduates of the specific programmes of higher education in the specialities mentioned above; some of us collaborate in teaching programmes, others in research and also in the administration. We believe firmly that the implementation of differential educational programmes constitutes a necessary, but insufficient, condition to guarantee the free right to survival and self-determination of our peoples. The differential education that we claim is based particularly on our understanding of development, life, the world, work, the community, the nation, production, distribution or consumption.

55

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Guillermo de la Peña, “La ciudadanía étnica y la construcción de ‘los indios’ en el México contemporáneo”, Revista Internacional de Filosofía Política, 6 (1995), pp. 116–140. Rosalva A. Hernández, La otra frontera… Manuel Ríos, “La formación de profesionistas indígenas”, Movimientos indígenas contemporáneos en México, Arturo Warman, Arturo Argueta, eds. (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico-Porrúa, 1991), p. 218.

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In the wake of the great and influential revolutionary thinkers, and the founders of indigenism in Mexico that constituted a central plank of the post-revolutionary state, the impact of its doctrines and policies in the Andean countries was very limited, especially in the 1960s. According to Favre58, indigenism is basically a current of opinion favourable to the indigenous peoples, which is seen as the adoption of positions that aim to protect this population from the injustices it suffers. However, we do not find any indication of integration (and, in turn, protectionist) policies for the primitive societies in Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador or Perú. This, to a great extent, means reproducing the system of castes, a direct inheritance from the colonial period. In the social and economic aspects, we are witnessing the reproduction of the large-scale landowning and food-exporting model, based on the intensive use of indigenous labour, and especially, the absence of purposeful policies of agrarian reform that mean the return of the land or territories to the indigenous communities.59

4. Indigenous Movements in the Post-Indigenist Stage Although the rise and development of the indigenous organisations constitutes a long lasting process that has coexisted for decades with state indigenism, it was not until the early 1990s when its visibility grew exponentially. Both in Mexico and throughout Latin America, the proximity of the 5th centenary of the European conquest of America stimulated the indigenous movements to make their own voice heard on the national and trans-national stages, to compensate partly for the imposed officialist celebrations that had long been under preparation. It is worth emphasising the tenacious and silent discourse of the indigenous organisations over the previous decades. An example of the native presence in the public sphere can be seen in the fact that in 1989, the International Labour Organisation adopted the Convention 169 on indigenous 58 59

Henri Favre, El indigenismo (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1999). Víctor Bretón, “Capital social, etnicidad y desarrollo: algunas consideraciones críticas desde los Andes ecuatorianos”, Revista Yachaykuna 2 (2001), pp. 2–20; Pablo Palenzuela, “Mitificación del desarrollo y mistificación de la cultura: el etnodesarrollo como alternativa”, Íconos, 33 (2009), pp. 127–140.

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and tribal peoples, which replaced another convention dating from 1957, dedicated to the indigenous and tribal peoples. Also of importance is the conceptual revision of populations by peoples, which is registered in the two texts although, as Escárzaga suggested,60 these policies of ethnic recognition by the UNO and other international institutions can perhaps be interpreted in other ways. Among these alternatives is the desire to strengthen the local ethnic actors, as a strategy aimed at weakening the nation states in the interests of neo-liberal capitalism. Without excluding this latter hypothesis, it is true that international recognition runs in parallel to the visibility that the indigenous mobilisations have achieved throughout the region over the last twenty years.61 In June 1990, the Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador (CONAIE)62 organised a large indigenous uprising in Ecuador that paralysed the country for days as an expression of its wish to enter the national public arena and as a warning call in defence of its social and ethnic claims. This large-scale mobilisation, which could not be ignored by the country’s political class, was followed by other significant mobilisations in 1992, 1994, 1997, 1998 and 2001. This organisation played a leading role in the overthrow of two presidents of the Republic, Abdalá Bucaram in 1997 and Jamil Mahuad in 2000. It also played a decisive part in the rise to power of the soldier Lucio Gutiérrez, who it supported, through the Pachakutik party in the same national government, in which it participated for a short time, until its members and ministers decided to switch to the opposition given the political drift of the new president. However, the presence of Pachakutik in local governments in the areas with an indigenous predominance is well established. From the CONAIE, experiences of the institutionalisation of a multi-cultural concept of the country have been encouraged through different ways, among which was the creation of the Universidad Intercultural de las Nacionalidades y Pueblos Indígenas “Amawtay Wasi” (UAW), or through the creation in 2003 of the Agencia de 60 61 62

Fabiola Escárzaga, “La emergencia indígena contra el neoliberalismo”, Política y Cultura, 22 (2004), pp. 102. Marisa Revilla, “Propuesta para un análisis del movimiento indígena como movimiento social”, Política y Sociedad, 42/2 (2005), pp. 49–62. The CONAIE, Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador is comprised of three regional organisations: ECUARUNARI, that groups together the indigenous organisations of the Sierra, CONFENAIE, based in the Amazon region, and CONAICE, that represents the indigenous people of the coastal area.

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Noticias Plurinacional del Ecuador, mouthpiece of the indigenous Confederation. Over the last quarter of the century, there was a transcendental process, with the switch from the indigenist paradigm to the indianist one. This change consisted, to use the expression by Guerrero63, “[of] abandoning the ventriloquist forms of representation”, which meant passing from a situation under which other voices interpreted and represented the Indian before the state and other fields of power, to a situation where the indigenous people broke into the public arena, through their political leaders, the representatives of an intellectual group, formed in the shadow if the paternalist programmes of indigenism, union militancy and also, to the pastoral action of the churches.64 The social and political context in which Indianism arises is far from the stereotypical image of the poor, backward, traditionalist Indian living on reserves. The images of the indigenous social actor that correspond to this stage are of a subject of our times, equipped with the latest technological advances, especially in the field of communication and information. These are people who travel, with the capacity for interlocution with political power together with the legion of NGOs and other instances of support at the trans-national level. The new forms of ethnic leadership have led many indigenous people and organisations to reach local, provincial or national power, in the shape of mayors, ministers and even presidents, as is nowadays the case of Evo Morales in Bolivia.65 The relative empowerment that the indigenous movement has achieved, in terms of political mediation against the State and of social, and economic claims against local power and the landowning and business sectors, has led to a new scenario in which ethnicity is no longer on the defensive. Instead it has become the centre of the revindicative discourse, 63

64 65

Andrés Guerrero, “El proceso de identificación: sentido común ciudadano, ventriloquía y transescritura”, Etnicidades, Andrés Guerrero, ed. (Quito: Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales-Instituto Latinoamericano de Investigaciones Sociales, 2000), pp. 9–60. Jean-Pierre Lavaud, Françoise Lestage, “El indisnismo en la América hispánica. Una nebulosa política equívoca”, Política, 47 (2006), pp. 149–169. Obviously, the reality of the indigenous world is much more complex than the stereotypical images, that tend to swing from one extreme to the other. Contemporary indigenous peoples neither constitute vestiges of a traditional past, disconnected from history, nor do they constitute a global vanguard of a change towards a fairer society, more respectful of nature and more plural.

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adopting contextual (we could say global) keys that make the indigenous movement understandable and attractive to wide sectors of trans-national public opinion, which feed the numerous solidarity movements that give them support from abroad.66 I am referring to the growing association of the Indianist discourse with criticism of the voracious financial and environmental practices of neo-liberalism and a more or less explicit criticism of globalisation and in defence of the principle of self-determination.67 While the indigenist stage was tinged with culturalism, based on the theoretical models and schemes of the mid 20th-century social sciences, nowadays, the schemes for representing the practices and values of the indigenous movements tend to be devoid of this static and essentialist view of culture.68 This is no more than a reflection of the new role of the indigenous cultures, as they are not measured by tradition and history, but rather by the challenges of contemporaneity, that are settled in the national sphere, seeking to adjust to full incorporation as citizens without diminishing their own identity. At the same time, in the trans-national sphere, they participate in the multifaceted global movements. These range from the MST to the international congresses of indigenous shamans and healers, which promote inherited ancestral knowledge, and from the struggle against the devastation of the land by Western energy industries to attending the main international human rights forums. The language of ethnicity, with its emblems and references to the social history, hidden or denied, of the indigenous peoples, understood as “peoples without history”, seems to have taken over at the end of the hegemonic cycle of intolerant, exclusive and homogenising state nationalisms. 66

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A paradigmatic example of this is the Zapatista Movement, that after arising as an armed insurgency with a mestizo symbology, has gradually evolved into an Indian movement, leaving aside the reference to Zapata and replacing this with Mayan symbolic and cultural references (Pedro Pitarch, “Los zapatistas y el arte de la ventriloquia”, Communisme, 83/84 (2005). In the most standardised discursive version, Indianism continues to appeal to the logic and values of communalism as an ideal model for social relations based on consensus and equality, thus challenging the democratic system, understood as a central emblem of Western modernity. Víctor Bretón, “Capital social, etnicidad y desarrollo…”, pp. 2–20; Pablo Palenzuela, “Mitificación del desarrollo y mistificación…”, pp. 127–140. Joan J. Pujadas, “Los claroscuros de la etnicidad. El culturalismo evaluado desde la óptica de la cohesión social y la ciudadanía”, Etnicidad y desarrollo en los Andes, Pablo Palenzuela, Alessandra Olivi, eds. (Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla, 2011), pp. 25–51.

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A new path of mutual integration is possible based on a pluralist conception of the state, able to create room for political participation, not through subordination, but rather from equality among citizens that can be expressed from one’s own identity and without abdication of one’s own values and symbolic emblems. Far from being a refuge for resistance, this becomes an asset for the recognition and acceptance of a place for creative intercultural dialogue. Ultimately, it is possible that this intercultural dialogue within the new multi-cultural Latin-American states will lead to new forms of true miscegenation or creolisation,69 but not from this symbolic structure of indigenism, constructed on the abstraction of an indigenous and mythical past, but rather based on the recognition of the civilising assets of which the present indigenous peoples are the bearers. Moreover, this deferred dialogue falls within the growing global trend, as the trans-national cultural industries link up with each other and identify the indigenous cultural component, although only to trade in it and reduce it to a consumer product.

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Ulf Hannerz, Conexiones transnacionales…

Global Ecumene, Electroacoustic Music and “Other” Music Fulvia Caruso Università degli Studi di Pavia

For a long time now, musical identity no longer refers simply one-dimensionally to a single region. In the area of music, increasing multipolar orientations create a continuous deconstruction of concepts of culture and identity. The local and the region, the national and the global have become interconnected in the cultural process of tradition to a “glocal” network. Max Peter Baumann*

In this text I intend to present an ongoing study on contemporary composers of electroacoustic music as a “community of practice” and in particular on their encounter with music that is not euro-cultured. This satisfies both topics covered in the Identitats Híbrides conference for which this text was conceived, because on the one hand composers of electroacoustic music define themselves as a virtual community with a precise identity, and because on the other hand the encounter between electroacoustic music and music that is not euro-cultured can produce hybridization. I will not make any conclusions, because this is a new and quite dense field of investigation. To date there is no widely accepted method of analysis, also because electroacoustic music compositions are extremely diverse and varied. Furthermore, this specific field of study requires the identification of a specific method, which I am elaborating as I proceed with the analyses. I intend to present the object of investigation, the conceptual basis and the first results of the analytical procedure that I have developed. The text is divided into three parts: the first is a brief description of the encounter of euro-cultured composers with other kinds of music, the second illustrates *

Max Peter Baumann, “The Local and the Global: Traditional Musical Instruments and Modernization”, The world of music–Local Musical Traditions in the Globalization Process, Max Peter Baumann, ed. (Berlin: Verl. für Wiss. und Bildung, 2000).

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the analytical and methodological tools that are at the root of my work, and in the third and final part I present my specific object of research: the compositions of Alessandro Cipriani.

1. Western Music and the Other: a Look at the Past The encounter between different kinds of music, as well as between different cultures, has always existed, but for centuries it has been dominated by euro-centrism and colonialism. The impossibility of really knowing the music of distant countries led composers to develop a set of imaginary ideas regarding this music, basically associated with particularly exotic or abstruse sounds. These ideas belonging to the “social imaginary”, which had perhaps always existed, became widespread in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth century as a result of the beginning of voyages overseas, wars with neighbouring countries such as Turkey, and the accounts of cultured travellers1. Thus, some composers used, in a more or less refined way, certain formulas identified by musical theorists as “alla turca” or “chinoiserie”2. With the shortening of distances between the continents produced by technological progress, the comparison with “other music”3 became more frequent, but throughout the nineteenth century a conception of “primitive” or “popular” still prevailed and composers often knew nothing of the scientific studies that had been conducted, even those regarding their own national folklore4. 1

2

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The first guide to the music of the New World was by the Huguenot missionary Jean Lery in1557, see: Philip Bohlman, World Music. Una breve introduzione (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 3. Roberto Leydi, L’altra musica. Etnomusicologia. Come abbiamo incontrato e creduto di conoscere le musiche delle tradizioni populari ed etniche (Milano: Giunti-Ricordi, 1991). Roberto Leydi, L’altra musica. Etnomusicologia… See: Jonathan Bellman, ed., The Exotic in Western Music (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998) (especially the Miriam K. Whaples contribution about “Early Exoticism Revisited”, which is a particulary useful review of the most rapresentative musicological contributions to the study of exoticism); Martin Clayton, Zon Bennett, Music and Orientalism in the British Empire, 1780s–1940s (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007); Jean-Pierre Bartoli, “Orientalismo ed esotismo sino all’epoca di Debussy”,

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German Romanticism, French exoticism and Russian nationalism actually drew very little from the music they purported to refer to.5 Apart from some rare exceptions, the Other was not seen or heard but only imagined, not necessarily as something primitive in these cases, but as something colourful, genuine, ingenuous and alive. These composers looked for their inspiration only by turning their minds, but not their eyes or their souls, to new horizons. There was therefore no real or genuine encounter with otherness, but only an attempt to colour and renew an existing repertoire with “open fifths, ostinati, sustained notes, Pentatonic scales, the Dorian sixth, augmented seconds, and a colouristic but non-functional use of chromaticism.”6, all of which was anomalous in relation to the syntax and grammar of euro-cultured music.

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Enciclopedia della musica. L’unità della musica, Jean-Jacques Nattiez, ed. (Turin: Einaudi, 2001), vol. 5, pp. 259–284; Philip Hayward, ed., Widening the Horizon: Exoticism in Post-War Popular Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999); Ralph P. Locke, “Reflections on Orientalism in Opera and Musical Theatre”, Opera Quarterly, 10/1 (1993), pp. 49–73; Claire Mabilat, Orientalism and Representations of Music in the Nineteenth-Century British Popular Arts (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007); Richard Taruskin, “Entoiling the Falconet: Russian Musical Orientalism in Context”, Cambridge Opera Journal, 4 (1992), pp. 253–280. Les musiques populaires et exotiques ont joué un rôle essentiel dans l’évolution de la musique ‘savante’ européenne à partir du XIXe siècle: elles sont constitutives du mouvement de la modernité qui bouleverse le langage musical au tournant du siècle, puis tout au long du XXe. On peut distinguer trois lignes d’évolution dans la culture européenne aux XIXe et XXe siècles: la première, dans les pays germaniques, se développe de façon dialectique à l’intérieur d’une tradition forte, qui constitue en réalité la tradition centrale de la musique européenne; l’exploration des couches profondes de la conscience par le mouvement romantique, liée à une revalorisation des traditions populaires, conduit à une remise en question des fondements même du langage musical. La seconde, en France, est déterminée par la rupture qu’a imposée la Révolution et par les guerres coloniales napoléoniennes: l’exotisme nourrit les différents mouvements de la modernité artistique. La troisième concerne les pays de l’Est européen jusqu’à la Russie, qui secouent le joug des puissances tutélaires et tentent d’affirmer leur identité nationale, culturelle et linguistique en recourant à leurs traditions paysannes préservées (Philippe Albèra, “Les leçons de l’exotisme”, Cahiers de musiques traditionnelles, 9 (1996), pp. 53–84). Pasticci Susanna, “L’influenza della musica non occidentale sulla musica occidentale del XX secolo”, Enciclopedia della musica…, vol. 5, pp. 285–304, especially, p. 289. See also: Diego Carpitella, “Musicisti e popolo nell’Italia romantica e moderna”, Conversazioni sulla musica. Lezioni, conferenze, trasmissioni radiofoniche 1955–1990 (Firenze: Ponte alle Grazie, 1992), pp. 81–165.

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But then at the beginning of the twentieth century something changed. The Great World and International Exhibitions that were held at the turn of the century and the possibility of recording music from all over world on wax cylinders meant that the composers of that period could have direct access to music that was not euro-cultured7. The search for a new language of cultured European music was becoming increasingly widespread and it lead also through the knowledge of non-Western music. One of the fathers of this process was Debussy, whose 1903 piece Pagodes, as well as various subsequent pieces by the composer, was influenced by Javanese gamelan8. But in reality this was still only “decorative orientalism”9. Among the “other” forms of music were those elements that were similar to eurocultured music, despite their otherness, to make a deeper impression on Western composers. They included features such as common time rhythms, squared rhythm, the harmonious superposition of sounds albeit with a different syntax, and pentatonic scales. Also later composers such as Ravel, Stravinsky and Schoenberg, rather than engaging upon a deep encounter with “the other’’ adopted and made use of “primitive” music (or what was presumed to be so) as a thrust towards new sonorities “in order to materialize an ideal of otherness, by projecting their deepest anxieties onto it.”10 Furthermore, these were always occasional excursions into unusual worlds of sound that were destined to have a fairly marginal impact on the expressive universe of twentieth century euro-cultured music. The exceptions included Bartòk, who composes after deeply reflecting on the popular music of the Balkans that he himself had collected; Messiaen, who 7

8 9

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The first World Exposition was held in London in 1851, but the first World Exposition that was truly significant for ethnomusicology was held in Chicago in 1893. On that occasion at least 103 wax roll recordings of Javanese, Turkish, and kwakiutl music were made (See: Philip Bohlman, World Music…, p. 41; Raymond Corbey “Ethnographic Showcases, 1870–1930”, Cultural Anthropology, 8/3 (1993), pp. 338–369). The first ethnomusicological recordings were made by Francis Densmore in 1901 in United States and Europe for the Berlin Phonogramm Archiv (see: Kurt Reinhardt, “The Berlin Phonogramm-archiv”, The folklore and folk music archivist, 5/2 (1962). For a discussion of Cambodian music in Debussy and other western cultured composers see: Neil Sorrell, The Gamelan (London: Faber, 1990). Jhon Corbett, “Experimental Oriental: New Music and Other Others”, Western Music and its Others. Difference, Representation and Appropriation in Music, Georgina Born, David Hesmondhalgh, eds. (Berkley-Los Angeles-London: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 163–186. Pasticci Susanna, “L’influenza della musica non occidentale…”, p. 296.

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modified the duration of his compositions following an in-depth study of Indian music, as well as Berio who, by his own admission, studied folk music because “I find something to learn that is useful for me […] it allows me to practice making some progress in the search for an underlying unity between seemingly unrelated musical worlds”11. Also Ligeti was influenced by the polyphony and polyrhythms of the Banda-Linda tribe of Central African in order to create complex compositions through the stratification of simple melodic lines12. In the nineteen-sixties the reconsideration of the primitive, or of the non-euro-cultured in general, in contemporary music is also due to an escapist exploration of unfamiliar or alien emotions and was especially a sign of protest, in the sense of a new need for a social and public dimension in art. Cage was one of the leading figures of this trend. It was not the syntax and grammar of other forms of music that influenced the music of Cage and those who followed in his footsteps, but the ethos, identities and ways of thought of other cultures, particularly Eastern cultures, also thanks to a climate of inter-culturality that was by then widespread, thanks to the acquisition of the euro-cultured compositional language by non-European composers13. The other attracts and fascinates, and we westerners try to study it, but basically the encounter with its music continues to feed the need for exoticism and originality, but also for escapism and rebellion, as well as encouraging the development of a sensitivity towards dialogue and solidarity. But the other is, however, still clearly percieved as such14.

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Berio Luciano, Intervista sulla musica (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1981), pp. 118–119. The minimalism of Terry Riley, Charlemagne Palestine, Philip Glass and Steve Reich should also be taken into account, but none of the critical texts that I have cited in this paper mention it. See: Diego Carpitella, Musica e tradizione orale (Palermo: Flaccovio and Borio Gianmario, 2009); Diego Carpitella, “Fine dell’esotismo: l’infiltrazione dell’Altro nella musica d’arte dell’Occidente”, L’etnomusicologia e le musiche contemporanee, Francesco Giannattasio, ed. (Venice: Fondazione Cini, 2009) . The first scholar to point out the distortion of viewpoint of the West as regards the other was: Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978). Starting from this text the theme was then extensively examined and discussed. Suffice it to mention: Georgina Born, David Hesmondhalgh, Western Music and Its Others…; Laurent Aubert, The Music of the other (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007).

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Alienation and distance are clearly evident in the work “Exotica. Für aussereuropäische Musikinstrumente” by Mauricio Kagel, commissioned for the exhibition “Weltkulturen und Moderne Kunst” held in Monaco during the 1972 Olympics. Over two hundred instruments from Asia, Africa, Oceania, Australia and America were made available to six musicians with a euro-cultured training who were expected to play instruments that do not know according to a loosely delineated score15. The outcome was predictable. In the nineties of the twentieth century the situation changed again. The practice of uniting within a composition different styles and aesthetics that draw on the different spheres of cultured music as much as on popular or commercial music was by now well-established, integrating musical gestures or instruments in a more or less subtle way, rather than simply pasting together very diverse or extravagant elements. “At the turn of the millennium, cultured music drew from time to time upon the cultured music of yesterday, traditional music from every culture or commercial popular music”. This may have involved the use of instruments or quotations from the musical structures of other cultures, but these influences were often manifested in the compositions of the time in more subtle and implicit ways, that were often almost imperceptible. Some musicologists have defined this kind of music as “impure” in that it combines styles with different aesthetic or is associated with other artistic disciplines such as video, dance or the performing arts16. I find that the most convincing interpretation is that of great freedom. The artist is free to do whatever he wants and she is aware of the freedom of others. It is a utopia, but the artist really believes in it. It is an absolute value, if not the only value, which characterizes our times. “One no longer seeks to make one’s art progress, but to let its imaginative qualities speak freely”17. Musicologists see this absolute freedom as a flaw, and a loss of orientation: once we win the freedom we do not know where to go. But if we avoid making value judgements about this explosion of possibilities, can 15 16 17

Ramon Pelinski, “Masques de l’identité. Réflexions sur ‘Exotica’ de Mauricio Kagel”, Circuit, 6/2 (1995), pp. 47–59. Jean Molino, “Il puro e l’impuro”, Enciclopedia della Musica…, vol. 1, pp. 1051– 1063. Pascal Noémie, “Musiche al volgere del XXI secolo: l’unità nella diversità”, Enciclopedia della musica…, vol. 5, pp. 304–327, especially, p. 321.

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we understand what has happened? There has been an incredible growth and development of technology and globalization, and this has made it possible to record music from all over the world and to transport it anywhere one wishes, either physically or virtually, as well as allowing composers to compose freely, released from physical musical instruments, from any single practice of composition and from any single musical language. How much this has influenced the modalities of composition and use of music is still to be investigated as a whole, and it is in constant change with the expansion of the Internet and “multiple composition” (involving a number of different musicians, whether professional or not, who all participate in the process of a real time composition).

2. The Tools of Analysis Ethnomusicologists have studied the encounter between the West and the Other according to three main analytic models: Westernization, the construction of ideas of otherness and the “local”, universalization and fragmentation. They correspond to what Hall18 has well summarized in three general trends of the construction of identity that have arisen in the current unprecedented articulation between the different dimensions of the local and the global: 1. the erosion of national identities caused by cultural homogenization; 2. the resistance or strengthening of local identities; 3. hybridization as the development of new identities and “new forms of ethnicity”. Except for some rare exceptions, which compared “primitive” music with Western cultured music, perhaps to exorcise the beginnings of the discipline, throughout the twentieth century the work of ethnomusicologists primarily focused in the study of non-Western musical cultures and the music of the european subordinate classes. They concentrated on music that was perceived as “pure” or “authentic”19, analyzing cultural exchanges only so far as they dealt with the Westernization of the local and/or the 18 19

Hall Stuart, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora”, Identity, Community, Culture, Difference (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990), pp. 222–238. Maud Karpeles, “Some reflections on authenticity in folk music”, Journal of the International Folk Music Council, 3 (1951), pp. 10–16.

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resistance of the local to Westernization. “Hybrid music” was only seen as non-Western music mixed with European elements deriving from the encounter of races and cultures in the Americas. In the eighties, however, globalization also became central to musical culture and ethnomusicology basically interpreted it as universalization and fragmentation, considering the disappearance of geopolitical boundaries and the transcendence of space as inevitable, because of the schizophrenic nature of the media of communication20. The existence of “pure” music was thus denied and the idea emerged that most music arose from a process defined either as hybridization, creolization or fusion. But once again what was observed was the “other”, or the minority21. If the West was considered, it was only so as to study the phenomenon of world music, which had become a popular musical phenomenon, to which much literature was dedicated22. Little attention was paid by ethnomusicologists to the influence of other music on western cultured music, and yet this would seem to be essential in order to understand the world in which we live. In 1973 Carpitella rightly emphasized the fact that if music is culturally constructed, it is also true that there is a very natural conditioning due to one’s immersion in a certain auditory perception: one does not choose what one hears. This “represents a dialectic factor which one cannot ignore, which is to say that every new cultural choice cannot suddenly make a ‘jump’ and then become based on ‘new’ factors which are completely foreign to the custom.” (p. 214) But the free access to world music has changed the scenario, making almost all the music of the world known, or knowable23. 20 21

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Schafer Murray, Il paesaggio sonoro (Milan: Ricordi, 1985). The same trand can be seen in musicology, that frequently studies the influences exercised by western cultured music on the “other” composers of the south of the world. See, for example: Pustianac Ingrid, “La musica d’arte dell’Occidente oltre l’Occidente”, L’etnomusicologia e le musiche contemporanee, Francesco Giannattasio, ed. (Venice: Fondazione Cini, 2009) . EM, “Globalizzazione, identità musicali, diritti, profitti”, Rivista degli archivi di etnomusicologia dell’Accademia nazionale di Santa Cecilia, 1 (2003). An issue that is entirely devoted to the phenomenon. A stimulating reflection on the topic is in: Erlman Veit, Music, Modernity and the Global Immagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Slobin Marc, “Micromusic of the West: a comparative approach”, Ethnomusicology, 36/1 (1992), pp. 1–87; Guibault Jocelyne, “Globalizzazione e localismo”, Enciclopedia della musica…, vol. 5, pp. 138–156.

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Twenty years later, Carpitella24 put forward a hypothesis for an initial system of categorization of the encounter between euro-cultured music and “other” music: a)

An uncritical external approach, fairely typical of all exotic approaches and mostly inspired by “collections” of transcribed or written music, rather than by direct listening (it is interesting to note that a recent study identified about three thousand standardized tarantellas written by XIX century Russian composers). b) A critical approach with correct and appropriate use (e.g. Bartòk). c) An uncritical approach of identification, which corresponds to a kind of craft of plagiarism, with minor restorations and processes of ossification. d) A critical free approach that uses small elements and then deviates from the original model (e.g. Berio’s Folk Songs). […] In the [contemporary] practice of “inter-cultural information” new sounds concretely emerge […] The inter-cultural information is now direct, due to the source, and the appropriation happens without the suggestion of anything primitive, but as an attraction for different musical languages that are concretely, sonically and critically heard and acquired. It is a totally different way of captatio.25

The encounter with “other” music is anyway always seen as a question of appropriation and the situation has still not changed subtantially since 1985. As evidenced by Giuriati’s essay of 2003 in which the author goes beyond Carpitella’s concept of “inter-cultural information” and introduces the concept of “inter-cultural practice”26. Through the analysis of Lou Harrison’s Double concerto for violin, cello and gamelan, Giuriati shows that today we see more and more, in 24

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Diego Carpitella, “Dal mito del primitivo alla informazione interculturale nella musica moderna”, Studi Musicali, 14/1 (1985), pp. 193–208; Diego Carpitella, “Il primitivo nella musica contemporanea”, Conversazioni sulla musica. Lezioni, conferenze, trasmissioni radiofoniche 1955–1990 (Firenze: Ponte alle Grazie 1992), pp. 166–204. Diego Carpitella, “Dal mito del primitivo alla informazione interculturale…”, pp. 203–205. Giovanni Giuriati, “Neoesotismi, primitivismi, informazione e pratica interculturale”, L’eredità di Diego Carpitella, Maurizio Agamennone, Gino L. Di Mitri, eds. (Besa: Nardò, 1990), pp. 333–346; Giovanni Giuriati, “La Cambogia e le musiche del mondo: esotismo, primitivismo, senso di colpa e informazione interculturale”, EM: Annuario degli Archivi di etnomusicologia dell’Accademia nazionale di Santa Cecilia, 1 (2003), pp. 71–88.

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a further overturn of the reversed exotism: “tipping down the exotic: a Western composer who uses Indonesian instruments while following their musical rules and combines them with some European instruments.”27 If we now wish to apply the analytical methods I have mentioned to the phenomenon of electroacoustic music, I think we can read it as a phenomenon of hybridization, and as a development of new identities and “new ethnicities”28. This is because contemporary composers of EM (Electroacoustic Music) do not see themselves as belonging to a national tradition and they attempt to construct a trans-national common language and to strengthen its status as composers of EM, thus practically producing a new hybrid identity. This identity is “positional, political, subject to the vagaries of history, more connected to the economy than it was in modern and pre-modern contexts.”29 In order to understand the development of the “electroacoustic community” it seems particularly fruitful to examine the possibility proposed by Appadurai of new scenarios that arise from the fractures that globalization produces, thanks to the creative potential of the human being. Appadurai’s vision seems to me the most fertile because it fits in with the development of technology and virtual reality. In my opinion the role that Appadurai gives to the individual or collective imagination is crucial30. He sees it as a tool used by individuals to adapt to the choices available to them and the role of the media, seen as producers of resistance, irony, selectivity, and in general, agency. Electroacoustic music includes “The use of electricity for the conception, ideation, creation, storage, production, interpretation, distribution, reproduction, perception, cognition, visualization, analysis, comprehension and/or conceptualization of sound”31. It is a new way of composing, listening, presenting, and participating in music. The principal features of electroacoustic music are: 27 28 29 30 31

Giovanni Giuriati, “Neoesotismi, primitivismi, informazione…”, p. 341. Martin Stokes, ed., Ethnicity, identity and music: the musical construction of place (Oxford-Berg: Providence, 1997). Hall Stuart, “Cultural Identity…”, p. 309. Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Neapolis-London: University of Minnesota Press, 1996). Kevin Austin, “Electroacoustic definition”, Extract from CECDISCUSS list 7, September 2001: . CECDISCUSS is a forum created by the Canadian Electroacoustic Community (CEC) and many practitioners of electroacoustic music use it communicate with each other.

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A wide-ranging use of synthesized sounds A reaffirmation of the aural experience in composition, performance, listening and analysis An interaction with techniques from different traditions (oral, written, electroacoustic) and increasing numbers of compositions for magnetic tapes, electronic instruments and computers or for instruments and live electronics A tendency to listen to any type of recorded music32

This involves the liberation of the sound as such – an acoustic process – at the expense of the conception of music as a succession of notes. This liberation is the culmination of a series of developments that include the liberation of dissonance, pitch (including the system of intonation and tuning), dynamics, structure, timbre, and space from the traditional restrictions and practices of euro-cultured music. Any parameter of sound traditionally used in a musical euro-cultured context can be used freely in electroacoustic music. Pitch, durations, or intensity, usually subjected to and governed by the conventional system of measuring, can now be freely re-elaborated. But the use of electronics also makes possible the synthesis of totally new sounds, total control over sampled sounds, the possibility to use and elaborate sound objects taken from any location, and the creation of virtual spaces and contexts (realistic or fictitious). The types of composition of EM are distinguished from the types of elaboration of the sonic materials: additional subtractive and non-linear synthesis, concrete sound, granular synthesis, timbric modulation, analysis and re-synthesis, physical models, delay lines, etc. The form of the piece of music is determined by the process of elaboration of the sound, and in this process the analysis and synthesis of the timbre is central33. In one of the interviews I conducted with the composer Alessandro Cipriani he emphasized the potential of this way of making music and the freedom that comes from composing music that is delocalized and without a physical identity, and without a single history or a market to which one is 32 33

Leigh Landy, Understanding the Art of Sound Organization (Cambridge, Mass): The MIT Press, 2007). According to Pierre Schaeffer, the sound object should “be appreciated on the basis of their abstract timbral characteristics as opposed to their own specific nature such as source, cause, or context.” (Landy Leigh, Understanding the art of sound organization (Cambridge, Mass.): The MIT Press, 2007), p. 4.

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accountable. In this way, a new type of relationship with music develops, in which technology plays a vital role. But as the composer Barry Truax has noted, in itself technology does not necessarily cause a change of paradigms. New ideas can lead to new technology, but not necessarily vice versa34. Cipriani points out that the role of aurality, while it is very important for electronic music, does not necessarily entail a change in the paradigms of composition: the electroacoustic composition often also involves writing (though this is less and less the case), or at least a spectral or waveform visualization on a computer or a similar device. The electroacoustic composition is therefore at one and the same time oral, written and computer-based. Part of it also does not take place in real time since, by elaborating recordings or synthesized sounds, the composer can stop and go back to listen to the sonic material again or reprocess it, just as in the case of composition by means of writing on the pentagram35. Most important, what Cipriani reveals is that despite the new technologies and approaches to sound, electroacustic composers are still inside the mental mechanisms of the “visual culture”. The existence of a widespread virtual context, however, is undeniable: composition, performance and listening are no longer tied to a place, a space, or a medium. In 2008 the most important journal for electroacoustic music composers, Organized Sound, devoted an entire issue to the global/ local connections in electroacoustic music, pointing out how much this music has its own existence in the digital space of mechanical reproductions and in the virtual space of the internet, and how close it is to the schizophonic world of sampled sounds (whether musical or not)36. For Appadurai the cultural global economy produces a complex setting that is realized in and through the increasing separation of five –“scapes” – socio-cultural, of the media, technological, financial and conceptual – within which people imagine and construct their identity37. These “–scapes” – are useful for understanding the current electroacoustic community: we are not dealing with immigrants, but citizens of the world, who live everywhere but who 34 35 36

37

Barry Truax, “‘Sequence of Earlier Heaven’: The Record as a Medium for the Electroacoustic Composer”, Leonardo, 21/1 (1988), pp. 25–28. Cipriani Alessandro, “Verso una tradizione elettroacustica? Appunti per una ricerca”, Musica/Realtà, 49 (1996), pp. 18–24. Cipriani Alessandro, “Global/Local”, Organised Sound, 13/2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) For a discussion of the concept of “shizophonia” see: Murray Shafer, The tuning of the world (New York: A. Knopf, 1977). Ethnoscapes; mediascapes, technoscapes, finanscapes, ideoscapes.

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are in constant contact with each other and who travel frequently, working not only in their own countries of origin but also elsewhere, creating new music thanks to new technologies and new ideas. Art for art’s sake in the music of the twentieth century not only creating micro-communities of users, but since it was not linked to a functional use, or an everyday context, it helped to create delocalized communities, united by a compositional style, and by a communicative aim expressed in a common musical language. Composers of electroacoustic music know each other and constantly keep in touch through various discussion forums, conferences, real and virtual festivals, experiences of collective performance in remote, so that they consider themselves to be a community, a community that consists of their shared interests and experiences, in which local needs and global potentialities coexist and give rise to an endless creative potential. The composers of EM therefore fit into what Bruce Cole defined “community arts”38: they develop communicative and creative practices in common, also making the most of the possibility of working online. In this way the distinction is blurred between individuals and communities in the public space, between producers and consumers, as well as between global and local. Landy clearly explains what this means: Communities go hand in hand with diversity. Of course, there is no turning back in terms of globalization. What is being suggested here is an optimal balance between massive global communities and similarly global approaches to soundbased music and local ones. The local can remain geographically sited, but other communities can be tied together through the Internet and the like, emphasizing their particular community interests. The future of sound-based music will be one that not only celebrates so-called universals, but equally one that celebrates local values in at least equal portion, an ideal manner of supporting diverse communities of interest and thus access. […] The art of organized sound offers us new means of celebration, of ritual, of sharing. As technology evolves, music as celebration will take on a range of new forms. Each community will be able to define its own celebration(s).39

This is a sort of democratization of music, thanks to the practice of co-authorship which is well expressed in the above mentioned issue of Organized Sound: “electroacoustic music presents itself as a territory of 38 39

Bruce Cole, “MIDI and Communality”, Organised Sound 1/1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 51–54. Landy Leigh, Understanding the art…, pp. 61–62.

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global exchange […] which is continually being (re)defined also because of the continual relationship with local music and soundscapes”40. In the cases that I have investigated of the use of the “other” by the composers of electroacoustic music, the general definition supplied by the ethnomusicologist Turino of some contemporary phenomena of identity seems appropriate: “cosmopolitanism”41. Turino uses the term “cosmopolitan” instead of “global” to indicate objects, ideas and cultural positions that are widely distributed in the world, but at the same time are specific only for some portions of the population of specific countries. Cosmopolitanism is a specific type of cultural formation and the formation of habits that is trans-local. Nevertheless, it includes practices, material technologies and conceptual networks, and it must therefore be realized in specific places and in the lives of active people. It is therefore always localized and will be formed by, and in some way distinguished by, each location. A cosmopolitan cultural education is therefore always simultaneously local and trans-local. It is not specific to a single individual or a few of his neighbours, but it regards people located in different places who are not necessarily in close geographic proximity, but who are instead connected by various forms of media, contacts and interchanges. They are connected through space by the similar constitutions of habits, which create the basis for social communication, alliance and competition42. Apart from intentions and modes of behaviour, what I intend to verify by means of a careful analysis of the repertoires of EM in its encounter with the  music of the world is to what degree this new identity is also reflected in the syntax and grammar of composition and how this occurs. What role does the search for an identity play in the way the community of electronic music composers actually make music? How much of their cultural roots and origins do they bring into play, and to what degree do they create a common language?

40

41 42

Cipriani Alessandro, Latini Giulio, “Global/Local Issues in electroacoustic Music for the Cinema af the Real: A case study”, Organised Sound, 13 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 89–96, especially, p. 91. Turino Thomas, Nationalists, cosmopolitans and popular music in Zimbabwe (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 2000). Turino Thomas, Nationalists, cosmopolitans…, p. 7.

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3. Electro-acoustic Music and the Encounter with the Other Electroacoustic music at least intends to annul the distance from the other in the name of the creation of a new space of identity thanks to the communion of musical practices made possible by technology. This is not the place for indicating the near-infinite number of examples of this practice. Ever since Stockhausen’s “Telemusik” (1966) experimentation has increased more and more, and national borders have become increasingly uncertain and blurred. Just one example of this is the work of Alireza Mashayekhi, since this Iranian composer uses Western and Iranian instruments keep while maintaining their respective tunings and playing techniques, in the search for a dialogue between musical worlds that are very far apart. But to what extent does this encounter really constitute a genuine inter-cultural dialogue? Does electroacoustic music really have this ability to cross boundaries? To answer these two questions it seems to me essential to conduct a study of a purely ethno-musicological nature. There are many issues to be considered, ranging from the composer’s intentions to those of the musician(s) involved. Have the aesthetic attitudes that composers had towards non-euro-cultured music in the past faded away or do they still persist? To what extend has globalization changed the scenario of the encounter between cultures? Are the questions posed regarding the interest of euro-cultured composers between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries still central? How much influence does the search for authenticity, meaning, roots and the Western aesthetic have upon the encounter between electronic music and other music? To the “uninitiated” the non-euro-cultured or so-called “traditional” music seems to transcend time and culture, but this is not the case. Traditional music is not, in any case, the picture of any original purity, or that of an intact musical past; above, and therefore, subject to change like any organism, it always expresses the present, showing the confluences and stages that have marked its course of production43.

The bearers of this music themselves might not be closely tied to their own traditions, or they might want to get away from it. Not infrequently migrant musicians, who left their countries of origin many years ago, 43

Laurent Aubert, The Music…, p. 22.

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are involved in electroacoustic compositions. How closely are they tied to their own traditions, or have they already modified it through the encounter with the euro-cultured West? Traditional music is strongly influenced by the occasion of the performance, its function and space-time conditions. Thus, when it is exported the problem arises of how to make sense of the structures of reference of a kind of music that is normally anchored to another context and another situation. It is not an “ethical” matter but rather a purely musical question: every musical performance is always determined by a space-time context, an audience, a use and a function that provide points of reference (for example, a ritual or a dance). Without these points of reference which guide the performance or execution it will necessarily undergo various substantial changes. Extrapolating or removing a musical performance from its original context effectively means that it loses its relative tradition, roots and meaning. Blacking44 has clearly shown that we should not confuse social and/or cultural behaviour with musical behaviour. One solution proposed by the composers of electroacoustic music themselves45 is to shorten the distances with a trip and/or dialogue with the musicians and the bearers of that musical culture. The fact remains that the electronic composition de-contextualizes the repertoire that it adopts and uses. But to what extent does this immersion in the context affect the composition? In the previous paragraph it was pointed out how electroacoustic composition is very free from the physical, historical and cultural context. But what then does it mean to be inspired by a culture to realize one’s own music, and to what extent does an immersion in the original context affect one’s final composition? “The use of culturally based aspects of music also allows works to be about something”46. Some composers, as Alessandro Cipriani pointed out to me in an interview, see the music of other cultures as a lifeline in a form of music that is so free from everything that it does not provide any points of reference47. But does it make sense at the present time to speak of a context, when contexts are disappearing, or at any rate are being transformed? Is this not 44 45 46

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Blacking John, How Musical is Man (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1973). Cipriani Alessandro, Global/Local… Simon Emmerson, “Crossing Cultural Boundaries through Technology?”, Music, Electronic Media and Culture, Simon Emmerson, ed. (Aldershot: Ashgate-Organised Sound, 2000), pp. 115–137. Fulvia Caruso, “World Music”, AM. Antropologia museale, 21 (2009), pp. 153–155.

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an ethnocentric distortion of the facts? In many areas of the world it is by now evident that cultural traditions are no longer widespread, or indeed that they no longer exist. There is also a purely aesthetic question. For too long it has been maintained that since non-euro-cultured music is largely functional it is devoid of an aesthetic. But this is not the case, since by extrapolating music from its original context and importing it into another its aesthetic and psychological qualities are inevitably lost. In the above mentioned issue of Organized Sound the question of the encounter with the other is also examined. It is fruitful instead of overwhelming and domineering if it takes the context and people involved into account, and if the composer engages in a continuous reflection on his motivations, as well as his approach to sound materials and the culture from which they originate48. He must also be sensitive to the concept of restitution and therefore aware of the need to “give something in return”49. The challenge is to understand if, apart from the intentions and motives behind it, music is able to implement this “trade on equal terms”. The difference lies in the kind of music that is created: if it entails a dialectic between modern creativity and ethnic-musical heritage at the level of structures, which leads to new solutions in terms of language, or if it is a case of exotic or “folkloristic” quotations in an ethnocentric context, or, what is worse, poor imitations. Robert Gluck, who for at least a decade has been using musical instruments from all over the world in his compositions states that “three elements must be present to achieve respectful adaptation [in cross-cultural borrowing]: an appreciation of the contents and value of other culture on its own terms; a desire to speak from one’s own personal artistic voice without mimicking the other culture, and an awareness that can be articulated to an audience of the fine line between creative borrowing and disrespectful appropriation.”50. This happens only when the practice of composition takes place in a reflective and fully conscious way. A genuine ethnographical study of the electroacoustic community is needed in order to better understand its true nature and culture, as well 48 49 50

Gluck Robert, “Between, Within and Across Cultures”, Organised Sound, 13 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 141–152. Cipriani Alessandro, Latini Giulio, “Global/Local Issues in electroacoustic Music…”, p. 93. Gluck Robert, “Between, Within and Across…”, p. 143.

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as the whole phenomenon it represents51. This should be done through an in-depth study of the means of communication it uses (such as the journals Organized Sound and Computer Music Journal and various websites used by composers of electroacustic music, which include that of the International Computer Music Association, EARS, IRCAM, of Canadian Electroacoustic Community, and the Virtual Sound forum), as well as through a dialogue with the composers, a careful study of their of creations, which would take every aspect of their products into account (for example the appearance of the CDs, the booklets and texts included with them, the order of the tracks, their thematic content, etc.52). Also a rigorous ethnomusicological analysis, which would truly examine the ethnography of “other” musical languages with which the composers have entered into a dialogue, is required. Finally, each composition should be analyzed not as a mere neutral “sound object”, but as the end product of a process of encounter with people and music, subsequent re-elaborations of materials, etc. This process of analysis should include interviews with the musicians involved, especially if they are directly engaged in the creative process, evaluating the original materials and tracks on which the final compositions are based, as well as the intermediate stages and alternative versions that lead to the creation of the final work, and thus creating an ethnography of the compositional process. Obviously all of this is not possible without a rigorous musical analysis of the final composition, which in the case of electroacoustic music requires a specific system of analysis from one composer to another. Each composer, in fact, develops a compositional language of his own, which often varies from one piece to another. It is therefore necessary to take a series of parameters into account and in recent years several different analytical methods have been developed. In this perspective it is also important to understand what happens when the composer uses portions of “other” music. Do they maintain their 51

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The only existing ethnographic case study was conducted by Georgina Born regarding the behavior of the IRCAM members. See: Georgina Born, Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalization of the Musical Avant-Garde (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). An excellent example of all-round information about composers is in the Groupe de Recherches Musicales series Portrait Polycromes, which incudes interviews, work discussions and analyses of various published booklets and online sources, using a wide variety of media. See the internet site: .

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identity or are they totally transformed and disguised? Cifariello Ciardi, reflecting on the use of traditional music in electroacoustic compositions, suggests four distinct approaches to the material: quotation, integration, translation and encapsulation53. “Quotation” consists of a voluntary insertion by a composer of a sound event that is extraneous to the other sounds. “Integration” – a more frequent practice – involves manipulating the sound material so as to connect it with the sounds that surround it while maintaining its recognizable qualities. In “translation” the composer does not directly use an acoustic event with specific features, but borrows some of its morphological aspects and uses them to semantically define another event. Finally in “encapsulation” the extraneous material is used mainly for its symbolic significance and it is therefore not changed. It is certainly not of secondary importance to take into account what the composer intends to communicate. For example Truax believes that pieces should have a context and a relationship to real-world experience, in addition to the ability to rouse emotions. While conducting an ethnographic study of a number of compositions by Alessandro Cipriani that created a dialogue with “other” kinds of music, in order to analyse their musical features I chose to put my trust in the method of Smalley, i.e. “to start from the perceptive choices of the listener-analyst who selects relevant criteria”54 so as to identify the type of treatment of “other” music in the cases defined by Cifariello Ciardi. I therefore listened to the production of Alessandro Cipriani’s electronic music in order to familiarize myself with the different musical languages that he uses and to identify the criteria that are pertinent to my research. Can we still percieve the presence of non-euro-cultured music in each of his compositions and to what extent is it apparent? Does Cipriani place it in the foreground or in the background? At which point of his compositions is the other music placed? How much do these borrowings of other music influence the process of composition on the whole and if so, in what way? What is the relationship of duration and intensity between the parts of apparent emerging “otherness” and the rest of the piece? 53 54

Fabio Cifariello-Ciardi, “Local and Global Connotations in Sonic Composition”, Organised Sound, 13/2 (2008), pp. 123–136. Denis Smalley, “Listening Imagination: Listening in the Electroacoustic Era”, Contemporary Musical Thought, 2 vols., John Paynter, Tim Howell, Richard Orton, Peter Seymour, eds. (London: Routledge, 1992), vol. 1, p. 423.

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In order to illustrate my work, I will now present an example of such an analysis: the composition entitled Al Nur – (La luce) 55, by Alessandro Cipriani.

4. Al Nur-(La luce) by Alessandro Cipriani The product analyzed is an audio CD, but the project also involved several live performances both with and without sound processing in real time, in addition to the realization of a video directed by Giulio Latini and with the collaboration of the anthropologist and film-maker Marco Rovetto. The CD is called Al Nur – (La luce), and it consists of 6 different tracks: Jasminb, Into the Light, Al Nur (La luce), Acqua Sapientiae/Angelus Domini, Mimaa’ Makim, Net56. Cipriani points out that tracks 3–5 are to be considered as a sort of triptych based on Muslim, Gregorian and Hebrew religious chants respectively. The CD notes tell us only that Al Nur is based on “an Islamic chant”, that Acqua Sapientiae/Angelus Domini is based on “three Gregorian chants” and that Mimaa’ Makim is based on “a Hebrew song”. The texts are presented in their respective languages (Arabic, Latin, Hebrew), which cannot all be understood by most people. It was presumably for this reason that the composer evidently did not see it as necessary or important to use the material he had recorded in its entirety. In fact this conclusion is backed up by the composer’s own sleeve-notes to the CD: “I feel is like a dissolving of the dualism between the composer (active) and the material (passive), between subject and object that is taking place in my work and in myself: I feel as though I where a channel through which sound waves pass, as though I were a dynamic filter…”. The boundaries are thus dissolved, according to the composer’s intentions, and also in the process of composition. The technique mainly used by Cipriani is the “blocks technique” which he himself conceived and elaborated in 199357. It is a compositional system 55 56 57

Alessandro Cipriani, Al Nur – (La luce) (Compagnia Nuove Indie e Edison Studio, Look studio srl/anagrumba srl, 2001). There are also 2 final bonus tracks which are further elaborations of the first track, created by two of Cipriani’s students. Successively elaborated and implemented through the system PODX Barry Truax system, this tecnique was used for the first time in Recordare: a series of pieces for double bass and bass recorder and tape, and In Memory of a Recorder (1994),

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of fragmentation and reassembly based on a fourfold modality of reading any sampled sound and on the subsequent construction of a multiplicity of fragments derived from the same initial sound. The idea is to split an audio file into blocks, i.e. portions of sound that may last from one-tenth of a second to three seconds. The file is read, or rather played, following a score that indicates which blocks to play, in what order and direction, and when. These are often infinitesimal durations, but they are still longer than those of granular synthesis. In fact, strictly speaking, the blocks technique is neither a synthesis technique nor a technique of sound processing. This allows for greater dialogue with the starting material. In an interview with the composer58 he explains that the process of transformation, which is at the heart of the electroacoustic compositional procedure, does not alter the timbre and pitch of the sounds. What truly changes is the structure of the piece, which is influenced by the materials used. As Cipriani wrote in the booklet of the CD, “I do not consider these pieces of the oral tradition as a ‘basic material’ on which I have worked. It is the same pieces themselves that are active, they are what changes my music, up to the point that I accept a melody as it is or regular rhythms without fragmenting them (as would be the custom in contemporary music, which is the milieu from which I come)…” 59. Let us now analyse the music itself. The different tracks, being digital, do not only have a horizontal dimension of their development in time and a vertical dimension (of their frequencies), but a third dimension of virtual space is added that goes beyond the use of the dynamics, creating layers in the foreground and the background. The sound material from the oral tradition is thus not only developed over time, being transformed by the “blocks technique”, but thanks to its transformation it enters into a dialogue with the original material, moving from the foreground to the background and creates a sort of dance between the original form and its elaboration. It is the emergence of the more or less pure original material that gives the pieces their structure. This kind of development of the material is quite homogeneous in all of the tracks. The different sampled instruments, including the voice, are used so that their timbres characterize the different sections of the pieces. It seems to me that each piece features

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published on CD “Elettronica_Italiana Vol.2” – Twilight TWI Music CD 07 02 (2007). The technique is described in the volume Cipriani, A., Giri, M. Electronic Music and Sound Design: theory and practice with Max/MSP (Rome: ConTempoNet, 2012). On 23rd October 2011. From the notes of the CD booklet.

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a particular musical element: percussion in the first song, stratification in track 2, rhythm in track 3, and repetition in track 4. I have chosen to analyze in more detail the track Al Nur – (La luce), because it is the central track of the CD, giving its title to the CD. This piece is composed with different software programmes using material recorded in Rome with the musicians Nour-Eddine Fatty from Morocco (voice and nay flute) and the Iranian Mohsen Kasirossafat (zarb and daf). They are both traditional musicians but they have a cosmopolitan live. Apart from the version for voice, nay, zarb, daf and magnetic tape there is another version of this piece: an acousmatic stereo surround 5.1 version, but here I will analyze only the version that is on the CD. When asked in an interview why he chose those instruments and those players Cipriani answered as follows60: I was looking for an expert of Islamic chant and I made enquiries at the central mosque of Rome. They addressed me to Nour Eddine. Mohsen Kasirossafar is a well known percussionist in the world of contemporary music in Rome. – What does he play? – “He cites some traditional rhythmic patterns, but I asked him to play also some fragments and single beats on the drum.” – And what about the song of Nour-Eddine Fatty? – He told me he was improvising on the basis of a song he already knew. The melody is probably based on pre-existing traditional melodic formulas. – Do you know the meaning of the text? – “Yes: ‘I saw a light on the mountain, let’s go to this light…’ I was fascinated by the fact that the whole text is about light.” – Did the meaning of the text influence your choice of the fragments of text you used? (Sometimes you reiterate some small, almost syllabic, fragments of text, sometimes longer portions…) – “I concentrated on the sound more than on the words. My intention was to evocate the various call to prayer from the loudspeakers of mosques in a city which enter into a dialogue with each other. Within the piece on the whole I tried to create the image of a journey towards the light. Sometimes a difficult one, with moments of going back, stops, tensions, developments, till the end of the piece, which opens on daf, with a hypnotic regular rhythm (although with some internal delays) that dissolves the previous tensions.”

The zarb or tonbak is the chief percussion instrument in Persian music. It is a goblet-shaped skin drum, the musical role of which is to rhythmically underpin the performance of the soloist. The word zarb means “to play”, 60

On 23rd October 2011.

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which to me seems to suggest that the role of percussion in this music is by no means secondary. In fact the marking of time and rhythm is central to Persian Music. The daf is a large frame drum that is played in popular and classical music. The frame consists of four interlinked rings and the daf is sometimes equipped with rings or small cymbals. The zarb thus emphasises the time and rhythm of music with its well-defined metallic and penetrating beat, while the daf, also due to the presence of rings and cymbals and the particular way it is played, produces a series of sounds that are linked to each other, and the skin membrane has a deeper and less metallic sound. My analysis of the track “Al Nur”, (see table) reveals that the structure is bipartited and that each of the two parts has a central section of greater dynamic intensity and timbric depth. In the first section Cipriani mostly processes the singing, and in the second the percussion. The original material constantly emerges and engages in a dialogue with its elaboration, and it comes to the surface, maintaining its original musical characteristics, while revealing the other materials. Both the original sounds and their electronic elaboration have the same emphasis, because have the same value for the composer. The emergence of the original recorded sounds also affects the entire sytax of the composition. Cipriani told me this depends form the fact that melody and regular rhythm, which are almost banned from Electroacustic Music, are very present here, but I think it is also because the language of the piece is influenced by the qualities of the particular instruments used. Percussion and stratification are in fact the two main elements that characterize the whole piece. Also the voice is treated so as to be sometimes percussive and sometimes a layer, and the sound of the ney is mostly elaborated by means of granular synthesis, so to seem percussive and persistent. The zarb is alternatively elaborated with reverb to make it more persistent (stratified) and altered in pitch so to emphasize its percussive nature (see the rhythmic element A in the Table). Thickness and rarefaction are reached through the stratification of pitches and sound objects more than with their intensity. In conclusion, Cipriani is not so much interested in the peculiarities of the syntax and grammar of Islamic music (its modes and rhythms), or in its specifically national (Morocco and Iran) characteristics, and he ignores the relationship between significant-signifier in Arab sounds (for example the way percussive rhythms are organized according to the high or low pitches). In fact the musicians Cipriani chose are cosmopolitan emigrant professionals who are thoroughly used to mixing various

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different genres and forms. Cipriani is instead interested in the qualities of sound per se and in the characteristics of the religious chant. Apart from the question of intentions and behaviours, does it still make sense to seek the purity of “otherness” in forms of music that have a very strong language, the fundamental basis of which is sound and its elaboration, in music performed by cosmopolitan musicians? In my opinion Alessandro Cipriani’s work has perfectly captured the essence of the sounds that he has used elaborated. He has used the acoustic properties of two specific instruments to create his own composition. The meaning of the words of Nour Eddine guides the musical journey. Transformation and objectification are central to this piece (even the voice, which was a key element, as Cipriani explained to me, is treated as a pure sound), but the author has a precise awareness of its purpose. The composition is authorial and electroacoustic, but it is also the creation of a composer who wishes to express the experience of an inter-cultural encounter. In fact, in 2000 (a year before the CD was made) Cipriani travelled (with the director Giulio Latini and the anthropologist Marco Rovetto) to several Berber villages of Morocco in order to make a documentary. As he wrote in the article published in Organized Sound in 2008, despite the lack of time available and the difficulties of mutual comprehension, there was a mediation between the composer, the context and the musician he referred to (Nour Eddine). The aim of the composition, as explained in the CD notes I have quoted from, is a message of spiritual elevation. The composer confirms this fact in what he wrote regarding the live performance of the piece in 1999 at the International Computer Music Conference in Beijing, where it was accompanied, without any previous consultation with the composer, by a choreographic performance by a dance company from Beijing: In the passage from the original Muslim song to the electroacoustic piece and the coreographic elaboration realized in China, the meaning was deeply transformed, but the emotions of the singer Nour Eddine, my own as a composer and those of the choreographer Wang Yuan Yuan regarding the piece and its form all appeared very similar. When these people talked about their involvement they all mentioned a feeling of the piece as a journey connected to the idea of an inner (or spiritual) force and a sense of final liberation. Nevertheless, these three aspects were certainly perceived from very different perspectives by all three of us and we all probably felt the exotic nature of each other’s interventions61. 61

Cipriani Alessandro, “Global/Local…”, p. 94.

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Cipriani’s words remind me of a statement which I think is absolutely relevant to this kind of experience: “The interaction between traditional music genres of the world and their new audiences develops like a game of mirrors in which each looks to the other for the reflection of his or her own ideal”62.

Annexe Table Structure

time 00’0”

01’05”

01’51” A1

02’12”

62

Succession of isolated sounds of the zarb with low use of technology (amplification and reverb). From a recurrence of fast percussive zarb sound, elaborated sounds of the zarb and the daf emerge, subjected to stretching with very long and overlapping fade-outs. Emergence of sound bands at high and low frequencies both. The sound has a layered quality. The pure sound of the zarb returns and is immediately elaborated. The elaborated sound of the ney flute anticipates the voice of Nour Eddine (2’15”) at the same frequency. The voice is recognizable, but only the first two syllables of the text are used, quickly played as a canon and superimposed upon their re-elaboration. Meanwhile the sounds of the zarb and the daf elaborated and in reverse appear at intervals over the continuous sounds of the voice and the ney flute. From 2’35” onwards the syllables are reduced to the two vowels O and E. There is a process of progressive densification.

Laurent Aubert, The Music…, p. 32.

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Structure

time

02’51” 03’10”

A2

03’31”

03’44” 03’46” 03’55” 04’08 04’46”

A3 05’20”

06’24”

07’15”

A4

08’02”

08’30” 08’40” 08’46”

The elaborated voice takes over. The two vowel sounds are shortened and repeated in rapid succession, almost obsessively, while the sounds of the flute elaborated on the computer increasingly appear in the foreground. A single and united layering of sustained sounds. The sound of the zarb is superimposed upon the layering of sounds (without the long reverb that previously characterised it) and it is repeated in rallentando while being altered in pitch in an ascending trajectory (rhythmic element A). Soon after (3’34”) some new higher and overlapping sounds of the ney flute emerge. Rhythmic element A returns at a lower tone. The sounds of the ney flute converge toward a unison. 3 repetitions of rhythmic element A at higher frequencies (the second with an extra beat, the thirdat a higher frequency). High and fast repetitions of rhythmic element A. The sounds of the ney flute drop to a lower pitch. On the previous sound layer, after the high sound has disappeared, a reverberated zarb sound reappears (4’46) (4’52”). The granular synthesis re-elaborations of the sounds of the flute are added to the superposed lines of the flute. Over the bordone consisting of these sounds, the voice of Noure Eddine enters in the foreground, on the same main frequency with a reverb effect, singing the complete verse. After about 30” the reverberation is perceived more clearly because of the gradual extinction of the flute sounds. The voice is left alone, with only the reverb effect, and it perform the whole song. The voice reverts to the background and its elaboration with the blocks technique emerges and the song stops at 7’18”. Its elaboration consists of a fast repetition of syllables in a sequence of fragments that become increasingly densely layered on different levels of the virtual space. The voice in its integrity returns to the foreground, together with its elaboration (with the blocks technique, creating an almost percussive layer), on the same level, but not particularly loud. The percussion of the daf, which is elaborated from the start, joins in. It continues with a bordone of layers of sustained sound that are broken up by some percussive sounds. Both the original voice and its elaboration slowly disappear. Multiple overlaps of tracks of the original voice form a reverberated and equalized band that gives a sense of remoteness. Several beats of the elaborated daf are added to this.

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Structure

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time

08’54”

09’08”

09’48”

B1 10’10”

10’28” 11’11” 11’20” 11’40”

11’48”

B2 11’59”

13’40” 14’32” 14’48” B3 15’20”

Over this band of sound the percussion of the unelaborated zarb is added, which establishes a dialogue with its re-elaboration, emphasizing the characteristic sliding and persistent sounds of the instrument. The sounds of the elaborated daf emerge from the background, also in reverse. Only the sound of the overlapping voices remains, first in the background and progressively emerging into the foreground. It is created by the layering of the elaborations of the voice as a canon. Some very short melodic and rhythmic cells emerge taken from the original recording of the voice. The vocal layer goes back into the background and the dialogue (spatialized in stereo) between the zarb and its elaborated sound reappears in the foreground, with irregular rhythms that are progressively intensified and increased in their density. While the original zarb remains the same its elaborated sound introduces a second sound, thereby producing an ascending semitone interval, which is repeated several times, while the unelaborated zarb emphasises the lower sound. The vocal canon reappears in the background. A new zarb sound produced by the percussion of the edge of the instrument is added. The vocal canon returns in the foreground and the densification increases as regards both the overlapping of new layers and the growth of intensity. Element A returns and meanwhile the sharp sound of the flute emerges in glissando elaborated with granular synthesis and remaining as a high band. Upon these densely layered sounds the pure sound of the unelaborated daf is added in the foreground. The three sonic elemens (voice, daf and flute) begin to alternate in their functions as background elements, by processes of mixing, reverb and EQ. The voice elaborated by the blocks technique reappears in the layering. The vocal sound blocks become more evident and comprehensible. All of the voices fall silent, leaving only the percussion with the granular synthesis of the flute. On top of the delicate background of the flute the voice reappears elaborated with EQ and reverb, sounding as if it were a megaphone.

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Structure

time 15’35” 15.54”

B3 16’20” 16’45”

The voice is multiplied and superimposed. More original voices sing the first phrase of the text like a chorus (at two different frequencies separated by the interval of a seventh). Only the bordone remains in the background and after a few seconds only the granular synthesis sound of flute remains, embellished by one last quotation from the original sound of the flute. The granular sound decreases until it finally disappears.

The Role of the Significant Other in the Construction of National Identities Graciela Spector Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Dan McAdams1 stated that from the initial bonding, which binds us forever to our parents, the experiences of the first year of life have such importance that they will determine the level of optimism or pessimism that will characterize the narrative tone that we will exhibit in adulthood. The themes of power and love, which for this author are the motivating currents of our adult life, also relate to the stories we have heard, learned and created during our childhood. What happens then with a life story is embedded with voices of death, horror, loss, exile, fear? This is the question that leads me to analyze the role of others in the history of life. While the central voice of a story is that of the narrator, we also hear echoes of many other voices: close or distant, concordant or dissonant, warm or threatening. These Others populate stories, and we do not always know who is the owner of the clear voice we hear. Thorne2 emphasizes the role of these “Others” when he says that the construction of the defining memories of the self and life stories constitutes always a social enterprise, “the family and friends conspire in the construction of the self ”. For Hermans3, the self is a polyphonic novel, which contains a multitude of internalized voices that converse among themselves. McAdams4 considers that entire history of life is formulated bearing in mind an internal or external 1 2 3 4

Dan McAdams, The stories we live by: Personal myths and the making of the self (New York: Morrow, 1993). Avril Thorne, “Personal memory telling and personality development”, Personality and Social Psychology Review, 4 (2000), pp. 45–56. Hubert J. M. Hermans, “Voicing the self: From information processing to dialogical interchange”, Psychological Bulletin, 119 (1996), p. 31–50. Dan McAdams, “The role of defense in the life story”, Journal of personality, 66 (1998), p. 1125–1146.

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audience. Someone is always listening or watching: friends or acquaintances, parents or children, the Freudian superego, Mead’s Generalized Other, internalized objects, or God. There are many difficult questions that accompany our work as interviewerd, and that will have to find plausible answers to carry out our interpretative task. “Who is speaking now? Who am I now? Who am I representing now in the eyes of the narrator? Whom is the narrator addressing now? I propose to analyze here an example of the construction of national identities, employing the narrative method following McAdams, who states that “identity is an internalized life story5. The process of construction of national identities has as its main objective to explain our social and geographic belonging. This is an instance of the “social construction of reality6”, or – in Winnicott’s7 words, the permanent “task of accepting reality”, an effort that in his opinion never reaches completion. It means that the answer to the question “who am I? Needs a “fiction” to bridge the inner and the outer reality. This answer is at the same time based on elements from the external world and on others that belong to the inner reality, to the subjective world. In the case of immigrants, we can count among the former the status granted by the new country (inhabitant, citizen), the relative status of the newcomer’s ethnic group in relation to other groups in society, the social status of his native tongue in relation to the majority language, the attitudes society holds towards his ethnic group, etc. Nevertheless, together with these external factors, other “subjective” elements will also color the answer: those belong to the personal biography of the person: his childhood experiences, his own perception of his ethnic identity, his feelings of being accepted or rejected by “significant others” throughout his life, etc. This explains why the individual’s relationship towards his national identity, the way in which he defines himself, the naturalness or lack of naturalness with which he accepts a certain national identity, cannot be predicted solely by demographic data. The nationality that appears on someone’s identity card is important, but it does not suffice. The person fictionalizes these data on the basis of the need to provide himself with an answer he can live with. 5 6 7

Dan McAdams, “The Psychology of Life Stories”, Review of General Psychology, 5/2 (2001), p. 100. Peter L. Berger, Thomas Luckman, The Social Construction of Reality (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1967). Donald W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality (London: Tavistock. Pelican Books, 1971).

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National identities are constructed in different ways. While some are inherited, others are acquired. Among the inherited ones, which constitute a part of the basic elements of social identity, it is possible to distinguish families which are deeply rooted in a certain identity, who have possessed it for many generations, and families which change their original identity and whose children exhibit a different one as a consequence of immigration. Sometimes, history pushes human beings towards other nation towards another narration, into another language through another culture. In these cases, the story is so violent that it requires that the subject moves, migrate, or which is referred to as citizen of a country that has not even elected, even through the painful Agency of the Migration Act8. The construction of identity is carried out by the individual, but is not however a solitary or independent task. Berger 9 reminds us that, on the contrary, “identity is socially bestowed, socially sustained and socially transformed …taking the role of the other is decisive for the formation of the self ”. Coles10 claims also that “one way or another, the other plays a fundamental role in how the self is formulated, enlivened and embodied in life and in the academic discourse”. Despite this, the investigation of the role of others in the construction of identities has not elicited great interest from the various social disciplines. In one of the few works that have been written on the topic, Coles11, claims that “the Self has received renewed attention across disciplines in recent years”. There are dialogic selves12, redemptive selves13, muscled selves14, mediated selves15. However, she adds, 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

15

Paola Zaccaria, “Translating Borders, Performing Trans-nationalism”, Human Architecture Journal of the sociology of self-knowledge, 4 (2006), p. 60. Peter L. Berger, Thomas Luckman, The Social Construction…, p. 98–99. Roberta Coles, “Others in the making of Selves”, Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Norman K. Denzin, ed. (Bingley: Emerald, 2008), p. 97. Roberta Coles, “Others in the making…”. Michail Bakhtin, The dialogic imagination, Michael Holquist, ed. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981). Dan Mc Addams, The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans live by (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). Andrew Sparkes, Joanne Batey, David Brown, “The Muscled Self and its aftermath: A life history study of an elite, black, male bodybuilder”, Auto/Biography, 13 (2005), pp. 131–160. Jessica Sawrey, “Wouldn’t it be nice: Performing the mediated self ”, Qualitative Inquiry, 11/5 (2005), pp. 789–807.

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“the Other has been overlooked…which is ironic, because it is difficult, if not impossible, for a Self to exist without an Other”. Who are these others? Among the long list of others that Coles cites and proposes in her article (the unconscious Other, the marginalized Other, the non-human Other, etc.), I will only refer in this paper to two of them: the generalized Other and the significant Other. I will analyze the life story of Raquel, an Argentinean psychologist who immigrated in Israel at the age of thirty, and who was 45 years old at the time of the interview. Throughout the interview, I was surprised by the frequency with which Raquel referred to “others” when she told her childhood experiences or referred to her feelings of belonging to Argentina and Israel. More frequently than other interviewees, she compared herself to certain others, when she was telling me about her lack of belonging, her lack of pride about her father, her Argentinean and Jewish identities. As Holdsworth and Morgan16 point out, at times “these others were sometimes identifiable significant others but, on other occasions, the reference was to something more vague and generalized. These references “served as points of comparison”, but beyond that, “they seemed to involve something more complex, a process of negotiation, partly with the interviewer but also, it would seem, internally within the interviewees themselves”. Holdsworth and Morgan suggest that these references illustrate Mead’s17 concept of the Generalized Other. Morris18, in the preface to Mead’s book, describes it as “one of Mead’s happiest terms and most fertile concepts”. The Generalized Other appears to be a stage beyond the processes of “taking the role of the other”, where the “other” is another identifiable individual or set of individuals. In Mead’s words: “finally crystallising all these particular attitudes into a single attitude or standpoint which may be called that of the ‘generalized other’.”19. In another reference to the term20, Mead refers to “the attitudes of the whole community”, and describes the process by which the community exercises control over 16 17 18 19 20

Clare Holdsworth, David Morgan, “Revisiting the Generalized Other: An Exploration”, Sociology, 41 (2007), pp. 401–402. George H. Mead, Mind, Self and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago PressPhoenix Books, 1934). Charles W. Morris, “Introduction”, Mind. Self and Society, George H. Mead, ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), p. 24. George H. Mead, Mind, Self…, p. 90. George H. Mead, Mind, Self…, p. 154.

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its individual members through the generalized other, which “enters as a determining element into the individual’s thinking”21. Coles22 defines it as “the sociological counterpart to psychology’s Unconscious Other”. She adds that “an individual may have multiple Generalized Others, because the individual can hold membership in multiple “societies”: such as an organization, a status group. family, tribe or nation, each having its own attitudes, values and expected behaviors. These Generalized Others may conflict with one another, and the Self must negotiate among them.

1. The Significant Other Coles23 considers that it is the simplest and most straightforward other that she deals with in her paper.” The Significant Other is always a “real” person, possibly a family member, partner, friend, therapist, or any number of people with whom a Self comes into contact. Perinbanayagam24 defines the significant other as someone, “who may or may not be physically present in the interaction, but who nevertheless plays a significant role in a Self’s life and can influence the Self from afar”. Eakin25 calls it the “proximate other”, and argues that “the most common form of relational life is the self’s story viewed through the lens of its relation with some key other person, sometimes a sibling, friend, or lover, but most often a parent”. That is, the Significant Other “is often approached as one Self in a dyadic relationship with another Self, where one Self is the focus and the other is, at least temporarily, playing a supportive role”26. The symbolic interaction with multiple Significant Others, a community of Others that Cooley27 called “primary group”,gives origin to the Generalized Other. 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

George H. Mead, Mind, Self…, p. 155. Roberta Coles, “Others in the making…”, p. 5. Roberta Coles, “Others in the making…”, pp. 5–6. R. S. Perinbanayagam, The Presence of Self (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000). Paul J. Eakin, How Our Lives Become Stories: making selves (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990). Roberta Coles, “Others in the making…”, p. 6. Charles H. Cooley, Social organization (New York: Schoken Books, 1962).

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The Significant Other28 plays “a strong and creative role” in the formation of the identity. Eakin29 suggests that we learn how to become a certain type of person in conversation with others. Identity formation is then socially and discursively transacted. Coles adds that “in a person’s earliest developmental stage, the Significant Other plays a pivotal role, both in the formation of the Self and in the formation of the Self ’s Others. Without the verbal and non-verbal interaction between Significant Other, particularly parents, and a child, the Generalized Other would not form”. While the Significant Other “is usually viewed as a benevolent agent, it clearly has the potential to exercise varying degrees of control over the Self’s creation”30 points out that we know who we are because Others tell us. Randall31 asserts that Others story us. Sometimes the Significant Other plays a much less benevolent role, since he carries a fateful message that originates in a horrid trauma he experienced and then he is bound to transmit to the subsequent generations. It was only after I realized the central role played by Raquel’s father, the Significant Other of her Jewish identity, that I could begin to unravel her history.

2. Raquel: Three Scenes, Three Men and Three Languages in a Woman’s Life 2. 1. First Scene: Yiddish, the Language of the Father “The scene: a six-year old girl is sitting with her father, speaking Yiddish. The girl looks deeply into her father’s eyes. She loves him so much! She is expecting her father’s look of approval. She wants him to see her. He looks absently into the past. His eyes are dead. He will never really see her. The little girl starts to sing a Yiddish song.” 28 29 30

31

Roberta Coles, “Others in the making…”, p. 211. Paul J. Eakin, How Our Lives Become…, p. 63. Roberta Coles, “Others in the making…”, p. 211; Richard Jenkins, “Categorization: Identity, Social Process and Epistemology”, Current Sociology, 48/3 (2000), pp. 7–25. William L. Randall, The stories we are: An essay on self-creation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995).

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Raquel was born in Buenos Aires. His father was a Polish Jew who had arrived in Argentina after the war. His first wife and two daughters perished in a concentration camp, and he barely escaped death thanks to his strong health. He remarried Raquel’s mother, and they had a daughter and a son. Raquel’s mother had arrived in Argentina before the war, following the death of her own father. While both of Raquel’s parents came from Poland, they belonged to different social circles. Her father was poor, and his family lived in the Jewish neighborhood and spoke Yiddish. Raquel’s mother belonged to the Jewish aristocracy, assimilated to the Polish culture and language, and had a deep distaste for Yiddish, a language she considered as “dirty” and non-prestigious. The couple spoke Polish among themselves when they did not want to be understood by the children. Raquel felt that Polish was a “secret language” and she learned to decipher certain codes: for example, words related to money – always a problematic issue at home, since they were rather poor. I ask her if she understands Polish today. She answers in the negative, but as a child, she thought she was able to understand what her parents said to one another. She really does not know if she did, or if she imagined she did. When she tried to check with her parents if she understood correctly what they had said, they refused to answer. She had to guess, and she felt she was able to do so. Polish constitutes a mysterious language to this day. Raquel knew she was a Jew when she was six. She says: “I understood I was different: while Argentinean children went to school only in the mornings, I also had to attend the Jewish school in the afternoons”. To be a Jew, for her, meant that “Spanish was not enough: I had to learn Yiddish and then Hebrew”. To be a Jew was not a simple issue. Everyone was Argentinean: she was also an Argentinean, but she possessed an added identity: that of a Jew. During many years this added identity constituted a kind of mystery. Her parents did not provide her with explications. She knew that it had something to do with ceremonies and Festivals, since her grandmother celebrated Pessach, Rosh Hashanah[New Year] and Yom Kippur[the Day of Attonement]. Her father also fasted on Yom Kippur, and he took her to the synagogue. It was a special day: they took a bus to the distant synagogue, where they heard the beautiful sounds of Kol Nidre [the prayer that opens the religious ceremony of Yom Kippur]. She did not attend the morning school, since Jewish children were exempted from attendance on the Jewish Festivals. She felt something heavy and strange during those days.

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Raquel felt a special love for her father, an extremely silent and reserved person. She quickly discovered that Yiddish constituted the path towards his heart. He offered her fifty cents a day in order to speak with her only in Yiddish. While her mother was totally uninterested in that language, Raquel spoke it with her father, and she also recited poems and sang songs in that language. But the truth is that Raquel did not like Yiddish. She agreed with her mother: it was a dirty language. Spanish, on the contrary, was clean and beautiful, much more aesthetically pleasing than Yiddish. Nevertheless, since Yiddish constituted the only channel of communication with her father, out of love for him she spoke it. This effort was not successful, though: she thinks her father was totally uninterested in her. He was not even interested in her progress at the Jewish school, and Raquel thinks that the only reason he sent her there was so that she would learn Yiddish. In fact, it was the only thing Raquel did well at the time: she had much more difficulty in learning Bible and Hebrew. But she read with great interest the books her father bought her in Yiddish, and she enjoyed the stories, although she did not like to speak that language. When they spoke Yiddish in the street, she felt ashamed, as if she wore the yellow star on her chest. While Yiddish was charged with love for her father, Hebrew was totally strange to her. Her parents did not speak that language, and she found no reason to be interested in learning it, other than its being a subject at the Jewish school. Raquel thinks that she attended the Jewish school because she was a Jew, but her parents never showed any special interest in her progress at school. Apart from the need to attend the Jewish school, to be a Jew meant also to be different from her friends in the neighborhood, who received beautiful presents for Christmas. There was nothing good in being a Jew! A negative side of Judaism was related to the Shoah. At the Jewish school there was this day of speeches, fire and tears. When Raquel asked her parents about the photographs of naked people, the tears and the ceremonies, they told her not to worry. She would know about it when she grew older. Despite her many questions, the Shoah remained as a mystery for many years. Raquel thinks the attitude of her parents towards Judaism was a bit incoherent. They wanted to keep her apart from any sadness in association with Jewish history, while they wanted her to be knowledgeable of Jewish culture.

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Raquel speaks Yiddish today, but she does so only occasionally. Yiddish is the language of Jews. And she does not feel comfortable being a Jew. This is a negative identity. It is related to suffering, humiliation, persecution, death. It is related to a weak father, who was never able to protect her or to make her feel proud of him. “I think my father was a survivor. He did not bring me security. He tried to rebuild his life in Argentina, but he could not manage in this world.” She loved him deeply, and she learned his language in order to communicate with him, but to no avail. She feels she was never able to really communicate with him, since his eyes remained forever in the past. The Yiddish language is dirty in Raquel’s eyes. It is the language of the weak. For Raquel, as well as his relationship with his problematic Jewish identity, Yiddish represents a self that was not answered or confirmed. Perinbanayagam32 says that we are, inevitably, discursive creatures. Since human action is marked by language, the Self does not have a continuous existence, but it is a mechanism that allows the existence of a conversation, either between two people or between two instances of the same person. The Self functions linguistically, and the conversational nature of the Self “implies that people employ rhetorical devices in order to be seen and noted, to feel present, recognized and even indisputable to others. Thus the mere physical presence does not suffice for a Self to be present. It only “exists” when it engaged in “a dialogical act”. It is easy to understand that this puts the Self in a dangerous situation: that when we present a certain Self to others, they can respond to it or not. Turner33 argues that the central motivation of all interaction “is the need to sustain a self-concept34. Therefore, the fundamental reason why we maintain a conversation is the need to present a Self that is answered and confirmed by Others. The Self, in short, is only present in a conversation (internal or external), emerges from the interaction process and depends on the reaction of Others in order to exist. Turner’s comment allows us to understand that the emerging and incidental qualities of the Self create high levels of anxiety in the individual, to the extent that sustaining the story of the self becomes the main motivation in interaction.

32 33 34

R. S. Perinbanayagam, The Presence of Self… Jonathan H. Turner, A theory of social interaction (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988). Jonathan H. Turner, A theory of social…, p. 61.

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The Yiddish language, then, apart from being an ugly language, symbolizes to Raquel her failure before his father, the Significant Other of her Jewish identity. His father, a survivor of the Shoah, also signified failure in her eyes. When Raquel says: “This world was too big for him. I thought that every Jew felt like him in this world” we see the relationship between the way she perceives her father and also her own Jewish identity. The nature of the trans-generational effects of the Shoah among children of survivors arises great controversy. Some researchers think that the concept of “second generation” is an illusion and the process of transmission a fallacy, but therapists usually consider that it is not possible to grow up in a family of survivors of the Shoah without absorbing some of the emotional scars of the parents. The mechanism of transmission of trauma is a complex process, related to various types of parental behaviour, both overt and covert, which seems to occur indirectly through the implicit influences of early childhood and, more directly, through communicative styles, educational practices and the interaction between the parents at later stages of life. The transmission of trauma can be seen as a subtle mediation process whereby the psychological burden of the survivor is transferred to the children from early childhood onwards, and continues to reverberate during childhood, adolescence, adulthood and even beyond it. In this way, “the massive psychic trauma shapes the internal representations of reality, becoming the organizing principle transmitted by fathers and internalized by the children”35. It seems that many of the implicit influences are apparently not what the survivor did to their children in terms of “specific parenting behaviors”, but rather what parents were: unsuitable role models. Since children learn not only on the basis of the actions of their parents but also from their “attitudes”, to grow near a “tormented” parent constitutes a cumulative trauma for the child who, tacitly, absorbs the parental distress. Similarly, the vague feeling of imminent danger may have been expressed through an exaggerated concern of the eager father. Thus, much of the indirect influence of the intergenerational transmission of trauma occurs through an ambiguous communication, nonverbal and generator of guilt, especially through the “conspiracy of silence”36. I started this paper bringing McAdams’ assertion that the experiences of the first year of life mark 35 36

Jonathan H. Turner, A theory of social…, p. 22. Ya’el Danieli, “Differing adaptational styles in families of survivors of the Nazi Holocaust”, Child Today, 10/5 (1981), pp. 6–10.

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the level of optimism or pessimism that will characterize the narrative tone we would possess in adulthood. Raquel is a survivor. She carries a horrific past on her shoulders: her dead sisters, whom she could not meet. The shadow of cruelty, indifference, desperation. She is strong: history won’t repeat itself with her or her family. In order to be able to escape destiny, the Jewish identity has to be put aside. We see that Raquel’s Jewish identity constitutes a “negative identity”, rejected by her. Raquel claimed that, from the moment Israel was founded, providing the possibility to hold an Israeli identity, there is no need for a Jewish identity. She would like to leave aside this identity. It is a ballast from the past.

2. 2. Scene Two: Spanish, the Language of the Others “The scene: the little girl’s aunt, a Christian, spends a month in summer with her, and they visit an “estancia”. There was a cook who made marmalade and brought them breakfast in bed. The girl opens her eyes in admiration: these are the “real” Argentineans!” The two schools Raquel attended were different. The Jewish school’s population was upper middle class. The pupils wore nice clothes, which their parents brought them from their frequent trips abroad. Since Raquel’s family was much poorer, she always felt envious of those children and their beautiful clothes, and she cried bitterly because her parents sent her to that “school for the rich”. The morning school, on the contrary, made her feel at home. Children belonged to her social class, no one spent the three-month vacation at the seaside and everyone wore the same uniform. It was easier for Raquel. At the Jewish school she was conscious of belonging to a different social class, and she had to make an effort to imitate the other children’s behavior. She tells me that children behaved in different ways at the two schools: the Jewish kids started dancing and dating earlier than the others. Already at 12, Raquel had her first boyfriend. Although she felt more comfortable with the kids at the morning school, she felt she had to belong to the Jewish school. At a certain point, Israel appeared as a topic in her Jewish studies. Israel was the place in which Jews lived, and people wore shorts there, danced the hora and went to the army. Raquel did not like the idea of the shorts. They did not seem

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beautiful to her! She wanted elegant clothes and high heels, and these seemed to be out of reach in Israel. She started attending the social activities of Hebraica, the middle-class Jewish club, because her mother wanted her to socialize with Jewish children. She was not a member of any youth movement. She went to Hebraica’s swimming pool and also to the neighborhood’s swimming pool. She felt at ease in the one at the neighborhood, an open and sunny one, while that of Hebraica was closed and had an ugly smell. The children were different, too. In the neighborhood, she liked her school-mates, her friends. In Hebraica she always felt as a stranger. “I never felt really as an Argentinean. It never caused me any pride to belong to that country”. Surprised by the association between pride and belonging, I ask her if she did not feel any kind of belonging, even if it did not make her feel proud of it. NO!, she almost shouts at me”. “For me, Argentina was the country of the others. Of those who had been there for generations, those who owned the “estancias”. Argentineans speak Spanish with their children, and they did not come from abroad, like my parents”. “I was totally different. My parents had come from a distant place. Of course, I had no relationship whatsoever with their native country. It was a forbidden topic at home. It was not a place they missed or wanted to return to. My mother had a pale nostalgia for some childhood remembrances, but my father hated it.” Her parents didn’t belong to the Polish Generalized Other. Her mother thought she belonged, till the Polish attitude toward Jews shattered her assimilatory fantasies. Her father had never felt belonging to Poland: he was a Jew in Poland. Raquel inherited from him the lack of belonging, the pessimism as to being accepted in equal terms. His marginality. “Where are you from, then?” – I ask after a long silence. Raquel lights another cigarette. She looks a bit angry. At last, she says: “I’m from Israel now. I have a territory, a home, friends. I can identify with Israelis. In Argentina I did not like Jews. Here I like Israelis. Nothing to do with their Jewishness. I have things in common with them”. I point out to her that most of her friends are Argentineans. She does not answer. Raquel displays contradictory attitudes towards her Argentinean identity. She claims she felt more at ease with the children of the morning school than with those of the Jewish school. She nevertheless says that Argentina belonged to others, not to her. She claims to be Israeli. On the

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other hand, as it is very frequent among immigrants, she mainly socializes with fellow Argentineans, including other psychologists. Coming back to her story, the Argentinean generalized other is constituted in her eyes by aristocrats of Barrio Norte, the owners of the estancias that inhabit the wealthy neighborhood. She feels excluded from the imagined community of these idealized Argentineans, and also from the community of the wealthy Jews, the parents of her schoolmates at the Jewish school. The children of her neighborhood, with whom she feels at ease, seem to lack any importance in her mental map of Argentina. It seems as if Raquel refers to Argentina in terms of ethnicity and social stratification when she is analyzing her feelings of belonging. She seems to perceive both the Argentinean and Jewish identities in terms of the social position of the three reference groups. The Argentinean Generalized Other is composed of rich Argentineans who live in Barrio Norte, own estancias, possess political power. In relation to them, her family is poor and foreign. “Since I was a little child, my family spent the summer vacation in Cordoba, in the hills. We traveled by train for many hours, and in the hills we drove motorcycles. Sometimes we spent a whole month in Mendoza, at the mountain hotels”. “My schoolmates from the Jewish school went to the sea, to Mar del Plata, and there they spent two or three months. They were at the beach during the whole day, and the rest of the time they bought clothes”. “When I grew up, I started demanding from my parents that we go to the sea. I realize now that it must have been very painful for my mother to renounce her beloved vacations in the mountains. She never liked the sea. It took me a long time to understand that the mountains were more aristocratic, more special than the sea. I understood only as an adult that our summer vacations in Cordoba were something different altogether from the seaside Jewish gatherings”. This is one of the scarce references to her mother, with whom she identified when she was a child in her attitude towards Yiddish, an attitude that her mother had held in her past as a Jewish aristocrat, assimilated to the Polish society. Now, her mother appears again as more aristocratic than these rich Jews that spend summer near the sea. “Something changed when we started to travel to the sea. We were like everyone else (this Generalized Other “everyone else” is composed by the rich Jews). At 13 I met Roberto, my future husband, at the beach. This was my third identity” – she says. “My third world”.

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“I have a boyfriend, and Roberto is my new belonging. I do not belong to the morning school or to the Jewish school. I spend long hours with Roberto every day. He walks me home from school, we eat ice cream, we create our small bubble, and we go together to parties and social gatherings. I belong to Roberto. His grandparents had come from Russia, and his parents were born in Argentina. They spoke only Spanish at home. I felt they belonged more to Argentina, much more than my family”. “Roberto brought me into a different social class: the one of the rich Jews. I decided I wanted to belong to that bourgeoisie. We went to fancy restaurants and I started buying expensive clothes. But I nevertheless perceived a false note in Roberto. I did not consider him a true Jew. It was I who attended the Jewish school, who spoke Yiddish and Hebrew, who celebrated the Jewish Festivals. Nevertheless, Roberto felt very Jewish and he showed it by fighting against the Tacuaras [the right-wing nationalistic and deeply anti-Semitic political organization]. I felt repugnance. It was a game. I did not feel Roberto and his friends were brave or strong. Although Roberto carried a gun in Buenos Aires, he belonged to a ghetto”. “His attitude contrasted with the one my father had held throughout his life. He had always told me not to become involved in any political activity. Whenever there were threats of a bomb at the Jewish school, I simply was told to remain at home. I had been able to detect my father’s permanent fear. This world was too big for him. I thought that this was the way every Jew felt in this world. Therefore, when I saw Roberto playing the macho-Jew against the Tacuara, in a country run by the military elite, where Jews could not belong to the Army higher ranks, I felt a discordant note. It was another kind of weakness”. This new Significant Other of her Jewish identity cannot provide her with the security she needs. Thus, she feels even more helpless. “The others held the power in Argentina. Not the Jews. A Jew could not be elected as the president of the country. I felt excluded. I felt as a second-class citizen. It was the country of the others. Not mine”. “I also felt excluded among the Jews. At least, I was not interested in their permanent search for money and prestige. Nevertheless, I played the game because I was Roberto’s girlfriend. It was very superficial. A lot of money. At 20, I knew perfectly well where to buy fashionable shoes, where the best restaurants were. I felt a bit trapped”. “Throughout my adolescence, the message I had received at home was ‘Do not get involved’. I dreaded political demonstrations, I did not

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understand who the enemy was, why they were struggling. I studied psychology at the University of Buenos Aires, and I was unable to understand why students defended the rights of the poor. I felt it was a kind of fashion, something one had to do in order to belong, as the books one had to read, or the political opinions one had to hold”. “Roberto was politically active, and he participated in demonstrations and strikes. I was angry at him, because he was a political activist instead of a good student, while his parents supported him economically”. “For me, Argentina was divided into three groups: at one extreme, the poor Argentinians in the slums. At the other extreme, the Argentinian aristocrats, delicate and full of savoir faire. In the middle, the Jews that wanted to imitate the aristocracy. I had to belong to this “false” aristocracy, not to the real one: the people with two family names who were born in Barrio Norte [a prestigious neighborhood]. The social class I belonged to “aimed” at Barrio Norte. They were not “born” there. “I felt that this was not genuine, but nevertheless I wanted to get it. Jewish men in the circle I frequented had to buy a certain kind of car, buy their clothes at certain shops, spend the summer in certain places. These Jews, the rich ones, were piolas (cute). They wanted power, money. They could manage. Nevertheless, they aroused in me a feeling of anxiety. Since they constituted my social model, in order to belong to them, I also had to learn how to manage.” She could not feel proud of her father (in front of whom? The Argentinean aristocrats?) Roberto provides her with a passport to the world of the rich Jews, but she cannot feel proud of him: his is only an apparent power, that depends on a gun and his parent’s money. I will now describe Raquel’s Spanish. When she was a child, she thought that it was “clean” and aesthetic. This is exactly the way her Spanish sounds to me. She speaks beautifully. Her descriptions are exact. She sounds sophisticated and knowledgeable in Spanish. She does not hesitate. Her Spanish is fluid, delicate and clean. It is the “imagined language of the Argentinean aristocrats of Barrio Norte”. Raquel speaks the Spanish of the Argentinean intellectuals. This is the only way in which she could manage in Argentina. Although belonging to the Jewish middle-class, she studied at the university, acquired the language of the intellectuals surrounding her. She worked as a psychologist, participated in professional gatherings, and therefore her Spanish is the one of the Argentinean “intelligentsia” more than the one of the Jewish middle class.

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Raquel wanders between different social groups without belonging to them. She does not want to belong to these groups, since she cannot value them or feel proud to belong to them. The only valuable group is, in her eyes, that of the Argentinean aristocrats of Barrio Norte, holders of the savoire faire, the power and the money, the influence, and the “authenticity” of which Jews are totally devoid. Are these the eyes representing the Shoah? German Jews, and her own mother constituted instances of Jews who wanted to belong to their societies, and thought that they succeeded in doing so, until the Nazis shattered their loves and their dreams, excluded them from all their rights, which only belonged to “authentic” German or Austrian Aryan race? What is this authenticity that Raquel is looking for? Will she be able to find it in Israel?

2. 3. Scene Three: Hebrew, the Language of Real Men “The scene: In Israel, after her divorce, she wants a real man. Not someone who needs a particular suit or car in order to be a man. A macho is in her opinion someone who is naked and wins a fight with another man. He does not live in fear. At last, a man she can admire. And he speaks Hebrew”. “After my divorce” – she continues – “I fell in love only with native Israelis. I feel attracted to Israeli men. They are totally different from Jewish men in Argentina. Therefore, after my divorce, already in Israel, it was clear to me that I wanted a real man: an Israeli. I wanted someone who has served in the Army, who has never felt ashamed for being a second-class citizen. Someone who grew up feeling that he belonged to their country, someone arrogant and self-confident. Someone who fought the wars, who needed to carry a gun to defend his country and his life, not to play games against other youngsters.” The Israeli identity allows Raquel to feel proud, as opposed to the Argentinian identity or even the Jewish identity, which always made her feel a stranger. “For me, a Jew is someone who has inherited a tradition. An Israeli is someone who belongs to this country, who is not afraid, who does not feel ashamed. Someone totally different from my father”. “In Argentina, with each new government the Jewish question was raised again: what will happen to the Jews? In Israel, if a man is insulted, he fights. In Argentina, if the man is a Jew, he lowers his head”.

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“In my opinion, since we have the State of Israel, there is no need for Jews to be second-class citizens. In Israel we have a territory, and the enemy is outside its borders. I do not feel afraid to be insulted in the street for being a Jew. I feel a certain fear, of course, because Israel is a dangerous country. Nevertheless, it is a different kind of fear. I am afraid because my country is at war, not because of my being a Jew. I do not have to hide myself. Therefore, and perhaps paradoxically, I feel more confident.” “Are you an Israeli?” “No. To be an Israeli is not an identity: it is a circumstance. The world is divided into different ethnic groups and languages, and human beings feel the need to establish differences among them. This is why I cannot be a cosmopolitan. I have to choose one group.” When I ask her if her belonging to Israel arouses her loyalty, or is related to the fulfillment of certain duties and rights, she answers both questions in the affirmative”. “I want to belong to Israel. I can contribute to Israeli society and Israel can contribute to my well-being. Nevertheless, I have a history, not an identity”. I am inclined to believe you, Raquel. The soldier is the Significant Other of her Israeli identity. Idealized, strong, independent, proud, belonging to his society, and capable of progressing in the social ladder. The opposite of her father. Raquel tells me that her way of being a woman has changed in Israel. In Argentina she dressed carefully and spent a great deal of money on clothes. In Israel, she dresses very simply and she does not wear any make-up. She looks very “Israeli”. When compared with most women I interviewed, she seems to be one of the least interested in her personal appearance. She is beautiful, but she does not invest any effort in her appearance. She looks at me and sighs: “I used to be like you”- she laughs. “Everything matched everything: shoes, handbag, gloves. Now, I am not interested in clothes. It is as if I feel more related to reality, to the more basic things. I feel there is no time to waste. I have become more generous in Israel, less egocentric. I am interested in politics here, my children went to the army, a couple of my patients have been hurt in the wars, I feel I belong. To be a woman in Israel is perhaps to be less delicate and feminine. To be more direct. Sometimes, though, I feel I have lost something of my previous femininity, and it causes me a momentary pain.” And I return to her Hebrew. I will never forget my surprise when I heard her speaking Hebrew for the first time. I had already known her for many

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years when I interviewed her, and I knew she had attended a Jewish school in Argentina. Therefore, I expected a much more sophisticated Hebrew than the one I heard. Only when I chose her as one of the cases, and I analyzed her life history again and again was I able to find a plausible explanation. Raquel described her Hebrew when she referred to the changes she experienced in being a woman in Israel. She speaks Spanish like an Argentinian and Hebrew like an Israeli. To be more exact, she speaks the kind of Hebrew that corresponds to her definition of an Israeli. Her Hebrew is direct, non- sophisticated, simple. For example, she laughs at me because I pronounce the initial “h”, which is really disappearing from colloquial Hebrew. Nevertheless, in my opinion she over-generalizes: she does not pronounce the “h” in contexts native Israelis do. I checked my observations about this with native Israelis who know her, and they agreed with me. Sapir wrote about the “psychological existence of the phoneme”. Here we see the psychological disappearance of the phoneme! She speaks like “the man in the street”. Hebrew seems to be related to strength, to self-confidence, to arrogance. Thus, it must be direct. Nothing to do with aesthetics or beauty. No time to waste. She sounds a different person in Hebrew and in Spanish. The truth? I prefer to speak Spanish with Raquel! Three scenes, three men and three languages. Trauma-survival – overcoming-security. Incomplete belongings. Stories that intertwine: losses, disappointments, findings, transformations. In Eli Wiesel’s words, “God created the man because he likes stories…”.

Hybrid Memories: Building the Present in Southern Pakistan Ugo E. M. Fabietti Università degli Studi di Milano – Bicocca

The theme I would like to discuss here is the way in which a political movement based on a specific form of “hybrid” cultural memory, still active today, gained ground in the twentieth century in one of the most remote regions of Southern Asia. My theme is thus not this hybrid identity itself, an expression that is in itself tautological as all identities are the result of processes of hybridisation, but rather memory. I appreciate that speaking about cultural memory can cause misunderstanding. However, I am not arguing, as certain anthropologists appear to, that collective (social) memory is roughly equivalent to culture1 but rather that it is an important element within it. I would argue that cultural memory is a “device” by means of which a group can place itself in a given historical context.

1. Slide 0 The movement I intend to talk about here is Baluchi nationalism (Baluchistan is an area of about the size of the Iberian Peninsula nowadays divided between Pakistan, Iran and, to a lesser extent, Afghanistan).

1

“Social memory” is the means by which information is transmitted among individuals and groups and from one generation to another. Not necessarily aware that they are doing so, individuals pass on their behaviour and attitudes to others in various contexts, but especially through emotional and practical lies and in relationships among generations […] To use an analogy from physics, social memory acts like a carrier wave, transmitting information over generations regardless of the degree to which participants are aware of their roles in the process”.

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It is important to clarify a few aspects of nationalism and memory as well as the use of the term “hybrid” at the outset. In the last quarter of the 20th century the theme of identity, often defined in ethnic terms, received a great deal of attention from both anthropologists and historians. In many cases, this attention was combined with interest in the resurgence of nationalism (understood as sovereign territory, language, history and culture taken together) as a worldwide reaction above all to growing globalisation. Identity, ethnicity and nationalism are the three terms around which a debate has formed which has found it unavoidable to consider the dimension of “memory” as the key element in the construction of nationalist arguments. Nationalism always makes recourse to a founding past of present identity and thus makes memory an element in strategy, a “device”. Anthropologists and historians agree on the fact that nationalism as an ideological construct and political movement must be considered to have appeared relatively recently and to be “Western”. However, whilst some scholars2 have argued that nationalism is not the culmination of prior feelings of identity, others3 have argued quite the opposite, that the roots of nationalism can be traced in elements which “pre-existed” full-blown nationalism. In the latter event, it is a case of ascertaining the existence or otherwise of cultural elements which, in certain circumstances, might have culminated in the creation of forms of collective identity that are at the heart of “nationalisms”. In a work significantly called The Ethnic Origins of Nations (1987) which has now become a classic, Anthony Smith set out to make a systematic analysis of “cultural forms, sentiments, attitudes and perceptions to the degree in which they are expressed and codified in myths, memories, values and symbols” with the objective of “retracing the foundations and ethnic roots of modern nations”4.

2

3

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Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983); Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983). John A. Armstrong, Nations before Nationalism (Chapel Hill: University of N.  Carolina Press, 1982); Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986). Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins…, pp. 53–54.

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I would agree in general terms with Smith’s arguments, but he appears to attach a reifying referential power to the term “ethnic”. Ethnicity, identity and other such concepts are in evolution, fluid, contextual, as is memory itself and thus developing an “archaeology” of nationalism by searching for common values and symbols rooted in a pre-existing “ethnic identity” risks taking the dogma which almost all nationalisms are based on rather too seriously – the perpetuity of the nation. I would thus like to demonstrate not so much the existence of identity phenomena “pre-existing” nationalism but rather the way in which certain aspects of the nationalist “discourse” which has developed in formerly British Pakistani Baluchistan specifically reflect interlocking representations which can be traced to colonial type relationships, a “hybrid” memory. It is, in fact, in reference to this type of colonial relationship that I use the term “hybrid” as a heuristic tool to define the characteristics of transcultural phenomena and to highlight the ambiguous nature of the relationship between colonised and coloniser where, within certain historical and social representations, the two merge as much by means of the former’s desire for liberation as by the latter’s hegemonic power. By “discourse” I mean, Foucault5 style, a set of statements, representations, images and symbols which, as both interpretation and interpreted, shape the subjects of the discourse itself. The nationalist “discourse” analysed here is thus intended as a “field” of resistance, debate and action which feeds on anything it finds useful in order to create an image of the Baluchis as a population with shared origins, culture, history and thus, identity. Before discussing the role performed by memory, I would like to highlight the fact that Baluchi nationalism has emerged in the heart of one of the largest “stateless nations” of South Western Asia (estimates of the number of Baluchi speakers range from 25 to 30 million). The idea of a Baluchistan “nation” was first formulated in an article published in 1933 in a Karachi-based magazine called Al Baloch, the official body of the Organisation for the Unity of Baluchistan (Anjuman-e Ittihad-e Balochistan).

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Michel Foucault, L’archéologie du savoir (Paris: Gallimard, 1969).

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2. Slide 4 The author in question translated the idea of a “Greater Baluchistan” into map form, encompassing parts of Iran and India (now Pakistan) as well as Sindh (the Karachi region) and other areas to the north which were considered the area of maximum expansion of the Baluchis in the 16th century. The idea of a “Greater Baluchistan” expressed in that 1933 article was one of many schemes formulated at that time by those who were attempting to shape the post-British future of the Indian subcontinent. There was no outcome from these 1933 plans, firstly because of the intervention of the British police and secondly, as a result of the annexation (in two stages, 1947 and 1958) of Baluchistan by the state of Pakistan. However, this nationalist spirit survived in the decades that followed annexation and was given fresh impetus in the 1970s leading to a dramatic clash with the Pakistani government of the day and consequent harsh repression6. Nationalism thus emerged out of, and developed in response to, British, and subsequently, Pakistani presence in the region. As an intellectual and ideological movement it was, in fact, the outcome of the convergence between local identity memories and ideas that arrived with colonial domination. This distinction between local and imported ideas is useful because, whilst it is true, as many have argued, that it is nationalism that makes nations – and not viceversa – Smith’s suggestion to “take a look at” what ideas, values, models, world views and social practices existed prior to nationalism is also valid. It is difficult to sustain, however, whatever today’s nationalists believe, that common Baluchi feelings of shared identity similar to those of today existed prior to British dominance. There are enormous differences between the various Baluchi regions in social, adaptational and economic terms. In some regions, moreover, affiliation takes the form of “tribal” social organisation while in others, it is shaped by patronage7.

6 7

Inayatullah Baloch, The Problem of “Greater Baluchistan”. A study of Baluchi Nationalism (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1987). Ugo Fabietti, Ethnography at the Frontier. Space, Memory and Society in Southern Balochistan (Bern: Peter Lang, 2011).

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We cannot go into on this here in greater depth and will, therefore, analyse just one of these local elements of pre-existing nationalism, the Baluchi’s memory of their origins. In her 1999 book (Erinnerungsräume, Cultural Memory and Western Civilisation), the German scholar Aleida Assmann classified memories into two types: “archive memory” and “functional memory”. Archive memory is the “amorphous mass” of “unorganised” memories which can take on meaning if they are made use of by a “functional memory” which “fishes them out” and bends them to its own totally incidental ends. These ideas, values and symbols are “found” in the (inert) archive memory by the functional memory. The latter, however, requires conceptual props capable of giving a plausible form to its discourse. These conceptual props encompass the ideas that the nationalist movement absorbed in the colonial era and after: on one hand, there is the idea of nation as it developed in Europe in the modern era, secondly, the theories of Western authors interested in Baluchi history and Indo-European language speaking peoples and lastly, a specific form of imagination which has been defined as “geo-cultural”, largely the outcome of globalisation. I will attempt here to demonstrate how elements from archive memory passed into nationalist arguments as a result of functional memories that were, in turn, centred around ideas of European origin, culminating in a hybrid discourse which affirmed the legitimacy of Baluchistan as a potential nation state. The Baluchis speak a language belonging to the Indo-European family. However, tradition has it that they are the descendants of Mir Hamza, the Prophet Muhammed’s uncle on his father’s side8. Mir Hamza is almost certainly a legendary ancestor chosen at the time the Baluchis converted to Islam in around the 11th century in order to connect their origins with the origins of Islam (the Baluchis are almost all Sunni Muslims). Poems and legends tell of conquerors from the Northwest, i.e. from the region south of the Caspian Sea, who occupied the area of today’s Baluchistan in the 11th century and completed their conquest in the 15th century under the leadership of the legendary “national” hero Mir Chakar Rind. During the 15th and 16th centuries, part of Sind (the Karachi region) and Punjab (the Lahore region) effectively fell under the influence of Baluchi potentates. 8

Janmahmad, Essays on Baloch National Struggle in Pakistan (Quetta: Gosha-e-Adab, 1988).

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In a relatively recent era, as we have seen, these events strengthened the image of a “Greater Baluchistan”. The contradiction between a presumed Arab origin (serving the purposes of a connection with Islam) and the Indo-European language spoken by the Baluchis is evident. This is a clear example of what Gellner has referred to as “the social function of the absurd” in which something which is in itself contradictory can be effective in sustaining a given argument. The credo quia absurdum – “I believe precisely because it is absurd” – is part of the way that cultural memory directed towards nationalism (and identity in general) works. The idea of unity of origin and settlement by culturally homogeneous groups who came from the West, as cited earlier, took on a central role in the nationalist discourse only as a result of the work of a number of European Orientalists whose theories gave a certain coherence to the story of Baluchi origins. Towards the end of the 19th century, a number of European scholars presented the origins of the Baluchis in a migratory perspective. This perspective relied in turn on a “paradigm” developed within the sphere of comparative linguistics and the study of the origins and migration of Indo-European peoples and languages. This was a reconstruction, by means of linguistic data, of the route taken by these peoples from their presumed origins in Southern Russia in the third millennium B.C. in a south-easterly direction into the areas in which idioms from the same linguistic family are spoken now, that is, from east to west, Kurdish, Farsi, Dari, Pashtu and Baluchi. The idea was that these languages spread as a result of the breakup of a society, culture and single proto Indo-European language into a constellation of different but related societies, languages and cultures. The European Orientalists believed, in turn, that they had found evidence for their theories in certain elements of Baluchi tradition and, in particular, in the oral poetry which began to be translated into European languages around the middle of the 19th century. These were in fact oral traditions that told of migrations, struggles and conquests of lands in modern-day Baluchistan. These traditions are, however, a world away from that feeling of unity that inspires the majority of today’s Baluchis9. 9

Longworth M. Dames, An Historical and Ethnological Sketch of Balochi Race (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1904); Longworth M. Dames, Popular Poetry of the Baloches (London: Folklore Society, 1907); Sardar Khan Baluch, Literary History of the Baluchis, 2 vols. (Quetta: Balochi Academy, 1977), p. 84.

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If we consider the idea of a “conquest” from the West, it is evident that the narration of this conquest takes the form of a sort of “spontaneous local sociology” (stored in the “archive memory”). At the time of my research in Southern Baluchistan from 1986 to 1994, the morphological characteristics of the Baluchi society of the day were interpreted by local people as proof of this past migration.

3. Slides 1, 2, 3 In Southern Baluchistan, for example, with a radically different social structure from that of the north and an economy based on agriculture rather than pasture, there are many patronymic groups whose members consider themselves descendants of a common ancestor whose name they bear. These groups are not concentrated into single areas but spread out over the territory. The ethnographic data suggests that their dispersion may be attributable to fluid residential models deriving from the land ownership and management systems10. When I put this second interpretation to them, the Baluchis agreed with it, but if I prompted them to consider the morphological characteristics of their communities and villages, they tended to interpret the dispersion of these groups also as a consequence of the historic invasion. Their theory was that, as they advanced, the conquering groups left families and individuals behind them and these, in a few cases, ended up forming the nuclei of demographic growth of different patronymic groups on the local level. This vision fits extremely well with the idea of common origin that suffuses the nationalist discourse and which, in the writings of many contemporary intellectuals, rests on 19th-century European Orientalist theory. However, here too the nationalists have “forgotten” something which contradicts the principle of unity of origin – the fact that certain groups regard themselves as full-blown Baluchis whilst at the same time claiming different origins, some of which are extremely recent, from the Persian Gulf, India, the Arabian peninsular. 10

Ugo Fabietti, Ethnography at the Frontier…, pp. 45–70.

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This diversity emerges, for example, when it is not a question of negotiating identity with external agents, such as the Pakistani state or the international media, but rather within the local political sphere where the superior status of certain patronymic groups still carries considerable weight. Baluchi nationalism thus makes reference to a founding past (as a guarantee of shared origin) intertwined with an oral epic which brings Islam into its origins, blending a spontaneous sociological model into a theory of conquest and then reorganising all these elements into a narrative form which garners its strength from “scholarly” authorities of certain historic, linguistic and cultural theories of Western origin which colonialisation brought with it. The nationalist discourse thus converges in what Ulf Hannerz has called “geo-cultural imagination”, a sort of large scale mapping, a way of talking of cultural things as if these were distributed over various territories and the peoples who live in them. It is a very common way of thinking in today’s world, one which divides the world into ostensible sectors each of which has well-defined cultural characteristics. These geo-cultural representations are, according to Hannerz, “significant components in a transnational collective consciousness, a set of representations of the world which are circulated, received and debated in a world-wide web of social relationships, and which again stimulate further cultural production”. They are representations which impact today on broad swathes of world society as a result of the diffusion of the media and television in particular, thanks to which “cultures” are presented using hyper-simplified cultural models. Over the course of the 1990s, this geo-cultural imagination found its most important exponents in a number of intellectuals, most of whom were linked to the American government. The best known of these, Samuel Huntingdon, linked his name to the geo-cultural image of a “clash of cultures” in which culture was reduced to religion and both were traced to specific parts of the planet. This concept was one of the pillars of the American “imperial ideology” of the years of the Bush presidencies both father and son. Clifford Geertz11 would willingly have defined this way of getting close to “the things of culture” as characteristic of “politologists in hot air balloons” because, if it is put to the ethnographic test, and thus looked at from closer up, this geo-cultural imagination is revealed, at best, as absurd. 11

Clifford Geertz, Mondo globale, mondi locali (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999).

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However, geo-cultural imagination has an extraordinary power to convince, a great ability to expand and a simplifying charm that makes it attractive in the context of everyday thinking and to any sort of identity discourse wishing to prove its legitimacy to others. There is no doubt that when the idea of a “Greater Baluchistan” was first mooted in 1933, this type of imagination was already common amongst the Baluchi nationalists themselves, not in the form of a clash of civilisations but rather in the idea of a nation-state as an idea which was popularised, understood and debated in the context of the network of “colonial” social relationships of the day. The geo-cultural imagination (depicting coextensive spaces with specific cultural forms) is the reflection of certain historical conditions. It is, in fact, a mental construction whose “form” depends on discursive strategies which “serve a purpose” at specific times. Thus the idea of a “Greater Baluchistan” has, for example, changed over time according to prevailing strategy and political context. For the nationalists of 1933 “Greater Baluchistan” was to encompass not only Iranian and Indian (now Pakistani) Baluchistan, but also the Sind and other regions of far northern Pakistan (Slide 4). Strangely, Afghan Baluchistan was not included (nor even indicated on the attached map). The reason for this omission was that the Afghanistan of the day was a refuge for independence activists and, according to the latter’s calculations, a potential ally of the anti-Britain movement in exactly the same way as it was in the years from 1970 to 1980 as a result of the pro-Soviet and anti-Pakistan stance of the Afghan government. In the mid 20th century, on the other hand, the idea of a Greater Baluchistan took in Afghan Baluchistan, while the northernmost regions disappeared and became part of Greater Baluchistan once again only in the 1990s, this time together with Afghan Baluchistan.

4. Slide 5 In the years around 1990, the regions which had been included in the Greater Baluchistan of 1933 – and were considered the maximum Baluchi extension in the 16th century – but had then disappeared from it, became the centre of nationalist’s attentions after the possible presence of important uranium deposits there was mooted.

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It would certainly be an oversimplification to argue that foreign domination can, in itself, trigger off “nationalist resistance”. Baluchistan has been exposed for centuries, if not millennia (it was a province of the Achaemenid Empire), to external forces without anything which might be termed “nationalist sentiment” emerging. With British and Pakistani domination, things changed and not only on the level of ideas or geo-cultural representations. Education arrived in Baluchistan and however overcrowded they might have been, however ill trained their teachers, a great many schools were opened, together with a university in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan. Thousands of young people thus had access to information and professional qualifications which were not those of a society of herdsmen and date palm growers but who were, at the same time, prevented from finding new career opportunities by economic depression and the almost total absence of infrastructure. The spread of literacy produced an entirely new situation, while the Pakistani state made no new opportunities accessible to the linguistic and cultural groups living within its borders. Wherever perceived ethnic, cultural and linguistic differences exist, the case of Baluchistan would seem to demonstrate that nationalism emerges when the gap between expectations and the chance to realise them is revealed to a dramatic extent. Those who consider nationalism a product of “modernity” would thus appear to be correct. In conclusion, in taking on board certain themes from late 19th-century Western scholarly thought and representations from its own archive memory, the Baluchi nationalist movement effectively reinvented a “hybrid” tradition in the sense that I initially attributed to the term. This process of reinvention did not take place within a neutral context. The transmission of meanings – this “traffic” in cultural elements from one cultural context to another – never occurs in spheres in which the various participants are on an equal footing, but rather within a context marked by specific power relationships. Dialogism and heteroglossia, that is the idea that everyone has something to say, should not lead us to neglect the way in which they say it. This often depends on power relationships that can be translated not only into everything we know, but also into the hegemony of the “languages” of one culture over those of the others. The languages of anthropology, linguistics and Western historiography, together with the influence of European nationalism (at Baluchistan

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University I bumped into a historian interested in the Italian Risorgimento), serve the purposes of “reinventing” an identity perceived as threatened in the present. However, in the context under discussion, such languages play a dominating role in the sense, at the very least, that local cultures get used, by imitation, to thinking of themselves also through ideas and representations developed elsewhere, as in the case of the idea of nation based on a specific form of geo-cultural imagination. From this point of view, the themes of Baluchi nationalism, and the way in which they were expressed, their claims to coherence, represent an example of what might be meant today by “historic relationships of domination and dialogue” between cultures12. However, they are also an example of the way in which a “hybrid” memory, shaped from local archives and imported accounts, reflects as much the hegemonic legacy of domination as the actions and desire to resist of those subjected to domination both yesterday and today.

12

James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture (Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press, 1987).

Hybridity and Catalonia’s Linguistic Borders: the Case of Najat El Hachmi Kathryn Crameri University of Glasgow

One of the recurring themes in recent debates on Catalan identity has been about the way in which immigration has changed, or could change, Catalan society and culture. This Autonomous Community has been a popular destination for foreign immigrants to Spain since the late 1990s, with figures showing that by 2009 there were 1.2 million foreign residents in the region out of a total population of 7.3 million.1 Even though the rate of immigration has slowed since Spain felt the full impact of the global financial crisis, it is clear that immigration presents on-going social, linguistic, cultural, economic and political challenges for Catalonia. For example, in the European Values Survey carried out in Catalonia in 2009, 34.5% of those surveyed said that there are now so many immigrants that a vegades em sento com un estrany/una estranya (“I sometimes feel like a foreigner”).2 Even though most people also thought that la vida cultural d’un país no queda destruïda pels immigrants (“the cultural life of a country is not destroyed by immigrants”),3 the responses to these questions reveal that Catalans feel a certain ambivalence towards immigrants. This preoccupation with immigration also feeds in to the current political situation in Catalonia and debates on its relationship with Spain. For example, Xavier Solano published an article in El Punt Avui in August 2011 in which he said the following: Tot i que el 23% d’estrangers que resideixen a Espanya ho fan a Catalunya, el nostre Parlament no té ni veu ni vot a l’hora de debatre o legislar sobre immigració. Per 1 2

3

Secretaria per a la Immigració, “La immigració en xifres”, Butlletí Secretaria per a la Immigració (Barcelona: Generalitat de Catalunya, 2010). Pau Mas, “Valors i actituds dels catalans davant de la immigració”, Valors tous en temps durs, Àngel Castiñeira, Javier Elzo, eds. (Barcelona: Barcino, 2011), pp. 313–340, especially, p. 329. 48.5% of respondents agreed with this statement (the most popular response), with 25% neither agreeing nor disagreeing. Pau Mas, “Valors i actituds dels catalans…”, p. 331.

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tant, no pot decidir temes tan cabdals com ara la quantitat, l’origen o el perfil dels nouvinguts que ens podem permetre com a país, ni sobre els recursos que hauríem de destinar per tal de garantir una qualitat de vida digna per a tots plegats. […] És vital […] que les decisions sobre aquest tema no les prenguin per nosaltres. Si volem una Catalunya cohesionada, desenvolupada, amb qualitat de vida i una economia competitiva, cal que puguem regular sobre aquesta qüestió com ho fan tots els estats del món i algunes nacions sense estat propi com ara el Quebec.4 Although 23% of the foreigners living in Spain do so in Catalonia, our parliament has no voice or vote for debating or legislating on immigration. Thus, it cannot decide on such important matters as the number, origin or profile of the newcomers that we can afford to take in as a country, nor about the resources that we should be dedicating to guaranteeing a decent quality of life for everyone […] It is essential […] that the decisions on these questions are not taken for us. If we want a united and well-developed Catalonia with a good standard of living and a competitive economy, we have to be able to exert control over this question, like all the other states in the world and some stateless nations such as Quebec.

Solano’s article is just one example among many. His words imply that Catalonia needs borders that are more solid, more “normal”, in order to tackle the challenge of immigration. They also imply that if Spain does not want to give Catalonia the necessary competencies to create “virtual” borders that would help to control immigration, this is another argument in favour of independence and the creation of “real” borders. If this increase in immigration has nourished recent debates about political competencies and economic prosperity, the cultural and linguistic effects of Catalonia’s history as a país d’acollida (“host country”) and a terra de pas (“waypoint”) have been preoccupying Catalans for much longer.5 The main motive for this concern arose in the mid-twentieth century, when the region attracted large numbers of economic migrants from poorer areas of Spain, especially the south. Given that the sociocultural differences they brought with them coincided with the restrictions on Catalan language and culture that had been imposed by the Franco regime, it is not surprising that when Catalan autonomy was restored after the dictatorship, there was much support for policies designed to promote the

4

5

Xavier Solano, “Immigració i prosperitat”, El Punt Avui (2011), accessed 23/9/11, . Salvador Cardús, “The Memory of Immigration in Catalan Nationalism”, International Journal of Iberian Studies, 18 (2005).

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Catalan language and support Catalan culture.6 The new wave of foreign immigrants from the late 1990s – which included some Spanish speakers from Latin America, but also many North Africans who spoke neither Catalan nor Spanish – brought a new dimension to questions about linguistic and cultural diversity that had previously only been considered in relation to migrants from the rest of Spain. This coincided with another new concern, about the potential effect of globalisation on cultures that were already marginalised within their own nation-states. The then-president of the Generalitat de Catalunya, Jordi Pujol, often mentioned this in speeches he gave in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and it was one of the major themes at the Fòrum universal de les cultures held in Barcelona in 2004. For Pujol, the main worry was that “small” cultures such as Catalonia’s could end up being diluïts en un gran magma global (“diluted in a great global magma”);7 in other words, he was most concerned about the threat of cultural homogenisation. For others, though, the problem was the potentially unwanted side-effects of cultural hybridisation. In the Llibre Blanc de la cultura catalana produced by the Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya in 1999, Ferran Mascarell warned against the promotion of mestissatges, barreges, síntesis, fusions o còctels multiculturals que desemboquin en una “nova” cultura o en una cultura híbrida (“miscegenation, mixtures, syntheses, fusions or multicultural cocktails that lead to a “new” culture or to a hybrid culture”).8 For many people, the only solution to these kinds of fears was to preserve and protect the elements of Catalan culture that made it unique. Hybridity is often theorised precisely as a way of breaking down national boundaries.9 It would therefore appear that to want more definite borders for Catalonia in order to control immigration could also be related to a desire to protect Catalan culture against hybridity. However, Vince 6

7 8 9

Kathryn Crameri, Catalonia: National Identity and Cultural Policy, 1980–2003 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2008), p. 52; Kenneth McRoberts, Catalonia: Nation Building without a State (Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 137–139. Jordi Pujol, Globalització i identitat (Barcelona: Generalitat de Catalunya Departament de la Presidència, 2001), pp. 5–6. Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya, Llibre blanc de la cultura catalana: un futur per a la cultura catalana (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1999), p. 89. Steven L. Arxer, “Addressing Postmodern Concerns on the Border: Globalization, the Nation-State, Hybridity, and Social Change”, Tamara Journal for Critical Organization Inquiry, 7 (2008), p. 191.

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Marotta argues that the existence of borders (in all senses of the word) is actually a necessary condition for hybridity. In “The Hybrid Self and the Ambivalence of Boundaries”, he considers the relationship between boundaries and hybridity from a theoretical perspective, starting from the work of the German sociologist Georg Simmel. Marotta says, “Boundaries capture the underlying paradox of the human condition because they signify both the heteronomy and autonomy of subjectivity”.10 They can therefore not be seen unproblematically as undesirable things to be broken down. Simmel himself spoke about the importance of two metaphors, the bridge and the door, that can help us to understand this paradox.11 The bridge symbolises the possibility that there can be connections between things that are separate, and it is also true that without this separation the bridge itself would not exist. The closed door always has the potential to be opened, and furthermore it “represents in a more decisive manner how separating and connecting are only two sides of precisely the same act”.12 This is why, as Keri E. Iyall Smith puts it, “hybridity can only exist in a world with borders”.13 Nevertheless, those – like many Catalans – who wish to clearly define the frontiers of their culture and identity are often accused of essentialism and denying the realities of today’s multicultural societies.14 How can we resolve this paradox? According to Marotta, boundaries are not bad things in themselves, but it depends on the use that we make of them: The problem is not boundaries in themselves, but how they are used, the type of boundaries and who imposes boundaries and why. […] boundaries can be oppressive and limiting, but they can also provide an ethical basis for respecting the otherness of the other.15

10 11 12 13

14

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Vince Marotta, “The Hybrid Self and the Ambivalence of Boundaries”, Social Identities, 14 (2008), p. 298. Vince Marotta, “The Hybrid Self…”, pp. 298–299; Georg Simmel, “Bridge and Door”, Theory, Culture & Society, 11 (1994). Georg Simmel, “Bridge…”, p. 7. Keri E. Iyall Smith, “Hybrid Identities: Theoretical Examinations”, Hybrid Identities: Theoretical and Empirical Examinations, Keri E. Iyall Smith, Patricia Leavy, eds. (Chicago: Haymarket, 2009), pp. 3–11, especially, p. 6. Tariq Modood, “Anti-Essentialism, Multiculturalism and the ‘Recognition’ of Religious Groups”, Citizenship in Diverse Societies, Will Kymlicka, Wayne Norman, eds. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 175–198, especially, pp. 176–177. Vince Marotta, “The Hybrid Self…”, p. 299.

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In other words, without clear borders – whether symbolic or real – we might fall into the trap of not respecting others’ right to difference. Furthermore, even people who intentionally describe or construct themselves as hybrid never escape totally from ethnic and group ties.16 They are still integrated into one or more specific communities, and they know how to recognise the “others” that allow them to construct their “self ”, a process that would not be possible without the existence of group boundaries. For recent immigrants to Catalonia, the Catalan language has been one of the most important group boundaries they must cross, because of the relatively high status of the language, and its importance in education and public institutions. Catalan politicians have always spoken of Catalonia as an open society, and have characterised the Catalan language as an open door through which newcomers may become part of this society.17 Catalan is therefore deemed to act as a bridge between an immigrant’s previous and new identity, rather than as a border designed to exclude.18 There is definitely some truth behind this political “spin”. During the Franco regime, even though Catalan culture and language were in a weak position because of the persecution they were suffering, Catalan still functioned as a means by which immigrants could achieve integration into Catalan society, if they were willing to learn and use it. The process also occurred in reverse: these migrants brought their own cultural phenomena to Catalonia, some of which have left a permanent mark on Catalan culture. Daniele Conversi describes this ability of Catalan culture to absorb other cultural elements as “remarkable”.19 According to Salvador Cardús, what has happened in Catalonia can be conceptualised as a process of “grafting”, as when the scion of one plant is grafted onto the rootstock of another, either to produce something more robust or for the purposes of propagation: el model català d’incorporació dels fluxos migratoris no és el del melting pot que acaba en guetos, ni el de la multiculturalitat que destrueix la comunitat i li fa perdre tremp, ni el de l’assimilació autoritària, ni tan sols el de la integració suau de l’estira-i-arronsa. El nostre model ha estat, amb algunes excepcions i uns quants 16 17 18 19

Vince Marotta, “The Hybrid Self…”, p. 309. Sarah Gore, “The Catalan Language and Immigrants from outside the European Union”, International Journal of Iberian Studies, 15 (2002). Kathryn Crameri, Catalonia: National Identity…, pp. 173–174. Daniele Conversi, The Basques, the Catalans and Spain: Alternative Routes to Nationalist Mobilisation (London: Hurst, 1997), p. 220.

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fracassos, però de manera nuclear, el de l’empeltament: l’empelt ha vigoritzat la planta vella, formant-ne una de nova.20 The Catalan model of incorporating migratory flows is not that of the melting pot that ends up in ghettoes, nor that of the multiculturality that destroys the community and leads it to lose vigour, nor authoritarian assimilation, not even the soft integration of give and take. Our model has been, with a few exceptions and some failures, but in a nuclear way, that of grafting: the graft has invigorated the old plant, forming a new one.

However, as Patricia Gabancho has pointed out, the situation today is rather more complex, especially if we consider that a high proportion of the newcomers are not even Spanish speakers: Hem de convenir que els immigrants no estan per a aventures lingüístiques, aquesta cosa tan intel·lectual. Prou feines tenen a sortir-se’n. El català queda sempre com a opció individual (i hipotètica) en un futur llunyà, quan per interès, o per afecte, o per respecte, qui havia estat un immigrant i ja és de fa anys un ciutadà, decideix de fer el pas i aprendre una segona llengua funcional.21 We have to accept that the immigrants are not here for linguistic adventures, such an intellectual thing. They have enough just getting by. Catalan always remains an individual (and hypothetical) option in a distant future, when through interest, love or respect, that person who had been an immigrant and has now been a citizen for years, decides to take the step and learn a second functional language.

Despite this pessimism, Gabancho claims that si un immigrant ostensible – vull dir amb la pell d’un altre color – s’expressa en català en públic, la reacció del catalanet mitjà és dir-se: aquest és dels nostres, i a partir d’aquí tot és simpatia. (“if an ostensible immigrant -I mean one with different coloured skin – expresses him [or herself] in Catalan in public, the reaction of the average Catalan is to say: he [or she] is one of us, and from then everything is smiles and friendliness”).22 Unfortunately, Gabancho’s impression of this acceptance seems more of a wish than a reality. Numerous studies have shown that many Catalan speakers will switch to Castilian when addressing someone who does not look or sound like a native Catalan.23 Advertising and information 20 21 22 23

Salvador Cardús, “Teoria i pràctica de l’empeltament”, Avui (3 May 2002). Patricia Gabancho, Sobre la immigració. Carta a la societat catalana (Barcelona: Columna, 2001), pp. 115–116. Patricia Gabancho, Sobre la immigració…, p. 117. Sarah Gore, “The Catalan Language and Immigrants…”, pp. 100–101.

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campaigns have tried to address this by encouraging Catalans to stick to their native language, even if it seems impolite to them to continue in Catalan if their interlocutor is having trouble understanding or replying to them. The theory is that Catalan will only act as a force for exclusion unless its speakers play their part in helping newcomers to learn it. To what extent, though, does learning Catalan allow the immigrant to forge a new identity on his or her own terms?24 Is it a door to an understanding of their own hybrid identity, or merely a tool of assimilation? This paper will consider these questions, and the effects of Catalonia’s linguistic border, using one particular example: the writings of Najat El Hachmi.

1. Najat El Hachmi Najat El Hachmi was born in Morocco in 1979 but moved to Catalonia with her family when she was just eight years old. They settled in the town of Vic, seventy kilometres inland from the city of Barcelona where she was eventually to study for a degree in Arabic. In 2004 she published Jo també sóc catalana, (I’m Catalan, too)25 a series of autobiographical reflections on her experience as an immigrant and the complex identity of her son, who was born in Catalonia. In 2008 she won the prestigious Ramon Llull prize for Catalan literature with her first novel, L’últim patriarca (The Last Patriarch),26 which has subsequently been translated into Spanish and English, among other languages. This was followed in 2011 by her second novel, La caçadora de cossos (The Body Hunter),27 which moves away from the theme of immigration and concentrates on issues surrounding female sexuality (and will therefore not be discussed here). She is also a regular contributor to the Catalan media. I am not proposing to treat El Hachmi as an example of hybridity – she has often railed against those who try to take her as an example of anything, insisting for example that she is not an icona de la integració dels immigrants (an icon

24 25 26 27

Kathryn Crameri, Catalonia: National Identity…, pp. 190–192. Najat El Hachmi, Jo també sóc catalana (Barcelona: Columna, 2004). Najat El Hachmi, L’últim patriarca (Barcelona: Planeta, 2008). Najat El Hachmi, La caçadora de cossos (Barcelona: Columna, 2011).

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of the integration of immigrants)–,28 but to take advantage of the way she expresses hybridity in order to illustrate my arguments. L’últim patriarca is the story of a girl – we are not told her name – who was also born in Morocco and also moves to Catalonia when she is very young. This means that there are clear autobiographical references, especially considering that El Hachmi had already published Jo també sóc catalana, in which she explained her personal history. However, there is one important aspect in which the possible autobiographical influence is not clear: the figure of the authoritarian and hypocritical father.29 The father, who is the “last patriarch” of the title, tightly controls his family but also passes through phases when he ignores them completely – for example, when he is in the middle of one of his many extra-marital affairs. Sometimes he decides he is going to be a good Muslim, other times he comes home drunk. His daughter can therefore never be sure what to do to keep him happy, and anything she does – however innocent it might seem – can send him into an instant rage.30 As she matures, the protagonist begins to search for explanations and solutions for her fears and insecurities, which first involves the difficult step of understanding them. As a teenager, she says, encara era incapaç de reconèixer [les meves crisis] com a identitàries (I was still unable to recognise [my crises] as ones of identity), 31 which implies that the older narrator does recognise them as such. The root of these crises is being a woman in a family dominated by a man who has no idea how to find his place in the world or control his own destiny. Instead, he attempts to control those around him. The protagonist must find a way out of this control before she can flourish as an individual. This is why the book finishes with a deliberate act of sexual betrayal designed to alienate her father forever: in this way, the protagonist draws a line under the gender domination that she has suffered, and throws off the yoke of paternal tradition.

28

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30 31

Agència Catalana de Notícies, “Najat El Hachmi respon a Garcia-Albiol i PxC: ‘Em sorprèn molt el concepte de nosaltres primer. Qui és nosaltres?’”, Agència Catalana de Notícies. Accessed 28 October 2011, . El Hachmi hardly mentions her father in Jo també sóc catalana, although there is a reference to his incapacity to understand his daughter. Najat El Hachmi, Jo també sóc…, pp. 114–115. Najat El Hachmi, L’últim patriarca…, pp. 232–233 and 266–268. Najat El Hachmi, L’últim patriarca…, p. 268.

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In the midst of the uncertainties and trauma caused by her family situation, the protagonist begins to read a Catalan dictionary. She starts with A and carries on reading alphabetically for many years, especially in the most difficult moments of her life, normally when her father passes through one of his habitual phases of violence and authoritarianism. The dictionary is initially a refuge, to help her to escape from the metaphorical “poltergeist” that roams her house causing unhappiness.32 But it also allows her to explore, even if in a limited way, the emotions she finds herself incapable of feeling: happiness, sadness, desire. If she cannot feel them, she can at least define and name them, and in this way know that they exist. It is significant that her reading starts with the dictionary, because it gives her a deep knowledge of the standard language that she would not otherwise have acquired. In Jo també sóc catalana, El Hachmi tells us that she did the same thing, and narrates an episode in which she puts her knowledge to the test by trying to correct a neighbour who insists on saying incens instead of encens.33 The story obviously speaks more than anything of her neighbour’s hypocrisy, since she believes it is good for immigrants to speak Catalan but cannot stand the idea that they would correct her: Sí home, m’ho diràs a mi que sóc catalana (“Hah, you think you can tell me, a Catalan, that”). But it also demonstrates that El Hachmi – just like the protagonist of L’últim patriarca – felt much more secure knowing that she had learned Catalan properly. Jo em vaig creure més legitimada a parlar de correccions lingüístiques. Al cap i a la fi, era jo qui m’havia llegit el diccionari quan no tenia altra lletra impresa a l’abast (“I believed that I had more right to talk about linguistic corrections. In the end, it was me who had read the dictionary when I had no other form of the written word within reach”). She had learned the rules of the language as a necessary step to be able to cross the linguistic border, even though her neighbour was unwilling to recognise that she had done so. The protagonist of L’últim patriarca undergoes this same process, which facilitates her integration into her community but also gives her access to new forms of culture that in turn introduce her to new ways of thinking. The later chapters of the novel are dotted with references to literature and popular culture, which seem a little gratuitous at first glance, but actually have clear links to the novel’s own themes: immigration, ethnicity, feminism, romantic love, patriarchy. Thus we see brief references to 32 33

Najat El Hachmi, L’últim patriarca…, p. 181. Najat El Hachmi, Jo també sóc…, p. 53.

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Zadie Smith, Leila Houari’s Zeida de Nulle Part, Whoopi Goldberg in The Colour Purple, the Venezuelan soap opera Cristal, and even the medieval Catalan novel of chivalry Curial e Güelfa. These are not just a refuge, or a marker of her eclectic intellectual curiosity, but also give her a means to refine her capacity to express her own identity. Interestingly, the most important of these influences on the protagonist’s thought is the work of Catalan women writers such as Victor Català (Caterina Albert) and Mercè Rodoreda. A very simple example of the parallels she draws between their writing and her life would be when she compares her long-suffering mother first with La Mila (the protagonist of Català’s Solitud) and then with La Colometa (the protagonist of Rodoreda’s La plaça del diamant).34 Much more importantly, however, it is Rodoreda’s Mirall trencat that shows her the way out of the dead end in which she has been trapped for so long. Diuen que els grans secrets desencadenen la tragèdia quan es destapen, el tipus de secrets que les famílies arrosseguen des de fa temps que ningú es recorda que existeixen. Ho diuen a “Mirall trencat”.35 They say that the big secrets lead to tragedy when they come out, the type of secrets that families carry with them for years [and] that nobody remembers that they exist. It says so in “Mirall trencat” (Broken Mirror).

She even invokes Rodoreda once again before committing the act that is to constitute this devastating secret: Jo no era la Mercè Rodoreda, però havia d’acabar amb l’ordre que ja feia temps que em perseguia. Què millor que un secret tan gran que ja no pogués tornar-ne a parlar mai més ningú.36 I wasn’t Mercè Rodoreda, but I had to put paid to the order that had been pursuing me for some time. What better than a secret so big that I could never talk about it with anyone ever again?

The book itself –L’últim patriarca – is in some senses the product of this assiduous reading of the dictionary and some of the best works of Catalan literature, without which the protagonist would never have been able to narrate her passage into adulthood in this way. The Catalan language is a 34 35 36

Najat El Hachmi, L’últim patriarca…, pp. 170 and 199. Najat El Hachmi, L’últim patriarca…, p. 316. Najat El Hachmi, L’últim patriarca…, p. 331.

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central aspect of her struggle for identity, and gives her access not just to the cultural reality that most closely surrounds her, but also to a mechanism that will allow her to articulate her hybridity. In the next section, we will explore how she expresses the relationship between the cultures and languages that influence her and her own developing sense of identity, and how this is mirrored in the style of the novel itself.

2. Dialogism and Hybridity As we have seen, language is a thematic element in L’últim patriarca that links the protagonist’s identity struggles to her growing domination of Catalan and its cultural context. This thematic element is reinforced by the style and language of the novel itself, in a way that can profitably be understood through Bakhtin’s notion of dialogism. According to Sue Vice, dialogism can be simply defined as “double-voicedness”, and although the implications of this term are complex, one key element is “the constant need for utterances to position themselves in relation to one another”.37 As Michael Holquist explains, “Dialogism […] takes it for granted that nothing can be perceived except against the perspective of something else”.38 At a simple level, this can be seen in the way that the style of L’últim patriarca is designed to reflect the narrator’s constant dialogue with herself and with the cultures in which she was raised. There is a subtle but noticeable difference between the styles of the two parts of the book that reflects the presence of two different voices: one belonging to a narrator who has not witnessed the things she narrates, and one who has. The style of the first part, set in Morocco, is more lyrical and epic, especially when narrating the childhood of Mimoun, who will later be the protagonist’s father. Here it is clear that El Hachmi is writing what Bakhtin calls “another’s speech in another’s language”, especially since there is a parodic tone to the narration of these early episodes in Mimoun’s life which mocks the patriarchal

37 38

Sue Vice, Introducing Bakhtin (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), p. 45. Michael Holquist, Dialogism: Bakhtin and his World (London-New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 22.

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framework of the society in which he was born.39 His birth, for example, as the first-born son, occurs without any significant omens or signs, and yet it is narrated in the kind of portentous style that would have been used if this had been the case: No hi havia senyals al cel, ni núvols gruixuts en l’horitzó del crepuscle, ni aquella mena de calma neguitejant […] (“there were no signs in the sky, nor thick clouds on the horizon at sunset, nor that kind of anxious calm”).40 This transposition into Catalan of a form of narration belonging to a different cultural tradition is what Bakhtin refers to as an “intentional linguistic hybrid”, “the perception of one language by another language, its illumination by another linguistic consciousness”.41 When the narrator talks about the distant days in Morocco and the family legends that she has heard at second or third hand, the style has an exotic touch that suggests a life lived to the rhythm of the seasons, and stories composed of many voices. The “legendary” overtones of these stories are reinforced in this part by the narrator’s constant insistence that there are different versions of the story, or that her own knowledge of the facts is incomplete.42 This polyphony is less apparent in the second part of the novel, set in Catalonia. The style is also more mundane and lacks the epic touch present in the first part. This means that there is a tension between the two parts that represents the tensions between the different aspects of the protagonist’s identity. The narrator, now older,43 dialogues constantly with her younger self, but in the first half she also dialogues with the collective voice of her birthplace; in the second, she reveals her struggles to initiate a similar kind of dialogue with her new home. To be able to do so means overcoming the barriers erected by her own family, and by others’ prejudices derived from her position as an immigrant. One of the fundamental premises of dialogism is that the self and language are both dependent on relationships with others, as without this dialogue with others we could not create meaning – either a meaningful sense of self or a meaningful language.44 L’últim patriarca narrates these two processes in parallel, as the protagonist literally “see[s] the world by 39 40 41 42 43 44

Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination (Austin University of Texas Press, 1981), p. 324. Najat El Hachmi, L’últim patriarca…, p. 11. Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination…, p. 359. Najat El Hachmi, L’últim patriarca…, pp. 16, 21, 32–34 and 61. We know nothing about the situation of the narrator or the position from which she is viewing her younger self. Michael Holquist, Dialogism: Bakhtin…, p. 23.

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authoring it, by making sense of it through the activity of turning it into a text – not just in the sense of translating it into finalizing schemes that can order its potential chaos”, but literally by narrating her life story.45 As Michael Holquist points out, this is a reductive process, since we need to simplify the world in order to understand it. However, the properties of the novel mean that it represents “the body of utterances that is least reductive of variety”.46 Indeed, El Hachmi is clearly trying to get the reader to understand the multiple dimensions of her protagonist’s identity and to move away from any stereotypical assumptions they might have held about Moroccan women, Muslims or immigrants in general. Nevertheless, El Hachmi has been criticised for apparently buying into a reductive and nationalistic vision of the Catalan language. Beatriz Celaya-Carrillo remarks that in Jo també sóc catalana, discussion of Catalan nationalism predominates over both Moroccan and Spanish national identities.47 Moreover, she asserts that El Hachmi overplays the minority status of Catalan in a way that suggests she has uncritically assumed the rhetoric of Convergència i Unió, the ruling party in Catalonia when she was a child.48 El Hachmi’s comment that she equated Catalan with the language of her homeland, Tamazight, because both had been marginalised and persecuted, is therefore portrayed by Celaya-Carrillo as something of an exaggeration, because el catalán ya no está marginado, al menos, en Cataluña (“Catalan is no longer marginalised, at least in Catalonia”).49 Whether or not we agree with Celaya-Carrillo’s assessment of the position of Catalan, in L’últim patriarca explicit reference to Catalan nationalism is largely absent, and the protagonist’s desire to make the Catalan language hers is not portrayed as political, but personal. The text itself is linguistically and culturally heteroglot, and although this necessarily implies that there are tensions between these conflicting discourses, this does not mean that there is a simple hierarchy of value attached to them.50 An obvious example of the heteroglossia of the text is the occasional use 45 46 47

48 49 50

Michael Holquist, Dialogism: Bakhtin…, pp. 84–85. Michael Holquist, Dialogism: Bakhtin…, p. 85. Beatriz Celaya-Carrillo, “Pánicos racistas: reflexiones sobre la inmigración en Cataluña y España a partir de un texto de Najat El Hachmi”, Modern Language Notes, 126 (2011), pp. 347–348 and 352. Beatriz Celaya-Carrillo, “Pánicos racistas: reflexiones…, p. 348. Beatriz Celaya-Carrillo, “Pánicos racistas: reflexiones…, p. 350. Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination…, p. 300.

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of words from other languages, sometimes Spanish or English but also Arabic or Tamazight: for example, personal titles and names of festivals, clothing or food (djin, serual, remsemmen, rhaj, subhanu-jaili, lalla, aixura, sahbi, iid, khringu). Some of these words are explained in footnotes, even though this interrupts the narration. This shows that these terms are not only there to provide an exotic touch: the author must consider it important that the reader understand them. Indeed, they illuminate the continuing importance to the narrator/protagonist of cultural practices from her Moroccan heritage, which now sit side-by-side with her love of Catalan culture in the same way that the Tamazight and Catalan words themselves do on the page, forming a hybrid construction.51 These non-Catalan words normally appear in dialogue, or when the narrator is using reported speech to represent the words or thoughts of others. They therefore belong to oral language. However, El Hachmi writes in such a way that there is no formal separation between dialogue and narration: they dissolve into one another. In fact, she credits her early experiences as a listener to oral storytelling with arousing her later interest in literature: abans de llegir, estava molt exposada a un tipus de literatura oral. He viscut envoltada de dones que a través del relat oral han aconseguit donar una forma a les seves vides (“before reading, I was very exposed to a type of oral literature. I have lived surrounded by women who have managed to shape their lives through oral tales”) 52 Oral language is therefore very present in the narration, for example onomatopoeic words such as plaf! to show a slap, tfu for the act of spitting, also txsst, rum-rum, uaaaa, and many others. These words stand in sharp relief to what Bakhtin calls “normal literary language, the expected literary horizon”, and therefore exist in dialogical opposition to it.53 By choosing a literary language that contains a clear bias towards orality and contemporaneity, El Hachmi moulds standard Catalan to her own needs, para ironizar y desenmascarar el monológico lenguaje encarnado en la autoridad paterna (“to ironise and debunk the monologic language incarnate in paternal authority”), as Cristián Ricci puts it.54 51 52

53 54

Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination…, pp. 304–305. Adam Martín, “Najat El Hachmi: ‘No sóc fruit de cap política pensada d’integració’”, Ara. Accessed 29 October 2011, . Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination…, p 314. Cristián Ricci, “L’últim patriarca de Najat El Hachmi y el forjamiento de una identidad amazigh-catalana”, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, 11 (2010), p. 80.

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Another good example of this kind of dialogised heteroglossia present in the novel – “another’s speech in another’s language”55 – is the distinctive phrase no pots quedar-te per vestir sants (“you can’t stay here to dress the saints”).56 There is apparently a disjunction between this Catalan saying and the context in which it appears. The protagonist and her family have gone back to the village where she was born. Her aunts tell her that she will soon have to marry, and the girl replies that she never wants to get married. This is when her aunts tell her no pots quedar-te per vestir sants, a phrase with clearly Catholic origins put into the mouths of Muslim ladies who would have been speaking Tamazight. In other words, the use of this phrase is an instance of hybridisation of two supposedly conflicting religious discourses. This hybridisation has the paradoxical effect of demonstrating a bridge between the two cultures: they are united by the same basic preoccupation that young women should get married. The phrase therefore demonstrates the kind of linguistic hybridity that “gives birth to new forms of amalgamation”, to cite Robert Young.57 Dialogised heteroglossia is the textual mechanism that supports El Hachmi’s desire to transcend stereotypes and, as Cristián Ricci puts it, evocar una poética del nuevo orbe que rompa con las subdivisiones basadas en fronteras políticas y esencialismos culturales inalcanzables (“evoke a poetic of the new orb that breaks with subdivisions based on political boundaries and unattainable cultural essentialism”).58 This rupture can be theorised in terms of the centrifugal and centripetal forces that Bakhtin identifies in language and that form the basis of dialogical thinking.59 The centripetal forces that correspond to “unitary language” are constantly offset by the centrifugal forces of “social and historical heteroglossia”.60 Not to recognise this simultaneity of forces is to fall prey to

55 56 57 58 59

60

Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination…, p. 324; Sue Vice, Introducing Bakhtin…, p. 20. Najat El Hachmi, L’últim patriarca…, p. 251. Another similar example is the phrase les porto posades fins al sostre (Najat El Hachmi, L’últim patriarca…, p. 174). Robert Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 21. Cristián Ricci, “L’últim patriarca de Najat El Hachmi…”, p. 72. Leslie Baxter, “Thinking Dialogically about Communication in Personal Relationships”, Structure in Human Communication, Richard L. Conville, ed. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1994), pp. 23–37, especially, p. 36. Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination…, p. 272.

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monological thinking.61 In the case of the immigrant, such thinking would mean that the observer could only see an “either/or” relationship between the immigrant’s past and present identities, rather than allowing for the kind of ambivalence, variation and intermixing that El Hachmi identifies in Jo també sóc catalana and L’últim patriarca. This involves not only a recognition that the relationship can actually be “both… and…”, but that sometimes it is “both… and…”, sometimes “either/or”, and sometimes it is in the process of shifting or oscillating, so that it occupies an indeterminate position between the two. The immigrant’s interactions with others as s/he negotiates these positions are crucial if we are to understand how this construction of the self is performed and perceived.

3. El Hachmi’s “Frontier Generation” and the Desire for Sameness Alan DeSantis, in an essay on literature by exiles who have made their home in the United States, calls for a more sophisticated understanding of the life of the exile based on an acknowledgement of the centripetal and centrifugal forces that shape their experiences: From a Bakhtinian perspective […], the contradicting discourse of exile literature may be reconceived as an ongoing dialogue between the exile’s centrifugal voice that sees the possibilities of starting over in a new land, no matter how uncertain and ambiguous it may be, and the centripetal voice that desires the sameness and stability of the old land, no matter how tyrannical or oppressive it may have been.62

While not an exile in the sense meant by DeSantis, El Hachmi and the protagonist of L’últim patriarca nevertheless – as migrants – very much reflect this dynamic. Furthermore, at the end of the Carta d’un immigrant (Letter from an Immigrant) that El Hachmi presented at a conference on immigration in 2004, she said the following to the hypothetical immigrant she was addressing: 61 62

Alan D. DeSantis, “Caught Between Two Worlds: Bakhtin’s Dialogism in the Exile Experience”, Journal of Refugee Studies, 14 (2001). Alan D. DeSantis, “Caught Between Two Worlds…”, p. 6.

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Ja res no tornarà a ser igual. No perquè els altres hagin canviat, sinó perquè ets tu qui t’has transformat en algú altre, no encaixaràs, potser, ni en el món del qual vas partir ni al món on vas anar a parar. Aprendràs a viure, finalment, a la frontera d’aquests dos móns [sic], un lloc que pot ser divisió, però que també és encontre, punt de trobada. Un bon dia et creuràs afortunat de gaudir d’aquesta frontera, et descobriràs a tu mateix més complet, més híbrid, més immens que qualsevol altra persona.63 Nothing will ever be the same again. Not because the others have changed, but rather because its you who has converted your self into someone else, you will not fit, perhaps, neither in the world you started from nor in the world where you ended up. You will learn to live, finally, on the boundary between these two worlds, a place that can be a division, but that is also a coming together, a meeting point. One fine day, you will think yourself fortunate to enjoy this frontier, you will find yourself more complete, more hybrid, more immense than anyone else.

This image of the contradictory border on which the immigrant must live corresponds closely with DeSantis’ conception of the tug-of-war faced by exiles. El Hachmi also uses it in a more specific sense in Jo també sóc catalana, to describe her own position as an immigrant who is in some senses neither “first” nor “second” generation, since she moved to Catalonia at such a young age: Sóc un esgraó intermedi, formo part del que jo anomenaria generació de frontera (“I’m an intermediate step, I make up part of what I would call the frontier generation”).64 While her letter to a fellow immigrant ends on a very positive valuation of hybridity, El Hachmi’s writings reveal the more negative side she refers to earlier in the same speech: division and lack of belonging. Her ambivalence evokes the classic idea of “two-ness” or “double consciousness” that derives from the work of W. E. B. Du Bois.65 Du Bois conceived this idea, at the turn of the twentieth century, to speak of the experience of African-Americans who suffered a division of their self, “as the objectified

63

64 65

Najat El Hachmi, Carta d’un Immigrant (Barcelona, 2004). Speech given at the opening of the Congrés Mundial dels Moviments Humans i Immigració, organized by the Institut Europeu de la Mediterrània. Accessed 22February 2012, . Najat El Hachmi, Jo també sóc…, p. 13. W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Souls of Black Folk” (Project Gutenberg eBook, n.d., 1903), p. 3.

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and excluded Other and as the subjective and agencial Self ”.66 Despite many negative effects, this division has a positive side in that it gives them a more nuanced perspective on their new home. This division is evident in Jo també sóc catalana, especially from the last words of the Prologue, where El Hachmi describes un pensament que ja no és el dels nostres pares, però que no és del tot el de les persones que ens envolten, els autòctons. Un pensament de frontera que serveix per entendre dues realitats diferenciades, una manera de fer, d’actuar, de ser, de sentir, d’estimar, una manera de buscar la felicitat a cavall entre dos mons.67 a way of thinking that does not belong to our parents, but that is not wholly of the people who surround us, the natives. A frontier thought that serves to understand two differentiated realities, a way of doing things, of acting, of being, of loving, a way of seeking happiness between two worlds.

An example of this double consciousness can be found in the two chapters where she narrates the very different experiences of Catalan and Moroccan women. The fourth part of the book is called Dones d’aquí, dones d’allà (“Women from Here, Women from There”), and it begins with a chapter that tells of a typical day in the life of the author: get up, take her son to school, go to work, come home and do the housework, etc. Throughout the chapter the author comments on the social expectations of Western countries that weigh down on her and make her feel like a bad mother (because she does not have time to explain everything to her son and is too dictatorial) and a second-class woman (because she does not have enough time to take care of her appearance). At the end of the chapter, she says with more than a touch of irony Quan et fiques al llit, ja tard, penses: que bé, ser una dona alliberada com les dones occidentals, rendida i sense temps per gairebé res, però alliberada al cap i a la fi.68 When you get into bed, late, you think “Isn’t it great, being a liberated women like the Western women, exhausted and with hardly any time to do anything, but free anyway.” 66

67 68

Judith R. Blau, Eric S. Brown, “DuBois and Diasporic Identity: The Veil and the Unveiling Project”, Hybrid Identities: Theoretical and Empirical Examinations, Keri E. Iyall, Patricia Leavy, eds. (Chicago: Haymarket, 2009), pp. 41–61, especially, p. 44. Najat El Hachmi, Jo també sóc…, p. 14. See also p. 47 where she talks about the linguistic aspects of her double consciousness. Najat El Hachmi, Jo també sóc…, p. 137.

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The next chapter is very different, and narrates typical events in her family back in Morocco, also from a woman’s perspective: they make food, discuss the marriage prospects of one daughter or the marital problems of another, and meet their sisters to sit and gossip. The chapter ends like this: I aquelles dones felices, cadascuna amb el seu lloc a la vida, amb la seva habitació, que deien, ningú els havia dit encara que estaven oprimides pel poder patriarcal, ningú els havia parlat de la revolució feminista occidental i que s’havien d’alliberar de la seva suposada esclavitud, de tanta opressió. I tot i això eren relativament felices en el seu racó del món fet de petites alegries, com aquella de poder-se retrobar amb les germanes sempre que volguessin.69 And those happy women, each with their place in life, with their own room, as they said nobody had told them yet that they were oppressed by patriarchal power, no one had talked to them about the Western feminist revolution and that they had to free themselves from their supposed slavery, from so much oppression. And despite that, they were relatively happy in their corner of the world made up of little pleasures, like being able to meet up with their sisters whenever they wanted.

El Hachmi explicitly rejects the black-and-white stereotype of the emancipated women from “modern” countries in comparison with the oppressed women of “backward” countries. Elsewhere, she expresses this rejection even more starkly, characterising Eurocentric feminism as “pathetic” –her strong language here perhaps revealing an emotional reaction as much as an intellectual position.70 Here too we see what might be an underlying conflict of loyalties, as she perhaps leans too much in the other direction and idealises the Moroccan woman. Nevertheless, the comments perfectly reveal her double consciousness, because she can see Catalan society through another lens. They also exemplify the fact that – just as dialogism does not mean a relationship between two distinct and separate forms, so two-ness does not necessary mean “just” two facets can exist within a person’s identity: the divided self permits multiple perspectives. In other words, out of two-ness grows Homi Bhabha’s “third space”, “which enables other positions to emerge”.71 69 70

71

Najat El Hachmi, Jo també sóc…, p. 147. Pep Subirós, “Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From: Thoughts of Immigrants to Catalonia on Social Integration and Cultural Capital”, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 35 (2011), p. 443. Jonathan Rutherford, “The Third Space: Interview with Homi Bhabha”, Identity, Community, Culture, Difference, Jonathan Rutherford, ed. (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990), pp. 207–221, especially, p. 211.

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But what of the border itself, the door that must be opened or the gap that must be bridged? Does it have any role to play in the creation of this “third space”, other than as something which must be contested and politicised? In the case of El Hachmi, the linguistic border represented by the Catalan language is not just an obstacle but, eventually, a facilitator that allows her sense of multiple perspective to emerge. However, her struggle to learn the standard language as well as she could, and her commitment to the “cause” of minority languages, appears to indicate that she essentialises Catalan in some way. Is there a way to make sense of this apparent contradiction? A fruitful way of understanding El Hachmi’s attitude to Catalan can be found in Shirley Anne Tate’s work on black British women’s discussions of their racial identity. Tate claims that this identity is “both fluid and dependent on a contingent essentialism”, as can be seen in the way that being a black woman is experienced in everyday life and performed in dialogue with others.72 Tate theorises this in similar terms to the centrifugal and centripetal forces identified by Bakhtin and mentioned above, but the key terms for her are “sameness” and “difference”. The centrifugal forces of hybridity that push for an acknowledgement of the validity of difference are offset by the centripetal urges that lead us to seek sameness. That sameness can only be found through a – however temporary – identification with a common essence possessed by those who are marked out as different, leading to the apparently contradictory location of “sameness within difference”.73 An examination of the “dialogical engagement” between these two apparent opposites is what allows us to “get to interstitial hybrid agency, the subjugated knowledge which is important in the production of critical ontologies of the self.”74 In both Jo també sóc catalana and L’últim patriarca, El Hachmi narrates not just a need for the recognition of the validity of difference, but also a marked desire for sameness. She also interrogates the place of both of these forces in the construction and expression of hybrid identities. Both books narrate experiments in sameness – which here might be profitably understood as “connectedness” rather than assimilation –75 such as 72 73 74 75

Shirley Anne Tate, Black Skins, Black Masks: Hybridity, Dialogism, Performance (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), p. 2. Shirley Anne Tate, Black Skins, Black Masks…, p. 141. Shirley Anne Tate, Black Skins, Black Masks…, p. 145. Busuyi Mekusi, “Sameness Within Difference: Blurring ‘Self’ and ‘Other’. Liminality in Zakes Mda’s The Bells of Amersfoort”, Spheres Public and Private: Western

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celebrating Christmas as well as Ramadan, that never resolve the tension between the underlying centrifugal and centripetal forces that shape an immigrant’s identity. Lack of sameness with her Moroccan family wounds the protagonist of L’últim patriarca and contributes to her sense of rootlessness.76 In Jo també sóc catalana, El Hachmi is told that her friends’ negative comments about immigrants do not apply to her because she is “different”, but rather than taking this as a compliment she shows her defiance by identifying, in that moment, with all immigrants: vull ser com tots els immigrants, mentre algú els discrimini (“I want to be like all the immigrants, while someone [still] discrimates against them”).77 She therefore chooses a politicised sameness with the persecuted immigrant over the possibility that being “different” from other immigrants might also imply a degree of “sameness” with her Catalan friends. In any case, both identifications are fleeting and ambivalent. On the other hand, one constant object of desire for El Hachmi is the recognition of her sameness when it comes to her command of the Catalan language and the culture to which this gives access. The episode in Jo també sóc catalana in which she tries to correct her neighbour, referred to above, is one example of this; another is her pride in her son’s insistence on speaking Catalan when addressed in Spanish.78 El Hachmi also narrated in an interview her disappointment at being feted for winning a short story competition as a teenager, only to realise that the excessive media coverage that followed was because she was Moroccan, not because she was a good writer.79 As for L’últim patriarca, the book itself constitutes an expression of sameness by both the author and the narrator, whose contact with literature through the Catalan language allows them finally to express their Catalanity, as well as their otherness and their hybridity. The novel’s dialogism is simultaneously contained and released by the standard Catalan in which it is written. As Leslie Baxter says, “To Bakhtin, the essence of ‘dialogue’ was its simultaneous differentiation-from, yet

76 77 78 79

Genres in African Literature, Gordon Collier, ed. (Amsterdam-New York: Editions Rodopi, 2011), pp. 571–597, especially, p. 574. Najat El Hachmi, L’últim patriarca…, pp. 275–276. Najat El Hachmi, Jo també sóc…, p. 91. Najat El Hachmi, Jo també sóc…, p. 54. Oriol Osan, “Najat El Hachmi: La vida després del Ramon Llull”, Benzina, 37 (2009), p. 31. Accessed 10 August 2011, .

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fusion-with, the Other”.80 Tate demonstrates that this fusion is dependent on sameness and, therefore, on being able to categorise both Self and Other in potentially reductive and essentialising ways. Those that deny that El Hachmi has the capacity to dialogue (i.e. that she has no right, or is not properly able, to speak and write in Catalan), also deny her the right to “fuse” and condemn her always to be “different”. Nevertheless, her secure knowledge of Catalan, and the culture that is accessed through it, gives her a way of seeking fusion while still expressing difference. After all, “to think dialogically is to focus on the centripetal-centrifugal dynamic, not on the static, monologic unities of one form or another”.81 The possibilities inherent in this dynamic constitute the joy to be found in hybridity, the positive side of straddling the border.

Conclusion El Hachmi’s own comments on her literary career and aspirations suggest that the specific fact of reading and writing in Catalan was important because of the way that the language spoke to her about minoritised cultures, thus intersecting with her own experiences. In Jo també sóc catalana, she also specifies that it was aprendre a llegir “en català” (learning to read “in Catalan”), not Spanish, that opened up the world of literature to her (despite the fact that the number of original texts and foreign translations available to her in Catalan would have been much smaller than in Spanish).82 She locates the reason for this identification not within the linguistic policies of the Generalitat, but in the generous help of teachers and friends who were keen to open up their culture to her.83 Despite her struggles to be accepted as a Catalan speaker and writer without constant reference to her Moroccan heritage, the language has clearly functioned as a key tool through which she can express multiple facets of her identity, as a woman, a Moroccan, a Catalan, a writer, a mother, and so on. If she and her son are perpetually condemned to fer de pont 80 81 82 83

Leslie Baxter, “Thinking Dialogically…”, p. 25. Leslie Baxter, “Thinking Dialogically…”, p. 36. Najat El Hachmi, Jo també sóc…, p. 14. My emphasis. Adam Martín, “Najat El Hachmi: ‘No sóc fruit de cap política…”.

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(act as a bridge),84 then at least they do have the advantage of a secure command of Catalan with which to do so. Moreover, her work is a clear example of the kind of stylistic hybridity that has the potential to enrich Catalan culture through what Bakhtin describes as both “the mixing of linguistic forms – the markers of two languages and styles” and, more importantly, “the collision between differing points of views [sic] on the world that are embedded in these forms”.85 To draw general conclusions about the experience of immigrants to Catalonia from the work of El Hachmi would be to fall into the trap of trying to make her a model of integration, a tendency which she has so often protested against.86 However, she does show us one mechanism by which Catalonia’s “linguistic border” can function as a means for expressing hybrid identities and the struggle between sameness and difference. Her experience also proves Marotta’s point that boundaries are not necessarily things that “negate and oppress”.87 Nevertheless, it is in Catalans’ best interests to capitalise more proactively on the positive and constructive qualities of their linguistic border, by fully recognising the “sameness” of Catalan-speaking immigrants as well as permitting them fully to express their otherness and hybridity.

Annexe Bibliography Agència Catalana de Notícies, “Najat El Hachmi respon a Garcia-Albiol i PxC: ‘Em sorprèn molt el concepte de nosaltres primer. Qui és nosaltres?’ ”, Agència Catalana de Notícies (2011). Steven L. Arxer, “Addressing Postmodern Concerns on the Border: Globalization, the Nation-State, Hybridity, and Social Change”, Tamara Journal for Critical Organization Inquiry, 7 (2008), pp. 179–199.

84 85 86 87

Najat El Hachmi, Jo també sóc…, p. 54. Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination…, p. 360. Agència Catalana de Notícies, “Najat El Hachmi respon a Garcia-Albiol…”; Adam Martín, “Najat El Hachmi: ‘No sóc fruit de cap política…”. Vince Marotta, “The Hybrid Self…”, p. 299.

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Identities. An interdisciplinary approach to the roots of present Identités. Une approche interdisciplinaire aux racines du présent Identidades. Una aproximación interdisciplinar a las raíces del presente

Individual or collective, assumed or imposed, accepted or disputed, identities mark out the basic framework that root the human being in society. Language, literature, the creation of a shared memory, social formulas and the range of all cultural expressions have contributed to articulating human life as a mixture of identities. Given these concerns, this series publishes books from the different branches of the Humanities and Social Sciences, which have taken identity as a prism through which the problems of current society and its historical roots are studied. The preferential use of English, French and Spanish ensure greater dissemination of research collected here. The series includes monographs, collected papers, conference proceedings. Individuelles ou collectives, assumées ou imposées, acceptées ou combattues, les identités configurent le premier cadre d’enracinement de l’être humain en société. La langue, la littérature, la création d’une mémoire commune déterminée, les formules sociales et toutes les expressions culturelles ont contribué à articuler la vie humaine comme un treillis d’identités. Compte tenu de ces préoccupations, cette collection publie ouvrages depuis les diverses branches des sciences humaines et sociales qui prennent l’identité comme prisme par lequel étudier les problèmes de la société d’aujourd’hui et ses racines historiques. L’utilisation préférentielle de l’anglais, le français et l’espagnol assure une plus grande diffusion des recherches ici présentés. La collection accueille des monographies, ouvrages collectifs et actes de congrès. Individuales o colectivas, asumidas o impuestas, aceptadas o combatidas, las identidades configuran el primer marco de enraizamiento del ser humano en sociedad. La lengua, la literatura, la creación de una determinada memoria común, las fórmulas sociales y todas las expresiones culturales han contribuido a articular la vida humana como un entramado de identidades. Asumiendo estas preocupaciones, esta colección publica obras provenientes de las distintas ramas de las Humanidades y las Ciencias Sociales que adopten la identidad a modo de prisma con que estudiar los problemas de la sociedad actual y sus raíces históricas. El uso preferente del inglés, el francés y el castellano garantizan una mayor difusión de las investigaciones aquí recogidas. La colección acoge monografías, obras colectivas y actas de congreso.

Editorial address:

Institut for Research into Identity and Society (IRIS) University of Lleida Plaça Víctor Siurana 1 25003 Lleida Catalonia / Spain

Vol. 1 Flocel Sabaté (ed.) Identities on the move ISBN 978-3-0343-1296-7, 2014 Vol. 2 Flocel Sabaté (ed.) Hybrid Identities ISBN 978-3-0343-1471-8, 2014