Postnational Perspectives on Contemporary Hispanic Literature [1 ed.] 9780813052014

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Postnational Perspectives on Contemporary Hispanic Literature

University Press of Florida Florida A&M University, Tallahassee Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton Florida Gulf Coast University, Ft. Myers Florida International University, Miami Florida State University, Tallahassee New College of Florida, Sarasota University of Central Florida, Orlando University of Florida, Gainesville University of North Florida, Jacksonville University of South Florida, Tampa University of West Florida, Pensacola

Postnational Perspectives on Contemporary Hispanic Literature

E Edited by Heike Scharm and Natalia Matta-Jara

University Press of Florida Gainesville · Tallahassee · Tampa · Boca Raton Pensacola · Orlando · Miami · Jacksonville · Ft. Myers · Sarasota

Copyright 2017 by Heike Scharm and Natalia Matta-Jara All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper This book may be available in an electronic edition. 22 21 20 19 18 17 6 5 4 3 2 1 A record of cataloging-in-publication data is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-0-8130-5494-0 The University Press of Florida is the scholarly publishing agency for the State University System of Florida, comprising Florida A&M University, Florida Atlantic University, Florida Gulf Coast University, Florida International University, Florida State University, New College of Florida, University of Central Florida, University of Florida, University of North Florida, University of South Florida, and University of West Florida. University Press of Florida 15 Northwest 15th Street Gainesville, FL 32611-2079 http://upress.ufl.edu

CONTENTS

List of Figures vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Heike Scharm and Natalia Matta-Jara Part I. Postnational Perspectives on Hispanism and Theory 1. Space, Subjectivity, and Literary Studies in the Age of Globalization 29 Nil Santiáñez 2. ImagiNations from a History of Space to a History of Movement: Cuba between Island-World and World of Islands 46 Ottmar Ette 3. A Postnational Critique of Language: The Baroque Algorithm 69 Julio Ortega Part II. Postnational Perspectives on Identity and Belonging 4. Beyond Borders: Language and Postnational Identity in Cecilia Vicuña’s i tu 89 Silvia Goldman 5. Postnational Masculinities and Globalization in Junot Díaz and Juan Francisco Ferré 108 Ricardo F. Vivancos-Pérez 6. Voluntary Exiles, New Identities, and the Emergence of a Postnational Sensibility in Contemporary Latin American Literature 128 Francisco Brignole

Part III. Postnational Perspectives and New World Literatures 7. The Classical Tradition of Cosmopolitan “Spiritual Exercises” in Jorge Luis Borges and Latin American Postnational Literature 149 Bernat Castany Prado 8. Cosmopolitan Postnationalists: The Case of Virgilio Piñera and Wifredo Lam 171 Francisco Fernández de Alba 9. The Postnational Reception of Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s La sombra del viento 187 Maarten Steenmeijer Works Cited 201 List of Contributors 221 Index 223

FIGURES

1. Map of Juan de la Cosa, 1500 50 2. “Awayo,” Cecilia Vicuña’s i tu 93 3. “devolver la justicia de una relación,” Cecilia Vicuña’s i tu 96 4. “habla alba,” Cecilia Vicuña’s i tu 98 5. “comenzar,” Cecilia Vicuña’s i tu 99

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Compiling this volume would not have been possible without our contributors’ continuous diligence and enthusiastic collaboration. It was a true pleasure and honor to engage with such renowned scholars and to converse across continents about the present and future of our discipline. We would also like to thank our reviewers for reading our first drafts and for their constructive feedback. Their input greatly improved the final manuscript. The editors of University Press of Florida provided invaluable support from the initial steps to the finalization of our project. We are deeply grateful for their professionalism and kindness. Finally, we would like to thank Texas Tech University for their financial support.

E Introduction Heike Scharm and Natalia Matta-Jara

This collective volume addresses the current paradigm shift in the humanities toward cross-cultural encounters by defining and applying the postnational position to Hispanic literatures. Despite the volume’s diversity of topics and approaches, each of its contributions focuses on how expanding worldviews at different moments in time have impacted and are reflected in the way Latin American, Latino, or Spanish authors write, and how postnational perspectives are reshaping literatures and cultural theory in the “Global Now.” To offer a precise and absolute definition of the term “postnational” and its uses across the disciplines would be an impossible task. However, for the sake of clarity, we would like to define postnational perspectives, at least as we are applying the term within the content of this volume, as timeless modes of thinking, writing, or reading literature that identify the interrelations between the local and the global, while recognizing the continuing ties to the nation. By giving preference in this collection to the term “postnational” over other widely used terms in current literary and cultural theories, such as transcultural, transnational, diasporic, cosmopolitan, etc., which are often used interchangeably or at least with similar intent across disciplines, we do not wish to impose our—or any—terminology over others. Well-aware of the heated controversies attached to the choice of terminology currently in vogue, our preference for postnational is simply rooted in the desire to draw attention to what we believe to be a continued dependency on the local, even and especially when addressing the global, as well as to the growing tensions between national and nonnational views and modes of reading.

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As readers and critics approach literary works beyond national contexts, they are beginning to place them within the broader perspectives of a “world literature,” redefined as a literary network system in the form of a planetary rhizome. While reading or writing from a postnational perspective necessarily also implies paying attention to the tension between the local and the global, it does not pretend to strip literary works off their local idiosyncrasies, their particular national histories, or their cultural singularities. Reevaluating literary processes within a planetary rather than a local context requires a conscious attempt to avoid falling into the binary trap of center-periphery. Rather, reading and writing in a postnational fashion implies a different kind of thought process, one that relies on analogous thinking following Alexander von Humboldt’s model of exploration. By recognizing local idiosyncrasies and by subtracting them from their local surroundings and then placing them within a broader, global perspective, Humboldt sought a deeper knowledge, not only of otherness, but also of the particularities of his own culture and language. As Ottmar Ette explains, we can only acquire the multidimensional meanings inherent in the local by broadening our perspectives and by placing the local within global contexts (“Alexander” 105). This method allowed Humboldt to recognize underlying networks and systems, similar to or relatable to other localities. Postnational modes of reading, as we wish to frame them in this volume, are therefore not only applicable to contemporary literature, but may also change our understanding of the literary production of other time periods, such as works written by Garcilaso de la Vega or José Martí. Ottmar Ette’s and Julio Ortega’s chapters both provide excellent examples of how postnational perspectives reshape the way we understand history, cultures, and languages. While it is true that literature, at least over the past six centuries, has always been “global,” at least to an extent, our ways of approaching literary works has been predominantly national, or at the most comparative (one nation’s literary production compared to another’s) or transatlantic (the dialogue and circulation between one continent’s literary production and another’s). Postnational modes of reading attempt to move beyond what Alasdair MacIntyre calls two of the prevalent characteristics of our modernity, which is the compartmentalization of thought (the tendency to think within clearly definable and isolated

Introduction · 3

categories) and the subsequent fragmented worldviews that shaped the twentieth century. Before framing our understanding of the postnational, it may be pertinent to clarify why we believe that postnational perspectives on Hispanic literature offer a valuable contribution to the ongoing discussions on the impact of globalization on current worldviews, as well as on the restructuring of the academic world in the United States and abroad. Why, when expanding our views beyond the nation, are we taking as a starting point “Hispanic” literature, a category or qualification associated—at least in some regards—with a national framing? Although Hispanic studies as an academic field started out as primary national “Peninsular” studies with a focus on the literary production of the medieval and Golden Ages, we have seen a clear shift in interest over the past three decades toward contemporary literatures, and toward literatures written in the Americas, the peripheries, and the diasporas (Davies 3). In her “What Is Hispanic Studies,” Davies summarizes that “Hispanic” refers to Spain and Spanish America, and may also refer to Brazil, Roman and Islamic Spain, pre-Columbian America, as well as the Spanish and Spanish American diasporas across the globe, including the United States. The attempt to articulate a clear definition of what the label “Hispanic” comprises presents a challenge, in part because, as Stephanie Dennison points out when discussing contemporary film in the Hispanic world, the meaning of the terms shifts “depending on one’s location (the UK, the USA, Spain, Portugal or Latin America) and on one’s locus of enunciation” (2). Although the authors of these chapters are scholars from Latin America, Europe, and the United States, and thus their locus of enunciation varies considerably, they all consider themselves as belonging to the academic field of Hispanic studies, as it has developed in the United States over the last decades. In that sense, when we speak of Hispanic literature in this volume, we are adapting Anne Cruz’s definition, who refers to Hispanism as a field comprising Hispanic studies as practiced primarily in the academic world in the United States. However, as Sylvia Molloy and Robert McKee Irwin remind us, Hispanism was originated as an ideological construct tied to a monolingual, hegemonic, even imperialist tradition. Therefore, we need to keep in mind the possible implications and pitfalls

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when using Hispanism and Hispanic studies interchangeably, and we need to be mindful of how the use of the term Hispanism could affect the development of Hispanic studies as a discipline (x-xi). We are quite aware of this underlying predicament, especially when taking into account the history of unjust power structures that has shaped and continues to shape the modern world. This criticism is not unjustified, and we wholeheartedly agree that it is not possible, nor perhaps desirable, to separate literature and its modes of interpretation or circulation from the reality of the historical struggle of the marginalized. Nevertheless, the introduction to this volume—while recognizing the existing polemic surrounding the terms Hispanic and Hispanism—simply cannot provide an adequate response here. Attempting to do so would require a volume with a different focus than the one presented here. For the sake of clarity, however, we wish to reiterate that when we speak of Hispanism in the context of postnational perspectives, we are referring to an academic field that aims to include and reflect the cultural and linguistic varieties of Spain, Latin America, and the United States. In order to make a statement of inclusivity and to draw a clear distinction between former practices at the root of Hispanic studies and what they represent and strive for today, Cruz advocates for the use of Hispanisms, in plural. The pluralization of the term expresses the explicit intent and practice to include languages and cultures other than Castilian, and not only marginalized literatures written in non-Castilian “Spanish” languages, but also those in English, the language of choice for many Latino writers. Julio Ortega’s chapter derives in part from these discussions. His reconsideration of the Spanish language as a mediator between many languages, rather than only a suppressing or colonizing force, indicates the direction toward which Hispanism has been evolving. For that reason, when Ortega speaks of “new Hispanisms,” he does so with the ultimate purpose to develop a “critical horizon opened up by plurilingualism.” For Ortega, this is the meaning and purpose of a transatlantic critical thinking, somewhat related to Humboldt’s methods of research, meaning, one based on a horizontal and dialogical worldview that recognizes the plurality and interconnectivity of cultures and their literatures (“Prólogo” 9–10). The objective of reconceptualizing Hispanism consists of revitalizing it as a viable intellectual concept for today’s globality, able to overcome fragmented worldviews by recognizing or even creating network systems

Introduction · 5

that are inherently diverse, but which also transcend traditionally established categories. We propose that this meaning of Hispanism or new Hispanisms, to borrow again from Ortega, is in tune with our framing of the postnational paradigm. It focuses on how the local and the global interrelate. Without discarding the importance of the nation, the postnational aims to venture beyond borders, labels, and categorizations, well aware that we are still somewhat caught up within them. The postnational proposes to reevaluate language as something other than a purely national construct tied to a rooted national identity. The Spanish language then becomes more than a colonial language that “may come from a brutal act of violence that happened five hundred years ago,” but may be valued as a language that also represents diversity and is able to mediate between cultures (Oropesa 245), as Ortega proposes. Hispanisms, in plural, thus question and expand established categories formerly coined by national frameworks. What does it mean to read or write from a postnational perspective? At its worst, it implies to steer head-on in a storm of heated debates, interdisciplinary entanglements, and clashes between traditions and ideologies, surrounding contentious concepts such as cosmopolitanism, universalism, or world literature(s). At its best, it means to enter into a generally acknowledged and widespread state of conceptual confusion, fed by the elusive meanings of globalization itself and the legacy of the unresolved—and yet exhausted—querelles of twentieth-century discourses on (post)modernity. As we closed the doors of the last century behind us, we did so with an emphatic declaration of the end of absolutes and the —apparent—overcoming of essentialisms. While intentions were laudable, and the results made humanity look, at least in theory, a little less inhumane—especially as hybrid became the new wholesome, and dynamic views replaced static concepts—we also deconstructed our critical discourses into a semantic flakiness, at times bordering on unintelligibility. But is this necessarily a bad thing? To define the postnational position might very well imply to fall back onto absolutes and inherent contradictions. It could amount to an attempt to discursively “pin down” a glocal planetary era whose defining characteristics, as Zygmunt Bauman reminds us, are its elusiveness and irreducible ambiguity (“Searching” 142–43).1 On the one hand, the

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challenge consists of articulating critical discourses that preserve enough ambiguity to adequately express the fluid dynamics of our globalized world and also to maintain the openness and unspecificity required to deal with (and maximize the benefits of) the interdisciplinarity at the heart of them. Critical discourses today, especially within the arenas of literary and cultural studies, have become, in “essence,” a place of transnational and cross-disciplinary encounters (see Klusmeyer, Frassinelli et al.). On the other hand, as necessary as this semantic unspecificity has become, it has not eliminated the calls for clarity resonating across the disciplines (see Bosniak). The call for clarity demands at least some narrowing down of definitions in order to construct a coherent enough discursive basis that makes a dialogue across national and disciplinary borders possible and continual, as we are dealing with “unavoidably murky concepts” (Frassinelli et al. 1), such as globalization, universalism, cosmopolitanism, world literature(s), as well as the post- or transnational positions from which we approach them. When we assume a postnational position from within the field of Hispanic studies, we have to take into consideration that critical discourses addressing the possibilities of cross-cultural encounters in literary studies are, for the most part, not produced within the field itself. In the same way that cultural and social contexts within Spanish-speaking countries have created different responses to the experience of modernity, critical discussions tied to cosmopolitanism or postnationalism present an even broader scenario, which further complicates the possibility of narrowing down cohesive definitions. At the same time, however, postnational perspectives on or within Hispanic studies are becoming more prevalent as scholars are responding to the increasing circulation of literary works that are written, read, and passed on beyond national boundaries (see Siskind, Hoyos). The term postnational has been in use across the disciplines when referring to globalization’s impact on or within the academic world. When analyzing the denationalization of citizenships in a globalized world, Bosniak adapts the sociologist Yasemin Soysal’s use of the term “postnational” to express the de-centering of the nation-state “as the locus of our collective institutional and affiliated lives” (Bosniak 240). The “post” here reflects more adequately than a “trans” the important notion of the de-centering

Introduction · 7

of—more so than transcending—the nation as a point of reference, and the “increasingly nonnational [more so than transnational] forms” that determine our identities and modes of belonging (240). Nevertheless, we are very much conscious of the shortcomings, contradictions, and negative implications associated—and widely discussed in the last century—with a term so closely related to (post)modernity. However, the preference for the prefix is grounded in part in similar reasons for which critics of the “post” in postmodernity rejected it. Precisely in the context of articulating the postnational paradigm, the prefix “post” necessarily implies a semantic emptiness, as much as it hints to a continued dependency on the noun it modifies. This continued dependency on the nation is not an oversight or concession, but quite intentional. Arguing from a postnational position does not imply that the nation has become an obsolete bystander. To the contrary, the choice of the term “postnational” expresses the continuous tension between the global and the local, as well as between the tendency toward compartmentalization and the efforts to overcome fragmentation. It reflects as much the de-centering of the nation-state, as it does its continued presence and importance in global thinking and in thinking the global. As Bernat Castany Prado (2007) in one of the first studies on postnational Hispanic literature observed, postnational literature is not a new genre, nor a new school of thought, but rather refers to the fact that “en la literatura actual el componente posnacional ha ganado presencia y ha entrado en tensión con el componente nacional, que no ha desaparecido sino que se está redefiniendo” [in literature today the postnational has gained in importance and has entered in tension with the national, which has not disappeared, but rather is in the process of redefining itself] (Literatura 167). Castany Prado’s clarification is useful, since it sheds light on the kind of perspectives this volume offers. When we speak of the postnational, we do not intend to place a defining label on a new kind of literature or new generations of writers. Neither do we limit postnational approaches to the literary production of recent years. The postnational can be the first step toward a mode of reading that identifies and explores the interrelations between the local and the global, while recognizing continuing ties to the nation. When coining the term “postmetropolis,” Edward Soja (Postmetropolis 26) follows a similar thought process in urban studies, one we can borrow

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when defining the “postnational” for our volume: it expresses current processes of expansion and de-centering, of the re-imagining of space, not just as a frame of reference, but also as a process of critical thinking. From today’s point of view, we construct meaning, especially when tied to identity, from a de-centered position. Its expansion is horizontal rather than vertical, spatial rather than temporal. Critics widely use “transnational” and “postnational” indiscriminately or even interchangeably. In light of the previous statement on the construction of meaning in a globalized world from verticality toward horizontality, a preference for trans- over post- would seem even more coherent. However, we do wish to clarify some subtle and yet important distinctions, at least in our own use of these terms, which makes “postnational” a more fitting term for our objectives here. Within the field of Hispanic studies, Lie, Mandolessi, and Vandebosch show “not only the plurality of meanings given to the term [transnational], but also the contradictory uses to which it is put” (71). On the one hand, the transnational could be understood as “synthetic gestures towards different cultures” and, on the other, as a concept that “can be put to the service of deconstructive ideas of the nation and identity.” The above-mentioned critics postulate that both attempts are motivated by “a generalized rejection of the ‘nation’ as an explanatory category of contemporary culture” (77). In Latin American and Latino studies, the transnational has been applied when dealing with material aspects of culture, such as new forms of production and circulation, hybrid and transcultural identities, especially those of migrants (see Trigo, Heredia).2 For us, “transnational” takes on the sense that Pease (“Introduction”) applies in American studies, as a condition of in-betweenness and hybridity, especially in the context of the (post)colonial subject and what Homi Bhabha calls a Third Space. In contrast, “postnational” perspectives refer to a questioning of the nation as a defining category. The postnational simply refers to the expansion of a planetary consciousness that redirects the gaze outward. It delineates a view grounded in a dialogical, cultural, and epistemological type of cosmopolitanism applied to literary studies and models of reading. Does this imply that postnational perspectives cannot be transnational or vice versa? Certainly, they can. Again, we do not believe it to be productive at this point in time when dialogues between disciplines are beginning to

Introduction · 9

expand and gain importance, to “pin down” a critical discourse that has more to lose than to gain from semantic absolutes. Therefore, even within this same volume we have respected and preserved our contributors’ own preferences, rather than imposing on them our own terminologies. The variety of interpretations and uses of the term postnational or, in the case of Nil Santiáñez’s chapter, the explicit avoidance of the term all together, reflect what we may view as a coherent incoherence when it comes to the use of terminologies across different areas within Hispanic studies and beyond. Physical and mental boundaries have become porous, and this is as true for our understanding of national borders as it is for our use of language, concepts, and views. In a globalized world, there is no room for defining absolutes. There exists, however, the necessity for openness and dialogue. For these reasons, when opting for the term postnational, we share Castany Prado’s assessment that “mi actitud hacia [el término posnacional] es paralela a la que Küng dice tener hacia el de ‘posmodernidad’ . . . no es una especie de palabra mágica que lo explica todo, ni una palabra polémica y chocante, sino un término heurístico, instrumento de búsqueda, tan equívoco como imprescindible” (Literatura 18) [my attitude toward the term postnational is parallel to Küng’s attitude toward the term postmodernity. . . . It is not a type of magic word that explains everything, nor is it a polemic or shocking word, but rather a heuristic term, an instrument of exploration, as equivocal as it is indispensable]. One cannot discuss the polemic of terminologies without at least briefly touching upon the historical perspectives of globalization. However, given the fact that at least some clarity concerning the use of terminologies is needed to present this volume and to highlight their interdisciplinary connections, communications and also miscommunications, rather than delving into a historical analysis within the limited scope of our introduction, we refer to the first chapter of this volume, which provides an excellent and extensive discussion on the age of globalization and its impact on Hispanic studies. Santiáñez presents a useful historical framework, one that is specific and yet sufficiently comprehensive enough to situate the remaining chapters of the volume in a historical context. His chapter, “Space, Subjectivity, and Literary Studies in the Age of Globalization,” summarizes the most relevant debates of globalization in a variety of disciplines over the past three decades, which have “resulted in a rather incomplete and misleading portrait of a phenomenon that goes beyond

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economic factors and political relations.” Santiáñez then rightly laments that “some important approaches to globalization undertaken from the field of literary studies have not paid enough attention to a crucial phenomenon, namely the emergence of new hermeneutic horizons ingrained in the age of globalization.” We consider postnational perspectives first and foremost instruments of the construction and exploration of these new hermeneutic horizons. They come about as a consequence of globalization’s influence on contemporary worldviews, which, if we accept Habermas’s interpretation of modernity, are undergoing a major transformation similar in degree and impact to the aftermath of Copernican or Darwinian discoveries (The Future 54). For that reason, critical discourses on globalization, including the postnational paradigm, are also participants in the articulation of discourses on modernity (see Fluck). While this statement is generally accepted, there is a strong divide among critics as to whether globalization is a continuity of modernity, with a present-day acceleration (Robertson), or whether it constitutes a break with modernity, due to technological advances and an exponential increase in global mobility. According to the latter view, the “Global Now” is a manifestation of the same changes that defined postmodernity, such as speed, discontinuity, convergence, disjunction (Giddens, Consequences; Appadurai). Other critics, like Paul Jay or Kwame Anthony Appiah, propose a middle-of-the road approach that reconciles both opposing views. Appiah understands globalization today in a way that also summarizes and reconciles many divergent views, and therefore might be one of the more useful assessments worth quoting in its entirety for our purpose here. It expresses the overlapping of areas and inevitable convergence of traditions at the heart of postnational perspectives. Globalization is not “one” but many phenomena, different yet tightly interconnected: Globalization can mean the increasing dominance of English as the language of business or the spread of liberal democracy or the growth of the Internet. And we hear it spoken of both by those who celebrate and by those who deplore the fluidity of capital flows, whose material preconditions lie in the same information technology that has made the Internet possible. Planes and boats and trains, satellites and cables of copper and optic fiber, and the people and

Introduction · 11

things and ideas that travel all of them, are, indeed, bringing us all ever more definitively into a single web. And that web is physical, biological, electronic, artistic, literary, musical, linguistic, juridical, religious, economic, familial. (Ethics 216) Similar to other areas of literary studies, the impact of globalization became a topic of discussion in Hispanic studies after the first theoretical discourses on globalization had already been established in the social sciences (Connell and Marsh 93). However, in contrast to other literatures, discussions on new world literatures in Hispanic literatures has been far more polemic, since Latin American or Latino writers and critics alike often see themselves as speaking from a “marginalized” position, far removed from the “centers” that generate the discourses on globalization. Therefore, joining these discussions has been rejected by some as a kind of intellectual neo-colonization and, moreover, as detrimental discursive practices that directly undermine the efforts of local and national realities struggling for recognition.3 Concerning the traditional opposition between cosmopolitanism and nationalism, some voices from within Hispanic studies have questioned the validity of articulating the global experience. This argument brings to mind earlier debates, when authors, such as Borges in “El escritor argentino y la tradición,” argued that “national” writers do have the right to appropriate and partake in so-called universal literature. Similarly, recent critical discussions on globalization and Latin American literature demand a full participation of Latin American literature within the global discourse (Hoyos 207). When questioning the local and global as a binary construct, we can recognize that Hispanic literatures do indeed reflect the experiences of the “Global Now,” whether directly through literary representation or as manifested within the works of Latin American, Latino, or Spanish writers, who perceive themselves as part of global dynamics, and who choose to write from a cosmopolitan perspective. Still, we cannot repeat enough that even as new generations of writers and readers are embracing the global, the local—and particularly the nation—still holds firm as a central point of reference for many. This becomes evident in the rise of historical novels focusing on the colonial past in Peru, or the continued prolific production of civil war fiction in Spain, to name just two among many

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examples in Hispanic literatures. In terms of cosmopolitan or national/ nationalistic viewpoints, the literary production of Latin American, Latino, and Spanish writers today varies to such a degree that the idea of a mere confrontation between center-periphery, played out on the battle grounds of Hispanism, becomes doubtful. Rather than reducing critical discourses on globalization’s impact on literature to a binary opposition—global against local, center against periphery—we suggest conceiving Hispanism as a space of dialogue, where the infinite complexities of multiple, glocal perspectives are brought to light and into contact, within Hispanism and beyond it. Postnational perspectives are closely related to—and borrow from— new cosmopolitanisms. Just as terms such as globalization and post- or transnational approaches, cosmopolitanism is one of the buzzwords of the twenty-first century, and, as would be expected, the debates that are currently taking place among critics discussing the different types and objectives of cosmopolitanism are closely related to the debates in the humanities on postnational critical discourses. In order to specify the application and objectives behind postnational perspectives for this volume it is helpful to first take a brief look at this debate on “new” cosmopolitanism, its historical developments and present day affiliations, its different manifestations, characteristics, and interpretations, its—at times—equation with universalisms, and, especially, its link to our understanding of a global modernity. Each one of these concepts comes with its own baggage of history, uses, and abuses that raises red flags and often hardens positions against or in favor. This is certainly true across the disciplines and area studies, from the social to the political sciences, from literary to cultural studies; and it is something we have to keep in mind when articulating postnational discourses. As Fernando Rosenberg points out, “[a]lthough much of what passed for cosmopolitanism certainly can be equated with a simple, unidirectional admiration for European culture, the concept is also relevant to the effort to imagine strategies of postcolonial contestation, because they are necessarily based on a self-reflective, nonorganic understanding of belonging that opens the capacity for cultural actors to adopt different viewpoints and go beyond their local alliances to converse across borders” (139). For Rosenberg, “[t]he notion of a critical cosmopolitanism,

Introduction · 13

breaking simultaneously with the idea of a self-contained (Anglo-European) modernity and discrete (other) cultures, points to the ethical ideal of a non-Eurocentric, always-situated universalism. It is a cosmopolitanism that transcends individualist strategies of ironic detachment but is equally suspicious of the claims of communitarian autochthony” (40). Rosenberg’s statements shed light on the deep connections—and also differences—between the tradition of cosmopolitanism and the emerging postnational paradigm in Hispanic studies. A case in point may be Fernández de Alba’s chapter. He initiates his reflection on the synthesis between cosmopolitan and national Cuban culture by stating that “Latin American literary and cultural criticism has orbited around cosmopolitan and nationalist conceptual poles.” In Hispanic studies, and especially among postcolonial scholars, cosmopolitanism has been equated with universalism and, as such, is rebuffed as part of an “imperial geopolitics” (Santos, “Cosmopolitismo” 153). Cosmopolitan literature is viewed critically, and mostly from a global market perspective as a product of the publishing industry. This “cosmopolitismo de mercado” [cosmopolitanism of the market], as Santos puts it, determines the topics, settings, and even the language of literary works, and imposes a certain degree of homogeneity (“Cosmopolitismo” 159). The equation of cosmopolitanism with universalism reveals, thus, one of the major concerns when discussing globalization’s impact on Hispanic literature: the influences of the global market on literary production. Some critics simply comment on the unequal circulation of an editorial market largely dominated by Spain (Pohl 47–48), whereas others directly denounce the “nuevas dinámicas centro-periferia para el desarrollo cultural en lengua española” [the new dynamics center-periphery shaping the cultural production in the Spanish language] (Sánchez 21).4 Although some critics, for example Gutiérrez-Mouat, have argued that Latin Americanism has been excluded from the recent reformulations and revisions of European cosmopolitanism (105), others do engage in discussions on cosmopolitanism.5 For example, Pedro García-Caro, when comparing the works of Carlos Fuentes and Thomas Pynchon, speaks of a “postnational articulation of cosmopolitanism,” which he does not consider the result of the globalizing of the editorial market, but rather “the logical culmination of Cold War leftist internationalism, that is, of global networks of solidarity, the discourse of universal human rights, and the

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emancipatory projects of the international New Left” (García-Caro 202). Cosmopolitanism is thus understood within the context of a new global humanism similar to Nussbaum’s. According to Ignacio López-Vicuña, this “humanismo cosmopolita” emerges as desire in the works of Edgardo Cozarinsky. It is defined as a new humanism whose potential lies in “la posibilidad de desterritorializarlo, de lograr que deje de ser un concepto meramente europeo/occidental y que se transforme en un discurso auténticamente cosmopolita y polifónico” [the possibility to deterritorialize it, to achieve that it stops being a purely European/Western concept, and that it may be transformed into an authentically cosmopolitan and polyphonic discourse] (10). The complexity of defining the postnational position is rooted and reflected in the debates surrounding cosmopolitanism; by comparing both, the dilemma born from the need to articulate definitions for the sake of clarity, which ultimately run the risk of negating the same position that tries to articulate them, becomes even more evident. Before providing a summary of the main debates in favor and against cosmopolitanism today, Cavallar addresses the issue of conceptual confusion in his perfectly titled Imperfect Cosmopolis. He pointedly remarks that “if we keep in mind that cosmopolitanism might turn into an ideology, it is not surprising that several authors have opted to keep the concept open and indeterminate, ‘precisely because specifying cosmopolitanism positively and definitely is an uncosmopolitan thing to do.’6 Alas, this reasoning is a bit unfortunate, because the adjective ‘uncosmopolitan’ already implies—or begs for—a definition” (1–2). For the political scientist Cavallar, cosmopolitanism today reemerges as a consequence of “the end of the Cold War, a growing awareness of global risks such as climate change, which cannot be dealt with at a national level, economic and cultural globalization, the new global terrorism, and the US ‘war on terror.’” Furthermore, he considers “cultural intellectual factors such as the rise of ethnocentric nationalism and liberal/ or leftist attempts to counter it, or a broad disappointment with theories on multiculturalism, universalism, economic globalization or pluralism” (Cavallar 1, emphasis added). As presented today, cosmopolitanism is reinventing itself as a middle-of-the-road school of thought that equally rejects the extremes of universalism and of pluralism (Hollinger). We can summarize it loosely as a global awareness, an ability, and an identity, all of

Introduction · 15

which are relevant for—and also define, at least in part—the postnational position: the awareness “not that we are without culture but [that] we are drawing on the traces and residues of many cultural systems, of many ethical systems,” the ability “to stand outside of having one’s life written and scripted by any one community, whether that is a faith or tradition or religion or culture—whatever it might be—and to draw selectively on a variety of discursive meaning” (Hall in Vertovec and Cohen 4), and, finally, a “global identity . . . in which everyday nationalism is circumvented and we experience ourselves as integrated into global processes and phenomena” (Beck “Cosmopolitan Society,” in Vertovec and Cohen 4). After providing a long list of adjectives that modify cosmopolitanism today, ranging from banal, exclusionary, oppositional, to emancipatory cosmopolitanisms, Cavallar rightly points out that “the new buzzword has begun to mean or denote almost anything” (1). In reference to this revitalization of cosmopolitan thinking and its many variants and practices, Vertovec and Cohen expand even more on this list, adding another collection of cosmopolitanisms adapted by critics to the exigencies of the “Global Now,” such as “discrepant cosmopolitanism,” “inclusionary cosmopolitanism,” “rooted cosmopolitanism,” “eccentric or ex-orbitant cosmopolitanism,” and even “cosmopolitan communitarism” (Vertovec and Cohen 21). The discussions that have erupted over the past decade, as well as the pervasive sentiment of “conceptual confusion” or “flakiness” (Cavallar 1–2) are very much reminiscent of the much-debated prefix in postmodernity. Chernilo makes a convincing point when he establishes parallelisms between modernities in transformation and the emergence of cosmopolitanisms at different historical moments of drastic change. By drawing a comparison between our century and Marx, Durkheim, Simmel, and Weber’s time, he suggests that “our epochal situation mirrors theirs, for instance, in that neither can take the current sociopolitical forms of modernity as pre-determined, inevitable and eternal. We all equally face the problematic question of the position of the nation-state in the context of an always ‘novel’ global (re-)shaping of modernity. There is also the shared challenge of providing a clear assessment, in the present, of the extent and depth of the structural transformations of modernity” (Chernilo 17). One of these challenges, the intent to narrow down the different applications, uses, and interpretations of cosmopolitanism may allow us to narrow down (although certainly not “pin down”) the

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different applications, uses, and interpretations of the postnational position, as proposed by different critics and also explicitly or implicitly manifest in the perspectives provided by our contributors. This, then, may also be an adequate moment to remind our readers that the purpose of this volume, and the postnational perspectives it offers, takes as its point of departure a kind of dialogic cosmopolitanism and an invitation to continue the discussions at hand, and to further enrich them with differences in viewpoints. Given the similarities between cosmopolitanism(s) today and postnational perspectives, why not simply refer to cosmopolitanism and further modify it with cultural or literary? The postnational position is related to, but not categorically interchangeable with cosmopolitanism. Especially Ulrich Beck’s proposed revised cosmopolitanism for today’s world, which he coins the second modernity, holds the same tenets as the postnational position. Beck even uses the term “postnational” himself, when referring to global events, such as ongoing wars, as no longer motivated by national interests, but as the consequence of the debilitation and barbarization of the nation-state (“Cosmopolitan Perspective” 61). In a somewhat extreme fashion, but useful here, because it shows the link, or overlapping, or perhaps better yet, the dissolution of borders between cosmopolitan and postnational discourses, Beck observes that “whatever constitutes society and politics in itself becomes questionable because the principles of territoriality, collectivity and frontier are being questioned. More precisely, the assumed congruence of state and society is broken down and suspended; economic and social ways of acting, working, and living no longer take place within the container of the state. The categories framing world society—the distinction between highly developed and underdeveloped countries, between tradition and modernity—are collapsing” (70). Nevertheless, despite the current redefinitions of cosmopolitanism, opting for the use of terminology of postnational over cosmopolitan perspectives allows us to consciously distance ourselves from the many clichés and historically uninformed uses of cosmopolitanism today. One of the prime examples is Martha Nussbaum’s admirable use of Stoic and Cynic cosmopolitanism to counter the dehumanizing side of globalization today. Her appropriation of Diogenes’s “I am a citizen of the cosmos” for her book Love of Country? was immediately construed as Western

Introduction · 17

individual normativism clashing with multicultural relativism (as commented on—not proposed by—Cavallar and Hollinger, among others). By opting for postnational perspectives we stress that we are not proposing an ideology but a range of perspectives. Rather than requiring further modifications or narrowing down, the term “postnational” allows an underlying process of un-modifying and broadening horizons. Referring to postnational rather than cosmopolitan perspectives simplifies the critic’s position and creates a dynamic, inclusive space for discussions, directed outward and forward, while quite intentionally avoiding the specter of Kantian moral universalisms and the underlying racism, elitism, and overt Eurocentrism than some associate with the Enlightenment. This strategy, however, does not imply that those who opt for postnational approaches are not aware of the dangers of falling into the same fallacies we find at the heart of totalizing Western discourses in general. As much as one’s perspectives may be “postnational,” one has to be aware that the place of articulation still is—at least in many cases—that of a Western privileged position. Raja makes a similar point when considering globalization, as well as cosmopolitanism, a current restructuring “in the age-old interest of the North” (Raja 8). Raja’s rephrasing of Spivak’s question—“Who crawls into the post of postnationalism at the end of the day?” (8)7—is succinct, and one that we have to keep in mind when articulating discourses and proposing postnational frames of reference. Spivak’s warning reminds us of the need to briefly address another object of heated debates and a contributing factor to the conceptual confusion surrounding the postnational perspectives: the historically loaded idea of “world literature.” In “World Literature: A Receding Horizon,” Pier Paolo Frassinelli and David Watson summarize some of the more representative voices pledging for or condemning literary production perceived as a global system. The main points of contention today involve Goethe’s “grandly utopian vision,” as Edward Said called it (qtd. in Frassinelli and Watson 192), with its smug appearance of totality and inclusiveness, under which, again, lures the specter of a totalizing, all-around exclusive, Western discourse. However, when coming from the defenders of national literatures, the charge appears hypocritical at best. Have national literatures ever been inclusive? As Franco Moretti rightly points out, the established canons of national literatures comprise less than 1 percent of a country’s published literary production (45). When keeping

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the “great unread” within nations in mind, rejecting world literature in favor of national literature on the basis of exclusiveness seems hardly a strong argument. More adequate for the “Global Now” are Pascale Casanova’s “World Republic of Letters” (although also severely criticized),8 a new world literature perceived as literary spaces “grounded in a principle of equivalence,” that “marks a series of intersections between diverse literary works and traditions, between different bodies of literature, and between literature and the planet” (Frassinelli and Watson 193–94). Moretti does not propose a redefinition of world literature, but offers a new way of approaching it. He simply states, and fittingly so, that “the literature around us is now unmistakably a planetary system” (Distant 45). Especially the latter descriptions show how and why world literature today “functions as a contact zone between various area studies.” Ironically, we may not be that far removed after all from a Kantian vision of communal, transnational space that functions as a “community of possible interaction” (Cavallar 68). Damrosch adds another layer of meaning to this redefined world literature in a globalized world. He points not only to the circulation of literary production beyond its own locality, culture, and language, but, more importantly, he defines it as a mode of reading: “a mode that is as applicable to individual works as to bodies of material, available for reading established classics and new discoveries alike” (4–5). Building on Damrosch and Moretti, and borrowing from Bauman, reading from a postnational perspective can be an example of “globalization coming home to roost” (Bauman, “Interview”). But what about regional or subnational literatures fighting for the preservation of their voice, their identity, their traditions? Through the process of postnational readings, national and regional literatures can become participants in the planetary system of world literature. Rather than diluting their local particularities, a broader, global context, brings them to the forefront. Moretti’s appeals for a new mode of reading he calls distant reading provides a fitting example. He proposes to approach a text from a postnational perspective, meaning, to broaden the geographical frame of reference on one hand, and on the other, to narrow in on “a concept . . . a device, a trope, a limited narrative unit” (53). The benefit, as Moretti explains, would be a deeper knowledge based on recognizing systems of variation, of differences, and of asymmetries (56)—which so

Introduction · 19

easily become invisible when limiting our view to one national context. Humboldt followed a similar method in his scientific research. He dislocated objects, concepts, from their local contexts, in order to reevaluate them within a broader frame of reference. He was thus able to establish analogies that showed the familiar within the other, as much as the strange within the familiar. This led him to discover “entirely surprising relations to comparable global phenomena,” and gave him “a novel understanding of supposedly well-known phenomena that in a transcontinental as well as translocal way are introduced and ‘entangled’ in unexpected contexts” (Ette, “Alexander” 105). When discussing globalization’s impact on Hispanic studies, the revival of the concept of world literature has elicited perhaps the strongest reactions. Following the first reactions—mostly negative—Latin American critics today are less concerned with the questioning of European models, and more interested in participating actively in the articulation of critical and theoretical dialogues (Ferrari 30).9 Recent reviews of world literature come mainly from Latin American criticism, which, while assuming the problematic peripheral position of the field, offer approaches that read Latin American literature in connection with global discourses. In this sense, for instance, Mariano Siskind situates Latin American literary discourses of cosmopolitanism, from modernism to the Boom, within current debates on world literature as a way to “illuminate the transcultural and transhistorical seams of the imaginary and material processes from which modern Latin American literature emerged.” (14). Furthermore, in his review of world literature, Siskind proposes the idea of “the globalization of the novel and the novelization of the global” as an attempt “to apprehend the hegemonic making of universality of world literature, while resisting the temptation to fall back on particularistic reaffirmations of national or regional cultural identities, and in fact preserving universality as the necessary horizon of cosmopolitan practices with an emancipatory purpose” (55–56). While Siskind “traces world-making discourses and physical displacements within comparative, translational, and displaced frames of legibility” (7), Héctor Hoyos, in his The Global Latin American Novel, examines works that “demand a level of field-specific awareness that questions the pertinence of the more encompassing, yet vague, world literature model” (205). Focusing on contemporary Latin American novels, Hoyos

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proposes “not to make Latin American criticism (and that of other regions) fall in step with world literature, but to model world literature after Latin Americanism” (9). To some extent, especially when we take into consideration previously voiced concerns by some regarding a limited participation of Latin American critics in global discourses, the concept of a global Latin American novel highlights the continent as a valuable contributor and allows us to recognize that the region “does not just produce the primary material that others read with fascination under that paradigm” (207). For Hoyos, “world literature may be a by-product of globalization, but it does not need to reproduce the cultural homogenization that drives some of its manifestations” (221). Curiously enough, the debates surrounding world literature have been mostly limited to Latin American criticism. In his article, “Literatura mundial desde/en castellano” (2012), César Domínguez comments on the lack of attention this debate has received in Spain. One reason for this may be, as Brad Epps and Luis Fernández Cifuentes observed in 2005, that the national framework continues to dominate literary production in Spain (13). However, the work of new generations of Spanish writers also clearly reveals the emergence of postnational perspectives and a growing global consciousness, as evident in writers such as Juan Francisco Ferré, or of those pertaining to the so-called Nocilla generation. In this volume, Ricardo Vivancos-Pérez presents Juan Francisco Ferré as a “a kind of ‘monstrous hybrid,’ a novelist-globalization theorist,” and his novels, such as Karnaval (2012), as “a critique of globalization that touches all the dimensions that characterizes globalization: economic, political, ecological, cultural and ideological.” One of the main criticism when moving from the local to the global, and from the national to the postnational, is that the broader our horizon becomes, the more abstract places and people physically remote from us appear, and the less we feel connected to them or care for them. From the point of view of ethics, communitarians certainly have a valid argument here. Even Spivak asserts that the globe, as we generally perceive it, “is on our computers. No one lives there” (Death 72). So, how can we, as Spivak proposes, “override the globe” and reconstitute our world as a planet and us as planetary subjects? We do not have to buy into Kantian or any other moral universalisms in order to concede literature and art a central role, and even a transformative power, in today’s world. In Cultivating

Introduction · 21

Humanity, Nussbaum values narrative imagination as one of the abilities that foster a sense of world citizenship. She suggests that it is not enough to “amass knowledge,” but that “we must also cultivate in ourselves a capacity for sympathetic imagination that will enable us to comprehend the motives and choices of people different from ourselves, seeing them not as forbiddingly alien and other, but as sharing many . . . possibilities with us” (85). At the same time, when reading the other, we have to be aware, of course, as Borges expressed so well through his Pierre Menard, that every reading, transnationally or nationally, always implies a translation of the untranslatable, and, as such an appropriation, a “mistranslation” of sorts, and a rewriting. However, the objective of engaging in world literature from a postnational perspective does not have to be a utopian goal of becoming the other. Whether desirable for some, or terrifying for others, it is simply not possible. But it is possible to make an effort to imagine alterity and to recognize their differences, while acknowledging our own unavoidable cultural, linguistic, or local centrisms. For Nussbaum, the goal of directing our gaze beyond the local (reading beyond the nation) consists of fostering the capacity to experience wonder through the power of storytelling. Wonder leads to empathy, and empathy, in turn, allows for knowledge to evolve into acceptance and into a planetary solidarity. Broadening our perspective beyond the local can thus become a first step towards cultivating our humanity. Postnational perspectives, whether referred to as such or not, are ubiquitous across the disciplines and area studies today. As the title of our volume implies, our focus lies on postnational modes of reading and writing, which have been impacted and shaped by manifold processes of globalization not necessarily limited to the contemporary. Divided into three parts, the chapters of this volume explore the impact of globalization on Hispanic literatures focusing on some of the areas that have received the most attention: (1) critical theory and pedagogy, (2) identity and belonging, and (3) New World literatures. The chapters of the first part, “Postnational Perspectives on Hispanism and Theory,” provide three theoretical interpretations of postnational perspectives within the Hispanic literary and academic world. Nil Santiáñez’s chapter opens our volume with a valuable synthesis of various critical stances and debates, as well as the author’s fervent appeal, following

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Spivak’s line of reasoning, for a reform of outdated curricula in higher education in the United States and especially in Spain. Rather than pointing to recent changes in Weltanschauung, Ottmar Ette’s chapter, “ImagiNations from a History of Space to a History of Movement,” offers a postnational rethinking of Cuban history and its literatures. His chapter explains why the postnational is not an invention of the twenty-first century, but that transaeral perspectives are already engrained in the founding phases of nations. By referring to the example of the island of Cuba and Cuban literature, he shows how nations, from the moment of their conception— or invention—are also already postnational constructs that form part of and interact with hemispheric or global archipelagos. Julio Ortega projects Santiáñez and Ette’s postnational reimagining of space onto the Spanish language, contesting the logic behind the idea of national languages as homogenous, essentialist concepts. Taking as a starting point Saussure’s distinction between langue and parole (to which Ortega refers as “natural language”), his “Postnational Critique of Language” shows the inherent plurilingual character of the Spanish languages (national or peripheral) and their interaction and intersection with other languages. The purpose of his postnational perspective on language and literature is to show how poetry, as practiced “postnationally” by Spanish and Latin American poets, can help to disassociate language from authoritarian, nationalistic frameworks and, consequently, could function as an agent of cross-cultural dialogue. Ette and Ortega’s chapters are representative of a particular writing style, which is characteristic of a type of an essayistic tradition less familiar to a US readership. Ette’s well-known lyrical prose is closely connected to Humboldt’s writing style, whereas Ortega’s Latinate syntax and poetic prose introduce intentional ambiguities. In our translation of both chapters, we have tried to preserve as much of their essayistic style as possible. For the sake of clarity, we opted to include literal translations when deemed more appropriate. Stylistically some of the resulting translations gain in preciseness what they may lose in elegance. In reference to Ortega’s defense of a “model of mixture,” for example, we forgo the more common term “mestizaje,” since the former already has an established meaning in Latin American discourses on modernity which does not capture the original meaning of “mezcla” intended by Ortega. While the first part of our volume provides examples of transatlantic

Introduction · 23

practices within Hispanic studies, the second part, “Postnational Perspectives on Identity and Belonging,” addresses one of the most discussed global phenomena today, namely, the Global Now’s impact on the processes of identity formation and the construction of home in a postnational world. The contributors of this section study contemporary literature written in Latin America, Spain, and the United States that provides insight to the experience of migration, exile, and diaspora in Spanishspeaking societies. In “Beyond Borders: Language and Postnational Identity in Cecilia Vicuña’s i tu,” Silvia Goldman shows how Vicuña’s book of poetry i tu (2004) challenges linguistic, national, and cultural foundations of identity, while proposing an alternative sense of belonging defined by fluidity and hopeful anticipation. Goldman presents the work of “Chilean New Yorker” Cecilia Vicuña as an example that transcends national genealogies and can only be fully understood when placed within a postnational framework. Goldman shows how the poet’s particular use of language leads to a “rethinking of the ‘foreign’” by weaving a plurilingual fabric of Spanish, English, and Quechua. Goldman’s postnational perspective offers, thus, an alternative to the existing postcolonial reading of Vicuña’s work. Likewise, but within the context of gender studies, Ricardo Vivancos-Pérez proposes a reformulation of gender identity by comparing the narrative voices in Dominican-American writer Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2008) and This Is How You Lose Her (2012), with Spanish novelist Juan Francisco Ferré’s narrator in Providence (2009) and Karnaval (2012). In “Postnational Masculinities and Globalization in Junot Díaz and Juan Francisco Ferré,” VivancosPérez argues that Díaz’s and Ferré’s explorations of masculinity from a postnational framework offer a new understanding of cultural exchanges transcending nationalistic positions and favoring the emergence of new diasporic identities. In “Voluntary Exiles, New Identities, and the Emergence of a Postnational Sensibility in Contemporary Latin American Literature,” Francisco Brignole addresses the “interstitial position” between exile and migration as a reference point, in order to “imagine and define new utopic possibilities of group formation” from a postnational perspective. His reading of El síndrome de Ulises (2005) by Santiago Gamboa, Travesuras de la niña mala (2006) by Mario Vargas Llosa, and El exilio voluntario (2009) by Claudio Ferrufino-Coqueugniot, establishes the futility of borders, as well as the productive fraternal bonds among individuals

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from different cultural backgrounds, as two defining characteristics of a new postnational sensitivity. The third part of the volume, “Postnational Perspectives and New World Literatures,” addresses cosmopolitanism and world literatures within Hispanic literature. In “The Classical Tradition of Cosmopolitan Spiritual Exercises in Jorge Luis Borges and Latin American Postnational Literature,” Bernat Castany Prado argues that the contemporary postnational paradigm is heir to a millennia-long classical tradition of philosophical cosmopolitanism. Castany Prado’s contribution communicates a fuller understanding of Borges’s cosmopolitanism, which he considers prevalent in current postnational Latin American literary production. Francisco Fernández de Alba advances a similar approach for understanding cosmopolitanism within a postnational framework in his chapter, “Cosmopolitan Postnationalists: The Case of Virgilio Piñera and Wifredo Lam.” Fernández de Alba demonstrates how Piñera and Lam appropriated and adapted European artistic practices to represent Afro-Caribbean culture in a way that challenges homogeneous views of national identity, such as those that exclude the island’s noncentral, nonwhite Cuban culture. Finally, Maarten Steenmeijer’s chapter closes the volume with a postnational perspective on market dynamics. He meticulously compares the reception of the Spanish bestseller La sombra del viento (2001) in other European countries, paying special attention to how the “national” is interpreted and valued beyond Spain’s borders. “The Postnational Reception of Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s La sombra del viento” also provides a fitting example of how global market dynamics influence the production of local literatures and their reception, indirectly promoting the emergence of a new postnational genre. The diversity in perspectives evident in the chapters of this volume provides us with examples of how we can read the global from within or for Hispanic studies in a variety of ways and with different objectives. Our contributors’ research and approaches are representative of the field’s transatlantic traditions, which place Hispanic studies at the heart of critical discourses on globalization. We carefully selected each contribution in order to assure a volume of transatlantic scope, and, at the same time, one representative of some of the many different converging and overlapping disciplines under the umbrella of Hispanic studies, such as postcolonial, Latino, gender, exile, cultural, or transatlantic studies, among

Introduction · 25

others. Touching upon a variety of topics related to history, diaspora, language, pedagogy, and editorial market dynamics, the chapters’ shared focus of postnational perspectives ensures the cohesion and coherence of this volume. We believe that the many parallelisms and shared foci of the chapters show the relevance of postnational approaches, especially when understood as modes of reading or writing that can also become an appeal to broaden perspectives beyond the local, rather than a defining and limiting system of thought. Notes 1. See also Castany Prado (“Las nuevas metáforas”). 2. Likewise, Arturo Arias (2009) describes how the emergence of globalized subjectivities in Central American literature initiates a change in perspectives, since “las fronteras ya no denotan la caída al vacío no-nacional, sino la entrada a nuevos espacios etnoterritoriales que dinamiza la transformación del sujeto de la narrración de uno nacional enclavado en la modernidad a uno transnacional que se reimagina a sí mismo interpretando el papel del sujeto post-nacional” (139) [borders no longer imply a freefall into a nonnational abyss, but become the entrance to new ethnoterritorial spaces that propel the transformation of a national narrative voice trapped in modernity, to a transnational narrative voice that reimagines him or herself in the roll of a postnational subject]. Similarly, Robbins and González characterize postnationalist writers in Latin America as those for whom “the national culture paradigm” does not suffice to “convey their sense of locality” (12). See also Aníbal González. 3. See Moraña and Trigo (“Algunas reflexiones”). 4. Other studies consider the complexity of the editorial market in Spain, given that the acquisition of important Spanish publishing houses by international companies shifts the control of the Hispanic literary production to the US (Robbins 95). At the same time, Graciela Montaldo (2014) points to alternative venues that avoid the homogenizing practices of the global editorial market, such as the Cartonera publishers, who “dejaron de ser fenómenos locales para despertar intereses globales” [stopped being local phenomena as they gained in global interest]. 5. Gutiérrez-Mouat proposes, therefore, to “reintegrar la dimensión ética del cosmopolitismo a una tradición literaria que en sus orígenes modernistas y vanguardistas (y en sus extensiones experimentales en las vanguardias narrativas de los años sesenta y setenta) ostentó un esteticismo a veces alienante . . .”

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[reintegrate the ethical dimension of cosmopolitanism into a literary tradition which, in its modernist and vanguard origins (and in their experimental extensions, the narrative vanguards of the sixties and seventies) flaunted at times an alienating aestheticism]. He suggests to “hacerlo sin desentenderse de los logros del cosmopolitismo, que es la tradición central de las letras latinoamericanas y que en momentos clave de la historia cultural . . . rechazó los avances y pretensiones del nacionalismo cultural. Mediante esta reintegración ética en obras de alcance global, se obtienen ficciones ‘cosmopolíticas’ que renuevan la problemática del compromiso y presentan nuevos problemas a la crítica literaria” (106) [to do so without the achievements of a cosmopolitanism central to the tradition of Latin American literature, and which in key moments of cultural history . . . rejected the advances and aspirations of cultural nationalism. By reintegrating [cosmopolitan] ethics into works of global scope, we obtain “cosmopolitical” works of fiction that renew the problematic of compromise and bring new debates to literary criticism]. 6. Cavallar quotes from Sheldon Pollock, Homi K. Bhabha, Carol A. Beckenridge, and Dipesh Chakrabarty, Imperfect Cosmopolis (1). 7. The increasing participation of the non-Western world and non-European thinkers, who point to cosmopolitan traditions not rooted in European traditions, can help us to stay alert and heed Spivak’s warning. Cavallar refers to, among others, Amartya Sen, Ananta Kumar Giri, and the oft quoted Kwame Anthony Appiah (Cavallar 120–30). Vertovec and Cohen defend a similar point when they address common misconceptions about cosmopolitanism today and clarify that “cosmopolitanism has a much wider and more complex genealogy than that arising from either Kant or ancient Greece” (14). 8. See, among others, Emily Apter’s Against World Literature. Her argument is based on the premise of untranslatability. Among her criticisms of Moretti’s literary world system is his failed overcoming of Eurocentrism and what she considers his ultimate lack of clarity (45–56). Within the context of postnational perspectives, as we explained before, conceptual elusiveness is not necessarily a disadvantage. And, as to the charge of untranslatability, is this not always the case with every reader and every reading, including those of us who share the same cultural and linguistic context of the work we read? 9. See Ignacio Sánchez Prado, ed. América Latina en “la literatura mundial” (2006); the dossier Utopías críticas: la literatura mundial según América Latina (2012) edited by Guillermina de Ferrari; Gesine Müller and Dunia Gras, eds. América Latina y la literatura mundial. Mercado editorial, redes globales y la invención de un continente (2015).

I E Postnational Perspectives on Hispanism and Theory

1 E Space, Subjectivity, and Literary Studies in the Age of Globalization Nil Santiáñez

Our historical present interpellates us. We are living in an epochal interregnum that demands our immediate attention. The dismantling of the welfare state in western Europe, the crisis of political liberalism, the decline of the middle classes, the hegemony of an almost unbounded economic neoliberalism, the tensions among cultural and ethnic communities within a national territory, and above all, the lack of utopian and revolutionary political discourses as well as the nation-state’s loss of sovereignty—all these are key elements of a global world that demands from all of us an active involvement in the political, cultural, and social spheres. This chapter outlines a response to our times’ interpellation by means of a reflection on literary studies in the age of globalization. Its main purpose is to clarify several pivotal ideas in the field of literary studies vis-à-vis a new production of space and the emergence of new subjectivities—two dimensions of globalization that challenge an area still hegemonic within the field of literary studies: the study of national literatures. The opening of conceptual possibilities and teaching practices, the sketching out of rules of formation and articulation, the description of new positionings and stubborn resistances, the discussion of the décalage between some hegemonic academic practices and our experience of the world—these are some of the coordinates of what follows. Given the widespread disorientation and the pervading sense of crisis that presently permeate the discipline of literary studies, the direction of this chapter is more descriptive than prescriptive. However, in the latter part of the chapter, I do suggest

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a few strategies for the practice of disciplines centered on the study of national literatures, placing particular attention on one of them: Hispanism. Several scholars have already explored the impact of globalization on literary and cultural studies. Theirs has been a belated intervention if we consider the work produced in the last thirty years by political scientists (Held et al.; Hirst; Hirst and Thompson; Scholte), economists (Stiglitz), and most particularly by sociologists (Bauman, Liquid; Beck; Giddens; Sassen, Global, Losing?; Sklair; Wallerstein). As Connell and Marsh (“Literature” 94) and Gupta (6) have already noted, specialists in the disciplines of political science, economics, and sociology have monopolized the debates on globalization, which has resulted in a rather incomplete and misleading portrait of a phenomenon that goes beyond economic factors and political relations. At the same time, some important approaches to globalization undertaken from the field of literary studies have not paid enough attention to a crucial phenomenon, namely the emergence of new hermeneutic horizons ingrained in the age of globalization. Generally, the texts chosen by critics such as Spivak (Death 71–102), Gupta (151–70), Jay, Damrosch (How 105–24), and Casanova (164–72) for developing their propositions on globalization are coetaneous to the period under scrutiny. As it happens, though, globalization is not merely the sphere that encompasses contemporary cultural production. Neither is it a historical moment external to ourselves, and thus susceptible to being studied in the same way as we approach classical antiquity, the Middle Ages, or the Renaissance. The processes of globalization are not external to the critical gaze, but its condition of possibility. When the aforementioned critics analyze the global age through the close reading of contemporary literary artifacts, they limit the scope of their gaze to specific contents of globalization, thereby neglecting a meta-theoretical exploration, in my view necessary, of the ways whereby globalization has determined our view of any cultural product. To put it differently: the question ought to interrogate not only the impact of globalization on contemporary literature and culture, but also its effect on our understanding of any literary and cultural artifact from any historical period. For this reason, what really interests me here is the meta-theoretical reflection on the modes of gazing constituted by the new episteme underlying the global age. The inexorable globalization of the world is in the process of decisively modifying the institutions, meaning, and function of literary and cultural studies.

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This fact compels us to reassess our place and function as teachers and scholars; it forces us, in sum, to explore the structure of new hermeneutic horizons. In order to understand the horizons determined by globalization, it is first necessary to review two of its fundamental dimensions: its production of a new space and its determination of new subjectivities. My initial premise, in fact developed by Henri Lefebvre (Production, State), David Harvey (Cosmopolitanism), Neil Smith, and other cultural geographers, is the notion that space is both a social product and a grammar that determines human agency and social processes. In Lefebvre’s well-known formulation, new social relations require a new space, and vice versa (Lefebvre, Production 72). A new mode of production entails a new production of space (Lefebvre, State 223–53). Alongside new networks of political, economic, cultural, and social relationships, revolutions generate their own space. The processes of globalization, in their gradual transformation of all levels of human existence, also produce a new space and new spatial relationships. Peter Dicken and Saskia Sassen (Global, Cities, Territory, Losing?) have elaborated a sophisticated conceptual apparatus on space in the age of globalization. To this short list one could add Carlo Galli, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (Empire, Multitude, Commonwealth), and Manuel Castells (End, Power, Rise). Of all these approaches, Sassen’s is perhaps the most useful for the scholars specialized in the study of cultural phenomena and literary works. In the revised edition (2008) of Territory, Authority, Rights, Sassen has developed one of the most complete models for the understanding of space in our times. Among other reasons, Sassen’s reading is very pertinent because it demonstrates that the nation-state, far from disappearing, continues to play an important role. What has really happened is that the nation-state has acquired new contents and new functions as a result of globalizing processes—a decisive phenomenon that needs to be considered in any analysis of the present place and social function of the scholarship and teaching of a national literary tradition. According to Sassen, ever since the 1980s, we have been living in a period defined by the nation-state’s loss of hegemony (Territory 1). In her view, globalization, digitization, the increasing importance of the struggles for human rights and the protection of the environment, as well as the transnationalization of identities, are basic factors that contribute to the denationalization of the nation-state (Territory 23). Unlike other

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approaches to globalization, Sassen’s does not consider the global and the national as two mutually exclusive entities. Global systems develop, to a great extent, from the capabilities of the nation-state and from the interstate system (Territory 21).1 The epochal transformation takes place, then, within the national. Sassen centers her attention on two dimensions of what she calls “denationalization”: the changes in the foundational subjects that represent the relations of belonging or exclusion with respect to the national community, and the political, economic, and territorial assemblages constituted by digitization. By means of this double analysis, Sassen describes the assemblage of a multiplicity of new territorial and temporal orders. The main factors that have contributed to the denationalization of citizenship are, according to Sassen, the erosion of the welfare state, the weakening of the privacy rights, and the international regime of human rights (Territory 284–91). In addition, she identifies two types of national membership that destabilize the concept of belonging to the nation-state (Territory 290–91): a kind of “informal” citizen, nonauthorized albeit acknowledged, and a formal citizen, authorized but unacknowledged. Besides this new configuration of citizenship, there is what Saskia Sassen denominates “global classes” (e.g., the transnational class of governmental functionaries, types of transnational activism and diasporic networks, members of transnational communities of immigrants); their emergence and constitution establishes a dynamic that disaggregates the nation-state, while weakening the influence of national politics precisely on those who belong to the global classes (Territory 298). The erosion of the nation-states’ control over their own territory and citizens makes new forms of power possible, which entails the transformation of the political geography that organizes subnational spaces. The “global cities” (a topic examined in depth by Sassen in her seminal book The Global City and in Cities in a World Economy) are, in Sassen’s view, the most important entities within such new political geography. Digitization is another factor that has rearranged the political, economic, and territorial assemblages (Territory 323–77). The Internet and private digital networks have the capacity to destabilize the state’s authority. They produce new types of territoriality and spatial relations, such as the global network of financial markets (which establishes a space with multiple divergent levels of territoriality within nation-states), the spaces

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constituted by new modalities of political activism and global civil society, and finally, new transnational jurisdictional geographies (e.g., the International Court of Justice).2 The set of assemblages studied by Saskia Sassen destructures the traditional territory of the nation-state. Today, the spatio-temporal unity of the nation-state constitutes itself by means of multiple spatialities and temporalities (Territory 398). Sassen’s analysis leads her to conclude that new assemblages are arising, and that such assemblages determine a multidimensional territoriality of a denationalizing nature. This dynamic could be described as a movement that takes us from the centripetal articulation of the nation-state to the centrifugal multiplication of specialized assemblages (Territory 422). Globalization generates, therefore, a multiscalar space; it creates, to say it with Carlo Galli (110), a plurality of overlapping spaces articulated by new hierarchies of power. The production of a new space and new spatial relations cannot be dissociated from the emergence of new subjectivities. Among them we have a new type of immigrant: the immigrant that belongs to what the Indian sociologist Arjun Appadurai (21–23) denominates “diasporic public spheres.” Thanks especially to electronic communication, today a Turk in Berlin, an Algerian in Lyon, or a Chinese in Barcelona can be in constant contact with the culture and daily life of their native country, and thereby feel emotionally closer to their country of origin than to the hosting country.3 The second type of subjectivity is determined by the great multinational companies, whose relocation of production generates a new geography of the international market, articulates the life of workers on a global scale, and, in general terms, produces “needs, social relations, bodies and minds” (Hardt and Negri, Empire 32). The third type of subjectivity to emerge in the age of globalization is connected to “immaterial labor,” a concept put forth by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri to refer to the labor that produces immaterial products, such as knowledge, information, communication, and emotional responses (Empire 289–94, Multitude 108–9, 182–84). Based upon the computerization of industrial production, immaterial labor entails the elimination of the separation between spaces traditionally considered as discrete units, as for instance the home, the office, and the factory. This dissolution of the limit that existed among modern institutions leads to a dislocated and hybrid subjectivity (Hardt and Negri, Empire 331–32). The fourth subjectivity is, in fact, the

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most important as regards the topic of this chapter. I am referring to what Zizi Papacharissi calls the “networked self.”4 This subjectivity derives from the interaction of the self with electronic media, particularly the social networks. In turn, the networked self produces new forms of personal interaction and social identification. Papacharissi points out that the present sociability is quite different from the one in place not so long ago. Before the appearance and expansion of social networks, physical activities as well as extroverted attitudes were deemed social in nature. Now, in the context of the sociability closely linked to social networks—the means by which the networked self-constitutes and realizes itself—“we observe varieties of behaviors that are unquestionably social, yet also practiced from variably passive states of engagement or via the more introspective exercise of narcissistic photography or self-expression” (Papacharissi 317). This new type of self-realization and social relation has decisively determined, together with other factors, the production of a new type of student, at least in those parts of the world with the highest penetration of the Internet among the population—Europe and North America. It is possible to conjecture that the students born as of the 1980s are substantially different from those who were born prior to those years. These students are, almost without exception, “digital natives” (Prensky 3–11). Unlike many of their teachers, who have had to adjust to the new technologies (thereby being “digital immigrants”), for these students the Internet and mobile telephony are their natural habitat. Digital natives “are used to receiving information really fast. They like to parallel-process and multitask. They prefer graphics before their text rather than the opposite. They prefer random access (like hypertext). They function best when networked” (Prensky 5–6). This situation gets transferred, naturally, to the classroom. Many students lack patience with lecture-oriented courses, logic, and thematic exams (Prensky 6). In his brief review of this issue, Marc Prensky argues that our pedagogic system has not been thought out for today’s students (3), and for this very reason it is imperative to design a new pedagogy (11). Regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees with Prensky and the experts who have written on this matter, the truth is that today’s students define themselves, to a great extent, by electronic communication and mobile telephony.5 The new production of space and the emergence of new subjectivities are signs of a new reality. And a new reality requires, as Karl Marx

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underscored in his introduction to Grundrisse, new theories (81–111). According to Marx, our modes of comprehension ought to adjust to the coetaneous social world, and thereby change alongside history: both method and substance must relate in a harmonious fashion, which means that as soon as history and social reality transform, the theories that had been valid up to then loose validity. The global world requires new theories, new paradigms, new modes of gazing. In the specific field of literary and cultural studies, the setting up of theoretical, methodological, and pedagogic parameters adequate to the new hermeneutic horizons is a task of concern in the humanities today. The challenge consists in finding the methods that match up the horizons that have arisen as a result of globalization—methods different from those that have been acquired before the globalization of the world, for they are no longer productive for the understanding of literary and cultural history. In the last twenty years, there have been serious attempts to meet the challenges posed by globalization to literary studies. They can be grouped within three clusters: (1) literary and cultural studies centered on large geographic areas (e.g., transatlantic studies, hemispheric studies); (2) literary and cultural studies focused on the mobility within and among cultures (e.g., translation studies, mobility studies); and (3) comparative literature that places the emphasis on the exploration of literary world-systems and world literature. I will examine the third cluster, for its theoretical presuppositions and practice provide clues for the reassessment of national literatures —an issue that I will address at the end of this chapter. The project suggested in the nineteenth century by Goethe and Marx to consider literature as Weltliteratur has acquired great force since the beginning of this century, opening up a variety of paths. The consolidation of this tendency within the field of comparative literature has been tacitly acknowledged in the 2004 report on the state of the discipline produced by the American Comparative Literature Association (Saussy). In a field otherwise as fragmented as literary studies, some critics and literary historians have found in the planet the ultimate inclusive space. This focus on world literature encompasses a great variety of analytic and historiographic practices.6 Of the different scholars who work on world literature, David Damrosch is one of the most active. In What Is World Literature?, he puts forth the thesis that world literature is not an infinite canon of works (1), suggesting a tripartite definition: (1) world literature is an

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elliptical refraction of national literatures, (2) world literature is writing that gains in translation, and (3) world literature is not a preestablished canon of texts, unmanageable because of its huge extension in both space and time, but rather “a mode of reading that can be experienced intensively with a few works just as effectively as it can be explored extensively with a large number” (298–99). This mode of reading, this form of “distant relation” of the reader with worlds and times beyond his own can also be described as a “conversation” that takes place, according to Damrosch, in the reader’s mind. World literature, he argues, does not eliminate the distinctive aspects of literary traditions. Every literary work arises within a specific local context. Texts bear the inscription of their native culture. This trace does not disappear when works circulate in contexts wider than their native literary field. But once they have been incorporated into world literature, that original trace gets diluted in such a way that it ends up refracting its native culture. “World literature,” David Damrosch writes, “is thus always as much about the host culture’s values and needs as it is about a work’s source culture” (283); these two foci, claims Damrosch, “generate the elliptical space within which a work lives as world literature, connected to both cultures, circumscribed by neither alone” (283). Whereas Damrosch attempts to get around the usual panic felt, at some point, by experts in world literature, Franco Moretti responds to the challenge from a diametrically opposite standpoint. Indebted to Immanuel Wallerstein’s theory of world-systems, Moretti claims that world literature is a system of variants, and not a way of reading literature—which is ultimately Damrosch’s point. In his article “Conjectures on World Literature” (collected in Distant 43–62), Moretti states that we have to stop practicing comparative literature, which in the best of cases has been limited to the study of European literature, and instead assume the project of a Weltliteratur. After all, says Moretti, “the literature around us is now unmistakably a planetary system” (Distant 45). The question does not consist of determining “what” we have to do; the key lies in “how” we have to do it. According to Moretti, world literature cannot consist of reading more books. World literature is not an object, but a problem, and a problem that requires a new method (Distant 45–46). The method proposed by Moretti is what he calls “distant reading” (Distant 47–49). This kind of reading is considered as superior to the traditional close reading, by

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definition limited to a reduced canon of works. If one wants to go beyond the canon, the direct and detailed analysis of texts must be given up. Unlike what happens with close readings, in a distant reading the distance between the scholar and the works is the condition of possibility for knowledge. To put it plainly: in a distant reading, the critic works with the information provided by experts of national literatures, whence he draws his own conclusions. What really matters is not the examination of specific texts, but rather the establishing of morphological or historiographic patterns. In a distant reading, one proceeds first to determining a supranational unit for its analysis, and then one follows its metamorphoses in a great variety of historical and spatial contexts. As Moretti ironically remarks, distant reading implies a pact with the devil: we know how to read texts, now we must learn how not to read them (Distant 48). An outcome of Moretti’s pact with the devil is his book Graphs, Maps, Trees and several of the articles collected in Distant Reading (63–89, 121–35, 179–210, 211–40). Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak has shown in recent years much interest in the study and teaching of literature in the framework of globalization. Death of a Discipline and An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization are her two most important works produced on that matter. Spivak’s stated goal is the overcoming of comparative literature, a discipline she considers “dead” (Death). In contrast with traditional Eurocentric comparatism, Spivak puts forth a “comparatism of equivalence” (Aesthetic 467–83), which she conceives as the foundation for an “aesthetic education” (Aesthetic 25–33) whose ultimate aim would be the transmission to students of a “transnational literacy” (Aesthetic 149–55), to be used to counterbalance the homogenizing power of globalization. Students must be taught to identify the other through the exploration of languages and literatures usually marginalized in comparative studies, particularly those from the southern hemisphere. Unlike David Damrosch and, to an extent, Franco Moretti, Spivak does not consider world literature—at least in its most commonly accepted sense—to be the path to follow. As Spivak has noted, behind world literature there are economic interests related to globalization (Death xi–xii, Aesthetic 455–66).7 Spivak advocates the study of literature through the deployment of two overlapping strategies: area studies and the care and respect of comparative literature for languages and idiom (Death 4–5).

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More than a discipline, Spivak proposes a utopian project, for area studies imply the painstaking multidisciplinary analysis of a specific area of the planet—a task that has typically been assigned to teams of historians, economists, political scientists, sociologists, and linguists. Within this new discipline, the function of comparative literature would be to make sure that the language of the other does not turn into a mere “field” language (Death 9). Spivak sketches the parameters of a discipline with a strong political and ethical direction. On the one hand, the new model has to encourage the study not only of the national literatures from the southern hemisphere, but also “the writing of countless indigenous languages in the world that were programmed to vanish when the maps were made” (Death 15). On the other hand, the new model has to teach students to recognize the other. In her inversion of the dominant tendency to appropriate the emergent (Death 100), the mission of this “new comparative literature” projects itself onto the classroom. It is in part this ethical and political dimension of the new discipline that explains Spivak’s rejection of globalization, as well as her preference for what she calls “planetarity.” Globalization is, in Spivak’s view, the imposition of the same exchange system to the entire world (Aesthetic 1). The planet, in contrast, subsumes us, as it implies alterity; moreover, it cannot be compared with the globe. “Planetary-thinking,” writes Spivak, involves the totality of universals of the human being, from animism and mythology to postrational science (Death 73). “If we imagine ourselves as planetary subjects rather than global agents,” Spivak states, “planetary creatures rather than global entities, alterity remains underived from us” (Death 73). Ultimately, the task consists of reversing and displacing globalization into planetarity (Death 97). The “planet” is a sort of catachresis that inscribes “collective responsibility as a right” (Death 102). The study and the teaching of texts is a way of keeping alive our collective responsibility vis-à-vis the planet within a world dominated by global capital (Death 101). As commonly understood, world literature would be a critical approach belonging to the processes of globalization, while Spivak’s “new comparative literature” lies in the acknowledgment of the other, in the refusal of the homogenization conveyed by globalization. It is, therefore, a discipline that belongs to planetarity (Death 71–102, Aesthetic 33–50).

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Spivak’s opposition between globalization and planetarity is predicated on one erroneous presupposition: globalization does not refer to the homogenization of the globe only; the political, social, and cultural resistances to that specific process of globalization are themselves constituents of globalization (e.g., the so-called occupy movement; on this score, see Harvey’s Rebel). As Hardt and Negri have observed (Empire 209–18, 357–63), within what they call “empire” there is a series of forces that have the power to subvert it; the “multitude” is the political subject of those internal forces undermining the empire from within (Hardt and Negri, Multitude passim, Commonwealth 165–78, 195–96, 349–51). Let us repeat it: properly speaking, globalization is not a singular event, but a network of processes working simultaneously within the social, the cultural, the political, and the economic spheres. At the same time, we cannot ignore the fact that globalization is not affecting everybody, at least not in the same way. There are areas in the world whose inhabitants do not experience the planet as a globalized entity. Globalization expands asymmetrically (its degree of penetration varies from country to country) and arhythmically (in some places it takes over quickly, while in others it is a slow and discontinuous process), acquiring different aspects depending on the political conditions, economic structures, social dynamics, and cultural tradition of each territory. Bearing all this in mind, it is not entirely surprising to see that many specialists in—for instance—Spanish literature continue to work as if nothing had happened. In the same way that “the overwhelming majority of people, in advanced and traditional societies alike, live in places, and so they perceive their space as place-based” (Castells, Rise 451), a significant number of Hispanists (especially those teaching in Spain) continue to rely on old methodologies and notions of national literature, largely oblivious to the challenges posed by globalization to the discipline of literary studies. No one, I believe, possesses the solution to the impasse experienced by Hispanism and other disciplines in the humanities, and attempts at imposing methods and approaches are surely as mistaken an attitude as is looking away. But it has become a necessity, most particularly for those living in societies where both a new production of space and the emergence of new subjectivities are underway, to reflect on the effects of globalization, draw lessons, and act accordingly. In a world that is in the

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process of becoming truly global one wonders if it really makes any sense to study and teach national literatures and cultures as if they were completely autonomous entities. Not only has the nation-state lost its original meaning. In addition, globalization has resulted in a hybridization of national identities and cultures (Appadurai 43; Nederveen Pieterse). The new meaning and functions of the nation-state require a thorough rethinking of the study of its cultural production precisely from within the horizon of this new meaning and functions. And this is something that has not been completely understood, neither in Spain, nor, to a certain extent, in the United States. Despite the many debates that have taken place in the American academia on globalization and literature and the significant changes produced in curricula, reading lists, and educational objectives, the truth is that for a variety of reasons—among them the predominantly conservative structures of academic institutions—both interdisciplinarity and cultural studies, hegemonic in many departments of Spanish across the United States for quite some time, are practiced from standpoints strangely old fashioned: more often than not, courses on cinema, for instance, are courses on national cinema; as it happens with courses on literature, references to other national cinematographic traditions are more supplementary than substantial. The practice of transatlantic studies has not entirely solved the problem, in part because they are predicated upon an ontologization of language and geographic areas, thereby replacing one essentialism (i.e., that of the nation-state) with another one (i.e., the presumed existence of a Hispanic transatlantic space, which often is taken not as a construct, but as a given). Hispanism will become truly meaningful in this global world if it reassesses its methods and objectives. The first step in the renewal of the discipline could be the assumption of a transnational methodology. It is true that few people deny the supranational dimension of literature and culture. But this acknowledgment of an ongoing transnational cultural and literary dialogue, manifested indeed in essays and academic books, is not yet sufficiently reflected in the curricula of—to give one example—the departments of Spanish in Spain’s institutions of higher education, and often not even in the Spanish programs of many American universities, which are generally more receptive to innovation than the departments of Spanish literature in Spain. The teaching of national literatures will be relevant if teachers make it significant for students whose experience of

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the world (I am referring to those living in North America and Europe) is both national and transnational. The gaze circumscribed to a single national literary tradition neither corresponds to our experience of the world, nor does it reflect the increasing hybridity of national identities and cultural expressions, nor does it represent, because of its predication on essentialist propositions, the ongoing re-semantization of the nation-state. Within the specific framework of the European Union—a supranational entity whose university system is articulated by the European Space of Higher Education—disciplines like Hispanism play a somewhat regressive role. This is evident even at the anecdotal level: the fact that students can start their major in Spanish in Berlin, continue their studies in Edinburgh and Toulouse, and finish them in Seville, is somewhat incongruous with the reality that many courses on Spanish literature are still taught with an essentialist concept of nation-state rooted in nineteenth-century cognitive schemata. Spanish literary history, especially as it is understood and practiced in Spanish universities, is an area of knowledge that speaks on the past from the past. A pending task for the departments of Spanish literature in Spain is to seriously meditate on the intellectual and political function of their curricula vis-à-vis the supranational entity to which they belong. Presently, the teaching of Spanish literature in Spain is a bulwark of an exclusionary national identity. Functioning as a border of sorts that sets up a system of symbolic exclusions, Hispanism may be viewed as an obstacle for the constitution of an inclusive transnational European citizenship. The reflection on the notion of the border is precisely another step in the reassessment of the discipline. There are models that could be fruitfully applied to Hispanism. The task of reflecting about the border in the context of the European Union has already been undertaken by a number of thinkers, among them Étienne Balibar, whose ideas on transnational citizenship may be extrapolated to the cultural and literary fields. In We, the People of Europe?, Balibar has insisted on the imperative need in Europe to think about the border, particularly because this issue “crystallizes the stakes of politico-economic power and the symbolic stakes at work in the collective imagination” (3–4). In a world partly unified in the areas of communication and economic exchanges there are borders that segregate wealth from poverty; borders thus become “essential institutions in the

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constitution of social conditions on a global scale where the passport or identity card functions as a systematic criterion” (113). These borders are problematic in that they produce “conflicts, hopes, and frustrations for all sorts of people, as well as inextricable administrative and ideological difficulties for states” (109–10). For Balibar, the key task resides in the democratization of the institution of the border, which means putting it “at the service of men,” making it “an object of their ‘sovereignty’ rather than allowing it to subject them to powers over which they have no control” (108). This democratization of the border goes hand in hand with the construction of a transnational European citizenship. The creation of this type of citizenship constitutes the core of Balibar’s reflections. In his opinion, a transnational European citizenship—which he imagines as necessarily “disengaged from all myths of identity” (3)—would allow us “to democratize the borders of Europe, to overcome its internal divisions, and to reconsider completely the role of European nations in the world” (10). In the process of creating a transnational citizenship “European citizens themselves produce, by removing the existing obstacles, the conditions of a new belonging—and no doubt, inevitably, the conditions of a non-exclusive belonging in a new sense of the word” (162). The solution to the problems generated by the border results from the integration of “all the peoples and all the countries of European space within a single territory of citizenship, of egalitarian or ‘cosmopolitan’ inspiration, with the decentralized means of modern administration” (170). Balibar clarifies that a transnational citizenship is not a “European citizenship” (the supranational equivalent of a national identity), but rather “citizenship in Europe,” namely “the shared construction of a citizenship by the diverse inhabitants of Europe considered as an effective progress in the history of the rights of man” (177). The disciplines centered on the study of a national literature in the European institutions of higher learning could play a significant role in the construction of such transnational citizenship. In order for them to participate in this collective production of a transnational European citizenship, they would have to abandon their exclusive focus on an otherwise passé notion of the nation-state, and put into practice, in its stead, a transnational gaze. In the specific case of Hispanism in the Spanish academia, transnational approaches would not only refract more truthfully what the

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Spanish nation really is—a mixture of people born in the country and immigrants from all over the world, and a state that encompasses several nations, with their respective vernacular languages and cultures, such as the Basque Country, Galicia, and Catalonia; in addition, they would prop up a European transnational citizenship, since courses on literature would present Spanish literature in a constant dialogue with other national literatures, above all those from other European countries. One of the most pressing pending tasks in literary and cultural studies lies precisely in the inversion of priorities as regards the relation of the supplement (i.e., occasional mentions in class to other national literatures) with the substantive (i.e., the exhaustive study of a national literature). Nation-states have not disappeared, and the study of a national culture is perfectly legitimate. However, the world has—to freely quote from Heidegger—worlded itself, and we have become inhabitants of the whole planet. This relocation ought to be the point of departure as well as the substance of the scholarly and teaching activities of the specialists in a national literature and culture. In the transnational reading of national traditions, comparative approaches would be the substance, and not the supplement. The comparative literature deployed in transnational analyses of national literatures would be of a very specific kind. First, the point of reference would be a national literature—Spain’s in this case. Second, it would apply what could be termed as “radical comparison,” which consists of the rhizomatic comparison of units (texts, movements, motifs, themes, and so forth) that transcend geographical contiguities. While the latter is undoubtedly still pertinent, in my view it is not enough, for it does not completely correspond to the way we look at the world, nor to the multiple spatial strata in which we live. In our activities as teachers, we need to go beyond the usual spatial contiguities and put in contact units belonging to cultures separated by vast expansions of land. Thus a transnational course on Spanish war writing would establish all sorts of links among texts produced within very different cultures (e.g., Spain, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan, China, Argentina, and Australia, among other possible nations). The teacher would design a flexible and inclusive network of radical comparisons homologous to our world, which is organized around flows (Castells, Rise 442). To a certain degree, such a transnational approach to a national literature would mimic the

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space of flows theorized by Manuel Castells. By space of flows, let us remember, Castells understands “the new spatial form characteristic of social practices that dominate and shape the network society . . . [it] is the material organization of time-sharing social practices that work through flows” (Rise 442), defining flow as “purposeful, repetitive, programmable sequences of exchange and interaction between physically disjointed positions held by social actors in the economic, political, and symbolic structures of society” (Rise 442). The teacher would, therefore, guide students to recognize relations among units by having them follow the logic that underlies our multiple ways of relating to the world and communicating with fellow human beings. There would be, however, an important difference: while the space of flows is ahistorical and aims “at imposing its logic over scattered, segmented places, increasingly unrelated to each other, less and less able to share cultural codes” (Rise 459), a transnational approach would in fact connect what is distant without altering the specificity of places. Such a methodology could in fact advert the dangers lurking in the space of flows. Castells writes: “Experience, by being related to places, becomes abstracted from power, and meaning is increasingly separated from knowledge. There follows a structural schizophrenia between two spatial logics that threatens to break down communication channels in society” (Rise 458–59). In contrast with this, transnational approaches to literature and culture would endlessly build bridges that would relate all types of societies without homogenizing them. The questioning of withered disciplines; the acknowledgment of the emergence of new subjectivities projected, inevitably, onto the classroom; the reassessment of the pedagogy, methodology, and very contents of the subject matter; making sure that the teaching of literature is based upon the new hermeneutic horizons brought about by globalization; teaching students, as Spivak suggests, ways of reading aimed at their recognizing of the other—these are categories of a mode of action that attempts to make intelligible and meaningful a seemingly outdated field of knowledge. In a recent essay, Katie Trumpener claims that we are not completely ready for the task of teaching world literature, asking herself: “But if not us, who? And if not now, when?” (198). Perhaps what we can do is to accelerate the arrival of that moment by modifying our modes of gazing at national literatures. But if that moment ever arrives, it might be a problematic one. The transnational and rhizomatic gaze corresponds to a new production of

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space and the emergence of new subjectivities, while the re-semantization of the nation-state’s borders correlates to the blurring of the boundaries of literary studies, once providing a framework for the study of literature, today defining not only literature, but also a much wider field: culture. In the United States, more often than not, departments of literature have turned into something else. Academic institutions are, of course, contingent. In the same way that literary history has not always been taught (the first chair of literary history was created in 1786 at the Reales Estudios de San Isidro in Madrid),8 departments of literature could potentially acquire a very different character from the one they have now; they could even disappear. When we look toward the future, it is hard to make out an area of knowledge defined by neatly delineated horizons, and it is equally difficult to discern the contours of its object of study. If literary studies end up transforming themselves into something else beyond recognition—will that not be because literature, as traditionally conceived, practiced, and studied, has itself faded out? Notes 1. Compare with Castells, Power xxi–xxxii, 303–33. 2. On the so-called network society, see, for instance, Castells, Rise. 3. On the modifying nature of global immigration, see Bauman, Culture 32–50. 4. See also Castells’ discussion on “the network and the self,” in Rise 1–27, Power xvii-xxvi. 5. On the dangers and advantages of electronic communication and social networks, see, for instance, Bauerlein; Christakis and Fowler. 6. In addition to the views of world literature reviewed in this chapter, see also Miyoshi’s and Hayot’s. 7. On the pitfalls of world literature, see also Apter 1–27, 40–42, 326–29, passim. 8. Detailed information about the first chair of literary history can be found in Santiáñez.

2 E ImagiNations from a History of Space to a History of Movement Cuba between Island-World and World of Islands

Ottmar Ette Translated by Heike Scharm

At a time when the hypothesis of Fidel Castro’s mortality finally appears to have been conclusively proven—as we could note facetiously and still not without some doubt given the powerful role myths play in Cuban history—one struggles still today, fifty years after the expulsion of the dictator Fulgencio Batista and the victory of the Cuban revolution, to form a coherent picture of the past half century of Cuban history, culture, and literature, without repeating the all too well-known Cuban clichés and cartographies, or without falling back into the traps of a binary logic. Cuban history has been discussed many times, maybe too many times since the middle of the twentieth century, on the basis of the same periodizations: from its euphoric beginnings following the “Triumph of the Revolution” and the marching of the “Barbudos” in La Habana, to the first nationalizations and waves of refugees, to the proclaiming of the rise of Cuba to the shining star of Latin America’s cultural, social, and political awakening; from the heated debates about the future direction of the revolution after the Cold War, to the disciplining of intellectuals and artists during the “gray five-year term,” which, in the end, lasted much longer; from the first timid attempts of a dialogue beyond ideologies and economies, to the increasingly massive floods of refugees leaving the island, and to

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the periodical waves of tourists flooding the island; from the economic disaster of the “Special period in times of peace” with the bankruptcy of the east block as its backdrop, the dollarization and subsequent dedollarization of a long-ailing economic state, to, finally, the late phase of the commercialization and sell-out of exported Cuban myths built upon a Cheguevara Holiday island to not just any more Western tourists and their currencies. But does the “island of extremes” (Zeuske) with its history of the past century not transcend these chains of events? And what do we mean when we talk about the island of Cuba? The development of Cuba and the varied segments of its complex reality can only be grasped if we envision the cultural specifics and especially the culturally longue durée as a combination of essential, intrainfluential components. We could even say that looking at the Cuban revolution by looking only at the Cuban revolution makes it impossible to understand it. Cuba and “its” Revolution are therefore much more than just an accumulation of economic, financial, sociological, or political parameters and data: the most decisive parameter for an analysis of the Cuban revolution is a specific transcultural culture at the heart of its purest national cultural autonomy. There is no other way to explain why the Cuban revolution, in contrast to other revolutions on the subcontinent, could have “persisted” for such a long time and to even celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. The approaching end of the Cuban dictatorship has been prognosticated too many times for anybody to still be able to believe in it. Can Cuba’s historical becoming stabilize itself in the presence, or will it continue along the path of its historic charade, which is the ongoing contemporaneity of a “siempre fiel isla de Cuba” [always faithful island of Cuba]? The attempt to look at the last half century from a different perspective, one that offers us new insights on Cuba, is undermined by the fact that in the areas of culture and literature—and the same is true for Cuba’s economic development, when looking at it exclusively from a national economic perspective—many of our theories and epistemologies are informed by spatial and static views that keep us from recognizing the highly dynamic developments and processes at their base. Modeled after a nineteenth-century Western Middle European conception of national literature, the dominant perspective still today on Cuban literature (to name just one example) is one tied to the territory of the Cuban island. Without delving deeper into this far-reaching problematic that I explored

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already elsewhere (Ette, ZwischenWeltenSchreiben), we have to emphasize that the possibly greatest challenge today consists of making a transition from history informed by spatiality to history shaped by movement. If we approach Cuban history—and also the history of the Cuban revolution—only from a territorial-spatial perspective, we are failing to understand its underlying long- and short-term developments. Expressed through a maybe somewhat extreme analogy to the field of climate studies, this would amount to an attempt to gather information on global weather developments solely on the basis of local data. The difficulties that we face when developing a poetic of movement and switching to a history of movement—not only for the area of literature—should not discourage us from rising above a backward understanding of the socalled spatial turn, and to meet the challenge of preparing a path towards a vectorial understanding of forthcoming historical and cultural processes head on. Only this way will it be possible to grasp the past and present dynamics of the political and economic, the cultural and the literary history of Cuba, and to create a fertile ground for the evaluation of future developments. The study of literature and the knowledge dynamically stored within can help us considerably in this enterprise. Especially when looking at Cuba, we realize that the moment has come to change our way of thinking based upon static concepts. The globally distributed photos of the decrepit leader of the revolution point at a historic present and past, at a presence of myths and their fatigue; the exhaustion of Cuban myths today opens up toward a future whose silhouette vaguely begins to appear on the horizon. The fascination with these fifty-five years of Cuban revolution lies in its paradoxical embrace of a present and a presence under the sign of a historical becoming as well as a history-to-be. Unlike people, even tired myths are not always mortal. This chapter, therefore, proposes to develop a theoretical landscape that goes beyond the simple function of historical memory and the circulation of knowledge; it also goes beyond the customary paradigm of hybridity, which has dominated the interpretation of Cuban culture and history. The objective here will be to open new paths toward a different and broader understanding of Cuba as a global island.

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Five/Two Centuries: From the Discovery to the Invention of Cuba Juan de la Cosa’s letter, housed today in the Navy Museum, Madrid, offers the most advanced cartographical image of the world of its time (figure 1). Created around 1500, it includes for the first time an overall correct geographical position of the equator line, as well as of the tropic of Cancer. It also clearly delineates the contours of the island of Cuba, including its many smaller offshore islands. The cartographical designs and worldviews at the beginning of the early modern period are without a doubt inseparable from Europe’s empirical claims of that time. The dominating position of the largest island of the Antilles clearly shows the enormous importance given to the island of Cuba on a global level with regard to the future. The invention of Cuba is already encrypted in its discovery by Europeans: within this triangle drawn on a map, discovery and invention blend together with experience and reality. Within a global context, Juan de la Cosa’s masterpiece of early modern cartography not only offers us a fascinating first picture of the American hemisphere based on the personal experiences of a great navigator; he also inserts the contours of Gog and Magog’s land in the farthest east of Asia—drawn closely along the western coasts along which he had travelled—and thus documents through this visual depiction the Iberian history of expansion at that time. This allows us to recognize the developing lines of the European history of future navigation. By taking this into account, it appears to be no coincidence that the first cartographical images of the island of Cuba, drawn just eight years after Columbus’s so-called discovery, depict for the first time the largest island of the Antilles within a global context: Juan de la Cosa’s map of the world creates a Cuba, drawn still to the north of the tropic of Cancer and therefore still outside the tropics, as a potential global island. It is intriguing to see that the first separate cartographical representation of Cuba in 1528—quite contrary to Juan de la Cosa’s today still recognizable outline of the island of Cuba—was a complete invention. More than three decades after the first Columbian voyage, the Venetian Benedetto Bordone, in his famous book Libro di Benedetto Bordone. Nel qual si ragiona de tutte l’Isole del mondo (1528) about the Cuban island,1 imagined a concept of Cuba that probably had little in common with the most advanced knowledge of his time, which, of course, due to imperialistic

Figure 1. Map of Juan de la Cosa, 1500. Museo Naval de Madrid, Spain.

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motives, was not readily made available. In the Libro di Benedetto Bordone the author invents a landmass with schematically indented and jagged coastlines. At the center of the island, a reader can recognize hills, mountain chains, forests, fields, and also Italian looking estates. The Insularium as Imaginarium: maps have always been cartographical projections of the Other within the self, and, especially, of the self in the Other. When we compare Bordone’s map of Cuba with his own world map, both drawn up in the year 1528,2 we notice that he did not include in the latter an island in the Caribbean that bears any resemblance to the realistic Cuban coastlines seen in Juan de la Cosa’s world map, or even to the more or less invented drawings of his own map of Cuba. While Bordone’s map of the world was highly imprecise, we can recognize the outlines of continents. It shows the grid of a map that was projected from Europe onto still the world. Thanks to its precisely drawn lines of the tropics and the equator, it presents an impressive demonstration of a centralized Western perspective, which follows a quite different logic than that of Isolario, his book on islands, and the new cartographic genre it founded (Oberhausen 22). In the separate representation of the island, the objective was not to discover Cuba but rather to invent it; and, in contrast to Juan de la Cosa’s mapping of the island as reflection of a history of movement, here Cuba becomes a static cartographical image that could be placed in any geographical latitude. Let us now jump ahead three centuries. Alexander von Humboldt includes two maps of Cuba in his Atlas géographique et physique des régions équinoxiales du Nouveau Continent, based on the field work he conducted during his American expeditions. Both maps show the island of Cuba as rectangular cutouts, as separate illustrations removed from the context of the other Caribbean islands and their surrounding continental coastlines. For the first time, these maps were included in Humboldt’s Essai politique sur l’île de Cuba (1826), which was published separately in two volumes in Paris as part of Humboldt’s Relation historique, the original report on his research expeditions through the Americas with Aimé Bonpland. Later, it was completed with a third volume. This work creates a link between text and icon, between image and text, which will be relevant for the following argumentation. The conspicuous generic similarity concerning the titles of the two works, Politischer Versuch über die Insel Cuba [Political Essay on the Island

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of Cuba] and Humboldt’s Essai politique sur le royaume de la Nouvelle-Espagne [Political Essay on the Kingdom of the New Spain], published years earlier between 1808 and 1811, apart from having scientific, epistemological, or even literary justifications, could be attributed to the fact that the Prussian scholar knew exactly that many of his readers, and especially his American readership, would read his Essai politique as a type of birth certificate for an independent Mexico. Humboldt practically laid this essay into the cradle of the emerging nation-state. One decade and a half later, when Humboldt’s essay on Cuba would be printed, the formation of the young state of Mexico was still embroiled in turmoil. Humboldt’s American travel writings accompanied the wars of independence in the Spanish colonies throughout their decisive decades, and he would have been well aware of their historical importance. The fact that he included a cartographical rendering of Cuba in his Essai politique sur l’île de Cuba that depicted a Spanish colony as physically detached from its geographical and topographical contexts by placing it on a separate map, could therefore be understood as an indication that Humboldt recognized and presented Cuba as a proto-national unity, even at a time when the island gained more and more importance for the European trade. When we compare both maps of Cuba included in the Atlas géographique et physique with, for example, Guillaume-Thomas Raynal’s cartographical representation of the island in his Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes—the big encyclopedia of the colonies and, since its first edition in 1770, a bestseller during the Enlightenment—we can clearly recognize the immense leap that characterizes Humboldt’s two maps of the years 1820 and 1826 with regards to the applied techniques of design, the precision in astronomical measurements and identification of places, as well as to the accuracy and meticulous attention to detail in the cartographical visualization. When Humboldt added a second map of Cuba in 1826, he did so in order to stay true to his principle of creating a work in progress; he continuously tried to improve this work, just as he did with all other materials included in his Opus Americanum. After weighing additional data, including measurements and corrections made by others, Humboldt adjusted the course of mountain ranges, improved faulty entries, or made slight

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corrections to planetary measurements. He thus created a visual conception of Cuba that comes quite close to the map of the island as we know it today. He also integrated its numerous smaller and larger surrounding islands, including Isla de Pinos, today called Isla de la Juventud, which had served Thomas More as point of reference for his Utopia. By applying the latest cartographical techniques and combining his own measurements with those of others, Alexander von Humboldt created the image of modern Cuba; by drawing it separately on a map, he also invented it as an independent island-nation. From a cartographical point of view, he was able to reconcile both Juan de la Cosa’s and Benedetto Bordone’s lines of tradition, and, by including Cuba’s many harbors, he eliminated the static character that the island displayed on previous maps. Furthermore, he unmistakably integrated Cuba in the worldwide history of movement by drawing out a detailed plan of Havana’s port, which he included in both maps, from 1820 and from 1826. After all, was it not Havana’s harbor that already designated Cuba as a global island, since the first phases of accelerated globalization? Havana’s port was able to accommodate the entire Spanish fleet, and therefore it took part in a history of movement dominated by Europe. Hence, it is of high relevance that Alexander von Humboldt introduced his elaborate commentaries on Cuba with a well-thought-out literary portrait of Havana’s famous harbor. Following this important passage of his travel report in chapter 28 of his Relation historique, the itinerarylike structure takes on a mostly descriptive and discursive dimension, as he describes in a spectacular fashion of “literarily travelling” (Ette et al. 33– 55) the mobile space of a harbor where the most diverse paths, the most varied movements, intersected, and which he saw for the first time on December 19, 1800: L’aspect de la Havane, à l’entrée du port, est un des plus riants et des plus pittoresques dont on puisse jouir sur le littoral de l’Amérique équinoxiale, au nord de l’équateur. Ce site, célébré par les voyageurs de toutes les nations, n’a pas le luxe de végétation qui orne les bords de la rivière de Guayaquil, ni la sauvage majesté des côtes rocheuses de Rio Janeiro, deux ports de l’hémisphère austral: mais la grâce qui, dans nos climats, embellit les scènes de la nature cultivée, se mêle ici à la majesté des formes végétales, à la vigueur organique

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qui caractérise la zone torride. Dans un mélange d’impressions si douces, l’Européen oublie le danger qui le menace au sein des cités populeuses des Antilles; il cherche à saisir les éléments divers d’un vaste paysage, à contempler ces châteaux forts qui couronnent les rochers à l’est du port, ce bassin intérieur, entouré de villages et de fermes, ces palmiers qui s’élèvent à une hauteur prodigieuse, cette ville à demi cachée par une forêt de mâts et la voilure des vaisseaux. (Humboldt, Relation historique 348) [Havana’s appearance from the entrance port is one of the most pleasant and picturesque on the coastline of tropical America north of the equator. Celebrated by travelers of all nations, this site has neither the luxurious vegetation that lines the banks of the Guayaquil nor the wild majesty of Rio de Janeiro’s rocky shoreline, two ports in the southern hemisphere. But it has the grace that, in our climates, adorns scenes of cultivated nature, blending the majesty of plant life with an organic vigor typical of the Torrid Zone. In this mixture of gentle impressions, the European forgets the dangers that threaten him at the heart of the Antilles’ populous cities. He tries to take in the diverse elements of a vast landscape: the fortified castle that crown the rocks to the left of the port, which is an interior basin surrounded by villages and farms; the palm trees that grow to a prodigious height; the city half-hidden behind a forest of masts and sails.] (Humboldt, Political Essay 26) Humboldt’s fractal style allowed him to poetically fuse the most surprising interactions and interconnections into a fundamentally complex narratological structure. Just like a literary mise en abyme, the cartographical representation of the harbor of Havana is thus aesthetically put into motion, incorporating the island into the global flux of migration. Here, the link to the cartographical representation of the harbor becomes evident. The comparison with other harbors in the New World draws attention to the meanings of the harbor and the city as dynamic in-between spaces that include and put into motion flows of migration following north-south, as much as west-east directions. In the port of La Habana, the climatic conditions of the tempered zones and the “cultivated nature” of the north meet the “Majesty” of the tropics, as the hot zones are characterized. In this manner, the harbor of Havana materializes as a place of

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exchange, a space of circulation that openly connects the northern with the southern hemisphere. At the same time it generates a transatlantic route that connects Europe with America. As it becomes evident using the example of this fascinatingly created passage and by means of many other places on Cuba, the island is not being fashioned through its territoriality, its static surface, but rather through historically constructed dynamics: space is created through movement, through the many routes that cross over it and connect through it. We are basically dealing here with a trans-aerial form of construct. The diversity of the climate and the flora is as extensive as the range of impressions that the bewildered and seduced European traveler experiences, to the point that their sweetness and pleasantness obscure the dangers that lure within the hustle of these densely populated cities of the Antilles. For Humboldt, the world of the tropics is tantamount to abundance, but this abundance—typical for this Western image of the tropics—can rapidly turn into a trap. The opposites of nature and culture, of the urban and the rural, of moving water and solid rock, are carefully blended and intertwined, forging a mobile and moving scenery. Seen from the perspective of the port of Havana, this scenery presents the tropical island of Cuba in a changed light, as Cuba can only be understood from the itinerant dynamics of movement. Presenting the harbor as fractal pattern, Humboldt appropriately draws attention to the island of Cuba as an important player in the history of global migration by providing a meeting place of differing climates, flora, cities, and populations. Within the context of migration of the most diverse life forms (plants, animals, people) begins a circulation of knowledge, of commodities, and of people—and also of people as commodities, since he soon made his readership aware of the trade of the “malheureux esclaves” [the unhappy slaves] (Relation historique 350)—as well as of cultures, languages, of traditions and ideas, all of which lead us now to the next point. The epistemological and equally programmatic status of this passage is obvious: Against any type of a static territorializing perspective, a wide range of different phenomena are brought into contact and are intensely interrelated within this “Anblick des allverbreiteten, beweglichen, länderverbindenden Ozeans” [the sight of the ever-expansive, moving ocean bridging continents] (Humboldt, Aus meinem Leben 36), through a constant and mutual interchange.

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The Port of Havana, and with it the entire island, is a place of transit that can only be understood as a relational and dynamic space, rather than an immobilized, static territoriality. What better way to depict Cuba, a place that played such an important role in the first, second, and also third phase of an accelerated globalization, than as an island within a transoceanic space of migrational movements? The tropical abundance of the palm trees on land relate to entire forests of ship masts, while the sails reflect the abundance of the itineraries initiated by the travelers. Not only had the world arrived at an archipelago, it equally had become an archipelago. This way, Cuba is depicted as an important part of a mobile, relational global system, in which everything seems to be interconnected. Even slavery, against which Humboldt spoke out over and over again in his Essai politique, was for him a product of these worldwide relations of exchange, and thus of a globalization whose dark side he consistently recorded. Especially in light of the Haitian revolution that had entered its final phase at the time of his two visits in Cuba, Alexander von Humboldt knew how important the abolition of slavery and the development of new ways of cohabitation between the different cultures, ethnic groups, religions, and languages would be. On the backdrop of the revolutionary events in Santo Domingo, at the time the richest European colony of the Antilles, but also in view of the French revolution and his own experiences in the revolutionary Paris, Humboldt knew how quickly ideas, once put into circulation, could modify the same structures that were previously deemed stable. Had he not himself already revolutionized the image of the New World? In all aspects of his invention of Cuba, Humboldt systematically included dynamic processes and changes. His cartographical as well as literary portrayal of an island, like the former Spanish colonies on the continent well on its way to independence—albeit with a certain delay and for Cuba such characteristic contemporaneity—consciously projected the future space of an independent Cuba as a trans-areal place of migration. For Humboldt’s incomplete project—until today—of a different modernity, one that would not be based on a centralized structure but rather on a multipolarity, an insularity in the form of an island-world that draws a sharp line between “inside” and “outside,” closed from the inside out and mostly isolated from the outside, would be a truly absurd concept.

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His invention of a prospectively independent island of the Antilles reflected his awareness of the basic flows of migrations. Since the first sightings of the Spanish sails and flags that appeared along the same coastlines that Juan de la Cosa so majestically sketched out his map, these migratory movements placed Cuba into a global context. They could not be rendered immobile by a nation-state. Rather, they had to be assertively constructed within a global consciousness. For Cuba itself, after the unavoidable abolition of slavery, it was a matter of inventing new forms of partnerships over a loosely sketched out background. 95/59: Visions of a Global Island When Alexander von Humboldt died on May 6, 1859, at the age of almost ninety, José Martí, a native of Havana, was just six years old. Martí’s repulsion for any form of slavery or colonialism was evident early on and throughout his whole life. When he opened his war diary on May 5, 1895, after many years of exile in Spain, Mexico, Guatemala, Venezuela, among others, and especially in the United States, and recorded his argument with General Antonio Maceo, he had already become one of the greatest leaders of his own Partido Revolucionario Cubano [Cuban Revolutionary Party], as well as the true driving force of a war destined to end the more than four hundred years of Spanish colonialism in Cuba and Puerto Rico. But his leadership was not uncontested. Especially the old generals that had already fought against Spain during the Ten Year War from 1868 until 1878 tried to demote the representative of the civilized powers, and, if possible, push him back to New York. The first direct confrontation was unavoidable: En la mesa, opulenta y premiosa, de gallina y lechón, vuélvese al asunto: me hiere y me repugna: comprendo que he de sacudir el cargo, con que se me intenta marcar, de defensor ciudadanesco de las trabas hostiles al movimiento militar. Mantengo, rudo: el Ejército, libre,—y el país, como país y con toda su dignidad representado. Muestro mi descontento de semejante indiscreta y forzada conversación, a mesa abierta, con la prisa de Maceo por partir. Que va a caer la noche sobre Cuba, y ha de andar seis horas. (Martí, Diario 229)

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[A dinner, opulent and awkward, with chicken and suckling pig, the matter comes up again: he wounds and repels me. I understood that I must shake off the role I am to be marked with, as the civilian defender of shackles hostile to the military movement. I hold out, roughly: the Army, free—and the country, as a country, with its dignity represented. I show my displeasure at such indiscreet and forced a conversation, before the whole table, and with Maceo’s haste to leave. For night is about to fall on Cuba and he has a sixhour journey ahead of him.] (Martí, Selected 397) Night was about to fall on Cuba. On the following day, the generals were about to sideline the poet who—as the representative of the future civil government—had closely interwoven Cuba and the night in his famous verses: “Dos patrias tengo yo: Cuba y la noche. / ¿O son una las dos?” (Martí, Poesía 127) [I have two motherlands: Cuba and the night, / Or are they the same?]. Martí’s description of that fatal encounter on May 6, 1895, in La Mejorana, was ripped out of his Diario de campaña; and the whirlpool Martí himself caused, of whom José Lezama Lima spoke of in an unforgettable way, started to spin faster and faster until it swept away the prolific writer and thinker: Martí’s destiny was to “crear el remolino que lo destruye” (Lezama Lima, Expresión 116) [to create the whirlpool that would destroy him]. The tone of Martí’s war diary started to change noticeably: the description of the execution of a traitor on May 8 at the order of Generalísimo Máximo Gómez is unforgettable—Martí was able to save the life of two others: “Lo arrodillan, al hombre, espantado, que aún, en aquella rapidez, tiene tiempo, sombrero en mano, para volver la cara dos o tres veces” (Martí, Diario 233) [They set the terrified man on his knees, though for their haste he still has time to turn his face back two or three times] (Selected 401). Several times before his own death Martí also turned back the gaze. His lyrical nature writings transform the flowing landscape of the Río Cauto, “el vasto paisaje del río amado” (Diario 234) [the vast landscape of the beloved river] (Selected 404), first into a dreamscape, and then, finally, into a deathscape, a landscape of death. Two days before his death on May 19, 1895, we read: “Está muy turbia el agua crecida del Contramaestre” (Diario 234) [The rising waters of the Contramaestre are very murky] (Selected 404).

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José Martí, founder of the PRC and an experienced strategist in political fights, is well aware of the importance of the “poder moral para resistir el peligro que de años atrás preveo” (Diario 240) [the moral power to resist the danger I’ve foreseen for years] (Selected 410). And in fact, the authoritarian rules of the game would assert themselves over the democratic ones dreamt up by Martí. With his death he played his last card; even though the Comandantes and Generales continued to succeed one another in their positions of power, his last card trumped, as José Martí became a legend that tirelessly and continuously reinvented itself. José Martí followed a logic of inclusion, not one of exclusion. His speech, later known under the title “Con todos y para el bien de todos” [with all and for the good of all] of November 26, 1891, and delivered in front of Cuban tobacco workers in Tampa, Florida, did not leave any doubt concerning Martí’s ethical position: “la ley primera de nuestra república sea el culto de los cubanos a la dignidad plena del hombre” [the primary law of our republic shall be the Cuban’s cult of the full dignity of man] (Discurso 270). In his literary speech, whose rhetorical elements Fidel Castro later appropriated, Martí emphasized the necessity to integrate the Spaniards living in Cuba, as well as the recently freed black slaves, into a future society that would be politically independent and would follow a “fórmula del amor triunfante” [formula of triumphant love]: “Con todos, y para el bien de todos” [with all, and for the good of all] (Discurso 279). In not very different terms, Martí later pronounced his famous declaration of war in his Manifiesto de Montecristi where he provides the ethical guidelines for the war he initiated. Besides the integrative force of his revolution that would fight for a future of peaceful coexistence in Cuba, Martí also outlined objectives that went well beyond the Cuban context: La guerra de independencia de Cuba, nudo del haz de islas donde se ha de cruzar, en plazo de pocos años, el comercio de los continentes, es suceso de gran alcance humano, y servicio oportuno que el heroísmo juicioso de las Antillas presta a la firmeza y trato justo de las naciones americanas, y al equilibrio aún vacilante del mundo. Honra y conmueve pensar que cuando cae en tierra de Cuba un guerrero de la independencia, abandonado tal vez por los pueblos incautos o indiferentes a quienes se inmola, cae por el bien mayor del hombre, la confirmación de la república moral en América, y la

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creación de un archipiélago libre donde las naciones respetuosas derramen las riquezas que a su paso han de caer sobre el crucero del mundo: ¡apenas podría creerse que con semejantes mártires, y tal porvenir, hubiera cubanos que atasen a Cuba a la monarquía podrida y aldeana de España, y a su miseria inerte y viciosa! (Manifiesto 26–28) [The war of independence in Cuba, the knot that binds the sheaf of islands where shortly the commerce of the continents must pass through, is a far-reaching human event and a timely service that the judicious heroism of the Antilles lends to the stability and just interaction of the American nations and to the still unsteady equilibrium of the world. It honors and moves us to think that when a warrior for independence falls on Cuban soil, perhaps abandoned by the heedless or indifferent peoples for whom he sacrifices himself, he falls for the greater good of mankind, for the confirmation of a moral republicanism in America, and for the creation of a free archipelago through which the respectful nations will pour a wealth that must, at its passage, spill over into the crossroads of the world. Hardly can it be believed that with such martyrs and such a future there could be Cubans who would bind Cuba to the corrupt and provincial monarchy of Spain and its sluggish, vice-ridden wretchedness!] (Selected 344) If we consider Alexander von Humboldt the great theoretician of the first and second phase of accelerated globalization, then José Martí is without a doubt the most important thinker of the third phase of globalization, of which he became conscious earlier than others, thanks to a global consciousness he formed during his New York exile and his many travels through the American continent and the Caribbean islands. This explains his repeated demand for an end to Spanish colonization in Cuba and Puerto Rico through a revolution in the “servicio de la humanidad” [service to humanity] (Manifiesto 28), and his intention to create a movement of liberation for the region of the Caribbean archipelago, for the American hemisphere, and for the whole of humanity—a movement with its starting point in Cuba—that would be able to efficiently counter not only European expansionism, but also, and especially, US imperialism.

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In his Manifiesto de Montecristi, written on Cuba’s neighboring island Hispaniola, Martí tested the metaphorologies “knot of islands” and “archipelago,” and quite successfully so. Thanks to these landscapes he was able to construct in his mind the theory of a global relationality, which, in his view, predestined the Caribbean as a point of intersection for the entire planet. Granted, when looking at Cuba, this view of such a highly favored geo-strategic position appears to be a hopeless exaggeration. Still today, Cuba’s national flag depicts this symbol, which stands in contrast to the regional confines of an island that has had great difficulties to liberate itself from its colonial chains. Nevertheless, José Martí was indeed aware that Cuba played an important role, and not just during the first and second phase of an accelerating globalization; he was also convinced—and as we know today rightly so—that the Caribbean island would also become an important global player during the third phase, the last third of the nineteenth century. Martí hoped that the war, as he had conceived it, would bring about the end of the Spanish colonial empire and allow the emergence of a new political constellation, one that would allow the sovereign development of all those states that fell under what Martí called “Nuestra América.” For this reason, Martí considered his home island especially relevant within this new hemispheric formation, not only what the continent concerned, but also for the Caribbean and even for the global archipelago. However, the intervention of the United States in the Cuban-American war of independence in the year of 1898 would create a new political constellation of power, one that Martí had tried to prevent: a new dependency on the imperial neighbor to the north. Thanks to the rapid expansion of its navy, the United States quickly defeated the inferior Spanish fleet in front of the coasts of Santiago de Cuba and of Manila. The further militarization of US foreign politics soon gave rise to the first non-European empire of the twentieth century. Cuba had played an important role in this—although not the one José Martí had hoped for when he conceived his home island as a global island. Still, this fiasco was quite productive. Many elements of Martí’s ideas have made their way—at least during the 1960s—into the philosophy and the foreign politics of the Cuban revolution. Following his tri-continental strategy, the revolutionaries in Cuba tried, by exporting the revolution

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to the American heartland and to other continents, to gain a global relevance. It did so by pursuing a political strategy of uniting allies against the threatening neighbor in the north. Weary of Fidel Castro who ruled the island in an increasingly autocratic way, the United States tried to isolate the island after its failed invasion and to block its development. However, during the Cold War, and during shifting formations of what began to be called the “Third World,” Cuba remained determined to hold on to the role of a global island. The fact that the then still young revolutionary leader would have even assumed the risk of starting a third world war shows the danger of such visions. The limited scope of this geopolitical scenario indicates only a few continuations from the visions of José Martí to the early phase of the Cuban revolution—without forgetting, of course, that the model of society conceived by Martí had little to do with the construction of the authoritarian system that Fidel Castro established early on—the Cuban culture politics took on a central position (at least until the continental divide of the socalled “Padilla-Affaire”). Therefore, on a national and international scale, literature was given at first an enormous importance. In order to adequately grasp the complexity of this process and of the immense importance Cuban literature held over the course of the long decades of the twentieth century, we have to understand the specifics of its historical development. The emergence of a national Cuban literature not only precedes Cuba’s political independence by almost an entire century, but it also has a unique trans-areal configuration. Cuban national literature—and herein lies one of the main reasons for its extraordinarily powerful and, in relation to the sheer size of Cuba, its proportionally truly extensive development—can be called, within its historical development and its current shape, a literature without a permanent residence. But what does this mean? The poet and essayist José Martí represents in many respects the enormous weight placed upon literature within the political, societal, and cultural development of Cuba, as seen in the fact that the great Cuban literature of the nineteenth century was written mostly outside the island. With his exile in Europe and in the South and North of the American double continent, the lyricist and revolutionary Martí poetized a development that marked the long Spanish colonial nineteenth century. José María Heredia’s great lyrical work was written between Cuba and Mexican exile,

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the same way that Cirilo Villaverde’s writing—and especially his novel Cecilia Valdés, which became a national epic, is situated between Cuba and the United States. Equally, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda’s name holds, and justifiably so, an important place in the history of Cuban as well as of Spanish literature. But this is not all. In the twentieth century varied names and works such as those of Nicolás Guillén, Alejo Carpentier, Lydia Cabrera, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Severo Sarduy, Reinaldo Arenas or Jesús Díaz confirm the fact that it would be absurd to limit Cuban literature to what was thought, written, and published on the island or within the Cuban nation. If one intended to record on a world map the choreography only of the authors mentioned here, we could quickly see that we can add to the United States—the country that without a doubt has absorbed the main part of the tradition-rich Cuban exile since the beginning of the nineteenth century—a great variety of Latin American countries, as well as France, Spain, or England, where the literary activities of Cuban men and women writers took place. Naturally, Germany also counts among these Cuban islands of a global archipelago, but it is also different in that the fall of the Berlin wall led to the unification of Cuban lives that had been shaped differently by the East and the West. All signs point in the direction that in this twofold comunidad the removal of the mental wall occurred faster than among the Germans themselves. By now, Cuban literature is no longer written in a tri-continental extension, but rather on all continents—mostly in the Spanish language, but also for a long time on a translingual level in the respective languages of the countries of exile or transit. A global archipelago is created, one that draws the richness of Cuban literature—very much in the sense of long lines of traditions—from the richness of its manifold cultural contexts. Since the fourth phase of the accelerated globalization, the migrating birds of which Fernando Ortiz once spoke have multiplied and interconnected their flight routes without the need to include a layover on the “main island.” It is a known fact: if we solely looked at Cuban literature from the territorial perspective of the island, without considering its transcultural development as a literature without residence, then its actual global impact would be incomprehensible. Even the admittedly justifiable separation between the literatures of Cuba, of Cuban exile, and of the diaspora

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presents too much of a way of thinking in categories that limits our understanding. It is methodologically and terminologically much too static and too little relational. Guillermo Cabrera Infante’s vision of a Cuba that had been composed of a plurality of islands and mini-islands before the arrival of the first inhabitants, has been, in the area of literature, long become the reality. Through the configuration of global interconnections, Cuba has grown into an archipelago—and, as such, has written and expanded its destiny into a plurilogical, heterotopic island of islands. Another Five Decades: Between Island-World and World of Islands There certainly has not been a lack of attempts to undermine the global archipelization of Cuba as presented here in this chapter, and to reduce the world of islands—defined as a world of islands standing in a reciprocal relationality—to an Island-world—understood as an island that places at its center its own world that, voluntarily or forced upon its inhabitants, becomes self-contained and isolated (Ette, Von Inseln 135–80). It is not surprising that these attempts have intensified especially since the beginning of the Cuban revolution and during the gradual establishment of an authoritarian dictatorship. Fidel Castro’s famous “Palabras a los intelectuales” [Speech to Intellectuals] offers us a first concise example of this strategy. Its objective was to shield the heart of the revolution from everything that could be considered contrarevolutionary, by keeping it out either through inclusion (here understood as the incarceration of unpopular “intellectuals” in jails or the infamous concentration camps, euphemistically named “Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Producción” (UMAP) [Military Units to Aid Production], or through exclusion (in the sense of forced exile). In April of 1971, together with other coercive sanctions, the “I Congreso de Educación y Cultura” [1st Conference on Education and Culture] built the foundation for the new culture politics of the Cuban revolution. This was yet another step toward the complete control and surveillance of writers, artists, and intellectuals. Far beyond the public trials, the coerced public self-incriminations and denouncements of others, and beyond the intensified censorship, the Cuban government institutionalized an omnipresent logic of

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exclusion based upon the elimination of a constantly redefined “Other”; a logic that to this day has lost nothing of its peril. Decades later, a critical counter discourse also emerged. These critical discourses are manifested, for example, in some activities of the “Centro Teórico-Cultural Criterios,” inspired by Desiderio Navarro, or, more recently, in Norge Espinosa’s speech of January 20, 2009, which was globally distributed through the Cuban theater of the quinquenio gris of the 70s (Espinosa). However, while this has certainly been a welcome development, it should not be overrated. These are not really new phenomena, but rather fall within the category of certain critical discourses that were published with the consent and under the control of the nation-state. Therefore, these types of discourses that pretended to evade the rigid formulas of the language of revolution also had a stabilizing effect within certain moments of history. It was easy to retract them, to control them discursively, to “put them back into place.” As an example, the written text of the speech on the “Triunfo de la Revolución” [Triumph of the Revolution], which by that time had fossilized into a formula, was then replaced by another formula, the “arribo revolucionario de 1959.” That way, the existing control over language has maintained its power as much as its ruler has: Fidel Castro is still simply Fidel—he is as close by as he is untouchable, even after his death. There are certainly areas of free play within the literary and intellectual circles in Cuba; the rules of the game3 depend on the more flexible or more rigid interpretations over the course of the past decades, but what the delimitations of borders are concerned, they have been put in place for a long time. One can easily and quickly end up in an offsite position, in a fuera del juego.4 The revolutionary Cuba also attempted to centralize the history (of literature) in a national-territorial fashion. The infamous José Antonio Portuondo, known for his orthodox patterns of interpretations, wanted to keep not only his contemporary Cuban authors in line, but even Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda—a century after her death. From today’s perspective accusing her of a lack of Cuban nationalism, due to her moving back and forth between Cuba and Spain (Espinosa), may seem absurd, but it does make sense within this logic of exclusion, which by then the Cuban revolution had already implemented: following this logic anything would be redefined from a territorial perspective, and all that could

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appear suspect would be excluded: ¡Fuera! [Out!]. Those who left the island or fell into disgrace disappeared from photos and from books of references—a process that was also mirrored outside the roam of influence of the Cuban Revolution. It appears to me that the long term logic of this logic only becomes evident when one becomes aware that the forced insistence on an islandworld is one of the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion proper of a dominating insularization and isolation, which, paradoxically, further speeds up the development of an island-world. The plurilogical archipelization of Cuban culture and literature is a fact that luckily neither La Habana nor Miami can deny or control. A ruse of history? Certainly. As the perspective of five centuries has made evident, overall the Cuban revolution has pursued—notwithstanding some contradictions within its exterior culture politics—a project of modernity that is based on the static of a nation-state and the control of its territorial power, all centralized through an autocratic Comandante. This homogenization of space under the supremacy of its own territory from which the Other has been in so many ways excluded, expelled, or erased, has created an islandworld that only allowed in an extremely limited way the convergence of knowledge and of the members of its society. The other model of modernity, the one that Alexander von Humboldt proposed when looking at Cuba, one that understood and conceptualized space on the basis of intercalating flows of migration, had no weight in this. Neither Humboldt’s nor José Martí’s modernity followed a logic of exclusion, but rather one of inclusion and integration. Their ideas and related manifestations in culture, literature, and education had little to no impact on a Cuban production of knowledge that would have as its goal the peaceful coexistence and the utmost respect—and not just tolerance—of the Other. If we can speak of a logic at the heart of Cuban history, then it should be one of a global island, of an archipelization in the sense of a global relationality, which, in turn, made it possible to develop a relational logic. Even fifty years after the much celebrated march of the “Barbudos” in La Habana, the often presented theoretical paradigms advanced by Cuban literature—the leading example being Lezama Lima’s La expresión americana—continue to be challenged. Within as well as outside the nationstate many supporters still need to be rallied. The fundamentally complex

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interconnectivity of the archipelago—far from any concentration camparchipelago UMAP or GULAF—leads to a theory for the future political, social, economic, and cultural reshaping of Cuba. However, the risk of falling back into binaries as an intellectual austerity measure always lurks. Relying on the complex knowledge of literature can prevent us from falling back into the infertile schemata that marked Cuban history up to the end of the colonial times, but also during the turbulent twentieth century. The Cuban revolution has, against its own will, accelerated the emergence of two, three, many literary Cubas. From the perspective of a Cuban national literature without a permanent residence we should value this as an immense opportunity. The different islands of Cuban literature have created an understanding of life and a capacity for coexistence that will be essential for survival when Cuba enters the surely approaching phase of fundamental change. Let us address again the myths of the Cuban revolution. Within the context of the herein explained processes de longue durée, these myths appear, and quite understandably so, tired and exhausted. Their commercial sell-out has been going on for some time, and only pays—similarly to a life-term insurance—some last dividends to the senior citizens, the Señores. The Cuban revolution has created its own myth; and it has—in the sense of Hans Blumenberg (1979)—completed its own work. The myth of José Martí, however, has not come to an end, and will continue to be powerful in Cuban history for quite some time. The future Cuba will be fine without Castro, but not without Martí. But has the myth of the global island not also exhausted itself? When looking at the limiting and by the nation-state regulated horizons of “Primer territorio libre de América” [First Free Territory of America] or at the often empty harbor of La Habana, one could indeed see the exhausted end phase of this myth. But it would be a mistake to limit our perspective to the main island of the Cuban archipelago. Not only when we look at literature and music, or at painting and dance, do we realize that the longest lasting misunderstanding concerning Cuban affairs rests on the perception of Cuba as a single island with definable territorial contours and precise borders. The cartographies of Cuba should contain, as precisely as possible, the topographies and local measurements; but without a mobile cartography of ports, relations, and migrations, all this

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information is dead data from which, just as in the final scene of Vista del amanecer en el trópico, man will soon have disappeared. Today, the construction of the myth of Cuba as a global island could enter a new creative phase: a phase, in which Cuba and its island-world become part of a trans-areal archipelago and, at the same time, represent the expresión americana, the American expression. The world as archipelago: built upon the foundation of symmetrical relations that develop a relational logic essential for survival within this ongoing process of globalization. The vital experiences that have shaped [Cuban] literature over the past centuries can help us rethink the world in new terms. Our task now consists of moving away from asymmetrical perspectives, in order to envision the plurilogical relationality of the twenty-first century. Notes 1. The map was put on display for the first time in Birgit Oberhausen’s beautiful exhibit “Faszination Kuba,” at the Library of Württemberg, Stuttgart, from March 7 to 19, 2007, and again on April 23, 2009, at the University of Saarland in Saarbrücken (see also Oberhausen). 2. An illustration of this map can be found in his “Unsichtbare Atlas,” in Alexander von Humboldt’s edition Kritische Untersuchung. 3. For a Cuban-insular interpretation of this term, see Hart Dávalos. 4. See the collection of poetry Fuera del juego de Heberto Padilla.

3 E A Postnational Critique of Language The Baroque Algorithm

Julio Ortega Translated by Heike Scharm

Why, in order to write, a poet writing in Spanish has to start by banishing his own language? Only in appearance paradoxical or ironic, the question I propose to explore in this chapter serves to sustain the hypothesis that there is a transatlantic poetic tradition unwilling to resign itself to a representation configured by natural language, and which makes its expulsion a poetic act par excellence. Today we can safely assume, without raising any red flags, that Latin America is home to more than twenty national literatures, and that the Spanish-speaking world produces Latin American and Iberian literatures written in various “original languages.” Furthermore, we come to acknowledge more and more the importance of their transatlantic exchanges, where communication on one hand, and textuality on the other, alternate or succeed one another. These exchanges and points of contact create new interactive spaces, which, in turn, generate new modes of communication, all in an inclusive and compartmental manner. Through transatlantic exchanges, the critical and the creative potential of our multilingualism is continuously reconfigured in accordance with its capacity to critique the power configuration of dialogue. The inherent plurality of our language, one that mediates between indigenous, Iberian, and American languages, is the foundation under construction for a transatlantic culture in which we as readers and critics are being formed.

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This mixture, or mestizaje, is the mode of producing modernity that Latin America introduces into language. Rather than determined by orthodoxy, monologue, and authoritarianism, it relies on tolerance, openness, and the newness of a principle of articulation that reconfigures the spatial organization of the world through a postnational language. This paradigm of mixture is transformed into a cultural model, since its inherent heterogeneity is seen as the product of a system of exchange that democratizes the public sphere. Mestizaje is not only ethnic, but also—and above all—cultural ex-change. It is also a system of information that articulates a new reading of the past, that disarticulates the violence of the present, and that vies for a future that is more open and more inclusive. Cervantes, who already recognized the potential of this new modernity, tried twice to go to the Indies, because he realized that the American languages would be free of the prohibition and censorship imposed by his Spain. If new is equivalent to clean, fresh, then the “New World” would bring forth a language freed of old constraints, a language of a new freshness, and a new poetic, communicative, potential language. Transatlantic literature is written in the present, in the uncertain borders of language itself; but, more importantly, it is read in the future, as it projects spaces beyond the present or past. If we consider literature as the enactment of the crises that plague our societies today, then its appeal to “futuridad” (futurity)—a word that finally has entered the dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy—could also help us to appease the present. Every writer who sets out to renovate poetic space, every crossroad decided in favor of a postnational poetic language, are radical appeals to keep alive the debates that inform transatlantic dialogue. Within these in-between places, the poetic processes unleash a type of literary language that overcomes the limits of the habitus of a critique in transit. To dwell, according to Heidegger, means not just to inhabit a place, but also to build this place of dwelling. Poetic language is therefore not just a question of being, but rather one of being in transit; and it is not as much a question of origin, but rather a process of belonging directed toward the future. I believe that this is the function of poetry and its vocation: to build new places. And the process of building begins by mapping out the horizon of a new plurilingual certainty. The Quechua language of the Andean culture has a syntax that, as it unfolds, opens up an epistemological space that incorporates and articulates associations

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and correlations. I propose to call this type of all-encompassing syntax a Baroque algorithm. Baroque algorithms function on a principle of appropriation and displacement that does not diminish any of its constitutive parts; rather, it negotiates a place for each one of them, within the dynamics of their occurrence. It unfolds toward the future. Our new writers build upon the work of established authors versed in the renovation of form. Neither does the fear of influences suffocate them, nor do they invent their precursors; they engage in an open process through which they invent their readers. In that regard, our great poets were the most inventive. Thus, our poetic traditions are far from being a museum or an archive; they are a place of dwelling, a place in a continuous state of construction. In this place, one space is created within another; one enclosed figure is conceived by another, yet what remains outside is still chartered. César Vallejo’s poetry forces us to refocus on language in order to return to its space of reinscription. As a consequence, the reader renegotiates the distance that lies between the function of referential language and the function of a language reshaped by poetry. From this, one might conclude that Vallejo’s poetry challenges the concept of natural language or even dismisses it as common idiom. Through this radical form of writing, one that feeds upon the emotive substance of poetic diction, common language is not a map of the world, not as a communicative system. Here it is worth remembering that, according to Andean mentality, a space (“cancha”) postulates another space, one that is alternate and complementary (“cancha-cancha”). It is unfolded as its own conceptualization. High and low, internal and external, serial and differential, this model—as explored and postulated by the Quechua-Spanish of the work of José María Arguedas—brings together, unties, and redistributes the functions and meanings of poetic language through a dialogic process of articulation. Not too long ago in Madrid, one politician called another “Galician in the worst sense of the word Galician.” This statement drew my attention, not because of the way it berates Galician people, whom we owe a good part of the intimacy of modern Spanish, but rather because of the negativity associated with the stereotyping that divides Spain, and that tends to reduce the perceived other to a caricature. This statement is proof of an

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antimodern typology, probably characteristic of the eighteenth century. The writer Javier Marías, in response to this much-debated statement, recalled in his column “Zona del fantasma,” published in the Spanish newspaper El país, that in Spain it is common to hear expressions describing someone as “very Catalan” (cheap) or “very Andalusian” (a partier and a cheat), “very Aragones” (pig-headed) or “very Castilian” (cocky and standoffish), and concluded that this is a reflection of a special kind of Spanish humor ingrained in Spanish tradition (Marías). I thought that the attribution of mundane wisdom to popular culture, while dating back to the book of refrains, can also be the consequence of a misunderstanding: Sancho’s folk wisdoms, in their ironic Cervantine rendering, prove that at times what passes for popular worldliness may really just be rooted in stereotypes or, even worse, in prejudices that find their justification in a sort of “black hole” of language. This use of national clichés produces a profuse, tautological, and reified language removed from thought that reveals itself as an ideological ossification. In each one of our nations this serfdom to language has only grown. Even at a time when modern technology has improved communication, has increased the access to education, and has helped promote civil rights, our particular use of language demands a high price, which, although less quantifiable, certainly is not any less costly: the diminishing of the place of the other. We can see daily examples of this type of language in the tabloids, in gossipy talk or radio shows, and in the increasingly violent exchanges on the Internet. Ironically, the lack of responsibility and regulations at the heart of market ideologies increase the violence of these perpetuated power structures and hinders the distribution of real information. The solution is not to force the Dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy to eliminate the offensive meaning of “Galician.” The dictionary’s online edition lists only one derogatory definition: “5. Adj. C. Rica. Stupid (lacking in understanding or reason).” The entry also advises that it has been “amended.” A note further indicates that it is the dictionary’s policy not to endorse discriminatory uses of some terms, but to simply record them. I am afraid that Spanish dictionaries will end up recording a language that we may recognize, but that we do not speak, or one that is spoken by foreigners. Julio Cortázar, who was particularly sensitive to the different connotations of words, called dictionaries “cemeteries,” where each definition of a word is like a tombstone covering a corpse. The issue that

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should be taken here, of course, is not with dictionaries per se, but rather with the ideological baggage attached to them. In his type of ideologically tainted dictionary, the definition for “Free man” would be “Citizen who exercises his rights,” but “Free woman” would be “Woman of loose morals.” It might be true that the best dictionary is one that is all-inclusive, but inclusivity does not have to equate the celebration of a crude humor typical of a Camilo José Cela. Languages reflect the burden of authoritarian traditions and ideological plagues such as sexism, racism and xenophobia. In the daily use of language, we feel exempt from providing sources to verify what we say: the validation of what we articulate relies simply on the I as the ultimate source of authority (a “because I say so” sealed by the fist on the table). Our daily use of language is grounded in the belief that the I is formed in opposition and also at the expense of the other, rather than within and through dialogue. It has been argued that languages are more complex (hermetic) in their area of origin, and more synthetic (communicative) the more they expand. The Spanish language is the product of a magnificent melting pot of Iberian regionalisms (patronyms and toponyms are fascinating manifestations of their imprints), where the Galician, Basque, and Catalan languages all leave their marks; later, we add the Arabic and Hebrew languages, and then the unsettling languages of the Americas, all of which will become the fabric of the language that weaves into the Baroque. The “ultramarine” has always negated the “ultramontane” in our languages—languages so historical, that only in the realm of literature have they been fully ours. One could add here that this authoritarian lineage could be understood as a consequence of the fact that Spanish is one of the European languages that eluded the Protestant Reformation. Moreover, the Spanish language helped rationalize the Counter Reformation: it justified the expulsion of the Arabs and Jews, and later fell victim to its own modern birth to violence. The recently discovered Trial of Columbus proves it so: violence consumes subjectivity and devours the colonial subject and its enterprise.1 The Spanish language has lived almost all of its life under absolutist regimes and under the spell of a religion that appeased its conscience. Apart from some illustrious and tragic cases, Spain has been rather impervious to change, even rejecting the modernization of the eighteenth century. And with the exception of brief moments of liberal or

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republican governments, it endured the extraordinary arbitrariness of its dictatorships. When faced with the choice between a democratic republic and authoritarianism, Spain ended up with the latter. Let us not forget that the last thirty years have been the longest period of civil liberties that Spain, and therefore its language, has experienced. For that reason, the use of regional stereotypes as a national sport is not just the product of a supposedly national sense of humor, but rather of a language unfamiliar with the habit of self-reflection. Let us remember that many great Spanish writers have suffered imprisonment or exile for using their language. San Juan de la Cruz and Fray Luis de León were imprisoned for having translated passages of the Bible or for maintaining that the Bible, after all the word written by God, could benefit from an improved translation into the Spanish of the people. In the proceedings of the trial of Fray Luis de León, his accuser, a colleague from Salamanca, calls him “the Hebrew Fray Luis de León.” The history of translation and of translators is a sensitive chapter in the cautious modernity of the Spanish language. The ordinances that regulate the work of the translators in the New World reveal the mistrust in their function, and also reveal the internal problems of a system of validation lacking any kind of methods of verification, other than authority, faith, and censorship. The great Mexican translator of the conquest, Doña Marina, “La Malinche,” instead of being consecrated by history as a heroic fighter for modernity, was cast aside as a traitor. From the nineteenth century onward her name stands for servility to the foreign. And “the children of La Malinche,” in the famous essay of Octavio Paz, are not valued as new bilingual subjects (mediators of the future), but branded as the offspring of violation, condemned since their origin to “hacer violencia sobre otro,” to inflict violence upon the other (Paz 70). How can we then write today in a language that is rooted in an antimodern tradition subjected to authoritarian prohibitions? Only by writing better, by folding language over itself, by exploring the materiality of signs and encoding terms with their contradictoriness in new hyperboles. But before this can be achieved, we must free ourselves from the diction and prosody established by protocols. The writer can then rebuild a place with and for a postnational language, an imaginary space that is larger than a referential language and less assertive than national authoritarian discourses.

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Garcilaso de la Vega expands the literary space into Italian. Góngora rooted himself in Latin. Cervantes sowed the seeds of his own language over the vast territory of the novel, cultivating the first relativistic space for a poetic language. Garcilaso opened up a space able to house the great traditions that formalized Humanism and Petrarchism and that modernized the classics; he borrowed from Dante, from Cavalcanti, and from Neoplatonism, to create his dolce stil nuovo. Garcilaso provides us with a heteroclite poetic language free of geographical constraints and open toward the world. Petrarch created philology out of poetry and also out of criticism, as an art form able to rebuild the literary memory of language. Today we call his model of reading “critical nostalgia” (Kelley 236–70). In the Middle Ages, classical texts were discarded as pagan and reprocessed as padding material for the binding of books. By restoring the manuscripts of classical antiquity, Petrarch salvaged memory from the arbitrariness of history. He established the rhetorical theory of Quintilian, the Hispano-Roman precursor of the modern paradigm of hybridity, and infused it with the language of Humanism. Petrarch described Quintilian’s manuscripts as “mangled and mutilated” (Petrarch 83). His work consisted in reconstructing memory not as a foundational text or fetishistic object, but rather as a possible pathway to the future. The gathering and establishing of classical texts became to him a task of urgency, especially in his gloomy era dominated by the commercial interests he detested. Petrarch had the curious habit of directly addressing classical authors of another time in letters, where he lamented that they lived in a magnificent epoch, whereas he lived surrounded by traders and frauds. His imaginary epistolary dialogue could be understood as yet another founding act of Humanism against authoritarian oppression. Equally, his friend Boccaccio converts dialogic discourse into a storytelling device. By transgressing the confines of time and geographical place, the writers convoke a dialogue constitutive of a literary community oblivious of borders. Within this dwelling place, Garcilaso initiates a dialogue with Petrarch. Boscán’s commentaries then revive the conversations of his ill-fated friend, ceding him his turn to speak long after he was silenced by his time. The Inca Garcilaso joins the conversation by dialoguing with Petrarch’s letters and with León Hebreo. Rubén Darío, in turn, dialogues with Garcilaso. Borges engages in a continuous dialogue with Cervantes. As Alfonso Reyes puts it so fittingly,

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literature, when perceived as an ever-expansive dialogue across place and time, becomes a conversation within another conversation, and so forth. Montaigne had shown a strong interest in joining in the transatlantic dialogues. He thought that the discovery of the New World was a great human adventure. He paid some sailors who had been to the Caribbean to tell him of their odyssey. But, as he admits in his essay Of Cannibals, he deemed them poor informants and even worse conversationalists. He much rather imagined himself conversing with Plato, and regretted that Lycurgus and Plato had no knowledge of [these American peoples]; for to my apprehension, what we now see in those nations, does not only surpass all the pictures with which the poets have adorned the golden age. . . . I should tell Plato that this is a nation wherein there is . . . no use of service, riches or poverty . . . the very words that signify lying, treachery, dissimulation, avarice, envy, detraction, pardon, are never heard of. It is extraordinary that he would think that the words he knew to be prominent in the European languages, might be nonexistent in the American languages. In this transatlantic otherness he saw a conversation yet to be had. The Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, whose library included Petrarch’s work, chose his name in order to honor not just his biological father, but also Garcilaso the poet, whom he considered a relative. I have commented on the importance of that affiliation elsewhere, where I referred to a vital scene of his Comentarios reales (Ortega, “Garcilaso”). In this passage, the Inca Garcilaso relates that during the English invasion of Cádiz, a prominent friar of the Cathedral of Seville rescued the manuscripts of the Peruvian historian, Father Valera, from the fire set by the invaders. Garcilaso tells us that he received the papers “mangled and mutilated” (IX, XIV, 592), the exact words used by Petrarch when describing Quintilian’s manuscripts. By appropriating Petrarch’s voice, the Inca Garcilaso demonstrates that he places the same importance on rescuing manuscripts from the violence of history. The Inca Garcilaso’s Comentarios are the result of his effort to continue Petrarch’s mission and to assure the recovery and continuity of a literary memory. He further sets out to expand and to enrich these cross-cultural and cross-epochal literary dialogues with his

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own model of mestizaje. For this reason, the Inca Garcilaso gives an example: he tells us that in the Indies the seeds of Spain grow in abundance, because its extraordinarily fertile soil receives these seeds and lets them grow into delicious and giant fruits. He recounts that he saw a radish of such dimension that several men could not reach their arms around it, and that he ate of that radish. Through this example, we see that the Inca Garcilaso’s model of nature was quite different from the one the mindset of medieval religion had come to accept. Rather than accepting creation as finite and completed, he proposes that nature is in a continuous state of becoming, a process made better thanks to mixture. Góngora resorted to Latin in order to forge a new syntax that we celebrate today as inherent to the Baroque. The Baroque emerges precisely as a new phenomenon of perception, one that is alternative to a geometric perspective. The circular figuration of the Baroque no longer privileges the rationality of a subject that controls the field of the gaze (“La abundancia” 3). Rather, the Baroque configuration gives rise to the materiality of immanence, to a gaze that is all-encompassing and that becomes part of a world that emerges in and through the senses. The exuberance of the New World overflows the field of the gaze and grants privilege to the function of subjective knowledge and experience. The Baroque would not exist without the gold, the silver, the birds, the chocolate, the pineapple, the tobacco, the roots and fruits that have left their mark in the space of representation and in a syntax and language that reflect this allinclusive exuberance. When trying to describe in his travel journals the lush leafy trees of the Caribbean, Columbus has to resort to the oxymoron of “disformidad fermosa” (beautiful deformity). The branches and leaves of what he calls “palm trees” overflow his field of vision, thus depriving him of the needed words to capture this overflow. By describing the tree as overflowing his perception, Columbus plants the first seed of the Baroque. Góngora’s new syntax is no longer only accumulative and expansive, but rather syncretic, where words themselves acquire a sort of tension, a sensorial character, an exoticism and substance that they did not have before. More than likely, Góngora’s new syntax would not have been the same without the eruption of the alternate spaces of the Indies within the worldview of his time. While the Latin language allows him to smoothly compress poetic language, the Indies expands it by interpolating new

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objects between old names. Góngora often refers to the Indies in his poems; but, as Alfonso Reyes fittingly observed, even beyond those references we find in his poetry the sensory presence of the exoticism of the New World. Cervantes is among those writers of his era who most refers to the Indies, and who was most interested in the reports coming from the New World. He pushes the limits of natural language by inserting his writing into the new critical spaces of literary language. The novel allows him to interpolate alternate places, while the theater allows him to reshuffle different chronologies into simultaneous spaces. His readings of the Inca Garcilaso’s Comentarios are evident in the settings of Persiles, some of which appear to be a gloss of Garcilaso’s work. However, especially Cervantes’s experiences as a soldier and as a captive, his exposure to other peoples and languages, even his common social condition and his convert origins, all must have made him perceive the space of the Indies as an alternative rather than a foreign place. His affinity with the New World is not only evident in the fact that he tried twice to move to America, it is also evident in his writing. Cervantes clearly recognized that mixture was the most creative metaphor of an Erasmian thought that to him was as critical as it was relativist. One of the most fascinating characters in Don Quixote is Ricote, an expulsed Moor who returns to Spain in disguise claiming he had traveled the world. When he relates to Sancho his experiences in other countries, he admits to having felt most at ease in Germany, since “allí me pareció que se podía vivir con más libertad, porque . . . cada uno vive como quiere, porque en la mayor parte de ella se vive con libertad de conciencia” [there it seemed to me that one could live with more freedom, because everybody lives as he pleases, because for the most part one enjoys freedom of mind] (LIV, 960). This is one of the best Cervantine ironies, since the spaces he inserts into his novel spill over national borders, thus pointing indirectly the finger at Spanish prohibitions. Moreover, Ricote is also the name of a Murcian town whose lands were made fertile by Arab agriculture. In all respects—spatial, temporal, ideological, philological, or philosophical—the Quixote is always also another Quixote, as was diligently demonstrated by Pierre Menard. Among all readers of Cervantes’s novel, Carlos Fuentes displayed the greatest Cervantine inventiveness

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among writers with an Atlantic vocation. He leads us back to the beginning of the quixotic project: changing the language, in order to change the world. Cervantes did not ignore the underlying issue of language. In the second part of the novel, Don Quixote arrives in Barcelona to meet his mother, the printing press. Cervantes’s narrator tells us that the sign on the door reads: “Aquí se imprimen libros” [Here books are printed] (LXII, 1030). The irony does not escape us: the “here” is superfluous, since there are no other places where they are printed; the words “are printed” are also redundant, since books are not drawn or copied, they are only printed; the word “books” is equally unnecessary, because it is plainly understood what is printed. Here, irony is the result of the Spanish language’s propensity for redundancy and periphrases. Would another sign for this place have made more sense? “Printing House,” naturally. Cervantes does not use it deliberately, in order to engage in his ironic critique of language. While it has been repeated that Sancho represents the book of refrains and popular wisdom, we also have to recognize that he often represents redundancy and the literal. Perhaps the sententious saturation of common sense, which Sancho elevates to a comedy of speech, may also be a subtle critique of the use and abuse of profusion and periphrasis of a language whose referents are getting lost in their long-windedness. When, after a defeat, Don Quixote is forced to return to his village, he knows that there is no worse punishment than having to return home, to return to La Mancha, a name better forgotten, as the first sentence of the novel indicates. La Mancha comes from the Arab word for a “dry place,” and the “dry” here refers to the “literal,” to the language’s penchant for repetition, its linguistic claustrophobia. The redundancy of literal language stems from the fact that it only endorses and confirms what is evident, because it is incapable of imagining its own transformation. Unrefined and rudimentary referentiality does not make possible the construction of a dwelling place, nor does it allow for a language to inhabit the world. For that reason, in one of the last chapters of the novel, when Don Quixote and Sancho return to their village, full of melancholy, the master tells his squire: “Si es que a ti te parece bien, querría, ¡Oh Sancho!, que nos convirtiésemos en pastores” [if so be thou dost approve of it, Sancho, I would have ourselves turn to shepherds] (LXVII, 1061). What this implies is

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the character’s desire to change books and to enter the discursive space of the pastoral novel. Both could then continue their adventures through an open-ended fictional discourse instead of having to return to La Mancha. This is yet another example of Cervantine irony critiquing a language without horizons. When considering the Cervantine concept of novelistic language, we should remember that despite being a humble genre, the novel derives directly from the Humanist world and the critical tradition of Petrarch mentioned earlier. Belonging to the comedy of letters, the novel is placed within a marketplace setting, where the narrator, moved by his love for mangled and mutilated papers, acquires a manuscript written in Arabic and translated into Spanish. However, Cervantes’s novel turns this transfer into an ironic and literary event that fulfills a purpose rooted in the Humanist tradition: to teach reading, to demonstrate that literary language strengthens humanity, and to humanize the inherently contradictory space opened up by “the prose of the world.” For that reason, one could understand Sancho Panza, the illiterate man, as the novel’s main character. The novel teaches Sancho to read by offering him a teacher so removed from literality that he willingly trades the imaginary world for the real. At the end of the novel, Sancho demonstrates eloquently that he indeed has learned to read. As governor of his island he reads each one of the cases he has to judge as if they were Italian novellas. He reveals himself to be a good analytical reader: he judges, decides, and Don Quixote praises his wisdom. For that reason, when they return to their village, the possibility of a discursive continuity, albeit in a pastoral novel, also implies a projection of another alternate space in writing. The literal, for our characters, represents death. Rubén Darío’s work, classified as modernist, not only makes use of a poetic language that surpasses referential language; moreover, his art relies on the permanent substitution of one language for another. Darío offers us the first poetic language of our time that liberates language from its naturalist tradition and from the confines of a local language. Not without provoking outrage, he abandoned Spanish and took up residency in the French poetic language. This transgression was not a mere question of the use of Gallicisms. When returning to Spanish poetry, Darío brought with

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him the music from the French Symbolists, and with it he rehearsed all forms of the Spanish metric traditions, from the Middle Ages until his soulless present. Not only was he among the greatest poets of the Spanish language, but he was also the poet who made the most use of Spanish richness of rhythm and old poetic forms. Naturally, Darío looked toward Garcilaso. Garcilaso had discovered the sonorous character of the Spanish language, which, as some poets have claimed, is the closest to Latin. It has a vocalic, absorbing, and resonant sound, which Darío explored better than any other poet. Exiled on an island in the Danube, Garcilaso had written: “Danubio, río divino” [Danube, divine river]. Rubén Darío wrote: “Juventud, divino tesoro” [Youth, divine treasure], which follows the same vocative formula (401). Both verses celebrate the sound and texture of language by engaging in a subtle symmetrical vocalic play: the former with praise, the latter with a reflexive mood. Borges, as we know, found a temporary home in the English language, and when he returned to Spanish he did so as a more succinct and laconic writer. The English language forged his eloquent irony as well as his aesthetic of fragmentation and wit. Borges practiced a kind of minimalism avant la lettre, which permitted him to reconcile intelligence and emotion within one expression. Decisively Cervantine, his “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” formulates a critical theory based on the reader and freed from the specter of the biographical. Menard writes the same Quixote because he understands that what he reads is always another Quixote, one that is written for the first time as he rereads it. With this idea Borges defends the modern notion of what makes a literary work a classic. A classic is a work that can continuously be brought into the present through each one of its readers, and one that can be brought to life ad infinitum through the immediacy of language. This Borgean notion builds upon the idea that human nature resembles language more than it resembles dreams. We are made of language, from the moment we learn to read until language abandons us. Borges made a Cervantine joke about language when he insisted that he first read the Quixote in English and only later in Spanish. Some critics took him literally and, without detecting his irony, fell into the modern cliché that bilingualism is hierarchal and gives preference to the language of prestige. Something less obvious to remember in this context is Borges’s predilection for the verbal games of the Baroque

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paradox. As one fitting example, we can recall the poet Byron who wrote his Don Juan to counteract the tediousness of the English language of his time, and who claimed that Shakespeare was better read in Italian. Other poets, like César Moro, directly wrote in French. César Vallejo also infused his poetry with some French elements. In French, one refers to a crowded space as “plain de monde,” “full of the world.” As a new speaker of French, like César Moro, Vallejo enjoyed those paradoxes of involuntary humor that arise in the crossroads of languages. In a poem from his book España, aparta de mí este cáliz, dedicated to the Spanish Civil War, Vallejo tells us of the death of a militiaman: “Su cadáver estaba lleno de mundo” [His corpse was full of world]. It was a corpse of cosmic dimension (Vallejo 64). Vallejo was among the poets who most radically questioned the use of Spanish language. I want to write, he said, but I get stuck, because there is no spoken word that does not go up in smoke, and one cannot build a pyramid without a center. He lamented that he had a lot to say but was not able express it in writing, because in order to write he needed language, yet language is successive and imposes an order; moreover, writing a poem demands a center and verbal unity. For Vallejo, the poem was sentenced and condemned before being written, due to the limitations of language. How to write without language? By writing poorly, as he responds in Trilce, from the margins of incongruence and pathos. This leads him to conceive of a poetics of erasure.2 The elimination of referential connections produces an organic unpolluted language of raw emotion. Out of this language Vallejo carves an acute critique of representation, one that celebrates the loss of the material world within language. Hence, by maximizing the communicative potential of poetry, referential language becomes residual, while a poetic, postnational language recreates itself as living image of the world. Federico García Lorca explored the light and circular forms of Arabic poetry, where language flows in accordance with discursive time and, while doing so, traces an arabesque in its currents. Poeta en Nueva York demonstrates Lorca’s profound affinity with Vallejo, since it favors the organic force of speech over a written language. Vicente Aleixandre chose the associative language of dreams related to Freudian imagery. Some of his more complacent critics favored his other “communicative” poetry, yet his surrealist work is much more powerful, because it contests the

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rationality of over-codified communication. Nicanor Parra infused his poetic language with mathematics and English philosophy in order to dismantle the verbal excessiveness of lyrical poetry and to regain the underlying irony in popular diction. Lorenzo García Vega maximized the variations of figurative and geometric systems of associations where language throws its net into the abyss and becomes an impeccable and prodigious substitution of the world. And how could one resist Jorge Eduardo Eielson’s brilliant compositions, written with a language steeped in the plastic and performing arts? By enriching poetic language with the languages of other domains, Eielson is able to confer on words a new range of creative figurations of an objective splendor and relentless freedom. José-Miguel Ullán opens up language from within in order to repaint it as poetic language. Free of constraints, this playful language allows him to rewrite the world as a universal exhibit that demonstrates the powers of symbolic transposition. Reina María Rodríguez draws the circular fluidity of language as a map of the affective world. All the poets mentioned here are examples, among others, of the immeasurable creative potential of poetic language, a language infused with dialogue and opened up to the world through the fabric of textuality. Together, they construct a place of dwelling, where everything, freed from referential language, can be articulated anew. While weaving the poetic fabric of this communicative space under construction, the poetic act unleashes a display of infinite possibilities, of associations and combinations, of mixture and interconnected networks, of multiple voices, languages, images, and symbols. José María Arguedas was a Peruvian writer of powerful poetic persuasion who chose the Quechua language as the locus of enunciation for the Spanish language. By doing so he demonstrates the continuing relevance of marginalized languages, not only what their own independence is concerned, but also for the domain of cross-cultural compatibility. When faced with the dilemma of choosing a language, Arguedas decided to write in Spanish, but in a Spanish that embraced Quechua as its center, where it resounds as a matrix, as translation, as substrate, as a bilingual endeavor. Arguedas’s language is not simply a mixed language, but rather an interpolated linguistic construct where mixture resides as a trace; above all, it is a dynamic space in the process of continuously being invented. In Los ríos profundos (1958), similar to Cervantes’s Quixote, Arguedas narrates the learning process the speaker of a new language must

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complete in order to learn his own. The communication of the natural word around him provides the model for his Quechua language, whereas the conflictive communication of the social world around him forces upon him the hierarchization of the Spanish language, a language he confronts, besieges, and appropriates. Arguedas’s novel, as one might say, is written in a language spoken by no one; it is not written only in Spanish, but neither is it written only in Quechua. It is written in a Spanish whose place of enunciation is found within the Quechua language. It is thus a poetic language that invents its future reader. The novel is written in a language that we Peruvians would speak if we were bilingual. In the nineteenth century, philology had been the discipline that accompanied the nation-state. As a consequence, each European country established their founding texts in order to anchor themselves in the origins of the formation of the state. Andrés Bello, one of the first editors of the Cantar del Mío Cid, restored to us the epic poem. From London, where he had as an interlocutor Blanco White, it occurred to him that Latin Americans needed Spain to have a founding text in order to become a modern civilization and thus a point of reference for the continent. The Cid had been considered a barbaric text, but Bello demonstrated the contrary, namely, that the poem’s storyline was elaborated in a refined metric, based on the sophisticated cultural memory of the Ballad. Some of the greatest achievements of the polyglot Humanism of Bello, Darío, Alfonso Reyes, and Borges was that philology could become a verbal history of the future. They recognized in names not only the object but also its context, not only the subject, but also its freedom. Borges conceived of a history that is posterior to language. Rather than a history based on origins, which generate a different kind of discourse, he recognized the simultaneous concurrences of language, the same that for Octavio Paz was equivalent to a contemporary citizenship. In a sense, Borges unfounded the origins of the Spanish language and liberated literature from regional obligations, from topological constraints and from the biographies that substitute for the work. Not in vain have Spanish novelists and poets of this century appropriated the inventive intelligence of Borges’s deconstructive methods in order to be able to recommence the creative process anew. Alfonso Reyes was probably the first in constructing an inclusive

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transatlantic space, but not as an encyclopedic homogenization. He did so by opening up a dwelling place that invites and preserves difference. As such, his is equally a project directed toward the future. In keeping with his rhetoric, always liberal and at times prudently radical, Reyes said that Fernando de los Ríos, upon leaving jail, sported a smile he described as more liberal than Spanish. Smiles, he adds, do not require a discursive language. Reyes had us converse with Greek and Latin writers to create a better modernity for us. Today we can appreciate even more that he prepared the terrain for Brazil to become part of the American model, one built from mixture and accumulation, in spite of the fact that the conservative mob ended up labeling his ambassadorship as “communist.” During his strenuous diplomatic assignment in Rio de Janeiro he wrote newspaper columns, short stories, and poems, including articles on basic information. The awe for his work paves the way for the writings of Emir Rodríguez Monegal for turning contemporary Brazilian literature into a frontier without borders, of a mutual transit and mutual intelligence. The writings of Haroldo de Campos are parallel attempts to convert the act of translation into another celebratory form of conversation. Haroldo put an end to the discussion of Gregorio de Matos’s place in Brazilian literature (whether it corresponded to the seventeenth century or to his modern discovery) by proposing to situate its literary beginning within the Baroque and the displacement of origins. A great translator of all the languages he tried to read, he understood the present as a time without beginning nor end, as a true multilingual geotextuality. He coincided, knowingly, with the other antiencyclopedic encyclopedist, Lezama Lima, and his notion that the American mode of representation comes from the Baroque, when language had reached its full maturity. The Atlantic poetic tradition has been constructing what is becoming one of the literary horizons of our times: dialogism, another type of bilingualism in the making, whose political force and multilingual calling are shaping the literary spaces of the future. These types of dwelling places may be safeguarded from the violence of history. In light of the challenges of globalization and the servitude of a globalized market, this cultural territory establishes itself as a needed promise of compatibility. What do Quechua and Catalan, Aymara and Galician, Guaraní and Basque, Mapuche and the Asturian bable have in common? What they have in

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common is the Spanish language as their mediator. The languages that cohabit within or with Spanish can overcome its authoritarian genealogy. Once liberated from its bureaucracy and restrictive powers, they can join in the construction of the critical horizon opened by plurilingualism. Nothing is less modern than a language informed by monolingualism. A postnational literature able to unite this diverse family, in spite of the traumas of a past bent on repeating itself, builds already a community of and for the future. A polyglot community searches for its roots in the future, more so than in the past. In Iberian-American cultural history, literature has always represented a communicative utopia. Literature provides us with an opportunity to reconstruct the public gathering place of common languages, from the perspective of a postnational Humanism and taking as its foundation the model of mixture, a model that is still the principle of modernity par excellence. This construction of inclusive spaces passes through the radical questioning of authoritarian language, in order to take up again, in its full dialogic contemporaneity, civilization as a pure voice, one that Emmanuel Levinas referred to as ethical certainty. The critique of a postnational language, which is our genealogy of the future, will permit us to exorcise the ideological monsters that devastate our languages and mute our dialogues. Notes 1. See Varela, La caída de Cristóbal Colón: El juicio de Bobadilla (2006). 2. See Ortega, El sujeto dialógico. Negociaciones de la modernidad conflictiva (2010).

II E Postnational Perspectives on Identity and Belonging

4 E Beyond Borders Language and Postnational Identity in Cecilia Vicuña’s i tu

Silvia Goldman Translated by Charlotte Whittle

The poetry collection i tu (2004), by Chilean poet and performer Cecilia Vicuña,1 addresses its reader in several languages: Spanish, English, Quechua, Latin, and Greek. The words in this text first congregate then disperse, are assembled and disassembled, and recognize and speak of their own alterity as they migrate from one language to another. i tu establishes a speech “between languages,” able to pierce through territorial, cultural, and linguistic borders. The poetic voice calls this an “habla-alba” [a “dawn-speech”] that identifies the common roots of several languages and reestablishes the connections between them, thus aiming to construct a future based on the continual redefinition of a multilingual and multicultural identity that challenges preestablished linguistic, national, and cultural boundaries. i tu, therefore, becomes an itinerant geography within a provisional country, described by the poetic voice as a “no lugar” [a “non-place”], protected from exile and rootlessness, which rejects ideas of what is “foreign,” “American,” or “border,” and where an alternative sense of belonging can be constructed. Vicuña’s book of poetry compels us to rethink Latin American itinerancy in the period of globalization, not from the point of view of the nostalgic atmosphere of the 1970s, which the poet herself experienced as a Chilean political exile,2 but rather from a position of fluidity and hopefulness, where the erasure of borders allows the diverse voices inhabiting this “nonplace” to find their own language in

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a mutually transformative process. In this way, language creates an alternative space that functions as a promise of the future, a new beginning, a “dawn” [alba] of “speech” [habla]. Cecilia Vicuña’s work originates in displacement and in the erasure of physical and disciplinary borders. Just as her body is itinerant (Chile, London, Bogota, New York, Spain, Italy, Belgium), so, too, is her work characterized by constant movement and a resistance to specific disciplinary classification, as Francine Masiello has observed. Vicuña works not just with words, but also with her own body, and with a range of disposable materials that form the basis of her art of the “precarious.” Through these minimalist installations and “visual poems,” as Lucy Lippard has called them (7–15), Vicuña explores the relationships between the local and the global, the earthly and the cosmic, and, as one of her best critics and editors, Catherine de Zegher, has pointed out, where she documents the ghostly presence of those who disappeared during the Chilean military dictatorship (17–45). De Zegher establishes a pertinent link between the trash or “basuritas” (“Merz”) created by German avant-garde artist Kurt Schwitters and Vicuña’s art of the “precarious.” By using society’s waste as their material, both Schwitters and Vicuña resist incorporation into an economy based on the principles of productivity and exclusion. These collectors of “basuritas” [small trash] and of the marginal bring that which has been excluded from official discourse back to the center. Within this context, one of the most relevant and pointed achievements of Vicuña’s work is that its precarious performances and installations intervene in settings where an implicit pact of silence concerning the atrocities committed in the last military dictatorship continues to be prevalent. The indigenous voices—Mapuche, Aymara, Quechua—that Vicuña brings to the center of her poetic discourse are another correlative of the artistic drive to make what has been excluded from the foundational myth of “Chileanness” visible and audible once more.3 The versatility of Vicuña’s work, which encompasses poetry, anthologies, performance, installations, urban interventions, videos, and workshops, results in literary affinities that constitute a collection of temporally and spatially anachronistic voices. Andean tradition, especially with reference to the relation between textile and memory, coexists with the contemporary Anglophone poetics of writers such as Jerome Rothenberg, Eliot Weinberger, and Charles Bernstein, and with avant-garde

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voices from Latin America and Europe. It is possible to detect the influence of Vicente Huidobro, in whom Vicuña has observed the presence of the Andean tradition and from whom she takes the cult of metaphor that was integral to Creacionismo. In an interview with Pérez and Urzúa, Vicuña asserts that “contrariamente a lo que se piensa, Huidobro a pesar de haber pertenecido a la clase alta chilena, fue criado en Pirque, que es un lugar de los poetas populares, entonces eso nadie lo nota, que el arte verbal de Huidobro tiene que haber sido creado en gran medida por haber oído a los payadores y a los poetas populares. Y después él, cuando ya es grande, dice que toda su idea del creacionismo está basada en el pensamiento aymara, esas son cosas que en Chile no se dicen, no se piensan, no se escriben” [contrary to popular belief, despite having belonged to the Chilean upper class, Huidobro was raised in Pirque, a place with a lot of traditional poets, but nobody notes that Huidobro’s verbal art must have been created as a result of his having heard the payadores (singers) and traditional poets. And then, when he had grown up, he said that the whole idea of Creationism is based on Aymara thought, but these are things that are never said, thought, or written in Chile]. Equally, one could note the influence of the Peruvian avant-garde poet, musician, and painter Jorge Eduardo Eielson, with whom Vicuña shares not just a particular vision of the verbivocovisual aspects of the poem, but also the poetic use of the quipu motif. The influence of the Brazilian concrete poetry is also present in Vicuña’s work. Like the Noigrandes group, Vicuña proposes to go beyond the verse as the fundamental poetic unit and to replace it with the “ideogram.” Thus, she emphasizes the relation between words and their context, rendering them not just a linguistic sign, but also a visual image. Her poetics does more than invite a holistic and spatial reading of the poem. It also establishes a nonarbitrary relationship to linguistic signs. Vicuña’s continual self-displacement translates into the creation of an imaginary space in her work that is also a space of itinerant and elusive identities. Her identity cannot be reduced to her native country, Chile, but rather it gives an account of her existence between two cultural geographies: Chile and the United States, in particular New York.4 In Vicuña’s work, the movement and fluidity that characterize the globalized era cast doubt on the validity of a coherent and stable national identity. We can read this problematization of national identity in part as a response to the poet’s sense of her own exclusion from the cultural and literary circles of

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her native Chile, and from a Latin America that for decades, as she herself observes, failed to include her in the corpus of Latin American writers. Only in the new millennium, and as a result of globalization, are such exclusionary contradictions beginning to be recognized more widely: in this case, the possibility that a Latin American, and specifically a Chilean voice, should emerge from the other, Anglophone America, and still represent what is “American.” As Jahan Ramazani indicates in his book A Transnational Poetics, Vicuña resists the critical tendency to link specific written works to a specific country.5 To locate her within a national genealogy would fail to account for the sum of the connections her work establishes with voices from a broad range of periods and geographies or for its inclusive, border-crossing nature. This “Chilean New Yorker,” as she introduces herself in her performances and readings, resists labels as a source of biographical truth, and uses them instead as epithets that reveal the exclusionary notions they contain. Equally, she creates a body of work that resists insertion in any specific national genealogy and demands to be considered within a transnational framework. This chapter examines the paths Vicuña forges toward the particular poetic and geographic spaces of i tu, first by questioning our a priori notions of what is American, and then by leading us through the diverse geographies of a shifting text, in which not only the reader but also words themselves undergo their own journeys and transformations. In this sense, to echo Ramazani’s term, “traveling poetry,” the poetics of i tu is itself a form of travel, not strictly in terms of theme or story, but rather in relation to the process of negotiation, exchange, and transformation experienced by the voices that make up the poem. Similarly to Ramazani, who writes that “In poetry, travel—not merely the plot-driven excursus into a foreign land—may occur at the level of a substituted letter, a varied rhythm, a pivoting line” (59), in i tu words mutate, sounds are lost and heard again with different meanings, and languages are sacrificed, lose their well-defined edges and their organizing logic, and can interact, travel together, and become a border-crossing, postnational, and inclusive text. Vicuña’s project implies a rethinking of the “foreign” from the perspective of the three main languages in which she “weaves” her speech (“Voy a tejer mis tres lenguas away” [I will weave my three languages away] the lyric voice tells us in the third part of the book): English, lingua franca of the globalized present, Spanish, the language of the conquest and

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Figure 2. “Awayo,” poem. Cecilia Vicuña’s i tu, no pagination. Buenos Aires: Tsé-Tsé, 2004.

colonization of “Hispanic” America, and Quechua, a marginal, silenced language that embodies a past prior to the creation of Latin American nation states. Establishing points of encounter and contact between these languages and distancing them from each other (“away”), a process that is dramatized in the very placement of the words on the page (figure 2), i tu proposes a game of liberation in which words challenge the limits imposed on them by inherited syntactic, grammatical, and lexical rules, by listening to and questioning each other, intersecting with one another, and reinventing themselves with each new movement. The text thus wills its readers to go beyond boundaries and to establish a speech free of linguistic dogma and preestablished knowledge. In i tu we witness a double movement: first, the recovery and recognition of the “foreign” that resides in each of these languages, and second, the erasure of borders, which, given the continual flux of subjects in our globalized era, gives rise to what Silvia Schultermandl and Sebnem Toplu describe as “complex identities”: In this era of increasing global mobility, the nation-state can no longer serve as primary means of identification of selfhood. Identities are too complex to be captured by concepts that rely on national borders for reference. Instead, they spill out over the boundaries and rims of nation-states, thus exposing the very limits that these borders conjure. Such identities are not unified or stable, but are

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fluid entities which constantly push at the boundaries of the nationstate, thereby re-defining themselves and the nation-state simultaneously. (11) Vicuña’s voices are identified neither with a specific nation or a specific history (Andean, Latin American, North American, Classical), but rather they shape themselves as they take into account the multifarious, complex, and fluid nature of identity. In this sense, they forge identities that problematize the very notion of a “border.” The three languages that “weave away” [tejen away] in Vicuña’s “nonplace,” and also the complex identities forged by those languages, participate in the creation of what the poet calls a “semi-language,”6 where each language must listen to the other and make itself understood by the other, dislocating itself, sacrificing its borders for the sake of a process of communion, communication, and fusion. Here the notion of a “border” is not identified with the creation of a boundary, the exclusion of an “other,” but rather with a dialogical process through which it is conceived as a point of intersection and encounter in the weaving; a point that denies any rigid position since it is flexible and can weave and unweave itself according to the relations established among the diverse voices that make up the tapestry of the text. By declaring she will “tejer estas tres lenguas away” (Spanish, Quechua, and English), Vicuña obliges us to “tejer away” our own preconceived notions of what is “American.” We are urged to ask, is America the cradle of Spanish and the Hispanic? Is there another, marginal, prior America, whose history was silenced by the foundational ideologies of the new nations of the nineteenth century that excluded it from their White, European, Catholic civilizing project? And what of the “other,” Anglo America, conceived by Martí and Rodó in opposition to “nuestra” (“our”) America? Vicuña urges us to reexamine the American from the perspective of these three discourses no longer seen as opposites (that is, no longer from a binary rhetoric based on exclusions [indigenous/Spanish; Latin American/anglo American; Ariel/Calibán]), and to propose new opportunities for contact and encounter. The “American” will no longer be defined according to the region’s dominant language, or according to the formation of one America versus another, but rather as a dialogue, with exchange taking the place of opposition. This dialogue is dramatized in the book’s title, and is a dialogue in which the “yo” (I) is no longer in opposition

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to the “otro” (other) (absent, distinct), but rather with a “tú” (you) that performs an act of presence, addresses it, defines it through interaction, and with it forges a new sense of belonging. This explains why the lyric voice states in the third section of the book: “Dialogar con lo que no es la palabra al interior de las palabras crea la unión” [to dialogue with what is not the word within the words creates union]. i tu becomes a textual weaving that fuses differences, dissolves the borders between the “yo” and the “otro,” ushering speech into a continual state of transformation and crossing: “Un no-lugar para el encuentro, la palabra se esfuma y queda la conexión un continuo desplazamiento, una trans formación” [A nonplace for encounters, words vanish, and the connection remains a constant displacement, a transformation] (from the third section entitled “Fábulas del comienzo y restos del origen” [Fables of the Beginning and Remains of the Origin]). Only in the “nonplace” and in the elimination of borders can the kinship between languages and cultures that i tu seeks be found. As the lyric voice states, this kinship lies not in “subyugación” [subjugation] but in “conjugación” [conjugation/combination], an open, horizontal space, where letters build bridges among themselves; a place where languages are free from the rules created by their conception as closed, self-referential systems, and can enter into contact with each other, pushing the limits of what they can express, to simultaneously transform and be transformed. The book visually echoes this piercing of borders by positioning itself as a fluid text whose six sections vary among themselves, presenting distinct visual formats, and where mobile, fragile, shifting letters, scarcely anchored to the page, seek their own otherness by scattering and shifting as if forming part of a diaspora not caused by expulsion, but rather by an urge to seek kinship, an urge to “devolver la justicia de una relación” [to give back the justice of a relationship], as the lyric voice suggests in the book’s first section (figure 3). The aforementioned textual weaving, in which the drawing/letters act restoratively—returning justice to the relationship—should not be sought in a traditional manner, but rather by retraining our gaze, and learning to decode the “habla alba” [dawn speech] so that we can witness its birth. The drawing suggests that part of the relationship it seeks to restore is external to it, invisible, and that the reader must go beyond what is shown on the page, if she is to find this “justicia de la relación.” In this

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Figure 3. “devolver la justicia de una relación,” poem. Cecilia Vicuña’s i tu, no pagination. Buenos Aires: Tsé-Tsé, 2004.

way, the reader becomes a collector of the traces that gain meaning when we listen to i tu’s appeal for us to travel through the text. To establish the “justicia de la relación,” the reader must not only enter the text but experience it through the page, turning it and moving it until she can discover and form her own meanings. Just like the words in i tu, the reader must constantly readjust her interpretation and reorient her gaze to be able to “tejer away” a constantly shifting text. The words in this (non) place can seem like scattered syllables that resist a linear reading, become drawings whose unstable lines the eye can scarcely follow, or in the end appear in a more traditional typeface. The reader must therefore get used to this shifting, passing through different textual geographies that invite her to deconstruct words and question the predictability of languages. The reader thus becomes a traveler, ready to cross the territories that make up the six parts of the textual weaving of i tu: (1) the gramma kellcani, (2) the poema cognado, (3) fábulas del comienzo y restos del origen, (4) del diario, (5) carta, and (6) dixio na rió.

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“Gramma kellcani,” as the author explains in the book’s final section, is a compound word that comes from the Greek “gramma,” meaning “to scratch, write, and paint,” and “kellcani,” from the Quechua, meaning “to paint/write.” At the same time, “gramma” reminds the reader of the Spanish term “grama,” a type of grass, lending a telluric meaning associated with roots and belonging, while also relating to the term “gramática,” which Vicuña sees as a crack in the territory of language, as she indicates in her interview with Pérez and Urzúa: ahí yo construyo un verbo nuevo que es grammakellkani, que es mitad griego por la palabra “grama” de gramática . . . la imagen de hacer una rajadura, es decir, una incisión que raja, y produce una escritura. Porque las primeras escrituras de las cuales hay memoria más o menos permanente están hechas en superficies que necesitaban ser hendidas, como el barro o el cuero, entonces mi asociación de grama con rajar, con hundir, precisamente para mí es una asociación que tiene que ver también con la tierra, con hundir, con la fertilidad de la imaginación . . . y del kellkani que es la segunda parte de la palabra, es del quechua. Kellkani quiere decir pintar y escribir, por eso construyo el verbo gramakellkani. [I create a new verb there, grammakellkani, which is half Greek due to the “grama” from gramática . . . the image of cracking, that’s to say, an incision that tears and gives rise to writing. The earliest forms of writing of which we have a more or less permanent record are on surfaces that needed to be cracked, like clay or leather, so the connection I make between grama and scratching and sinking/burying, also has to do with the earth, with sinking, with the imagination’s fertility . . . and kellkani, the second part of the word, is from Quechua. Kellkani means to paint and to write, that is why I create the verb grammakellkani.] Grammakellkani, a “mestizo” term used by Vicuña to address us in Quechua, in Greek, and in Spanish, implies not just the assimilation of voices from diverse territories and periods, but also the erosion of the earth from which those voices emerge. In other words, Vicuña’s painting and writing will likewise imply a cracking, a stirring of the earth so that nothing remains fixed, so the text may continue to be a shifting space where

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Figure 4. “habla alba,” poem. Cecilia Vicuña’s i tu, no pagination. Buenos Aires: Tsé-Tsé, 2004.

the reader as traveler must scratch its surface in pursuit of discoveries to come. In this first part of the book, the poem is conceived as a body where drawings, graphemes, and phonemes coincide, creating new ideogrammatic, or to quote James Joyce, “verbivocovisual” meanings, that resist the syntactic organization of language, and establish alternative practices of inscription and decoding. Writing appears as a body that is assembled and disassembled, draws near and scatters, is discarded, decentered, and rearranged, in the process of its transformation. The words move as if they were their own passengers, and they themselves were both the transporter and the transported. In this active and watchful state, they negotiate their own multilingual way of speaking; a way of speaking that proposes a syntax that is “other,” where words resist being fixed in discourse, and continually redefine their own meanings. A discourse where “habla” [speech] is a palindrome of “alba” [dawn] (figure 4). The letters act in a kind of ritual, detach themselves from the line and act out their discursive turns, spirals, and acrobatics, as if performing their own rite of passage. They lack a clearly defined status: they are sometimes graphemes, sometimes phonemes, scratches on the printed page, etymological explorations, sketches, tiny discursive creatures clinging to the

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Figure 5. “comenzar,” poem. Cecilia Vicuña’s i tu, no pagination. Buenos Aires: TséTsé, 2004.

blank page. The very rejection of conventional typography increases the impression of their precarious, transitory nature. While the page remains, they are in flux: floating signifiers, liminal entities, “mestizo” letters, flocks of migratory birds flowing toward the margins of the page to occupy a new space, always in motion (figure 5). The gramma kellcani seek their center, their roots, in the prefix “com,” which is what completes (completa), begins (comienza), and accompanies (acompaña) them, but is also what propels their dispersion, their diaspora; the recognition of the otherness that inhabits them. So the words distance themselves from one another, constantly questioning their own meanings, aware of themselves as precarious and foreign: ¿cuál entre medio es nues tro lu gar? [Which/in between/is ou r/pl ace?] The same words ask themselves this in the second part of the book, “el poema cognado” [the cognate poem]. Through this simulacrum of

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distancing, the words will seek a place of transitory belonging in an incomplete, fluid discourse. Their “ser” [being] in the sense of identity, will be intimately linked to their “estar” [being there], their migratory passage through the various territories and borders of the page. The words are aware of the changeable nature of their identity, and that their homeland is a “semilanguage” always at the margins, where voices from Quechua, Spanish, English, Greek, and Latin converge. They will speak in the plural, asking not for absolute answers, but transitory ones: “entre medio” [in between]. In these blank spaces that the words leave between them, in the different “places” of the word, they recognize themselves as native as much as foreign, and, although not in a way that is circumstantial, they will find their truth: ¿cuál es nuestra ver dad? ¿por qué est amos a quí? the eye is the I? [what is/our/truth?/why/are we/h ere?/the eye/is the I?] This truth, pierced and wounded by the silence of the blank space, will throw the act of “seeing” into relief. That is to say, is one what one sees? What does it mean to see? The gaze with which we judge one another is always rooted in cultural, political, linguistic, and historical perspectives, and must be questioned and retrained in an exercise of tolerance and acceptance of difference. In other words, this is an inclusive vision of identity that brings together not only what is seen, but what remains beyond the edge of the page, the silent writing present in the blank space, unseen because of a blindness trained by rigid and exclusive conceptions of identity. The poetic voice, then, will develop an alternative speech that can assimilate a range of cultures and histories. A new speech, “habla-alba,” which reminds us what can be found on the reverse side of hegemonic discourse: a space where languages aren’t defined according to a hierarchical discourse, nor by their differences, but rather by their contact and

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fusion, defining an intimate space where identity continually transforms and renegotiates itself. Therefore, the “tallo verbal” [verbal stem or stalk] that makes up the “poema cognado” [cognate poem] is structured as a series of questions that imply that identity is forged through a questioning of the self: “¿cuál es nuestra verdad?” [what is our truth], “¿por qué estamos aquí?” [why are we here?], “the eye / is the I?” the plural poetic voice asks, in an attempt to affirm its identity not only in the collective response it may receive, but in its ability to position itself spatially and temporally in relation to the others. Hence the choice of the verb “estar” with “aquí,” which marks the orality experienced by the reader, who is again placed in the transitory and ephemeral present of the text (“a quí”), as the constant displacement and “hyper-mobility” (in the words of Silvia Schultermandl and Sebnem Toplu), experienced by the subjects of globalization, continues to be dramatized. To face the challenges of this “hyper-mobility,” these subjects develop an alternative sense of belonging by accepting identity as a subjective construction that is not fixed or stable, but rather that forges new narratives in accordance with its physical, political, cultural, and linguistic movements: Such experiences of transnational identity also characterize their protagonists, whose quests take them on journeys across the globe: physical journeys from place to place as well as reflections on the routes that their cultural heritage has taken. These protagonists learn, often at crucial moments in their character development, that only by embracing a fluid sense of self can they reach a sense of belonging amidst this hyper-mobility. This fluid sense of self repudiates all notions of a unified identity. . . . These social interactions include cultural encounters that cannot be defined by the nationstate but are testimony to the velocity with which culture travels. (Schultermandl 13) Vicuña’s text therefore suggests a new “na ser” for identity, as this second part of the book implies, since this birth takes “ser” or the “self ” as central to its cultural, linguistic, historic, and geographical transformation. This “na ser” is made of change, transit, borrowing, memory, and forgetting. As the poetic voice states in the book’s last section, “Ná ni ná: no más, un eco chileno del andaluz? O del quechua na, no me acuerdo, na, me acordé de repente?” [Neither ná nor ná: no more, a Chilean echo of the

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Andalusian? Or of the Quechua na, I can’t remember, na, suddenly I’ve remembered?]. We must therefore recognize the distinct migrations that make up this speech, and likewise remember not only its past (“ná”), but a future yet to be written (“ná”). Vicuña’s voices think themselves into being in a process that simulates the coming and going of a voice, a “ná ni ná,” which explains identity’s ability to forge itself, to weave itself, from a range of different times and geographies, listening not only to itself but to the echo that inhabits it, the question that arises from the difference in its sameness; that is, the “ná” that echoes another “ná.” In “El poema cognado,” the second part of the book, we witness the displacement of the “gramma kellcani” to a different visual format: groups of one, two, or even three words that imitate the form of a large vertical stalk; the “gramma,” once grown, seeks connections or kinship that would allow the creation of a kind of discursive family. Not only will the poem write or draw the words, but it will also enable them to be heard. As the letters migrate, the reader will witness her own migration as she hears the otherness that inhabits the words and their sounds: el in mi grant e changing the heart of the ear th The poem is a fluid space through which words travel, and at the same time leave behind parts of themselves to be transformed. The “inmigrante” becomes an “in / mi / grant,” abandoning the “e” with its previous origin, in the blank space of the poem. The “th” of “earth” becomes “ear,” in reference to the act of listening in which the poetic voice invites us to engage. The “ear” of the poem remains suspended between the immigrant subject that detaches itself from what anchors it, and the earth that resignifies itself (earth/ear) to make him “na ser” in this state of flux, that is, to make him “change his heart” (“changing /the heart”). “Fábulas del comienzo y restos del origen,” the third section of the book, continues Vicuña’s search for origins, but in a different format, made up of brief essaylike explorations that reflect on the creative

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techniques deployed in the weaving of i tu: “Abriendo palabras llegué a una inmensidad” [Opening words is how I reached an immensity], the lyric voice tells us. It continues, “con jugar, dice, no sub yugar” [with play, it says, not sub jugate], suggesting that the movement or projection indicated by the verb’s “con-jugación” [con-jugation] in its different forms, implies an open, nonhierarchical path, where subjects can discover “el espacio com / ún” [comm/on space], as if they were gathering to play. In this way the poetic voice presents play as a ritual that can generate the kinship sought through identifying “yo” with “tú,” affirming: “Tú eres lo mismo que yo” [You are the same as I]. Likewise, the poet plays to demystify and lend new meanings to the words, to disrupt the predictable logic of language by suggesting new, hybrid forms, such as “awayo mi away” [awayI my away]. To “Con jugar,” [“Con jugate,” but also “with play”] is therefore not only to respect the rules imposed by language, but to form nonoppressive connections through play, thus leaving “La música de las cuerdas en tensión” [the music of the strings in tension] as the lyric voice suggests. This auditory tension gives rise to exchanges between languages, and therefore to the possibility of a meaningful transformation. Thus, the poet writes in this section, “Migrar y migrar y llegar al interior del e // star” [Migrate and migrate and arrive inside the be //ing]. The book’s fourth part, “Del diario,” continues in an essayistic tone, and stresses the text’s ludic character: “El código de la lengua era su gozar. La risa que oía su encordar” [The language’s code was its pleasure. The laughter that heard its threading]. This laughter [risa] implies a kind of undeciphered articulation. It is itself marginal, unregulated, an irruption that intrudes on communication, and in this sense, it is a sign of otherness. The fact that laughter “hears” (“oiga”) its own “threading” (“encordar”) indicates a conscious process of chaos and play. The poetic voice suggests it is necessary to escape the code (“código”) to fully and consciously inhabit it, heeding its connections, its bridges, and its dialogic nature: “Un modo de ser en la lengua, atendiendo a la lengua dentro de la lengua, una sintaxis com unal” [A way of existing in language, heeding language within language, a comm unal syntax]. In other words, “ser en la lengua” [exist in language], to listen to the foreign other within it, in order to assimilate it. Vicuña’s kinship is thus a bridge, a discursive ideology that projects, moves, eludes distances, and heals rifts, making the “com unal” of language and also of the speaking subject, visible. i tu suggests

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that kinship can be achieved only in the timeless, nonhierarchical space of play. The “carta o nota final” [last letter or note] of i tu, only a page long, keeps the confessional tone of the previous section, and tells the reader about Instan, a book published by Kelsey Press two years earlier, and that according to Vicuña constitutes an earlier version of i tu: “El i tu nace del Instan y el Instan empezó como una palabra ondeada. . . . Se abrió y me invitó a entrar. . . . De inmediato comprendí que su lengua no era español ni inglés, sino un lenguaje intermedio, ‘legible’ o ‘ilegible’ desde los dos. Un puente verbal igualmente inexistente y posible en los dos” [i tu was born from Instan and Instan began as a word with waves. . . . It opened up and invited me to enter it. . . . I understood straight away that its language was neither Spanish nor English, but an in between language, “legible” or “illegible” from both. A verbal bridge equally possible and nonexistent in both]. Thus i tu unfolds in the certainty of its own bilingualism, of its double chamber, its “in betweenness.” Neither here nor there, neither present nor past, neither European, nor Anglophone, nor Andean, neither one or the other, but rather, “ná ni ná.” i tu invites us to play in the game of the connections between languages that emerge from every act of speech, where cognates are transformed into spaces where past, present, and future fluid identities are formed. These spaces become a “non place” that, like an echo, sounds out a testimony to the exchanges resulting from the movements and migrations of our globalized era. The final section of i tu, “Dixio na rió,” continues to emphasize the book’s ludic and multilingual character by employing an idiosyncratic orthography. The three words “Dixio,” “na,” and “rió” invite the reader to explore and recognize the foreign in this territory “between languages,” and to inhabit it and meditate on it, “naturalizing” the otherness suggested by the text. “Dixio” refers us to “dictio,” meaning word in Latin. The “x” with which it is spelled, however, makes it seem more like a Greek term. “Na” comes from Quechua, and as we have already seen, it evokes the wavering between memory and forgetting. The last word, “rió” is of course the third person preterit of the verb “reír” [to laugh], and also evokes the metaphor of the river as a space for the migration and flux of identity. Moreover, the inclusion of the accent in “rió” allows the poetic voice to transform what would usually be considered a noun (“dixionario”) into a verb. After the “na” that sways between memory and forgetting, comes a laughter (“rió”)

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that places the guffaw among words. If words are to be regained, they must be dismantled. In order to establish the “habla-alba,” the words must be allowed to release their repressed laughter so that they can emerge, scatter, and come together. Thus, this “dixio na rió” is presented as a celebration of forms of speech, a space for encounters between words, where the semilanguage of Vicuña’s poetic discourse, forged through a dialogue among multiple histories, cultures, and territories, can be explored. Vicuña’s discourse is thus polysemous and flexible, and undergoes a constant transformation. The reader, as a migratory subject, occupies this space “between languages” as a provisional homeland, safe from exile or uprooting. i tu offers an alternative space, where speeches and practices that challenge fixed, rigid visions of identity, are made visible. There is no single privileged voice or form of speech, but rather a chorus of voices that tell of the many border crossings, borrowings, and dialogues present in a globalized era, where it is as easy to get lost in endless explorations as it is to anchor oneself, and establish new spaces of belonging. Vicuña herself speaks of this kind of celebration of loss in her interview with Pérez and Urzúa: “Pues yo mientras más perdida mejor, entonces efectivamente, es que yo existo en ese espacio entre las lenguas. Incluso en español cuando era niña, me preguntaban: ¿Y usted mijita de dónde es? . . . Los chilenos nunca me han reconocido como chilena. Yo no soy de ningún lugar, entonces ese no ser de ningún lugar, hace que yo sea del espacio, del momento y el espacio del momento, y entonces ahí yo bailo, ese es el lugar donde los sonidos danzan” [The more lost I am, the better, so I essentially inhabit the space between languages. People even asked me in Spanish when I was younger, “and where are you from, little one?” . . . Chileans have never recognized me as Chilean. I’m not from anywhere, and that being from nowhere means I am from space, of the moment and the space of the moment, and that’s where I dance, that’s the place where sound dances]. In this sense i tu is utopian, since this “being from nowhere” is not identified with any sense of imminent danger, violence, or persecution, but rather implies a state of connectedness with everything that exists in opposition to the harsh reality of rootlessness. The space of written and drawn letters that is i tu implies a utopian gaze toward the future, removed from a reality. As González asserts, “saying goodbye to nationalist nostalgia in literature should not be seen as a nihilistic gesture, nor as a rejection

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of the idea of the nation” (95). In order to emphasize his point, he then continues to cite from a 2009 report by the organization Refugees International, “National Rights for All: A Progress Report and Global Survey on Statelessness” that reminds us that “statelessness, or the lack of effective nationality . . . means having no legal protection or right to participate in political processes, inadequate access to health care and education, poor employment prospects and poverty, little opportunity to own property, travel restrictions, social exclusion, vulnerability to trafficking, harassment, and violence” (Southwick and Lynch i). The process of migration and displacement often coincides with the resurgence of extremist nationalisms and the violation of individual rights. i tu therefore becomes a utopian space, distanced from reality, since its lack of rootedness to any specific place results not in extreme vulnerability but in radical freedom. i tu is thus an open-ended work, one that invites us to enter and participate in its “dream,” and that speaks to us—“i tu”—of the possibility of a borderless world, a space beyond narrow and exclusive binary nationalist discourses. i tu demands an answer from us: the reader will respond “i yo,” personifying an identity that forges itself through the migrations and displacements proposed by Vicuña’s words and drawings. The book builds its own utopian, alternative “global village,” where political, national, cultural, and linguistic borders are questioned, and where at the same time the threads that lead back to a common point of origin are made visible. Rather than being exiled we are welcomed, and offered a provisional home in language. Notes 1. Cecilia Vicuña is a Chilean poet and visual artist residing in New York. She has been in exile since the seventies, as a result of the Chilean military dictatorship. Her most notable works include the books SABORAMI (1973), Luxumei (1983), Palabrarmas (1984), La Wik’uña (1990), Unraveling Words and the Weaving of Water (1992), QUIPOem/ The Precarious, The Art and Poetry of Cecilia Vicuña (1997), UL, Four Mapuche Poets (1998), Instan (2003), I Tu (2004); the installations Cloud-net (1998–1999), K’isa (1997) and the documentaries Caleu está soñando (1996) and Kon Kon (2010).

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2. Following Pinochet’s coup in 1973, Vicuña moved to London, then later to Bogotá, and in the 1980s she settled in New York. 3. Masiello has likewise related Vicuña’s writing to that of other contemporary Chilean poets who include indigenous voices in their work, such as Rosabetty Muñoz, Delia Domínguez, Elvira Hernández, and Soledad Fariña. 4. In the interview with Pérez and Urzúa Vicuña expands on the subject of this conflict, as quoted later in the chapter. 5. In the second chapter of his book, Ramazani observes that “Studies in cultural transnationalism have recently proliferated in a variety of humanistic subfields, but in studies of modern and contemporary poetry in English, singlenation genealogies remain surprisingly entrenched: an army of anthologies, job descriptions, library catalogs, books, articles, and annotations reterritorializes the cross-national mobility of modern and contemporary poetry under the single-nation banner” (23). 6. In the interview mentioned, Vicuña asserts that “Todo ese poema está escrito en una semi-lengua, entre el español e inglés, con quechua y latín y griego entreverados” [The whole poem is written in a semilanguage, a combination of Spanish and English, with Quechua, Latin, and Greek woven into it].

5 E Postnational Masculinities and Globalization in Junot Díaz and Juan Francisco Ferré Ricardo F. Vivancos-Pérez

By engaging in a transatlantic comparative analysis of the works of Dominican-American writer Junot Díaz and Spanish writer Juan Francisco Ferré, this chapter reflects upon the emergence of a postnational discourse in contemporary Hispanic literatures, taking as starting point the critique of masculinity at the heart of their novels. Despite their different backgrounds and literary styles, both writers explore cultural hybridity with a focus on masculinity and the nation. In their fictions, narrative voices and male characters underscore our need, in the era of globalization, to reinvent masculinity through a historically grounded critique of virility. In This Is How You Lose Her (2012), Díaz confirms his intention to become the chronicler of a particular working-class US-Latino experience through the voice of Yunior. He was the character-narrator of most of the short stories in Drown and is the main narrative voice telling the story of his friend Oscar Wao in Díaz’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007). Initially, Yunior represents the perspective of a second-generation Latino-Dominican teenager who grows up in a transnational and postmodern era. In Díaz’s complex fictional world, which is characterized by the convergence of popular culture and postcolonial discourse, Yunior faces traditional and normalizing values that are obsolete and ineffective, and for which he lacks clear solutions or fixed alternatives.

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After being awarded the Premio Herralde for his novel Karnaval in 2012, Ferré has consolidated as one of the most ambitious and promising novelists in the Hispanic world. His originality lies in the combination of a harsh critique of capitalist values with stylized narrative experimentation. This complex intersection includes an idiosyncratic interdisciplinary sophistication, based on metaliterary and metafilmic discourses. Ferré’s novels Providence (2009) and Karnaval (2012) have strong narrative voices that are similar to Díaz’s Yunior. Character-narrators theorize about a wide range of identity and globalization issues. These voices not only construct an interdisciplinary metaartistic discourse but also a discourse about sexuality, power, and the nation that, from an initially hypermasculinized focalization, paradoxically deconstructs traditional male myths and behaviors. A look into contemporary trends in gender studies is useful to discern Díaz’s and Ferré’s approaches to masculinity. In Object Lessons (2012), Robyn Wiegman discusses the emergence of masculinity scholarship in the late 1980s dividing it into three main approaches: one that starts from a discussion of race and ethnicity “following the theoretical imperative of what is now glossed as women of color critique” (Wiegman 57); scholarship that focuses on masculinities from a cultural studies perspective “and sought to decipher the cultural representation of diverse masculinities, the male body as spectacle, and generic conventions of masculine representation” (57–8); and finally, a third and more sociological trend that is interested in the relationship between sexuality and gender. Díaz and Ferré offer a focus on masculinity that, in Wiegman’s spectrum, we could align respectively with the first and the second approaches. In dialogue with inter-American debates on postcoloniality (Mahler), Díaz’s deconstruction of masculinity is always directly related to race and ethnicity issues. Ferré’s fiction tends to focus on representation. Díaz follows the tenets of women of color critique, while Ferré exercises a contemporary and postmodern—following Fredric Jameson’s approach to “the logic of late capitalism”—adaptation of Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo’s critique of heterosexism and fixed sexual and national identities in the Hispanic world. My strongest argument is that Díaz’s and Ferré’s explorations of masculinity add a new dimension to the transnational turn in Latino/ Hispanic literatures and cultural production. Regarding postnational

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masculinities, this essay shows how, even though a nostalgia for machista attitudes or nationalistic perspectives may be present at times in Díaz and Ferré, none of them emphasize this nostalgia, but rather focus on the need for a recodification of masculinity that includes both a historically grounded deconstruction of virility, and a new understanding of cultural exchange that is beyond nationalistic positions and the primacy of onedimensional traditionalist views about national cultures. Junot Díaz as a Transnational Chronicler in This Is How You Lose Her In Díaz’s fictional world, Yunior—with a “Y” emphasizing the Spanish pronunciation of “Junior”—is an ambiguous, multiple entity that resists traditional categories of narrative analysis and normalized ways of reading fiction. In some of the short stories in Drown, the narrator is not clearly identified as Yunior, but we have to assume, by reading the rest of the stories, that the same Yunior narrates all of them. However, the last short story, “Negocios,” raises questions about the genealogy of the character. Ramón, the father, has multiple sons with his US wife, and he calls them all Ramón/Yunior. It is not clear whether there are one, two, or even three Yuniors. So who is telling us the stories? The novel, Oscar Wao, is narrated by an unidentified voice until page 169 in the first edition, when we assume that it is the voice of Yunior, although it may also well be the voice of the implicit author, especially in the initial pages. So who is Yunior, and how many Yunior-narrators do we encounter? Is he a character-narrator, just a narrator, an implicit author, or even the author or writer of some of the stories? As critics have pointed out, these questions are relevant to discern the diasporic subject at the center of Díaz’s fiction. Yunior’s identity crisis has to do with diasporic displacement—exile, immigration, migration (Mahler)—and a particular “binational” masculinity, shaped by a gallery of heroes that characterize Dominican virility—Christopher Columbus, Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, and Joaquín Balaguer (Ramírez). Yunior is constantly being haunted by and negotiating an idea of masculinity that is synonymous with Dominicanness (Ramírez 354–55). In Drown, with Yunior as a composite voice accounting for (1) an immigrant, (2) for a first-and-a-half generation exile—the so-called “exile’s

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children generation”—and (3) for a US-born second generation Dominican, Díaz confuses different backgrounds and genealogies in his exploration of internal power struggles within US Latino-Dominican communities. In Oscar Wao, the variation consists of having a Yunior born in the Dominican Republic who tells the story of the US-born Latino-Dominican Oscar to show a process of transformation of the two characters, of the two generations or different diasporic backgrounds. This is part of a complex Cervantine process of Yuniorification of Oscar, and Oscarification of Yunior. The more recent stories in This Is How You Lose Her (2012), show a more mature version of the character. In an interview, Díaz explains the difference between Yunior as narrator in Drown and in his later writings. It is a long quote that is worth including here: I guess I was operating under the rule: no need to tell the same story twice. Yunior narrates Drown almost as it’s happening, so there is a rawness, an immediacy—like the writer who wrote the book, he’s really going for the kill. He’s a young narrator with something to prove and has all the young man’s ferocity. But the Yunior of Oscar Wao and This Is How You Lose Her is like the person who wrote them older and not so much interested in the same things as his younger self. He’s ruminative and focused more on consequences. He’s looking at his life over the long term. Describe a fire the day after it happens and you can get the fire right, but you often don’t nail the context or the larger significance of the calamity. Describe a fire twenty years later and the description of the blaze may not be as immediate, but what it meant over the long term is suddenly more clear. That’s the difference, I think, between these books. Yunior has grown up, has other interests. The violence of Drown I’m looking at from another angle, less sensational but for me at least equally troubling. I definitely meant Yunior to be more postmodern as a character—by which I mean someone that is not unified and coherent and whole. For me it was always okay if he seemed different from chapter to chapter. I think on my past and I don’t even recognize who I used to be. I’m so different from my twenty-year-old self, and yet I

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am he and as a writer I have to account for these disparities in some way. One of the first lessons you learn as a writer is that the level of character consistency is sometimes overvalued. (Frangello) By linking Yunior’s performative qualities with his own lived experiences, Díaz reminds us of the provisional quality of Yunior’s in-progress narrative voice. In particular, the stories in This Is How You Lose Her are told from a more reflexive, more detached, and more distanced position, that of the adult writer Yunior. It is an older self than the one in Drown. The illusion of immediacy in Drown gives way to a more reflexive narrative voice/Yunior in This Is How You Lose Her, where Yunior is looking back on his failed relationships with women with a critical, and in Díaz’s words, “ruminative” eye. Yunior is just one representation of an in-progress composite entity—that of the controlling agent of the narratives—which is accepted but constantly interrogated throughout. This abstract multiple entity or controlling agent of the narratives includes the narrative voice, the character Yunior, the authorial voice or implicit author that some critics have seen in the first pages of Oscar Wao (Barradas), and even the character of Oscar Wao as a writer-to-be who becomes a reflection of Yunior, the character-narrator of his “brief wondrous life.” This abstract entity, that I call “Yunior-storyteller,” theorizes and reinvents Latino and Dominican identity from a diasporic perspective that is postnationalistic and transnational. Something similar, as I will explain later, happens in Juan Francisco Ferré’s fiction, where this abstract entity that theorizes appears through the alternating voices of third-person narrators and first-person character narrators. Díaz’s theoretical subject of Latinidades participates in the three debates that shape the “transnational turn in literary studies” in the twentyfirst century according to Paul Jay. First, Díaz rejects the false assumption that globalization is not historically grounded, and that it is exclusively a contemporary phenomenon. Second, in Díaz’s fiction the term transnational is not only a purely economic designation, but also a term that has to do with culture, cultural exchange, and internal diversity. His fiction reflects an approach to agency that questions “homogeneity” and uniformity regarding cultural exchange. Third, Díaz complicates the model center-periphery in chronicling Latino experiences from a multicultural,

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working-class perspective. Yunior functions as a chronicler for a young generation of working-class US Latinos who focuses, in accordance with the transnational turn, on a recodification of class relations and Latino masculinity. In other words, Yunior is a chronicler of a Latino postnationality in process, whose complexity lies in the inscrutable intersection of several identity markers and the power struggles that they entail: working class, mixed race and ethnicity, and gender and sexuality relations. In this multilayered and contentious context, the failure of traditional male values is linked with a need to create a postnational perspective for Latinos. The title of the collection, This Is How You Lose Her, refers to its specific focus on the failures of masculinity. It comes from the vignette-like four-page short story “Alma,” which is the third out of the nine stories in the book. Yunior cheats on Alma even though she appears to be the perfect lover. She knows of his infidelity by reading his journal: “Yes —it’s an opposites-attract sort of thing, it’s a great-sex sort of thing, it’s a no-thinking sort of thing. It’s wonderful! Wonderful! Until one June day Alma discovers that you are also fucking this beautiful freshman girl named Laxmi . . . because she, Alma, the girlfriend, opens your journals and reads. (Oh, she had her suspicions)” (This Is How 45–47). At the end of the story, Yunior unsuccessfully tries to tell her that what she read was in fact part of his new novel. After this pathetic move, “This is how you lose her” is the closing statement. So in the title, “Her” refers to Alma, the perfect lover, described as the girl “with a long tender horse neck and a big Dominican ass that seems to exist in a fourth dimension beyond jeans” (45). Cheating on her is losing her. Yunior loses both her ideal lover and his “alma” or soul. But most importantly, his writing about it, and her reading of his “secret” texts, his journals, expose his betrayal and lead him to failure. The story is representative of what happens in the rest of the book. Machismo gender norms do not work anymore for working-class Latino men, but Yunior’s voice exhibits a nostalgia for specific machista values, those of the Dominican type called “tíguere,” a kind of “playboy hustler” (Ramírez 394–98). This nostalgia forces us, as readers, to continually disidentify with Yunior. Not only the unreliability of the character but also his ambivalence may lead us to both rejection and attraction. The tensions between parody and authenticity are never resolved. In this context, it is not surprising that the publication of Díaz’s book

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has become controversial for many so-called feminist readers. In Elle Magazine, Virginia Vitzthum offers an example. By arguing that Díaz’s cheaters are “charming, funny, and desirous” and that in the end “they do sort of succeed,” Vitzthum accuses Díaz of objectifying women in his stories: “we pretty much see the women as exes, crying and screaming after they’ve been cheated on, or as new possibilities, cataloged in terms of their fuckworthiness” (Vitzthum). Vitzthum takes for granted a “normalized” reading of the book, one in which readers identify Yunior’s ideology with that of the author. When she asked Díaz about it, he responded that he as an author is exposing, but not endorsing Yunior’s behavior. However, Vitzthum discards Díaz’s explanation as being “professorial”: “When I tell him that some of the book made me flinch, Díaz goes all professorial, explaining (unnecessarily) that a narrator is not the same as the writer. ‘Representing a subjectivity doesn’t equate with approving the subjectivity,’ he lectures. ‘So the questions we have to ask about a piece of work are, what does our interaction with this subjectivity do for us? What is productive? What is the book rewarding or not rewarding?’ Good questions all” (Vitzthum). It is clear that we as readers can reject Yunior’s voice from a feminist antiobjectifying perspective. In many of the short stories, Yunior seems to discredit his partners with no sense of guilt. His perspective exposes the maladies of the male gaze and scopophilia in a Lacanian sense. Yunior can be tedious and annoying for a feminist reader. My reading of Díaz’s fiction as feminist oriented is based, first, on the recognition of a complex transnational interaction of cultural traditions. This interaction has to do with the intersection of struggles that deal with many identity markers: mainly class, race, gender, sexuality, and age. The “Yunior-storyteller,” a character-in-progress, or tenuous subjectivity, orchestrates the narrative very precariously. So, in terms of feminism, to read his texts following a superficial, “normalized” and cynical reading such as the one in Elle Magazine, amounts to a grave simplification, or better yet, distortion of its meaning. My proposal is, first, to read Yunior/ Díaz in a dialogue with the Latina feminist tradition of aesthetic activism, especially in relation to fiction by Latinas; and second, in relation to a search of new forms of knowledge, and memories, and what Judith Halberstam calls the art of failure in relation to the practice of “low theory.”

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Díaz’s fiction is clearly informed by a “postnational” paradigm in Latina/o cultural production that includes new and more democratic views on gender and sexuality since the 1980s. This paradigm, as explained by Ellie Hernández in the field of Chicana/o creative works, takes into account “a heterogeneous arrangement of a nationally based feminism with creative and intellectual links to queer studies and sexuality” (4). The most relevant aspect of Díaz’s postnational discourse is how he expands this paradigm by focusing on a reconceptualization of Latino masculinity. I will sketch my analysis briefly. Díaz’s fiction is inspired by the main tenets and some of the strategies of Latina feminist writing. In a way similar to how Norma Alarcón has studied Latina feminist writings, Díaz’s pathetic, compassionate-to-be, and unstable character-in-process Yunior becomes the theoretical subject of a postnationalistic, post-machista US-Latino reality. In this regard, the strongest connection is with Sandra Cisneros’s fictional world—the epigraph opening This Is How You Lose Her, a reflection on a failed relationship included in one of Cisneros’s poems, confirms the importance of Cisneros for Díaz. Cisneros’s Esperanza in The House on Mango Street and Lala/Celaya in Caramelo become theoretical subjects in a continuous process of dismantling and reinventing inherited gender norms and values. In Cisneros’s writings, the controlling agents of the narrative are hociconas. They disidentify with tradition by complicating cultural interaction in an irregular dialogue with previous generations. A clear example may be in Caramelo, in the chapters where Lala establishes a conflicting, imaginary dialogue with her Awful Grandmother. Additionally, Yunior, defined by Monica Hanna as a “writer-historian” in Oscar Wao, is similar to the role of Lala as “anthropoeta” in Caramelo, following José David Saldívar’s reading of Cisneros’s novel. The chapters, short stories, or vignettes in This Is How You Lose Her are, as in Cisneros’s writings, focused upon tradition and change from new, younger perspectives that incorporate popular culture and the imagination beyond traditional conceptualizations of nationalism, high and low culture, and failure and success. From a gender studies perspective, This Is How You Lose Her proposes a focus on the exploration of machismo as an integral part of a postnational Latino discourse. How does Díaz explore Yunior’s confrontation

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with machismo traditional values that are no longer viable? How does he do it in order to achieve a felicitous identity? I believe that in this sense Díaz argues for practicing the “art of failure” in the way proposed and theorized by Judith Jack Halberstam in her analysis of US popular cultural production. For Halberstam the movie Little Miss Sunshine (2006) serves as a paradigmatic example to explain how the practice of failure can lead us to “a new kind of optimism” (5). Olive, a young girl whose dream is to participate in a beauty pageant, trains for the contest while she travels with her dysfunctional family on a road trip from Albuquerque to southern California. When they finally arrive at the pageant venue, they realize that Olive, being chubby, wearing large eyeglasses and untrained for this kind of show, cannot be successful. The contenders are hypersexualized preteen girls in sophisticated adult evening wear and makeup. For Halberstam, “Olive is destined to fail, but to fail spectacularly” because “a new kind of optimism is born. Not an optimism that relies on positive thinking as an explanatory engine for social order, nor one that insists upon the bright side at all costs; rather this is a little ray of sunshine that produces shade and light in equal measure and knows that the meaning of one always depends upon the meaning of the other” (5). In Díaz’s fictional world, Yunior is also destined “to fail spectacularly” but in a different way. Yunior wants to be a macho in the traditional sense, but he is aware that machismo is not viable. Being a machista is being a loser. However, machista attitudes allow him to advance within his process of identity formation and his search for intimacy and felicitous communication with lovers and friends. Being a Latino Dominican in the barrio, practicing the art of machismo as the art of failure is for Yunior the only way of surviving and achieving provisional maturity. It seems that this is a central reason for the “Yunior-storyteller” theoretical subject to decide that his stories are worth telling. With his construction of an abstract entity that I call “Yunior-storyteller,” Díaz ambitiously proposes the practice of “low theory” in the way suggested by Halberstam—“theoretical knowledge that works at many levels at once . . . and that seeks not to explain but to involve” (15). In this way, his fictional world adds a new dimension to transnationalism in Latino literature and cultural production. Díaz’s fictions expose, from a

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Latino working-class male perspective “from below,” a double nostalgia —for machista values, and for a nationalistic position—that is obsolete, and that leads to failure. But this failure—and also our failure as readers to completely identify with the character—aims at involving us in an ethical discussion about new postnational masculinities. Sexuality and Globalization in Juan Francisco Ferré Juan Francisco Ferré’s novels also invite us to discuss postnational masculinities, but from a different perspective “from above,” and in the context of mediatic spectacles and globalization. Ferré is also interested in combining creative writing and cultural critique, but his inspiration comes from a nomadic tradition of Spanish intellectuals. He aspires to be a “monstrous hybrid,” if we follow Juan Goytisolo, who is one of Ferré’s main influences. In Contracorriente (1985), a text about the baffling contradictions of Spanish nationalistic intellectuals, and about his own aspirations as a self-exile and cosmopolitan writer, Goytisolo writes about his “monstrous” ideal: La antinomia desdichada del novelista que teoriza y el crítico practicante de la ficción nos debería poner en la pista del ideal que nos obsede: el del crítico-creador o creador-crítico que, a la manera de Cervantes, introdujera genialmente en el ámbito de la obra novelesca todo el corpus teórico de la época: novelista que escribiera no sobre personajes y cosas, sino personajes y cosas; crítico que novelara su doctrina y ficcionalizara su glosa. Este híbrido monstruoso aunaría el saber y recursos de ambos al servicio de una propuesta que sería a la vez crítica y creación, literatura y discurso sobre la literatura. (Goytisolo 940) [The ill-fated antinomy of the novelist who theorizes and the critic who practices the art of fiction should give us a clue about the ideal that obsesses us: that of the fiction writer-critic or critic-fiction writer who, following Cervantes, would masterly include in the realm of the novel all the theoretical corpus of the times: a novelist who would not write about characters and things, but characters and things; a critic who could novelize his doctrine, and fictionalize

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his commentary. This monstrous hybrid would have the knowledge and resources of both at the service of a proposal that would include criticism, creativity, literature and discourse about literature.] Ferré’s fiction uses strong male character-narrators and a kind of “Cervantine” heteroglossia that, for critics of his work, is the main strength of his fiction. But it is in his second novel, Providence (2009), where Ferré’s sophisticated satire reaches maturity. Goytisolo explains the connection between Ferré and Cervantes in his review of this novel. If Cervantes, according to Goytisolo, introducía en su obra maestra los verosímiles de las novelas de caballerías, morisca, bizantina, bucólica, etcétera, a fin de parodiarlas y edificar la suya sobre sus ruinas, atento lector de Cervantes, Juan Francisco Ferré compendia en Providence las manifestaciones artísticas contemporáneas—el cine, la tele, la omnívora Red, los mitos y falacias de la utopía cultural norteamericana—para machacarlas y mezclarlas en su batidora. . . . Gracias a la síntesis de planos diversos—literario, cinematográfico, televisivo, musical, ciberespacial—, Providence recrea su genealogía de raíces múltiples, heterogéneas, mezcladas. (Goytisolo, “Literatura en el ciberespacio”) [included in his masterpiece the verisimilitude of knights’ tales —morisca, byzantine, bucolic, and so on—in order to offer a parody and build his own narrative over their ruins, Juan Francisco Ferré—an attentive reader of Cervantes—condenses in Providence contemporary artistic manifestations such as cinema, television, the omnivorous Internet network, myths and fallacies of the US cultural utopia—in order to crush them and mix them up in his blender. . . . Thanks to the synthesis of different domains—literary, filmic, television, music, cyberspace, and so on—Providence recreates its own genealogy of multiple roots, heterogeneous and mixed.] Providence (2009) and Karnaval (2012) have narrative voices that can be considered as abstract entities or subjects that theorize. These voices not only develop a meta-artistic interdisciplinary discourse, but also a discourse on masculinity that, focusing on the recodification of virility, deconstructs myths and power relations associated with traditional male heterosexism. I will focus on how Ferré conceives sexuality discourse as

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an essential component of a critique of capitalism and globalization, taking the intercultural dialogue between Europe and the United States as a starting point. I will stop briefly in Providence and will focus on representative passages in Karnaval, his most ambitious and more “global” novel. Providence and Biculturalism If Providence is a novel that, according to Goytisolo, uses Cervantine techniques to address intercultural exchange in today’s global world, it is curious how Goytisolo compares Alex Franco, the main character of the novel and Ferré’s alter-ego in many ways—a visiting professor of Film Studies at Brown University—with Don Quixote, and Eva Dhalgren—a PhD student at Brown—with Dulcinea. Their failed love affair clearly reflects the lack of understanding between European and US popular cultures. Alex Franco is a donjuanesque figure that uses his exoticism to satisfy his strong sexual appetite. However, he ends up falling in love with Dhalgren, whom he idealizes completely, and whom he describes as “espécimen paradigmático de la subcultura nacional” (paradigmatic specimen of the [US] national subculture) (Ferré, Providence 317). In this part of the novel, cultural critique emerges from the dialogue between Franco and Dhalgren, from the relationship between the Spanish filmmaker and the representative of US culture. According to Franco, US culture has been constructed mainly by the Hollywood movie industry, where it exists as a “master code” (343). For him, America has been invented through film, but for Dhalgren “América es una utopía multicultural in progress (sic)” [America is a multicultural utopia in progress] (344). For Dhalgren, there are productive dialogues across ethnicities in the United States, but Franco argues that that dialogue is illusory. In Providence, this essential disagreement refers clearly to the difficult dialogue on cultural exchange between European and North American points of view. This conflict leads to inevitable failure and lack of communication. Ironically, it is Franco who falls in love with Dhalgren, but she never takes him seriously. Like Yunior in Díaz’s fiction, Franco fails spectacularly due for the most part to his donjuanesque heterosexist approach to gender relationships. This pessimistic view on cultural exchange and cultural conflict is inseparable, in Providence, from a discourse on gender relationships and (hetero)sexuality. Here, Ferré follows Goytisolo’s aesthetics and his

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interest—especially in El sitio de los sitios (1995)—in exploring a “nueva lógica del deseo masculino, esto es, una redefinición literaria y ficcional de la masculinidad” [new logic of male desire, that is, a fictional and literary redefinition of masculinity] (Ferré, “Zona sotádica” 302). For Ferré, as a heterosexual man who tries to redefine masculinity in a time, the twenty-first century, when women have reached higher levels of equality in Western societies, it becomes essential to assume the dissolution of the old sexual contract, as well as to realize that we are still in a transitional period in which a new sexual contract has not yet been established. This is what he argued when I interviewed him in 2013: En el momento en que las mujeres han adquirido un mayor nivel de libertad y de presencia social se ha cambiado todo, incluso la forma en que los hombres las vemos. En ese sentido en mi literatura yo intento explorar esa perplejidad y ese caos desde la masculinidad y una cierta virilidad sin olvidar el pasado y todo el bagaje que hay entre hombres y mujeres en lo social, lo cultural, lo histórico, lo mitológico, artístico, etc., pero al mismo tiempo intentando decir bueno qué está pasando, qué estamos viviendo, qué es esto, qué pasa con nuestros cuerpos, qué pasa con el deseo y con nuestras relaciones. (Vivancos-Pérez) [When women attained a higher level of freedom and social presence, everything changed; even the way men view them. In this sense, in my writing I try to explore that perplexity and that chaos from the perspective of masculinity and a particular understanding of virility, without forgetting the past and the baggage that gender relationships have in society, culture, history, mythology, the arts, and so on; but at the same time trying to say well what is going on now? What are we living? What is this? What is happening with our bodies? What is happening to our desire and our relationships?] Karnaval and Globalization With a focus on heterosexual desire and the encounters of bodies, and on a search for a new kind of masculinity, Ferré’s fiction insists on the existence of a global dimension that influences heavily the socioeconomic and cultural situation of Spain. This insistence is even more apparent in

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Karnaval, which is a fictional cultural study of Dominique Strauss Kahn’s mediatic “incident” and sexual scandal. Dominique Strauss Kahn—“God K,” the main character-narrator in Karnaval—is the most clearly Quixotesque character in Ferré’s fiction. DSK is a kind of “Yunior storyteller” from above, from an entity that theorizes at the precise moment of falling from a maximum phallic position of power. Throughout the narrative, we have access to his thoughts. Ferré’s DSK is a lunatic who lives in a patriarchal world that has clearly disappeared, but that still has a strong influence in today’s gender relations. His phallocentric idea of power also affects his way of directing the International Monetary Fund and his views on the impunity that should come with these male-only positions of power. DSK’s sexual and political madness make this character a kind of Quixote of our times, much more than Alex Franco in Providence. This is part of Karnaval’s “Cervantine heteroglossia.” Through the voice of a fictional DSK—a voice that, for the reader, initially represents capitalism and machismo—Ferré constructs a critique of globalization that touches on all the dimensions that characterizes globalization: economic, political, ecological, cultural, and ideological (Steger). Ferré uses literary discourse, which belongs to the cultural and ideological dimension, as a point of convergence in order to offer a sophisticated ludic and caustic sarcastic narrative, both provocative and skeptical, about the global financial crisis. Karnaval covers the days in which DSK remains under arrest in New York after being accused of raping one of the workers in the Sofitel New York hotel. DSK’s narration alternates with a third person narrative. Additionally, the novel includes two main “apocryphal texts.” First, there is the script of a fictional documentary entitled, in English in the original, “The Hole and the Worm,” which was first released in HBO in November 2011, right after DSK allegedly raped the woman in his hotel room. The documentary shows comments about the “incident”—this is how the character DSK describes what happened—by twenty-three public figures, including prominent writers, thinkers, filmmakers, and even Lady Gaga. Second, the novel includes a series of six letters, all dated the same day, July 14, 2011, described as “Epístolas del gran Dios K a los grandes hombres (y mujeres) de la época” [The Great God K’s Epistles to the Great Men and Women of the Times]. Appearing as a series of interruptions

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to the main diegesis of the novel, these letters are essential to understand Ferré’s critique of globalization and his reflection on postnational masculinities. Let me focus on them in greater detail. The first four letters, to Nicolas Sarkozy, Barack Obama, Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), and Bill Gates are conciliatory missives in which DSK, who always signs as “God K,” congratulates all of them on their achievements, always from his position as another “great men of the times.” In the first letter, to Sarkozy—the President of France at the time—DSK affirms that he knows for a fact that the US government, other European governments, and certain financial institutions plotted the “incident” at the hotel. Since Sarkozy was not involved, DSK offers his friendship and asks him to do something to avoid an imminent global financial crisis caused by the “dominio planetario de la economía neoliberal” [planetary rule of neoliberal politics] (Ferré, Karnaval 90). The night before the “incident,” a mysterious man gave DSK a briefcase that contained the complaints and demands of protesters from all around the world. The briefcase disappears during the police search of his hotel room. In the second letter, DSK offers himself as advisor for Obama’s speeches. After a vision that DSK had on top of the Empire State Building, he believes that the world needs a new global narrative with new myths, gods, and fictions. With this idea in mind, DSK offers his services as a consultant for the following elections. He is sure that Obama shares his vision. In his third letter, DSK tells Pope Benedict XVI about the “hell” of global capitalism. First, he explains how since the incident he has been in a living hell. Hell, for DSK, is nothing but God’s mind. Global economy is ruled by the same amorality that characterizes God’s mind. According to DSK, the mind of God includes no content. It is a kind of void structure similar to the structure of capitalism. That is why, for DSK, God is the great economist of the world. The “incident” has allowed him to “unite” with God, and this mystical experience has brought him closer to the figure of the Pope. Second, and most relevant to our analysis, DSK identifies with the Pope because they both incarnate two models of masculinity. The Pope is the intellectual, and DSK the technocrat. Since the world needs global leaders, DSK invites the Pope to ally with him in a “spiritual crusade” against the “pesadez” [heaviness] of the world: “La

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pesadez cristiana, la pesadez islámica, la pesadez monárquica, la pesadez aristocrática, la pesadez burguesa, la pesadez capitalista, la pesadez comunista, la pesadez fascista y nazi” [Christian heaviness, Islamic heaviness, monarchic heaviness, aristocratic heaviness, bourgeois heaviness, capitalist heaviness, Communist heaviness, Fascist and Nazi heaviness] (Karnaval 177). Here, Ferré’s approach to masculinity has to do with global leadership in a particular way. From the point of view of DSK as the position of power in the obsolete phallocentric world of global capitalism, there is a need for a spiritual global leader such as the Pope. This contrasts with Junot Díaz’s approach to the obsolescence of traditional masculinity from the multicultural but nonetheless local context of the barrio and the city. In his fourth letter, to Bill Gates, DSK expands his foolish and hilarious ideas about God as an inherently capitalist entity. The nature of the Universe is computational, and was created by a God who is a “careless programmer” (322). The universe is conceived after an “expansive digital program” (322), and history is nothing but a “cosmic videogame” (324). DSK praises Gates for being the first who realized this. But DSK, being at the same level of genius, tells Gates that technogenesis is the only future, “la metamorfosis por la cual los humanos pasaremos a gestionar la realidad como si fuéramos máquinas” [the metamorphosis which will allow us humans to manage reality as if we were machines] (326). In his imaginary conversation in the virtual Olympus of today’s global financial “gods,” it is important for DSK to share his thoughts and to advise Gates because he thinks that Gates will outlive him—DSK is aware of his symbolic and literal “death” as a powerful public figure, and as a monstrous fictionalized character at the end of the novel. As observed in these first four letters, DSK identifies with his addressees and praises them for being geniuses with a faculty to see beyond reality and predict the future. Ferré shapes the character-narrator DSK as a contemporary Quixote who, from his outdated vision of the world is in fact offering a diagnosis of the so-called era of globalization. Economic, political, and cultural interdependence have led us to a virtual world that is pure structure with no content, in which capital is based on speculative predictions. Here, DSK’s discourse is nothing but the construction of an allegory of global capitalism as a cosmic parody and as a skeptical diagnosis from above, from an Olympian imagined position of maximum

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power. Instead of being a “writer historian,” the theoretical subject in Ferré’s fiction becomes a kind of “monstrous hybrid,” a novelist-globalization theorist. The fifth letter, to the director of the European Central Bank at the time, Jean Claude Trichet, is much more confrontational. DSK calls Trichet a cynic, accusing him of rejecting DSK’s plan to save the European economy and preventing him from carrying it out. DSK accuses Trichet of being too obsessed with the Euro and with creating fictional data and figures. Trichet is also one of the leaders of the conspiracy against him, which ended up unveiling his “incident” with the hotel maid. DSK describes this as a bad business transaction, because the maid did not want to accept any money for her sexual favors. But instead of debasing her, DSK defends her act as a “lesson on dignity” for him. We could say that, following Ferré’s playful project, which invites us to empathize (!) with DSK through fiction, we are at the “Kore” of the “Karnaval” of the novel. God K-DSK considers himself the victim of a conspiracy that comes as a result of his efforts to present an alternative economic plan to avoid Greece’s fall into bankruptcy and its subsequent “rescue” by the European Central Bank. DSK writes his sixth and last letter to Christine Lagarde, appointed to replace him as director of the International Monetary Fund on July 5, 2011, a day after the date on DSK’s letters in the novel. Lagarde had announced her candidacy right after DSK’s resignation, and became the first woman to access this position. The delusionary aspect of this letter accounts for DSK’s paraphilia and abusive behavior toward women. I am not going to stop at the main topic of the letter—to persuade Lagarde about the pleasures of anal fist-fucking—which is part of Ferré’s harsh critique of capitalism through a provocative intersection of sexual depravity and political corruption. For the purposes of my analysis, I will only quote the beginning of the letter, which summarizes some of the main ideas in DSK’s lunacy as representative of today’s global leadership. DSK starts by telling Lagarde—and Trichet, and Bernanke—to “fuck off,” adding the following reflection: Cuando pienso en muchos amigos banqueros y financieros, los mismos que fabricaron de la nada una política económica basada en los productos derivativos y vendieron las hipotecas basura a todo el

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mundo como el nuevo oro mercantil e hicieron piruetas acrobáticas con el dinero de los demás y se hicieron millonarios a costa de los mismos clientes a los que habían arruinado, sumiendo al mundo en una espiral económica descendente, al clan de los keynesianos y los idiócratas del Nuevo Orden Mundial les deseo otro tanto, sí: que les den por culo. Y no es un exabrupto, no. Es una recomendación, o un consejo. (Karnaval 414) [When I think of many friends who lead banks and financial institutions, the same ones that created out of nothing a political economy based on derivative products and sold subprime mortgages all around the world as the new gold; the same who did acrobatic pirouettes with the money of others and became millionaires using the money of clients that they have led to bankruptcy; to all of them, the clan of the Keynesians, and idiocrats of the New World Order, I wish them to fuck off. And this is not just an outburst. This is a recommendation, or a piece of advice.] DSK’s fictionalized story in Karnaval ends up being symbolic of any corruption narrative in the so-called first global financial crisis of the twentyfirst century. The result is a powerful, ludic, and perverse reflection, from the perspective of the corrupted perpetrator, on the infamous effects of the deregulation of financial transactions as explained by critics of globalization who, from an economic point of view, argue that the global financial crisis emerged mainly from investors’ reliance on “commodities or currency rates that did not yet exist” (Steger 43). In a review of Rafael Chirbes’s En la orilla (2013), Ferré contends that, in the realm of fiction, there are two ways to explore the current financial crisis in Spain: Hay dos estrategias posibles para escribir sobre esta situación devastadora. Una más globalizada y compleja, conectada a las realidades mediáticas y financieras de la escena internacional. Y otra más apegada al espacio local, de perspectiva más realista en el sentido tradicional, pero limitada al pequeño relato de las sórdidas experiencias de los protagonistas regionales de la crisis. Ambas opciones narrativas son igualmente válidas siempre que se realicen con talento y vigor verbal. (Ferré, “La vuelta al mundo”)

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[There are two possible strategies to write about this devastating situation. One that is more globalized and complex, which is connected to mediatic and financial realities in the international context. Another one is closer to the local space, with a more realistic perspective in the traditional sense, but limited to the small story of the regional protagonists’ sordid experience of the crisis. Both narrative options are equally valid providing that they are carried out with talent and verbal vigor.] In a personal interview with Ferré, I asked him to elaborate on this statement and this is what he added: Las dos [opciones] son válidas, pero la diferencia en mi opinión es de perspectiva. No quise seguir porque no era momento de desacreditar, pero es verdad que a mí en un momento determinado me parece que la opción de Chirbes, limitada a lo regional o lo local tiene un problema, porque al final solo explica el pequeño relato regional, el cual no es la clave de la crisis ni permite ver el sistema, como diría Jameson, ni hacer un mapa cognitivo del sistema. En cambio, el gran relato que hago yo en Karnaval sí que te permite verdaderamente radiografiar la crisis mucho más allá de los límites nacionales. (Vivancos-Pérez) [Both options are valid, but in my opinion there is a difference in perspective. I didn’t want to continue because it wasn’t the time for discrediting, but it’s true that at some point Chirbes’s option seems to me limited to the regional or the local. This is problematic because in the end his approach only explains the small regional story, which is not the key to the crisis because it doesn’t allow us to view the system, nor create a cognitive map of the system, as Fredric Jameson would say. In contrast, the grand récit that I do in Karnaval really allows us to X-ray the crisis way beyond national boundaries.] On the one hand, as a critic of global capitalism Ferré argues that any analysis of the financial crisis in Spain has to be framed within the greater context of global economic interdependence. On the other, he is also claiming that a more ambitious openness to this greater context is imperative in contemporary Spanish fiction.

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Conclusion In this chapter, I analyzed how masculinity and postnationality are discussed in works by two contemporary fiction writers of the Hispanic world. Coming from different backgrounds and approaches, a transatlantic study of their works is useful in several ways. Both authors are exploring alternative ways of representing masculinity and a transnational identity. They do not simply reject traditional and hypermasculine myths and behaviors, but try to explore their specificity in connection with the greater transnational/global context, either by a focus on colonial legacies, displacement, and marginalization, as in Junot Díaz’s fiction; or by constructing figurations of the novelist-globalization theorist using fiction to elucidate the dynamic and elusive relationships between global capitalism, identity, and media spectacle, as Ferré does. Both emphases —Díaz’s on ethnicity and transculturation, and Ferre’s on spectacle and masculinity conventions—reveal at least two common concerns regarding contemporary representations of postnational masculinities. Their fictional narratives are about spectacular failure, and their approach to the crisis of masculinity and virility is done from the perspective of the perpetrator. The perverse quality of their fictions has to do with the fact that the narrative voice of the sexually abusive, sexist male subject is also the medium for theorization. The theoretical subject is also the corrupted perpetrator. This playful and disturbing perversity is, in different ways, a common signature at the core of Díaz’s and Ferré’s imaginative fictions.

6 E Voluntary Exiles, New Identities, and the Emergence of a Postnational Sensibility in Contemporary Latin American Literature Francisco Brignole

As is widely known, the dictatorships that plagued Latin America in the second half of the twentieth century triggered the exile of thousands of people not only in the Southern Cone (Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile), but also in Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua), and the Hispanic Caribbean (Cuba, Dominican Republic). This situation led to the writing of a myriad of literary works that dealt with the tragic effects of state repression—persecution, torture, incarceration, and exile. Most of these accounts were politically committed narratives that denounced the many abuses of Latin American dictatorships, and that poignantly portrayed the devastating effects of authoritarian regimes on society and the individual. Much like the authors that penned them, the political outcasts that populate these fictions inhabit the space of exile rather unwillingly. They generally express bitter resentment against the regimes that expelled them from their countries of origin, and they long for a prompt return to their homelands. To them exile seems to be almost irremediably charged with a negative connotation, to be nothing less than “terrible to experience . . . the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home” (137), as Edward Said famously wrote in his seminal “Reflections of Exile.” Thinking their exile in Said’s essentialist terms—by equating it with suffering and with a forced expatriation from a unique and privileged

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homeland—, political exiles such as those portrayed in Marta Traba’s En cualquier lugar (1984), Carlos Cerda’s Morir en Berlín (1993), and Mario Benedetti’s Andamios (1997), often fail to adapt to a new place, missing out on the opportunities of the present. They typically conceive of their exile as a temporary, unproductive experience, and live their lives accordingly—their attention split between the nostalgic recuperation of their national past, and a focus on present circumstances at home that might lead to their much awaited return. As John Durham Peters explains, this type of traditional exile discourse has generally been associated with nationalistic or ethnic movements, and with the recuperation of essential, primordial identities, as opposed to other doctrines of social identity construction (31). The oftentimes chauvinistic pining for home of many political exiles, coupled with their predilection for selective interactions with other compatriots abroad, has indeed tended to ghettoize the space of exile, and limited what could otherwise prove to be fruitful cultural exchanges between exiles and immigrants coming from different national origins. To Salman Rushdie, this “ghetto mentality” represents the most dangerous of all mistakes made by traditional exiles, because it entails both their forgetting “that there is a world beyond the community to which [they] belong,” and also their unwarranted confinement “within narrowly defined cultural frontiers” (19). Despite the nationalistic bent evident in traditional narratives of political exile, Latin American authors continue to make use of the always versatile aesthetics of exile, pointing it in new directions. Some authors, such as José Leandro Urbina, María Teresa Andruetto, and Horacio Castellanos Moya, have started to represent issues related to state repression and forced expatriation from a skeptical perspective, demystifying the romanticized figures of leftist revolutionaries and political exiles, highlighting shared responsibilities in the ideological conflicts of the past, and cautioning about the urgent need to seek new literary horizons. Other writers, such as the three I analyze in this chapter—Colombian Santiago Gamboa, Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa, and Bolivian Claudio FerrufinoCoqueugniot—have heeded this call for a renovation of literary discourses of exile, by opting to examine the vicissitudes of a new generation of voluntary exiles that has started to replace, in diachronic progression, the traditional—and tired—figures of leftist revolutionaries and external political exiles. Gamboa’s El síndrome de Ulises (2005), Vargas Llosa’s

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Travesuras de la niña mala (2006), and Ferrufino-Coqueugniot’s El exilio voluntario (2009), are only three of a larger genealogy of novels that signal a transition point in the literature of exile and displacement in Latin America. Although revolutionaries and political exiles are not absent in the novels of these and other contemporary writers, they are increasingly portrayed as an anachronism, as mere curiosities seemingly belonging to a distant era. The systematic replacement of these figures by new types of voluntary exiles calls for a reassessment of many of the attributes found in narrow definitions of exile. Unlike the vast majority of political exiles who conceive their stay abroad as a sterile interruption outside the normal course of their lives, the voluntary exiles portrayed by Gamboa, Vargas Llosa, and Ferrufino-Coqueugniot think of exile primarily as a place of self-discovery and growth, in which they hope to materialize a variety of personal and professional dreams. As I intend to demonstrate, these voluntary exiles are no longer fixated on an attempt to recover a lost land or primordial identity, like traditional exiles, nor do they seek to assimilate into the cultural makeup of the new countries they inhabit, like immigrants. Instead, they deliberately remain in an indefinite state of “extranjería” or “foreignness” by adopting an interstitial position, located somewhere between that of the exile and that of the immigrant. From this privileged vantage point as outsiders both at home and abroad, voluntary exiles imagine and define new utopic possibilities of group formation that differ markedly from the chauvinistic identity ties so commonly forged by political exiles. Instead of assigning unwarranted importance to this nation or that, to this ideology or that, or to this ethnicity, or that, the protagonists of these novels project a new postnational sensibility. They emphasize the shared experience of all exiles, draw attention to the futility of borders, and forge productive fraternal bonds with individuals coming from different cultural heritages. The notion of voluntary exile I utilize in this discussion has not been free of controversy in the past. Ángel Rama has used the expression to posit that differentiating between involuntary and voluntary exodus may be a misguided effort. First, as Rama claims, because it oftentimes proves difficult to separate the political and the economic causes that lead to exile, and second, because even contemporary political exile is technically voluntary, since it no longer results from a legal sentence or punishment,

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as was the case in classical, medieval, and even colonial times (336). Liliana Heker adds yet another, more sinister, reason why Rama’s theorization is in principle correct, noting that Latin American military governments were never as thoughtful so as to send warnings or notices to their potential victims. Instead, as the Argentine critic affirms, individuals and families nearly always had to decide, based on very limited information, whether or not to choose the uncertain path of exile (197). Amy Kaminsky, in contrast, does not agree with what she considers to be an insensitive conflation of voluntary and involuntary exile, maintaining that the former expression should not be callously applied to circumstances of state repression, for she considers the notion of voluntary exile to be nothing but an unfortunate “oxymoron that masks the cruelly limited choices imposed on the subject” (9). I agree with Kaminsky that carelessly applying the notion of voluntary exile to periods of state repression can harm the sensibility of many political exiles that had to abandon their families and homelands due to real life threats during repressive regimes. But I also caution against the critical tendency to unduly privilege forced political exile over other types of displacement that have been either routinely omitted or deemed inferior or illegitimate. As Hamid Naficy has stressed, the time has come to strip the concept of exile from its traditional and almost exclusive association with politically motivated expulsions and forced geographic displacements (9). Indeed, exile should no longer have a “necessary association with anguish and loss,” or relate solely to “a painful state of being” (1), as Sophia McClennen’s study of Hispanic exile postulates. Nor should departure “always [be] coerced” (9), or inevitably entail “a moment of trauma” (12), as Amy Kaminsky has theorized in her own work. Not at least at the turn of the millennium, as we enter more fully into democratic times when voluntary exiles are much more common than the political outcasts of recent decades. Cultural critic Néstor García Canclini, in fact, has wondered precisely about the reasons why a continent that has already expelled hundreds of thousands during the last few decades continues to push its inhabitants to seek a better life in other countries—such as the United States—and continents—like Europe and even Oceania (16). Gamboa, Vargas Llosa, and Ferrufino-Coqueugniot attempt to provide some answers to this contemporary conundrum in their respective fictions. By looking into the circumstances and motivations that cause

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a series of alternative, apolitical, voluntary exiles, they provide valuable insights that help explain the continuous exodus and/or permanence abroad of millions of Latin Americans, even in democratic times when individuals are generally no longer subject to the kinds of political or ideological persecution they faced in the sixties, seventies, and early eighties. They thus also help dispel an important distortion commonly found in public discourse: the widespread belief that all exiles are political exiles, an all too convenient myth that belies the fact that the vast majority of Latin Americans that emigrate do so due to the relatively poor quality of life in the region (Brocato 75). It is also worth noting that if Gamboa, Vargas Llosa, and FerrufinoCoqueugniot choose to examine different instances of voluntary exile in their fictions it is because, like their own imaginary characters, they have also lived abroad for extended periods of time without being coerced to do so. They join renowned twentieth-century writers such as Alejo Carpentier, Julio Cortázar, and José Donoso, to name only a few, but are also part of a larger group of contemporary Latin American authors who increasingly write their fictions from a deterritorialized and nomadic point of enunciation, a fact that makes it nearly impossible to pigeonhole them in essentially obsolete national literary canons (Aínsa 76). Among these writers we should cite the likes of Xavier Velasco, Ignacio Padilla, Jorge Volpi, Karla Suárez, Jaime Bayly, Daniel Alarcón, Andrés Neuman, and Clara Obligado, but also Alberto Fuguet, Mayra Santos-Febres, Rodrigo Fresán, Edmundo Paz Soldán, and Leonardo Valencia. All of them write what Sylvia Molloy has called “una escritura desde afuera” [a writing from the outside], to differentiate it from more traditional political exile writing, and to acknowledge the fact that these itinerant writers have the ability to come and go from their home countries with relatively more ease than their banished predecessors. This freedom of movement and association makes a difference in the content and intent of their work, since the narratives of these migrant writers, as Julio Ortega has pointed out, are no longer (exaggerated) accounts of past victimizations, but rather, and as I will soon demonstrate, genuine attempts to forge complex “networks” and engage in rich cultural “negotiations” with the Other (“Literatura” 32). In the works of these authors, national themes and the recuperation of primordial identities increasingly lose their currency, as many critics have pointed out, partly due to the emergence of novels such as Volpi’s

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En busca de Klingsor (1999), Valencia’s El desterrado (2000), or Fresán’s Los jardines de Kensington (2003), which deal entirely with the lives of foreign subjects in foreign lands, and partly because of compelling fictions like Santos-Febres’ Sirena selena vestida de pena (2000), Velasco’s Diablo Guardián (2003), and Fuguet’s Las películas de mi vida (2003), which explore the formation of hybrid, transnational, and/or postnational identities. Gamboa’s El síndrome de Ulises, Vargas Llosa’s Travesuras de la niña mala, and Ferrufino-Coqueugniot’s El exilio voluntario, would count among the latter, since the national identity of the characters is clearly established from the very beginning, and their subjectivities will only undergo transformations as their journeys progress and they encounter other peoples. From the onset too, Gamboa, Vargas Llosa, and FerrufinoCoqueugniot deliberately “mark” their main protagonists strictly as voluntary exiles whose trajectories differ from those of the traditional exile and the immigrant. In El síndrome de Ulises the two Colombian characters, Esteban and Paula, move to Paris for personal reasons and end up staying there indefinitely; in Travesuras de la niña mala, the eponymous character leaves Peru to escape her humble origins, while her compatriot Ricardo Somocurcio also leaves Lima, but simply to fulfill his childhood dream to live in Paris. Finally, in El exilio voluntario, an ordinary Bolivian young man by the name of Carlos Flores makes his way to the United States, essentially to achieve economic independence from his parents in the context of a perennially depressed Bolivian economy. If the voyage of the traditional exile is usually presumed to be circular (Gass 228), and that of the immigrant can be thought of as a linear process leading to straightforward assimilation, in the case of the voluntary exiles portrayed by Gamboa, Vargas Llosa, and Ferrufino-Coqueugniot, return will be constantly and routinely postponed, as Carlos Fuentes theorizes, “no porque algo lo impida sino [precisamente] porque nada lo impide” [not because something impedes it but rather because nothing stands in the way of going back] (73, emphasis in the original). This is precisely what occurs in Gamboa’s novel. Esteban, the main protagonist and first person narrator, aspires to be a novelist and chooses to follow the footsteps of many notable Latin American writers since the nineteenth century, joining an academic program in Latin American literature in the prestigious Université Paris-Sorbonne. Although he informs

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readers that in his first few years of study in the French capital he barely had enough money to survive—“vivíamos mucho peor que los insectos y las ratas” [we lived much worse than insects and rats] (1),—he almost immediately clarifies he has no plans to return to Colombia. Even though there is no real impediment to his return, he affirms: “No iba a regresar a Bogotá. No por nada en especial o por nada muy original, pero así lo había decidido. Esa ciudad era un excelente refugio, pero entre medias estaba mi vida. ¿Qué hacer con ella? Alguien tenía que vivirla o al menos intentarlo, así que debía continuar, y continuar solo, todo lo lejos que fuera posible” [I wasn’t going to go back to Bogota. That city was an excellent refuge, but my life was at stake. What to do with it? Someone had to go ahead and live it, or at least try to, so I had to continue, and go at it alone, as far away (from home) as humanly possible] (12, emphasis added). Beyond the ostensible, deliberate challenge to any presumed obligation to return to his homeland, Esteban’s statement is also innovative in that it challenges at least another commonly held notion prevalent in traditional political exile discourse. Esteban inverts, for instance, theorizations such as that of Jean-Luc Nancy, when the French philosopher, trying to mitigate the pessimism of many exiles, proposes to think the space of exile as an asylum, or refuge; that is, to conceive of it in a more positive light, as a place where the persecuted and banished could “own” their exile and find shelter, solace, and some degree of comfort (38). To Esteban, it is exactly the other way around: home—not exile—constitutes an excellent refuge (12), whereas exile is no longer seen as a place of deportation and temporary shelter outside the normal course of his life; rather, it becomes a second home where he will live his life to the fullest, attempting to realize his most daring professional dream: that of becoming a writer of fiction. Soon afterward, Esteban follows up his implicit critique of an exile discourse that, as Caren Kaplan has outlined, traditionally tends to privilege a unique type of exile “forged in pain, cleansed by a singular glory, and made sacred by its purity” (109), while belittling other variants. Esteban begs to differ, acknowledging the prevalence of new types of displacement, while also making sure that he does not put all exiles in the same category. At one point, in fact, he lucidly shares: “Hay mil motivos para irse del propio país y el mío fue una decisión personal y voluntaria, lo que me situaba entre los privilegiados” [There are a thousand motives to leave one’s own country, and mine was a personal and voluntary decision,

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which put me among the privileged ones] (287). His compatriot, friend, and lover Paula is a case in point that demonstrates both the variability in types of emigration and the inherent mutability and temporariness of any given status, as an exile, an immigrant, a refugee, an expatriate, and so forth (Suvin 114). In one of her first conversations with Esteban, this high-class Colombian shares with him the reasons why she initially went to Paris, claiming that she is neither an exile nor an immigrant, but something else she cannot quite put a name to: “no soy ni exiliada ni inmigrante, ni nada de eso. Vine a París a estudiar francés y a vivir la vida antes de volver a Bogotá y casarme con Gonzalo, mi novio desde hace varios años” [I am neither an exile nor an immigrant, none of that. I came to Paris to study French and to live life before returning to Bogota to marry Gonzalo, my long-time boyfriend] (38). As the novel unfolds, however, the reader learns that her attitude and plans change with the passing of time and the vicissitudes of life. What was only supposed to be a temporary stay, a circular trip that would lead her back to her normal bourgeois life as a wife in Colombia, turns into another experience of indefinite, voluntary exile. In Paula’s case too, it is home, and a traditional life as a married woman that eventually seem confining, and imprisoning, while the space of exile is at all times equated with freedom, enjoyment, and an enriching process of self-discovery. Similar life choices are made by a number of characters in Travesuras de la niña mala and El exilio voluntario. Ricardo Somocurcio is a middle-class Peruvian born in Lima’s affluent bourgeois district of Miraflores. He narrates the entire novel chronologically, soon explaining to readers that he does not quite remember when he started to love Paris. Rather, he claims that he had dreamt to live in the French capital since he had use of reason (15). As he shares a few lines later, this is most likely because his father had made him read Paul Féval, Jules Verne, Alexandre Dumas, and other French authors that aroused his imagination much like the fantastic tales of El Amadís de Gaula once stimulated Don Quijote’s eccentric sensibility. A crucial part of his upbringing, in fact, were “esas novelas [francesas que] me llenaron la cabeza de aventuras y me convencieron de que en Francia la vida era más rica, más alegre, más hermosa y más todo que en cualquier otra parte” [those French novels that filled my head with adventures and convinced me that in France life was richer, happier, prettier and better than anywhere else] (16). Ricardo further develops his

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incipient cosmopolitan sensibility by taking English and French language lessons at a Peruvian-American institute and at an Alliance Française (16). His only other ostensible desire besides learning languages and living in Paris comes in the form of seducing the attractive niña mala or “bad girl” he meets in the memorable summer of Miraflores in 1950. Otilita, for that is the real name of his muse, comes from a very poor neighborhood in Lima, but she also goes by the nickname of “La chilenita” since, hoping to assimilate into the bourgeois fabric of Miraflores, this modern-day trickster pretends to be Chilean (26). Like Ricardo, and despite her poor origins, “La chilenita” exhibits a diasporic imagination from a very early age, confiding that, as an adult, she would love to work as a travel agent, or even better, as a stewardess for a commercial airline, so that she could travel the entire world (17). She never gets to work in those professions, but still manages to leave Peru through a Cuban-sponsored scholarship program for guerrilla fighters, even though she is utterly unmoved by the ideological struggles of the time. As Joaquín Marco has pointed out, her departure represents an escape from her unprivileged origins, as well as a flight from classist Peruvian society as a whole (110). Her agency is stressed by Ricardo, who explains that if the treacherous “bad girl” leaves Peru, she does so on her own terms, before being trapped into a life of poverty by her circumstances: “cuando era una mocosita impúber, tomó la temeraria decisión de salir adelante, haciendo lo que fuera, de dejar de ser Otilita la hija de la cocinera y el constructor de rompeolas, de huir para siempre de esa trampa, cárcel y maldición que era para ella el Perú, y partir lejos, y ser rica” [when she was still a prepubescent brat, she committed herself to stick to a daring decision, to do whatever it would take, to stop being Otilita, the daughter of the female cook and the levee construction worker, to forever flee that trap, prison, and curse, that Peru was to her, to go far and away, and to become rich] (324). As can be gleaned from this passage of Ricardo’s narration, the “bad girl” is another voluntary exile that demystifies the importance of the nation, and that highlights instead the potential opportunities that may lie hidden in a life of exile. If Esteban, from El síndrome de Ulises, had redefined “home” as an all too boring refuge where he risked becoming complacent, the much more humble Otilita considers her native Peru to be nothing but a “prison,” a confining “trap” from which she wants to escape at all costs (324). She thus flees her country of origin and remains in constant

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motion, so as to reinvent herself in exile—as la camarada Arlette in Cuba, Madame Arnoux in Paris, Mrs. Richardson in London, and Kuriko in Tokyo—without being conditioned by restricting ties to family, class, and ethnicity. Lastly, Carlos Flores, protagonist of El exilio voluntario, comes from a middle-class Bolivian family and has completed his university studies, but is only able to find lowly paid, menial jobs, such his penultimate one in Bolivia, “en la Marmolera Urkupiña S.A., haciendo mosaicos, barriendo el piso, picando el mármol en el baldío del frente, comiendo pan y banana, como buen trabajador, y . . . mi salario apenas pasaba los ocho dólares mensuales” [in the marble mason’s shop Urkupiña S.A. making mosaic, sweeping the floor, chipping marble in the empty lot across the street, eating bread and banana, like a good worker, and all with a salary still below US$ 8 per month] (96). Tired of depending on his mother and family, he books a plane ticket to the United States, where he arrives in 1989, in his early twenties, and with only four-hundred dollars in cash. By the time he begins his first-person narration at age forty-two, he has a wife and two daughters, and is comfortably settled in an unnamed American city. Despite his relatively good fortune living in a new country, in the beginning of his account Carlos initially questions what he calls “mi exilio voluntario y mal pensado” [my poorly conceived voluntary exile] (66). He even seems to identify with pessimistic accounts of exile, imagining, most notably, an epistle sent to him by Cuban exiled writer Reinaldo Arenas: “Reinaldo me escribe desde la cárcel de su cuerpo: Carlos, en el exilio uno no es más que un fantasma, una sombra de alguien que nunca llega a alcanzar su completa realidad; yo no existo desde que llegué al exilio; desde entonces comencé a huir de mí mismo” [Reinaldo writes to me from the prison of his body: Carlos, in exile one is but a ghost, the shadow of someone who never quite coalesces into his complete self; I do not exist since I arrived in exile; since then I have started to flee from my own self] (67, emphasis in the original). Yet as his narration progresses, readers soon realize that if Carlos has one overarching purpose it is precisely to correct his initial views, and to provide a more nuanced reflection about life in exile and American society in general. While it is true that at first he spends most of his time contrasting the warring, violent, and materialistic culture of the United States with a romanticized version of his native Bolivia, in the second half of the novel he transcends his negativity and becomes

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aware of the many advantages of living life in Latin America’s northern neighbor. With the hindsight that only the passing of time can provide, he realizes that despite the country’s undeniable flaws, it was only in the United States that he was finally able to break his tie of dependency to his mother, that only in exile he managed to become self-sufficient and independent. These overriding factors help him overcome the dire effects of loneliness and moral lassitude, allowing him to finally reach a state of happiness: “Aquí estoy solo y nadie me regala nada, y si he de devorar devoro, y matar mato y el mutismo de mi rostro refleja un cansancio moral. Sin embargo, estoy feliz” [I am alone and no one gives me anything here, and if I must devour, I devour, and if I must kill, I kill, and my muted face reflects a degree of moral tiredness. Despite it all, however, I am happy] (207). As I have shown thus far, voluntary exiles are normally forward-looking individuals who do not contemplate a return to their lands of origin. This may be the main reason why their narratives do not rely on the type of nostalgia (from nostos—return home, and algia—longing) most prevalent in traditional exile novels. By this I mean a type of nostalgia that Svetlana Boym has called “restorative nostalgia,” as in its most common form this feeling routinely seeks to reconstruct a static image of the home country and of the past (xviii). By obsessively fixing the attention of exiles on a return to an almost mythic “true home,” this type of nostalgia prevents exiles from making new connections and from learning enough about the world in order to successfully inhabit new environments. My analysis of the novels by Gamboa, Vargas Llosa, and Ferrufino-Coqueugniot, however, reveals that the voluntary exiles they portray hardly ever rely on restorative nostalgia; rather, they either exhibit little to no nostalgic inclinations, or, more often, they engage in what Boym terms “reflective nostalgia,” that is, a type of nostalgia that “explores ways of inhabiting many places at once and [of] imagining different time zones” (xvii). Esteban and Paula, from El síndrome de Ulises, are among the former, since both live almost strictly in the present and are not particularly nostalgic about their Colombian past. After all, they have come to Paris in order to experience it, to learn new things, and to meet new people, seeking instant gratification to their senses in almost all they do. The two young Colombians do not hope to reconnect with a true sense of self by means of a nostalgic recollection of their past, since they actually hope to find

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or craft a new identity in their Parisian exile, as does Paula, exploring her sexuality, experimenting with drugs, attending museums, and reading profusely in her apartment. She eventually finds her true sense of self, and from that moment onward she prefers to no longer think about her past identity in Colombia, as she demonstrates when she tells Esteban: “Mi verdadero nombre no importa o, mejor, prefiero no decírtelo, ni a ti ni a nadie, pues aquí en París me volví a bautizar” [My true name does not matter, or better yet, I prefer not to share it with you or anyone else, since here in Paris I was baptized again] (38). The same can be said of the “bad girl,” who exhibits no nostalgia throughout the novel, preferring instead to sever all physical and psychological ties to her native land. While in exile, she soon chooses to purge Peru from her memory, “como una masa de malos recuerdos (¿pobreza, racismo, discriminación, postergación, frustraciones múltiples?)” [like a mass of bad memories (poverty, racism, discrimination, deferment, multiple frustrations?)] (85). Ricardo Somocurcio and Carlos Flores, on the other hand, engage mostly in reflective nostalgia, by kindly remembering and embracing the many homes in different time zones they inhabited in the past. They do not privilege the recuperation of a primordial unitary root, as traditional exiles tend to do, but rather embrace the routes they have traveled, accumulating nostalgias and memories from each of the many places that helped shape and construct their present identities (Storey 117). As Vargas Llosa’s fictional counterpart, Ricardo’s entire narration—the novel itself—represents the author’s own fictionalized collection of nostalgias for the many stops in his nomadic life. He reminisces about the Miraflores of the fifties he used to frequent on weekends during his adolescence, certainly, but also remembers his subsequent homes: the turbulent Paris of the sixties, the iconoclastic London of the seventies, and the effervescent and cosmopolitan Madrid of the eighties, without privileging one or the other. Much like Ricardo, Carlos Flores, from El exilio voluntario, also acknowledges that his hometown in Bolivia is important to him, but he underscores that so are “Recife, Alexandria, Redwood City, Columbus, La Baie, Poitiers, Cali, Los Ángeles, New York, Arlington, Filadelfia, Portchester, [and] Munich . . . nombres de exilio” [Recife, Alexandria, Redwood City, Columbus, La Baie, Poitiers, Cali, Los Angeles, New York, Arlington, Philadelphia, Portchester, [and] Munich . . . names of exile] (155). He is particularly fond of his time spent in Alexandria, and Washington,

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DC, North American cities he holds dear in his heart because he inhabited them in the earliest, most memorable stages of his exile. In numerous passages of his account, Carlos fondly evokes his time in each of these cities, as when he tells readers that “Alexandria pesa en la vida tanto como Cochabamba” [Alexandria weighs as much in life as Cochabamba] (149), or when he points out that despite the many difficulties he had to endure, he nevertheless holds very good memories of his first few years in DC’s historic Tenleytown neighborhood: “me queda nostalgia de las calles de Tenleytown, del otoño, del domingo, día de descanso, de comprarme en Safeway una leche chocolatada, pedazos de queque, e ir a comerlos al extremo de la ciudad, pasto y graffitis en las paredes y ni un alma” [I am still nostalgic about the streets of Tenleytown, of the fall, of each Sunday, a day to rest, of buying chocolate milk and muffins in Safeway, to later go eat them in the outskirts of the city, grass and graffiti on the walls, and not a soul around me] (83). The lack of nostalgia for their home countries exhibited by some of these voluntary exiles, and the prevalence of “reflective nostalgia” over “restorative nostalgia,” in others, contributes to a further weakening of national ties. These bonds were weak to begin with, since voluntary exiles many times seek new horizons precisely because they feel out of place in their home countries (Naficy 3). They thus challenge the legal principles of jus soli (right of the soil) and jus sanguini (right of blood) that determine citizenship status and rights in most contemporary societies, and consider themselves to be essentially foreigners, like Julia Kristeva postulated in Strangers to Ourselves, “from nowhere, from everywhere, citizen[s] of the world, cosmopolitan” (30). Indeed, despite the many years spent abroad, and despite the fact that some of them marry, have kids, and become naturalized citizens of their host societies, the voluntary exiles described in the novels of Gamboa, Vargas Llosa, and FerrufinoCoqueugniot are not able to or, better yet, do not even want to, assimilate into the cultural matrix of the nations they choose to inhabit. Carlos Flores appears to be the one to come closer to assimilation. After all, he gets married and has two daughters on foreign soil, and toward the end of the novel he even finds himself in an immigration interview in order to obtain his American citizenship. However, Carlos is quick to point out that his signing of immigration documents does not mean anything at all to him, scornfully noting that “la patria es un papel, nada

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más . . . y papeles hay muchos, hasta papel higiénico” [the nation is a piece of paper, nothing else . . . and there are many types of paper, even toilet paper] (221). Eschatological commentary related to his new citizen status continues when the Bolivian underscores that he is not at all like the other naïve, would-be immigrants also present in the immigration office, whom he disdainfully calls “Los otros, los nuevos norteamericanos, mejicanos, rusos, indios y pakistaníes [que] no daban más de espíritu de fiesta, era el idilio de la historia para ellos; un bosnio lloraba, ojalá mis padres vieran este logro. Miro mi reloj, a qué hora terminará esta cagada” [The others, the new North Americans, Mexicans, Russians, Indians, Pakistanis, who could not stop celebrating, it was historic and idyllic for them; a Bosnian cried, I wish my parents saw this achievement. I look at my watch, at what time will this bullshit end] (221). Thus, despite his new legal status as an American citizen, Carlos prefers to define himself as a postnational voluntary exile who can see the entire world—home included—as if it were foreign land. From this liminal position as an outsider both in Bolivia and the United States, he gains what sociologist Georg Simmel once theorized as a “distinctively ‘objective attitude,’ an attitude that does not signify mere detachment and nonparticipation, but is a distinct structure composed of remoteness and nearness, indifference and involvement” (145). Endowed with these newly acquired doses of awareness and objectivity, Carlos’ narration is punctuated by frequent asides filled with acute social and political criticism, not only toward the United States at large —George W. Bush and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan being his favorite targets—but also toward “las taras nacionales” [the national defects] of his compatriots, both residing in Bolivia and abroad (214). Ricardo Somocurcio and his friend Salomón Toledano are also worthy of detailed examination due to their frequent identification with the figure of the foreigner, a subjectivity they seem to find increasingly appealing, particularly in the context of a world that nowadays “is being widened more than ever, that is more than ever heterogeneous beneath its apparent scientific and media-inspired unity” (Kristeva 104). Proficient in at least two languages, Ricardo and Salomón work in translation and interpreting, professions that are in accord with their status as foreigners, since to them being interpreters is just “otra manera de ser siempre un extranjero, de estar sin estar, de ser pero no ser” [another way of always being a foreigner, of being without being] (175). From both a cultural and a

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linguistic standpoint, too, the act of translation, as Gustavo Pérez-Firmat has argued, “is not a homing device,” but rather a “distancing mechanism,” since in translation “any linguistic or cultural displacement necessarily entails some mutilation of the original” (3). This mechanism of cultural translation plays a key role in the lives of Ricardo and Salomón, who, after years of exile become aware of personal identities they have continually translated and read anew, changing or mutilating them to the point that they eventually conclude they would no longer be able to feel at home in any one country: “nos habíamos dicho que nunca podríamos volver a vivir en nuestros países, pues yo en el Perú y él en Turquía nos hallaríamos seguramente más extranjeros que en Francia, donde, sin embargo, nos sentíamos también forasteros. Y ambos éramos muy conscientes de que nunca nos integraríamos al país en el que habíamos elegido vivir y que nos había concedido incluso un pasaporte” [We had told each other that we would never be able to live in our countries, because I in Peru and he in Turkey would find ourselves surely more foreign than in France, where, however, we also felt like outsiders. And we were both very aware that we would never integrate into the country in which we had chosen to live and which had even granted us a passport] (175). If Gamboa, Vargas Llosa, and Ferrufino-Coqueugniot elaborate on the subject position of the foreigner, it is because they see it as an important ingredient to their ultimate purpose, which is to outline utopic visions of a postnational world. The literary imagination of these three Latin American authors becomes a potential catalyst for change, since their fictions largely function as laboratories in which alternative prescriptions for individual and collective identity are systematically envisioned and played out. Symbolically and physically detached from nation, home, and family, the voluntary exiles who see themselves as foreigners are able to forge new connections with other itinerant subjects, not based on national affiliation or a sense of belonging to a particular territory, but rather on personal affinities or other circumstances, such as their shared experiences of exile and displacement. The importance of this ability to make active connections on the go, while at the same time transcending rooted identities, is emphasized by characters such as Víctor, one of Esteban’s friends in El síndrome de Ulises, when he perspicaciously reminds the young Colombian that “las raíces de los hombres son los pies y los pies se mueven, la vida es dinámica, movimiento y velocidad. Lo que define a un organismo

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es el poder de desplazarse; las conexiones activas en oposición a la suprema quietud” [the roots of man are its feet and feet move, life is dynamic, movement and speed. What defines an organism is his ability to move about; active connections as opposed to supreme stillness] (165). Gamboa, Vargas Llosa, and Ferrufino-Coqueugniot craft a postnational imaginary in their novels both through the transnational itineraries of some of their characters and through their forging of fraternal and sexual bonds with the Other in the space of increasingly cosmopolitan cities. The nomadic nature of these voluntary exiles is best exemplified in Travesuras de la niña mala, where the female protagonist and Ricardo take readers along on an excursion of global dimensions that passes through cities as diverse as Lima, Havana, Paris, London, Madrid, and Tokyo. Adding to this list, when “the bad girl” finds her second husband in London she follows Mr. Richardson, a horse race aficionado, to new destinations as remote and exotic—from a Latin American perspective—as the United Arab Emirates, Korea, Taiwan, or Thailand. As they move about in space and time, Ricardo and “the bad girl” also meet other itinerant subjects, such as Paul, an international guerrilla fighter and promoter of communism, and Salomón, a translator and interpreter, two peculiar characters that epitomize the new postnational sensibility favored by the author. Both are polyglots who speak several languages and travel the world. Paul, a Cuban by birth, always seems to be coming back to Paris from different places, from Peking, Cairo, Havana, Pyongyang or Hanoi, while Salomón, who speaks Turkish, Arabic, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and German, has also lived in three continents: the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Due to their transnational experiences, Ricardo points out, Paul “se había convertido en un personaje internacional” [had become an international figure or character] (46), while Salomón’s insatiable interest in travel and languages had eventually rendered him the ultimate “ciudadano del mundo” [world citizen] (174). Although the characters of all three novels forge transnational ties while traveling and living outside of their native countries, Vargas Llosa, Gamboa, and Ferrufino-Coqueugniot also suggest that, in the twentyfirst century, one need not leave home in order to come into direct contact with the world, at least if home happens to be a world capital such as Washington, DC, Madrid, or Paris. As Homi Bhabha theorizes, these western metropolitan cities have increasingly become points of

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confluence of east and west, north and south, places where the migrants, the minorities, and the diasporic meet and collide, all while crafting new hybrid identities that challenge commonplace homogeneous narratives of the national (5–6). These demographic and cultural changes can be discerned in the multicultural experiences of Carlos Flores in Washington, DC, where he befriends foreigners and American minorities alike, and where he routinely gratifies his senses with the city’s wide array of cosmopolitan cultural and culinary offerings. These sweeping changes are also conspicuous in the Madrid depicted in Travesuras de la niña mala. When Ricardo settles for some time in Lavapiés, a traditional or castizo neighborhood of the Spanish capital, he finds that it has been utterly transformed by a massive influx of migrants coming from every corner of the world. Despite the efforts by locals to preserve some semblance of their Spanish culture and customs, Ricardo points out that Lavapiés has suddenly become “una Babilonia en la que convivían mercaderes chinos y paquistaníes, lavanderías y tiendas hindúes, saloncitos de té marroquíes, bares repletos de sudamericanos, narcos colombianos y africanos y, por doquier, formando grupos en los zaguanes y esquinas, cantidad de rumanos, yugoslavos, moldavos, dominicanos, ecuatorianos, rusos y asiáticos” [a Babylon cohabited by Chinese and Pakistani merchants, laundromats, and Hindu stores, Moroccan tea houses, bars full of South Americans, Colombian drug dealers, Africans and, forming groups all over the place in corners and hallways, lots of Romanians, Yugoslavians, Moldavians, Dominicans, Ecuadorians, Russians and Asians] (369–70). Similarly, in Gamboa’s Paris, Esteban and Paula befriend a few fellow Colombians and Latin Americans, but also a vast number of people coming from countries as diverse as Morocco, North Korea, France, Poland, Romania, Somalia, Senegal, Moldavia, Iran, and Iraq. These eclectic exiles and migrants coalesce into a fraternal postnational community where nearly everyone displays a keen interest in learning about the Other, and thus together they concomitantly help inscribe the City of Light in a larger global imaginary. Last, the cosmopolitan characters in these novels have frequent sexual encounters with each other. Their sexual relationships are privileged, even foundational, since they serve as an extended metaphor that suggests the advent of a new generation marked by intercultural hybridity. Much like “the bad girl,” who has lovers or husbands in different countries, Carlos Flores engages in intercourse with a vast catalogue of women from

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various parts of the globe. Although at the moment of enunciation he has already settled down as a married man, he often recalls his sexual exploits, problematically associating women with the different stops in his transnational itinerary—“me guardo Polonia, España, Francia, e Inglaterra. Me callo la mayoría de mis mujeres de Italia, Suiza y Portugal” [I keep Poland, Spain, France, and England to myself. I do not say a word about the majority of my women in Italy, Switzerland and Portugal] (103). It is in Gamboa’s novel, however, that the prevalence of sexual bonding reaches orgasmic heights. Esteban goes to bed with eclectic partners from different parts of the globe, and even participates in a few memorable international orgies, such as those that take place in Paula’s and Saskia’s apartments. In El síndrome de Ulises, sexual relationships are further imbued with pedagogical properties, as they seem to provide a direct window into the unknown aspects of other cultures. Esteban’s main tutor in these “worldly” matters is his sexually seasoned friend Paula, whom he refers to as “la princesa demente que me da placer y me enseña cosas, me enseña el mundo y cómo son los demás” [the delusional princess that gives me pleasure and teaches me things, teaches me the world and how other people are] (119). Yet the young Colombian also appears to learn about the world from other women such as Yuglú, a young Muslim from whom Esteban hopes to learn about Islam, in a rather unusual and sensual manner: “por ese orificio voy a entrar al Islam, esa hendidura en la carne de Yuglú me va a bautizar en una nueva fe” [through that orifice I will enter Islam, that fissure in Yuglu’s flesh will baptize me in a new faith] (112). By means of these strategies Esteban learns quickly, soon displaying his newly acquired worldliness and cosmopolitanism in a series of creative similes that continue to systematically point readers’ attention to a larger global imaginary, as when he talks, for example, of “los labios oscuros como el roast beef o los atardeceres de Ispahán” [the lips, dark as roast beef or sunsets in Ispahan] of one of his sexual partners, or when he adds that she moved in bed much like a “faluja del Nilo mecida por el oleaje de barcos más grandes” [faluja in the Nile river, swayed by the swell caused by larger boats] (188). Compelling as they are, the postnational visions, and the overall sense of worldliness and cosmopolitanism conveyed by the novels of Gamboa, Vargas Llosa, and Ferrufino-Conqueugniot should not immediately lead to an unwarranted sense of optimism. After all, while these

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three novels accurately reflect the increasing prevalence of cultural mixing and displacement in contemporary societies, they also frequently remind readers that a truly postnational era lies strictly in the future, as does Gamboa’s narrator, for example, when he daydreams about the possibility that one day someone may recall, in disbelief, the absurd, heavily patrolled national borders that still today prevent the free flow of peoples (344). While the paradigm of the national has become obsolete to describe many contemporary phenomena, this does not mean that modern nations have lost their clout, or that a postnational world will inevitably prevail in the years to come. Utopic visions of a seemingly impending postnational future have been recurrent in the last few decades, particularly with the changes brought about by the advent of globalization. Yet, as Azade Seyhan explains, postnational formations have, for a variety of complex reasons, time and again failed to materialize (13). This may not be such a bad thing, however, for without appropriate safeguards it is not yet clear that a postnational future is even desirable. While a postnational world certainly presupposes the espousal of worthy ideals—such as the increased equality and fraternity among human beings promoted by Gamboa, Vargas Llosa, and Ferrufino-Coqueugniot—it can also have a dark side, particularly if the new status quo is reached through a one-sizefits-all brand of globalism that erases cultural differences and/or hinders the ability of weaker countries to invoke national sovereignty as a last resort to resist the unscrupulous charges of global capitalism.

III E Postnational Perspectives and New World Literatures

7 E The Classical Tradition of Cosmopolitan “Spiritual Exercises” in Jorge Luis Borges and Latin American Postnational Literature Bernat Castany Prado Translated by Neil D. Anderson Libre de la metáfora y del mito labra un arduo cristal: el infinito mapa de Aquel que es todas Sus estrellas. Jorge Luis Borges, “Spinoza,” El otro, el mismo.

Exercise yourself in these and kindred precepts day and night, both by yourself and with him who is like to you; then never, either in waking or in dream, will you be disturbed, but will live as a god among people. For people lose all appearance of mortality by living in the midst of immortal blessings. Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus

The postnational turn that characterizes current Latin American literature cannot be attributed solely to the social, political, or cultural changes that make up what we call “globalization.” Globalization as a subjective phenomenon has always existed; for example, the Hellenic and Roman empires and the conquest of America were experienced in their time in much the same way we now experience late-capitalist globalization, that is, as a passage from a closed world (soothing or claustrophobic) to an infinite one (dizzying or liberating). Cosmopolitanism as a philosophical doctrine has existed without interruption since its inception by Diogenes, more than 2,400 years ago. The goal of this chapter is to show the ways in which the cosmopolitan tradition, from Diogenes to Nietzsche, by way of Spinoza, Goethe,

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Emerson, and Whitman, are taken up by Borges, ultimately feeding into contemporary Latin American postnational literature. While recent works such as Habermas (2001), Appiah (2005, 2006), and Singer (2002), have made significant contributions to our understanding of cosmopolitanism, these works do not take into account the classical tradition of cosmopolitan “spiritual exercises,” which are, as I will show in the pages that follow, a key model for postnational literature in its project of transforming the intuitions of cosmopolitan philosophy into literature.1 The case of Borges is different; his work constitutes not only a veritable arsenal of ideas and references, but also of cosmopolitan literary practices; so much so that he could be considered a direct or indirect precursor to all of contemporary postnational literature: Julio Cortázar, Roberto Bolaño, Jorge Volpi, Fernando Iwasaki, and Horacio Castellanos Moya, among many others.2 To begin, let us note the common error of confusing cosmopolitanism with mere internationalism. At its origin, cosmopolitanism proposed a form of universalism or, as Seneca put it in his Letters to Lucilius, a life in which the soul “penetrates the whole world and directs its contemplating gaze upon all its Phenomena” (LXVI, § 6). Contrary to what one might surmise given the scant attention it receives in textbooks and in university curricula, cosmopolitan philosophy is not a marginal current in the history of Western thought. Rather, it was in fact a principal concern of classical sages and philosophers and later of modern Christian thinkers, linked to the philosophical motifs of the “cosmic gaze” and the “grandeur of the soul.” Proof of this can be found in the large number of “spiritual practices” that sought to awaken in disciples of the various schools of classical philosophy a sense of the cosmos and of totality. With the goal of deepening our understanding of Borges’s cosmopolitanism, this chapter studies both the classical tradition of “spiritual exercise” within Western culture and the channels through which Borges assimilated them, whether directly or indirectly. In this way, I hope to provide insight into cosmopolitanism, both in general and as elaborated by Borges, highlighting its oft-ignored historical depth and its conceptual texture and variation. Additionally, the study of spiritual practices in general and of cosmopolitan spiritual practices in particular shows the ways in which the cosmopolitan tradition that Borges recovered served

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to supply ideas, motifs, and references to the new postnational paradigm and, perhaps more importantly given the literary nature of the works, to exemplify a whole series of literary-philosophical practices. Ancient philosophers distinguished philosophy in the strict sense, whose goal was the assimilation of a philosophical rule for living, from philosophical discourse, which was principally theoretical in nature. This discourse was never considered an end in itself, but rather a means for carrying out philosophy. One’s conversion and adherence to a life of philosophy was carried out by engaging in a set of practices that we know as “spiritual exercises.”3 These exercises were quite varied, given that each school, and indeed each disciple, invented their own practices or adapted existing ones to meet their specific needs. Even so, it is possible to discern a basic structure that tends to be repeated from one school to the other. In general, philosophical practice involved condensing a rule or norm (kanon) into persuasive maxims and arguments (epilogismoi) which the disciple would learn by memory (mneme), meditate upon (melete), and practice (askesis), all in order to have them always “at hand,” transformed into psychological or existential reflexes that could be accessed quickly and instinctively wheresoever the occasion might arise (procheiron) (Hadot, Ejercicios 27). Memorization of and meditation upon a maxim that condensed a rule required the disciple to imagine specific situations in which the rules might be applied. The deployment of persuasive and rhetorical forms—we might call them literary forms aided this imaginative process—which allowed the doctrine to be metabolized or, as Nietzsche would say, incorporated. This could be done mentally, in dialogue, or in writing; it might be done in the morning thinking of how the rule could be applied that day, or at night thinking about how it had been applied during the day. The training or practice was meant to transcend the realm of mere imagination and involved applying the doctrine to real-world situations. Such training might be intellectual (attending lessons given by a master, exegesis of philosophical texts, Socratic dialogue, control of the passions and of internal discourse, etc.); or it might be existential in nature (climbing to high places, observing storms, practicing friendship, keeping to a specific dietary regimen, studying music, nature, astronomy, etc.). Many of these practices have not been recorded, whether because of their everyday, individual nature or because they had been coopted

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by Christianity and subsequently rejected by modern philosophy. That notwithstanding, we do have indirect evidence of them, thanks to doxastic and anecdotal works such as “Lives of Eminent Philosophers” by Diogenes Laërtius. Traces of these practices are also found in many tracts by Plutarch (On Controlling Anger, On Tranquility of Mind, On Envy and Hate), Seneca (On Anger, On Leisure) and by Marcus Aurelius (Meditations), as well as in Lucretius’s De rerum natura and “The Dream of Scipio,” included in book VI of Cicero’s De republica. This list of authors is important in that it shows that “spiritual exercises” are one of the principal points of contact between philosophy and literature. Philosophy needs the persuasive and catalytic force of literature in order to be metabolized or incorporated; literature finds in philosophical doctrine and practice a means of transcending the realm of the merely aesthetic and thus a means of changing or affecting life. The study of the ways in which “spiritual exercises” have endured in or been recovered by modern literature is an unfinished task, although the topic has recent garnered more attention from scholars of philosophy and literature. Notable in this regard is Pierre Hadot’s book No te olvides de vivir. Goethe y la tradición de los ejercicios espirituales (2010), as are certain references in Las sabidurías de la antigüedad. Contrahistoria de la filosofía by Michel Onfray (2008), and The Therapy of Desire by Martha Nussbaum (2009). The tradition of “spiritual exercise” entered Borges’s oeuvre and, as the author is central in the canon, it served to ensure the dissemination of this tradition across much of contemporary literature and thought. Leaving aside Borges’s knowledge of the main classical works relevant to the tradition of “spiritual exercise”—Epicurus, Lucretius, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius and Sextus Empiricus—the fact is that in large measure, the authors who most influenced Borges—Erasmus, Montaigne, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Dostoyevsky, Emerson, Whitman, Nietzsche, and Macedonio Fernández—sought to recover philosophy’s practical dimensions. Take for example Montaigne, whose Essais can be seen as exercises in skepticism (controlling one’s desire for certainty and practicing epistemological humility), in cynicism (practicing shamelessness or anaideia, candidness and freedom of speech, parrhesia), in stoicism (control over internal discourse with the goal of eliminating the chimera and anxieties that beset us), and of Epicureanism (attachment to the moment, management of the balance between pleasure and discomfort, overcoming fears).4

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Spinoza, for his part, also reflected the tradition of “spiritual exercise” in his Ethics and, in spite of his abstruse style, left a notable mark on Borges’s thought. We must also note Spinoza’s influence on Goethe, a writer who played a decisive role in the modern literary recovery of the tradition of “spiritual exercise” and whom Borges praised for his rejection of romanticism and his movement toward “a serenity that we might call ‘classical’” (Professor 150). Borges was also a self-proclaimed “impassioned reader” (Selected 336) of Schopenhauer, whom Borges would call “la autoridad máxima” [the foremost authority] (Obras IV: 178), and who is closely connected to the tradition of “spiritual exercise.” The practical focus of Schopenhauer’s philosophy is apparent not only in his Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays—“Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life” (I: 311–400), “On Thinking for Oneself ” (II: 491–500) or “On Din and Noise” (II: 642–45—but also in his The World as Will and Representation (IV, § 57, and elsewhere), in which he masterfully demonstrates the practice of the cosmic gaze, a fundamental element in Borges’s work. Indeed, the cosmic gaze is present in the whole of Latin American postnational literature, which seeks to provide a reckoning of the world in its totality, deploying scientific motifs ( Jorge Volpi, Fernando Vallejo), metaphysical motifs ( Julio Cortázar, Ricardo Piglia) and motifs issuing from the realm of science fiction (Roberto Bolaño, Junot Díaz). It is no coincidence, then, that Nietzsche should title the first of his Untimely Meditations “Schopenhauer as Educator.” After all, the author of The Gay Science, which Borges would praise saying that Strindberg “was for a time my god, alongside Nietzsche” (Selected 179), just as he called Zarathustra a “pedagogo feliz” [extraordinary pedagogue] (Obras I: 250), was one of the principal agents in the recovery of the tradition of “spiritual exercise.” This idea will find its echo in Latin American postnational literature, with Cortázar being perhaps its principal heir. Indeed, Cortázar’s project of freeing humanity from an inauthentic existence (“La Gran Costumbre” [Último 66]) and transforming it into an authentic one is not unlike the philosophical life that “spiritual exercises” are meant to bring about. It is fitting, then, that in one of his first articles, Cortázar should indicate his preference for Rimbaud over Mallarmé, arguing that Rimbaud’s problem “no fue un problema poético, sino el de una ambiciosa realización humana, para la cual el Poema, la Obra, debían constituir las llaves” [was never a problem of

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poetics, but rather of an ambition toward human actualization, for which the Poem, the Oeuvre, is merely the means] (“Rimbaud” 17). But even earlier, Miguel Ángel Asturias called El Señor Presidente an “ejercicio espiritual de desangustia” [“spiritual exercise” of relief from anguish] (482) and later Roberto Bolaño would come to see exile as a practice that allows us to “reach our real height, the true height of the self ” (Between 49), a practice that takes place in the very act of writing, given that “all literature carries exile within it, whether the writer has had to pick up and go at the age of twenty or has never left home” (Between 49). Emerson is another key figure for understanding the ways in which Borges was connected to the tradition of “spiritual exercise.” Borges called Emerson “a classical writer and a gentleman,” “instinctively happy,” who “encouraged Whitman and Thoreau” (Selected 417), and reminds us that Nietzsche praised him in glowing terms: “To no other books have I felt as close as to the books of Emerson; I do not have the right to praise them” (Selected 417). These sympathetic attitudes are no surprise; he was one of the main thinkers responsible for the recovery of the tradition of “spiritual exercise,” as one can see from essays such as “Self-Reliance,” “Heroism,” “Character,” and “Nature.” What is more, Borges translated and wrote the prologue for the Jackson Classics edition of Emerson’s Representative Men, a collection of essays that call for the practice of that which is best in humanity: “Montaigne or, the Skeptic,” “Shakespeare or, the Poet,” “Napoleon or, The Man of the World,” “Goethe or, the Writer,” “Swedenborg or, the Mystic,” and so on.5 As Emerson wrote, the writer’s task is, “first, last, midst, and without end, to honour every truth by use” (166). In Emerson’s wake comes Whitman, whose Specimen Days (1902) is made up of a set of “spiritual exercises” that seek union with nature and with the rest of humanity.6 Reading these notebooks, we can see Leaves of Grass as a poetic transcription of this constant “spiritual exercise.” For Borges, the hero of this American epic, written “under the influence of Emerson, who in some way was always his teacher” (Selected 446), is an attempt to practice in a single life all of the possibilities described by Emerson in Representative Men: “he needed a Hero, but his, symbol of manifold democracy, had of necessity to be innumerable and ubiquitous, like Spinoza’s diffuse God. He came up with a strange creature which we have not yet fully understood and he gave this creature the name Walt Whitman” (Selected 447).

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Macedonio Fernández, one of the Latin American writer-thinkers most associated with “spiritual exercises,” was also of central importance for Borges. Borges compared him to the Buddhists, who stoke their fires with canonical books in order to teach novices that writing kills while the spirit enlivens (Obras IV: 54). Fernández viewed philosophy as an eminently practical endeavor, and was involved in numerous events that remind us of the chreiai of the Ancients, one of the oldest known forms of “spiritual exercise”: “los dichos de Macedonio, imprevisiblemente agregados a la realidad y enriqueciéndola y asombrándola” [Macedonius’s sayings, attached to reality in unpredictable ways, enriching it and astonishing it] (IV: 59). This approach resonates with Borges’s own obsession with the distinction between arguments understood on an intellectual level and arguments absorbed through experience. Quoting Emerson, Borges writes in his prologue to Swedenborg’s Mystical Works that “Arguments convince nobody,” going on to cite Emerson’s disciple Walt Whitman who “creía que los argumentos no persuaden a nadie y que basta enunciar una verdad para que los interlocutores la acepten” [believed that arguments convince no one and that one need only speak a truth in order for one’s interlocutors to accept it] (Obras IV: 145). Likewise, in “The Postulation of Reality,” Borges recalls that “Hume noted once and for all that Berkeley’s arguments do not admit the slightest reply and do not produce the slightest conviction” (Selected 59); in his review of An Encyclopaedia of Pacifism, by Aldous Huxley, he makes the distinction between two types of reasoning: intellectual and pathetic (IV: 312). In “The Doctrine of Cycles,” Borges affirms that the argument for eternal return is the one that begins with “insipid preliminaries” eventually culminating in an “enormous and threatening outcome” (Selected 115). In light of this, it is not surprising that Borges refers to his own writings as “ejercicios” [exercises], “primeras letras” [preliminary writings], which “responden a cuidados” [respond to care] (I: 177). This psychagogic perspective on language will, in the nineteenth century, come together with the Romantic and later Surrealist project of seeking existential freedom through literature. This project, epitomized by Rimbaud, would be of fundamental importance for Julio Cortázar and Roberto Bolaño; equally would Nietzsche’s vitalism, revisited later by authors such as Deleuze and Foucault, two writers who would later come to influence the new postnational paradigm.

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Let us now briefly discuss some of the fundamental elements of philosophical “spiritual exercises,” especially those that provide insight into Borgean cosmopolitanism and the ways in which this cosmopolitanism impacted postnational Latin American literature.7 For simplicity of exposition, I will follow the Ancients in drawing a three-way distinction between: (1) logical, or gnoseologic, “spiritual exercises,” whose objective is to effect a transformation of the ways we perceive or experience the act of knowing; (2) physical or cosmic ones intended to modify the ways in which we understand our relationships with nature and the cosmos; and (3) ethical or existential exercises, meant to teach an artful way of living, one that follows naturally from the previous two types of exercises. Logical “spiritual exercises” were aimed at generating a particular attitude toward knowledge. The Pythagoreans, for example, followed later by the Platonists and Neoplatonists, saw the study of mathematics, music, and astronomy as “spiritual exercises” that tended to purify the soul and allow it to remember the world of essences. The Stoics, for their part, saw the study of logic not as a mere intellectual discipline, but rather as a metaphysical one, a way of understanding Logos, which for them was the organizing force of the cosmos. The Skeptics, on the other hand, developed many tropes or patterns of argumentation—the famous tropes of Aenesidemus and Agrippa—which discouraged any attempt at the attainment of knowledge, in the belief that turning away from knowledge would free us from individual anxiety and collective fanaticism.8 Not surprisingly, given Borges’s skepticism, we see in his work a kind of ascetic practice made up of various “spiritual exercises” with the objective to free the subject from pretensions of knowledge. One of these exercises involves the contemplation of human ignorance through the exposition of and commentary upon out-dated scientific, theological, and metaphysical doctrines, as well as of various types of prejudices and thought biases. This practice is aimed at deepening our sense of humility regarding our own knowledge by making us aware of how easily today’s certainties become tomorrow’s blunders. Some examples of this in Borges include his reflections on hell, a concept which he writes “has become, over the years, a wearisome speculation” (Obras I: 235); his examination of Zeno’s paradoxes, which shows that the concept of infinity not only leads to a “multiplication of chimera” (Labyrinths 205), but also that its refutation leads one to “become contaminated with unreality” (Labyrinths 206); and his

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summation of an obsolete cosmogony such as that of Basilides (“A Defense of Basilides The False” [Selected 65]). In this way, Borges’s work resembles Flaubert’s Bouvard et Pécuchet, a novel conceived by its author as “an epic of human idiocy” (in Selected 386). But alongside these two Flaubertian characters, who develop the “lamentable faculty . . . of seeing stupidity and no longer being able to tolerate it” (in Selected 387), Borges is less interested in inspiring indignation than he is in evoking a feeling of liberation that arises when we cast off the cognitive baggage with which we burden ourselves. Since our focus here lies upon “spiritual exercises” with a physical component, for the moment, let it suffice to mention that these practices were considered means by which initiates might assimilate their school of philosophy’s concept of the cosmos and the role of humanity within it. Through the memorization of physical doctrine, the observation of celestial or meteorological phenomena, climbing to high places, imagining traveling to the Moon, the Sun, or beyond, or reading texts that awoke in the reader a sense of the sublime, the philosopher came to inhabit the physical doctrine of his school, as well as its ethical and political corollaries. Finally, ethical “spiritual exercises” sought to put into practice a given philosophical school’s rules for living. For example, the Stoics practiced the praemeditatio malorum (an imagining of possible future disgraces or misfortunes), self-vigilance (prosoche), and self-control (enkrateia). The Epicureans, by contrast, rather than contemplating possible ills, insisted on reliving past pleasures and enjoying present ones, on living in the present moment and turning away from the nostalgia and regrets of the past, as well as the fears and desires of the future. For his part, Borges on many occasions cites Lucretius and his project of attempting to free humanity from the fears that keep us from being happy. In “Pascal,” for example, he reminds us that Lucretius’s goal was to “free us from the fear of the gods” (Other Inquisitions 93), and in his talk entitled “Immortality,” he makes reference to one of the arguments that Lucretius adduces: as we do not fear the infinite past that preceded our birth, we should not fear the infinite future that will follow our death (Selected 483–91).9 The influence of these three types of “spiritual exercises” is fundamental not only to Borges’s essays, but to his narrative and poetry as well. Indeed, many of Borges’s stories can be seen as the development of these

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exercises in the form of narrative. Moreover, if one reads his essays and his stories in parallel, it becomes clear that Borges used many of the exercises previously contemplated in his essays as material for his works of fiction. As for cognitive “spiritual exercises,” we find that a story such as “Funes, His Memory” teaches us to reconcile ourselves with certain limitations of cognition, for example, forgetting and the inability to think in abstractions. The story bids us not only to accept these limitations willingly, but also to enjoy the plurality and diversity contained in the world (Collected 131–37). It becomes clear that a story like “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” is a mental exercise that shows us how to read with humility by practicing “the technique of deliberate anachronism and fallacious attribution” (Collected 95). Lastly, a story such as “The Theologians” is a “spiritual exercise” meant to counter dogmatism, and is based on the intuition that all fanatics are essentially the same, however different they may claim to be (Collected 201–7). With respect to physical and cosmic “spiritual exercises,” we find stories such as “The Library of Babel,” which is, in part, a fictionalization of the Epicurean, Stoic, and ultimately Nietzschean “spiritual exercise” of eternal return. In “The Immortal,” Borges affirms, following the Epicureans and the Stoics, that “death (or reference to death) makes men precious and pathetic” (Collected 192), and writes in the epilogue to the book The Aleph that the story is an “outline for an ethics of immortality” (Collected 287). In terms of ethical “spiritual exercises,” among Borges’s oeuvre we find stories that seek to free us from fear, for example “The South,” in which Borges seems to imagine his own death in order to learn courage (Collected 174–79). Again, in “The Other Death,” a man who, having deserted his military post, dedicates his life to “correcting that shameful moment of weakness,” retires to Entre Ríos, where, by “dealing with the brushy wilderness and the skittish livestock, he hardened himself,” thus “preparing himself, unwittingly, for the miracle” (Collected 227). Borges’s profound influence on all of twentieth and twenty-first century literature—not only postnational but postmodern in general—must be understood to include his role as a disseminator of others’ work and ideas. Therefore, it is no surprise that an author such as Julio Cortázar should see literature as a “spiritual exercise” geared toward existential transformation, as evidenced by books like Last Round and Around the Day in Eighty Worlds, which are not mere stylistic exercises, but rather

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exercises in a kind of life-style. The Autonauts of the Cosmoroute, which tells a story of a journey toward self-knowledge, or From the Observatory, which includes the three kinds of “spiritual exercises” described here: it attempts to effect in the reader a gnoseologic change, a cosmopolitan shift in perception, and an ethical revolution: “But we’re not talking about searching . . . this is not about mental satisfactions or submitting a not yet colonized nature to another turn of the screw. We’re wondering here about humanity although we’re talking about eels and stars; something that comes from music, amorous battles and seasonal rhythms, something the analogy senses in the sponge, in the lung and the systole, stammers without a tabulated vocabulary in a direction toward another understanding” (49). More recently, we find the work of Roberto Bolaño, whose conception of literature is linked to ideas of redemption, transformation, and praxis, which should not be attributed solely to his intellectual connection to the Romantics, Rimbaud, and the Avant-Garde. By taking a closer look at the presence of physical “spiritual exercises” in the work of Jorge Luis Borges, we can develop a deeper understanding of his cosmopolitanism, as well as his influence on contemporary postnational literature and thought. To begin, let us recall that this type of practice was oriented around incorporating a given physical doctrine into a philosophical way of life. From this perspective, the defense of anthropophagy offered by Cynic philosopher Diogenes of Sinope, for example, should not be understood as simply an attack on social conventions, in this case a dietary prohibition, but also as a way of practicing the sort of Atomist materialism to which that school subscribed (Onfray, Cinismos 136–39).10 Many of the apparently irrelevant anecdotes that we find throughout the history of philosophy can be interpreted as physical “spiritual exercises”: Leucippus watching dust fall through a ray of sunlight, a perfumed Aristippus strolling through the Agora, Lucretius watching a storm from the shore, Spinoza observing a spider devouring a fly, Nietzsche climbing to a mountain top. To the degree that all these philosophical practices were aimed at incorporating a given idea of what the cosmos is and what humanity’s role in it might be, it is more than fitting to call these practices cosmic, or cosmopolitan exercises. Indeed, it is in precisely this sense that Diogenes of Sinope coined the term cosmopolitan: “Asked where he came from, he

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said, ‘I am a citizen of the world’” (Diogenes Laërtius, VI, § 63). It should be pointed out that in Antiquity, the philosopher was considered an atopos, something unclassifiable and out of place (Hadot, La filosofía 154). Firstly, seeing that the Cynics were categorically opposed to civilization, which they identified with nomos and which they proposed to abolish in order to become reintegrated into the physis, the term “citizen of the cosmos” appears to be a contradiction in terms. The term cosmopolitan seems to be a chreiai, that is, a kind of outburst, a provocation, a joke, which in this case consists of joining terms that for the Cynics stood in opposition to one another: “cosmos” or world, which referred to nature or physis, and “polites” or citizen, which referred to the city or polis. Diogenes Laërtius writes “I am a citizen of the cosmos” (VI, § 63), because “the only true commonwealth was, he said, that which is as wide as the universe” (VI, § 72); proof of the playful spirit behind the invention of this term is that Diogenes claimed that money was the “mother-city of all evils” (VI, § 50) and that Crates once quipped “a fellow-citizen of Diogenes” (VI, § 93). However, the expression took on a positive meaning as it came to represent the process of reintegration into nature, which could be rendered metaphorically in terms of cosmic, physical, or natural citizenship. We should not forget, though, that in Antiquity “the cosmos consists of . . . the earth and the heavens” (Moles 110). This form of cosmopolitanism consisted not just in a kind of hypernaturalism, but also in a “universalism” or “cosmicity,” and thus has very little to do with the narrow conception of cosmopolitanism that we have today, a conception limited to the cultural, political, and economic realms. This change of perspective is essential to understanding both the concept of physical or cosmopolitan “spiritual exercises” in general, and Borgean cosmopolitanism in particular. Coming back to a work like Julio Cortázar’s From the Observatory, we find that an evocation of the stars and of the life cycle of eels—which are born on coasts and in the rivers of Western Europe and travel across the Atlantic where they die after laying their eggs, leaving their young to cross back over and enter European rivers during Spring and Fall—allow the author to make us see and accept the cosmos in its totality. In the same way, Roberto Bolaño not only rejects adherence to any sort of national identity, but also fills his works with cosmic images, often inspired by the world of science fiction and by other cosmopolitan authors such as Whitman, Cortázar, and Borges. Bolaño writes in his review of El asco by

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Castellanos Moya, “Herein lies one of the book’s many virtues: nationalists can’t abide it. Its acid humor, like a Buster Keaton movie or a time bomb, threatens the hormonal stability of the idiots who, upon reading it, feel an irresistible urge to string up the author in the town square. Truly, I know of no greater honor for a real writer” (Between 185). Let us turn now to some of the “spiritual exercises” practiced in Antiquity and which endure in the work of Borges, looking first at the Cynics, the first school to advocate the practice of cosmopolitanism. For the Cynics, the first step toward acquiring cosmic citizenship is to be cast off from the polis. Plutarch writes in Contentedness of Mind that Diogenes proclaimed after his banishment “‘not so bad’; for his exile made him turn philosopher” (294). Plutarch returns to this theme in How a Man May be Benefited by His Enemies, in which he affirms that “some have made exile and the loss of money a passage to leisure and philosophy, as did Diogenes and Crates” (203). According to this view, the philosopher must practice from the margins, abroad, in exile, in poverty and in disrepute, from a position of social banishment: “Diogenes said that self-taught poverty was a help toward philosophy, for the things which philosophy attempts to teach by reasoning, poverty forces us to practice” (Stobaeus, IV 32a, 11). It is no surprise, then, that the Cynics should have met in the Cynosarges, a gymnasium for noncitizen metics, which was located outside of the polis, nor that they boasted of being bastards, nor that they praised Dario, a bastard king. Borges, though he did not share the radicalism of the Cynics, was ever aware of the advantages that accrue to thinkers living in the margins. We might recall, for example, that Borges, writing in praise of Victoria Ocampo, affirmed that being born in the Americas leads one to understand that the world is our birthright (Textos 87). In a similar way, postnational writers would see exile as a form of asceticism that grants access to a higher world of writing and thought. Such is the case of Fernando Iwasaki, who, in works like Mi poncho es un kimono flamenco and España, aparta de mí estos premios, has created an entire aesthetic of being out of place, and Roberto Bolaño, who sees a certain kind of exile as an option that allows us to acquire, in existential terms, our “real height” (Between 49).11 Another cosmopolitan “spiritual exercise” practiced by the Cynics is the observation and admiration of animals as beings whose simple, free

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life, fully integrated with nature, makes them authentic cosmopolitans. This type of exercise gave rise to an important philosophical/ literary tradition that George Boas (1966) called theriophily, which includes works such as Plutarch’s Gryllus, Lucian’s The Ass, Montaigne’s “Apology for Raymond Sebond,” Cervantes’s “The Dialogue of the Dogs,” Cyrano de Bergerac’s The Other World, and several works by Schopenhauer. Likewise, Borges often trains his interest in the lives of animals. These observations serve not only to generate a certain skepticism toward what Borges regards as dominant anthropocentric epistemologies, but also to provide examples of ways of living that human kind would do well to follow. In “A History of Eternity,” Borges writes of “the pure corporeal immediacy in which animals live, oblivious to death and memory” (Selected 127); in “The End,” the protagonist affirms that he is “in the habit of living in the present, as animals do” (Collected 168); in “The Wait,” one character’s happiness is described through a comparison with a canine—“he was not a great deal more complex than the dog” (Collected 267); and in “The South” he writes that “man lives in time, in successiveness, while the magical animal lives in the present, in the eternity of the instant” (Collected 176). For his part, Cortázar also shows a keen interest in alternative perceptual modes, including those of animals (From the Observatory, “Axolotl”) and children (“End of the Game,” “After Lunch”). Roberto Bolaño also turns his attention to the perceptiveness of children—beings who are cosmopolitan insofar as their world has not yet undergone conceptual compartmentalization—both in his poetry (“A Stroll through Literature”) and in his fiction (“Mauricio ‘The Eye’ Silva”), elevating childhood to a kind of existential ideal. A third kind of cosmopolitan “spiritual exercise” with connections to the Cynics is that of the “view from on high.” The literary ramifications of this philosophical practice have been brilliantly studied by Hadot, who affirms that these practices offered the Cynics a vantage point from which to observe how small and ridiculous human passions are (No te olvides 60). These exercises might involve physical actions, such as observing daybreak from atop a mountain, or reflections, readings, or writings of an imaginative nature, for example, Lucian’s Icaromenippus, Charon, and How to Write History. This tradition, having originated with the Cynics, went on to influence Epicureans like Lucretius and Ovid; Stoics like Seneca and Marcus Aurelius; Neoplatonists like Pseudo Longinus; and Eclectics

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like Cicero. After the Middle Ages, during which time the tradition survived as part of religious thought and practice, the Humanists recovered it as a literary and intellectual motif. In this regard, chapter 48 of Erasmus’s In Praise of Folly was fundamental,12 followed later by Quevedo’s Dreams, Gracián’s El criticón, Cyrano de Bergerac’s The Other World, and Voltaire’s “Micromegas” and “Zadig.” Seen in the context of these texts, Borges’s work is revealed as part of the ancient philosophical and literary tradition of the “spiritual exercise” known as “view from on high.” Our author is fully aware of this kind of “mirada cósmica” [cosmic viewpoint], which he associates with Spinoza, whose “astronómico desdén” [astronomical disdain] and the “casi divina imparcialidad” [nearly divine impartiality] with which he saw the world, led him to speak of men “como si escribiera de sólidos, de superficies planas y de líneas” [as if he were describing solids, planar surfaces, and lines] (Obras IV: 242). The satirical potential of the Cynical (and Menippean) exercise of the “view from on high” are clear to see in a story like “The Aleph,” which is not only a literary satire of a mediocre poet, but also of humanity in general, whose attempt to live like the gods is always revealed to be in vain. The epigraph that accompanies the story points in this direction, ironically evoking the grandeur that man, that ridiculous being, attributes to himself: “O God!, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a King of infinite space (Hamlet, II, 2)” (Collected 274). The Stoic philosophers inherited the cosmopolitanism of their teachers, the Cynics, and made it more serious and polished, integrating it into a fully developed system of physics. This meant that not only the exercise of “the view from on high” but also many other cosmopolitan exercises that the Stoics later developed took on central importance within Stoic philosophy. In his Letters to Lucilius, Seneca affirmed that one of the characteristics of the sage was his “soul that penetrates the whole world and directs its contemplating gaze upon all its Phenomena” (II: LXVI, §6). Marcus Aurelius, in his Meditations, calls for a distanced, cosmic perspective on that which causes irritation or anguish: “if thou should suddenly be raised up above the earth, and should look down on human things, and observe the variety of them how great it is, and at the same time also should see at a glance how great is the number of beings who dwell all around in the air and the ether” (XII, § 24, 277). The objective was to see from a compound perspective, letting go of points of view that are

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individual and inflected by the passions (Hadot, No te olvides 9). Achieving this kind of vision, which the Ancients called “grandeur of the soul” —partial and ephemeral as it might be—is the objective of many “spiritual exercises.” This Stoic imbrication of cosmopolitanism with ethics is a constant in the work of Borges. Take for example a story such as “The Writing of the God,” included in The Aleph, where after evoking the “mirada cósmica” [cosmic gaze], Borges derives ethical consequences that might have been pronounced by Seneca or Marcus Aurelius: “He who has glimpsed the universe, he who has glimpsed the burning design of the universe, can have no thought for a man, for a man’s trivial joys or calamities, though he himself be that man. He was that man, who no longer matters to him. What does he care about the fate of that other man, what does he care about the other man’s nation, when now he is no one?” (Collected 253–54). On several occasions, Borges identifies this forgetting of the individual in favor of that which is universal as a characteristic of classical writers. Thus, Kafka “era judío, pero la palabra judío no figura, que yo recuerde, en su obra. Ésta es intemporal y tal vez eterna” [he was Jewish, but the word Jewish does not appear, that I can recall, in his works, which are atemporal and perhaps eternal] (IV: 454). This is one of the principal motifs of “The Argentine Writer and Tradition,” in which Borges criticizes Argentine nationalists who “pretend to venerate the capacities of the Argentine mind but wish to limit the poetic exercise of that mind to a few humble local themes, as if we Argentines could only speak of neighborhoods and ranches and not of the universe” (Selected 424). But although Borges takes issue with nationalism, we must not forget that what he advocates is not mere internationalism, but rather a radical cosmopolitanism: “we must believe that the universe is our birthright” (Selected 427). Indeed, the connection between cosmopolitanism and ethics would become one of the pillars of today’s postnational paradigm. Migratory movements, ecological problems, planetary inequality, fundamentalism, the impact of the media on global imaginaries and, in general, globalization, have caused a veritable revolution in our ways of life and in our concept of moral responsibility. It is no longer possible to continue in the belief that our actions are contained by our borders. The most personal act—leaving the faucet running, buying a certain brand of

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sneakers—connects us directly with the rest of the world and opens us up to moral judgment. This change in the moral scope of our acts has not only been the subject of theoretical reflection, in works such as Appiah’s Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, Said’s Reflections on Exile, Habermas’s The Postnational Constellation, Peter Singer’s One World: The Ethics of Globalization and my own Postnational Literature, but also in works of literature such as Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Dream of the Celt, and Ernesto Cardenal’s Cosmic Canticle, to name but a few. Stoic cosmopolitanism was integrated within a doctrine of physics, whose cornerstone was the notion of Logos, a central theme in Borges’s work. Borges calls upon practically every existing formulation of Logos: the Stoic Logos, the Christian Word, Galileo’s book written in mathematical terms, and Carlyle’s book of history. In “On the Cult of Books,” Borges quotes Mallarmé’s statement, “The world exists to end up in a book” (Selected 358); in “El espejo de los enigmas” [The Mirror of Enigmas], he informs us that “Bloy (lo repito) no hizo otra cosa que aplicar a la Creación entera el método que los cabalistas judíos aplicaron a la Escritura” [Bloy (as I have said) did nothing more than apply to the whole of Creation the method that the Jewish Kabbalah applied to Scripture] (Obras II: 100); and, in “Partial Magic in the Quixote,” he reminds us that “in 1833, Carlyle observed that the history of the universe is an infinite sacred book that all men write and read and try to understand, and in which they are also written” (Labyrinths 195–96). The Epicurean tradition was also a fertile territory for the “spiritual exercise” of “the view from on high”; one need look no further than the letter of Epicurus or Lucretius’s De rerum natura. Borges shows that he is perfectly aware of this influence when, in his essay “Pascal,” he praises Lucretius who becomes intoxicated by infinity and uses it in pursuit of his objective of freeing us “from the fear of the gods” (Other Inquisitions 93), while lambasting Pascal, who showed cowardice when faced with infinity and felt lost in his search for God (Obras II: 81). One might also do well to recall Pierre Hadot’s No te olvides de vivir. Goethe y la tradición de los ejercicios espirituales, which studies the ways in which the tradition of “spiritual exercises” in general, and the cosmopolitan exercises of the “view from on high” in particular, entered Goethe’s work and, from there, inhabited all of European Romantic literature (66–83). The works just mentioned

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suggest many direct and indirect routes by which Borges might have come to make these “spiritual exercises” his own. Many are the cosmopolitan “spiritual exercises” related to the exercise of the “view from on high.” We can draw a distinction between “physical” height and distance, like the view from high places; “explanatory” height and distance, like the idea of the infinite causal chain; and temporal height and distance, that is, eternity. In terms of the explanatory mode, let us recall that for the Stoics the argument or motif of the infinite causal chain was essential. Borges also took up this motif in essays such as “El arte narrativo y la magia” [Narrative Art and Magic] (Obras I: 226), in which he affirms that magic is “la coronación o pesadilla de lo causal, no su contradicción” [the coronation or nightmare of the casual, not its contradiction] (I: 230). Borges would revisit this theme in stories such as “The Zahir,” where the narrator contends, along with Tennyson, Schopenhauer, and the Cabbalists that “there is nothing, however humble, that does not imply the history of the world and its infinite concatenation of causes and effects” (Collected 248). In terms of the practice of occupying an elevated or temporally distant vantage point, let us recall that, according to Pierre Hadot, for the Stoics there exists only a finite universe, infinity being found only in time, during the course of which that finite universe repeats infinitely (No te olvides 59). It is precisely in this context that we can understand the idea of “eternal return” as a cosmopolitan “spiritual exercise” that seeks the expansion of the soul “into the infinity of time” (XI, § 1, 252) that Marcus Aurelius recommends. In “The Doctrine of Cycles,” Borges affirms that Nietzsche was but the most recent inventor of the Epicurean-Stoic “spiritual exercise” known as “eternal return” (Obras I: 385), whose objective, as he himself indicates, was not speculative but rather eminently practical: “Nietzsche wanted to be Walt Whitman, he wanted to fall minutely in love with his destiny” (Selected 120), “Nietzsche wanted men who were capable of enduring immortality” (Selected 119). In “Circular Time,” also included in A History of Eternity, Borges takes up the theme once more, demonstrating his knowledge of its classical origins. Thus, Nietzsche, who was but “su más patético inventor o divulgador” [its most extreme proponent] (I: 393), was simply taking up a motif well-known by Marcus Aurelius, who “affirms that any time span—a century, a year, a single night, perhaps the ungraspable present—contains the entirety of history” .

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(Selected 228). Once more, this theme is not only a constant in Borges’s essays, but in his short stories as well. Perhaps the best example is “The Library of Babel,” in which the letters of the alphabet combine infinitely, serving as the atoms (Borges would have been thinking of the Epicurean version of the exercise) that make up all possible past and future worlds. In the early text The Language of the Argentines (1928), Borges described an eternalist epiphany in clearly Nietzschean terms. Remaining faithful to this theme, the author reproduces the page in question at the end of “A History of Eternity”: “I felt as the dead feel, I felt myself to be an abstract observer of the world: an indefinite fear imbued with knowledge that is the greatest clarity of metaphysics. No, I did not believe that I had made my way upstream on the presumptive waters of Time. Rather, I suspected myself to be in possession of the reticent or absent meaning of the inconceivable word eternity” (Selected 138). Another kind of classical cosmopolitan “spiritual exercise” involved the study of natural phenomena, whether biological, meteorological, or astronomical. It is unsurprising, then, that a book like Seneca’s Natural Questions is full of moral reflections in which it is affirmed that what is most important for man is “seeing everything with one’s mind,” as this elevates the spirit “above the threats and promises of fortune” (Natural 27).13 The Epicureans also practiced this type of exercise, as we can see in Epicurus’s letters to Herodotus and Pythocles. For the Epicureans, the goal of the study of physics was “lograr la serenidad de ánimo o ataraxia, liberando al hombre de la superstición, del miedo a los dioses y de la muerte, si bien también se busca la voluptuosidad de sumergirse en el infinito, en lo que no tiene límite” [to achieve serenity of the spirit, or ataraxia, freeing man from superstition, from fear of the gods and of death, though one might also seek the voluptuousness of plunging into the infinite, into that which has no limit] (No te olvides 59). Borges also uses science as a cosmopolitan spiritual exercise; a brief review of his essays and journalistic work reveals Borges as an excellent science writer. Take for example his review of Men of Mathematics by E. T. Bell (Obras IV: 375) or Modes of Thought by A. N. Whitehead; expository texts such as “Un resumen de las doctrinas de Einstein” (IV: 394) or “Time and J. W. Dunne” (Selected 219); and prologues such as those for Historia de los animales de Claudio Eliano (IV: 482) and Mathematics and the Imagination by Edward Kasner and James Newman (IV: 467).

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If Borges saw science as a repository of arguments and perspectives that could potentially become “spiritual exercises,” he viewed science fiction in much the same way. H.G. Wells’s books, for example, are not for Borges just “ejercicios fantásticos” [fantastical exercises]; they are rich texts about which our author writes “Well’s fictions were the first books that I read; perhaps they will be the last” (Selected 516). Borges was a fundamental figure in recycling ideas and motifs from science and science fiction with a view toward creating a cosmopolitan literature. Bolaño would be one of his principle heirs, even though he is more interested in science fiction of the 1970s and 1980s; he finds in science fiction a means of introducing a cosmic distance with respect to his subjects, much in the same way advocated by the Epicureans, the Stoics, Spinoza, Schopenhauer and Borges himself. Take for example, the postapocalyptic tone of the story “Last Evenings on Earth” (2006), the cosmic distance of the narrator of 2666, the motif of space travel that appears in Amulet, and the dystopian tone of Nazi Literature in the Americas.14 Among other writers, Fernando Vallejo employs apocalyptic imagery together with scientific motifs in his The Precipice, and Jorge Volpi makes numerous references to science and mathematics in his novel En busca de Klingsor. Although it has not been the objective of this chapter to perform an exhaustive analysis of the Western classical tradition of “spiritual exercises,” nor to offer a full accounting of the channels through which Borges received that tradition, the arguments I have provided contribute to a fuller understanding of Borges’s cosmopolitanism, which has been so influential in contemporary Western literature in general and in postnational Latin American literature more specifically. To conclude, let me offer four points that summarize the findings of this study. First, we have seen that cosmopolitanism must not be viewed as mere internationalism; instead, we should see it as a form of “physicism” or “cosmicism” related to the classical idea of the “cosmic gaze” and “grandeur of the soul.” Second, cosmopolitanism should not be seen as a marginal philosophical idea, but rather as one of the principle objectives of the sage or philosopher in the Western tradition. Third, cosmopolitanism is not a peripheral concern in Western literature; it is a fundamental literary motif without which it is impossible to understand authors such as Lucian, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Goethe, Emerson, Whitman, and, of course, Borges. Fourth and

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finally, as I argue, the contemporary postnational paradigm is neither the direct result of recent globalization processes, nor can it be understood in solely internationalist terms; rather, it is heir to a millennia-long tradition of philosophical cosmopolitanism. This is especially important in the area of postnational Latin American literature, for which Borges constitutes a decisive influence. Notes 1. Although Martha Nussbaum does address spiritual exercises in her excellent book The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics, she does not address spiritual exercises of a cosmopolitan nature. 2. As I studied in Literatura posnacional (2007), postnational literature is the literary expression of posnationalism, a theory or sensitivity for which nationstates’ organization has become obsolete not only from a political, or economic point of view, but also from a moral, aesthetic, or identity perspective. Postnational literature attempts to account for not so much about a national society but a world society. Yet it would be a mistake to think of postnationalism as cosmopolitanism. Postnationalism is a recent phenomenon because nations are recent as well. Cosmopolitanism, on the other hand, is an intellectual millenary tradition that, regarding the West, starts with the Cynics and the Stoics. 3. The term “spiritual exercise” may lead to confusion, given its adoption by the Christian tradition and its appearance in Ignacio de Loyola’s exercitium spiritualis. Nevertheless, I choose to use it here, following Pierre Hadot, who finds that other designations such as “physical exercises,” “intellectual exercises” or “ethical exercises” fail to capture the full meaning of the term (Ejercicios 23–24). 4. For information on Montaigne’s influence on Borges, see Castany Prado, Que nada se sabe 61, 63, 75–77. 5. According to Borges, this was “la primera introducción que yo leí a la obra de Swedenborg” [my first introduction to the works of Swedenborg] (Obras IV: 186). 6. Some of the exercises practiced by Whitman (1902) are: listening to the sound of animals (“Bumble-Bees” 147–51, “Sundown Perfume” 153–54), paying attention to what trees have to teach us (“The Lesson” 157–60, “The Oaks” 185– 87), contemplating the sky (“The Sky-Days” 161–64), observing the seashore (“A Winter Day” 165–67), being naked among nature (“A Sun Bath-Nakedness” 182–85), observing waterfalls (“Seeing Niagara” 291–92), sitting next to a stream (“To the Stream” 144–45) and listening to far-away sounds (“Distant Sounds” 181–82).

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7. Although it is a cliché to speak about Borges’s cosmopolitanism, there are not many studies about this topic. Perhaps the most important book is Le Cosmopolitisme de Jorge Luis Borges (1973), by Michel Berveiller. In the last years, there has been a rise of interest in this subject, as it proves the works of Burbridge et al. (1994), Capel (2001), Jullien (2007: 205–23) and Castany Prado (2007: 271–88), as well as the Symposium “Borges et le cosmopolitisme littéraire” held at the Université Lille 3 on February 13, 2015. 8. See Castany Prado, Que nada se sabe. 9. In “Biathanatos,” Borges cites Epictetus, who seeks to free us from fear by reminding us that suicide is always an option: “Remember the essential thing: the door is open” (Selected 334). Also, in Epicurean style, Borges equates happiness with knowledge. Thus, in his address “El libro” [The Book] (Obras IV: 165– 71) Borges affirms that although “el concepto de un libro sagrado, del Corán o de la Biblia o de los Vedas . . . puede haber pasado” [the concept of a holy book, the Quran, the Bible, the Vedas, might be behind us], books “tiene[n] todavía cierta santidad que debemos tratar de no perder” [still have a certain holiness that we should try not to lose], a holiness that consists of “el deseo de encontrar felicidad, de encontrar sabiduría” [the desire to find happiness, to find wisdom] (IV: 171). 10. “[Diogenes said, speaking of Thyestes] nor even anything impious in touching human flesh, this, he said, being clear from the custom of some foreign nations. Moreover, according to right reason, as he put it, all elements are contained in all things and pervade everything: since not only is meat a constituent of bread, but bread of vegetables; and all other bodies also, by means of certain invisible passages and particles, find their way in and unite with all substances in the form of vapour. This he makes plain in the Thyestes” (Diogenes Laërtius 75). 11. Although the theme of marginality as a position conducive to the attainment of wisdom has been studied by scholars such as Beatriz Sarlo (1995), Adriana Astutti (2000), and myself Castany Prado (2013), among others, the approach proposed here may give rise to equally compelling avenues of research. 12. It was Erasmus who translated Lucian, one of the Classical sources for the practice of the “view from on high.” 13. See Williams, The Cosmic Viewpoint. 14. Here I follow the brilliant observations offered in José Javier Fernández Díaz’s doctoral dissertation, La otra América. Influencia de la literatura estadounidense en Roberto Bolaño (108–33), defended in November of 2014 at the University of Barcelona.

8 E Cosmopolitan Postnationalists The Case of Virgilio Piñera and Wifredo Lam

Francisco Fernández de Alba

For decades now, Latin American literary and cultural criticism has orbited around cosmopolitan and nationalist conceptual poles. This has been necessary to explain the development of postcolonial local cultural formations, the Latin American nation, and their place in the world. Borges’s “El escritor argentino y la tradición” [The Argentine Writer and Tradition] (1953) is perhaps one of the best articulated and most well-known reflections on the questions of national literature, tradition, and the tensions between local and cosmopolitan culture. Beatriz Sarlo (Borges), Ángel Rama (“Processes”) and Walter Mignolo (“Many Faces”), to name but a few critics, have weighed in on the cultural, political, and social tensions between nationalism and cosmopolitanism. In general, critics have found a fundamental divide between those authors dedicated to developing a national local tradition, and those authors reluctant to ascribe essentialist attributes to their national culture. Cosmopolitanism appears in critical literature to be diametrically opposed to nationalism and yet, I argue, there are examples of artists that need to be read as both nationalists and cosmopolitan. In addition to Borges, Virgilio Piñera (1912–1979) and Wifredo Lam (1902–1982) were cosmopolitans sui generis who participated in the construction of national Cuban culture while utilizing cosmopolitan techniques. A question arising at the outset of this discussion, of course, is whether one can at the same time be a cosmopolitan and a nationalist. The title of

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this chapter riffs off Kwame Anthony Appiah’s essay, “Cosmopolitan Patriots,” which concludes that there is no automatic contradiction between (some forms of) cosmopolitanism and patriotism. Cosmopolitanism and nationalism, however, are often understood as antonymous terms, as the definition of nationalism has become associated with totalitarianism, exclusion, and even belligerence (Giddens, Runaway 129). Cosmopolitanism and nationalism are often presented, respectively, as an absolute form of universality, or uncompromising localism when, in reality, both terms are dynamic cultural categories. To bridge this division, we need to first take a postnational approach to culture and, second, take a wider view of cosmopolitanism to unveil alternative cultural approaches to national constructions that are often overlooked. To illustrate this point, I draw evidence not only from the circumstances of Piñera’s and Lam’s residence abroad, but also from their ways of engaging with their original and adopted communities. Both artists participated in the local cultural debates in Havana, Buenos Aires, Madrid, and Paris, and in the case of Lam, even in the Spanish Civil War. Upon returning to Cuba, both men continued to contribute to the national culture while pursuing an agenda that challenged the hegemonic construction of Cuban nationalism. In defiance of a homogeneous view of Cuban culture that accentuated the Creole experience of the late colonial period, Piñera and Lam fought against the establishment of a national identity that elevated a single racial and ethnic heritage over all others. In doing so, they were offering an alternative national construction that was cosmopolitan in its wider sense of cultural citizenship and modernist in its definitive sense of art’s duty to push its limits. They devoted themselves to creating a national culture that could be both cosmopolitan in form while fundamentally rooted in larger Cuban society and history. The use of the term “postnational” in this chapter is a deliberate attempt to offer a critical approach that investigates the closed and hierarchical concepts of national culture. When using “postnational,” I do not refer to the end of the nation-state—an occurrence that some have predicted.1 Rather, the use of this term reflects the specific critical positioning in our present historical moment that has led nation-states to cede some of their sovereign powers to supranational actors. With respect to cultural and political dynamics, modern citizens’ identities are no longer exclusively constructed from nationalist narratives, but instead are formed

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and expressed through global trends. For some scholars, including Homi Bhabha (1990) and Arjun Appadurai (1996), postnationalism is driven increasingly by nonstate actors, nonterritorial agents, and the transnational allegiances among these agents. For others, like Jürgen Habermas, postnationalism is the end result of the globalization and integration that, in the European context, have toppled the nation-state from its position as the dominant mechanism of political organization (Postnational 66–67). Each of these authors questions the ways in which social agents, culture, belonging, citizenship, and subjectivity circumvent the former centrality of the nation-state. In using the term postnational as I do in this chapter to refer to Piñera and Lam, I refer to their awareness of the basis upon which national entities find their justification: ethnicity, common memory, tradition, and art, to name a few. All these factors are cogs in the mechanism of national identification, which functions by imagining culture as already homogeneous. This collective acceptance of one common culture ultimately produces a nation, and the feelings of attachment and belonging that come with it (Hedetoft and Hjort xii). The illusory notion that culture is homogenous, however, obscures the fact that canons and national constructions have been, historically, contested grounds. Canon development is in part a process of nation formation that naturalizes culture by presenting it as a given, already formed, common heritage. Nations indeed “create mental boundaries that match the borders of the state” (Hedetoft and Hjort xii). It is within those borders, as Benedict Anderson has explained over the years, that national identities are constructed through processes that are historical and contingent on local and international circumstances. Piñera and Lam engage with their historical local and international circumstances to create an alternative Cuban cultural identity. The rejection that Piñera and Lam suffered by their earlier critics was not only limited to aesthetic grounds but it rather had to do with their desire to create art that would speak to the racial, cultural, and historical diversity of the island. This art, apparently cosmopolitan but in close contact with local cultural production, had to reflect the marginalized national and cultural reality that Piñera and Lam considered central for Cuban culture. Cuba offers a unique case study for nation building. Rafael Rojas has identified the period in Cuban history between 1933 and 1952 as the

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period in which the public sphere first opened. During the Second Republic, a great explosion of historical writing focused on moral and civic symbols that emerged in reaction to the perception that Cuba had no history and needed an identity (6). These writings, according to Rojas, aim to settle the struggle between three cultural imaginaries—HispanicCatholic, Anglo-Protestant and Afro-Caribbean—to produce a distinct Cuban national culture (25). José Lezama Lima, for instance, expounded on the creation of a national insular myth in his colloquium with Juan Ramón Jiménez (1937); similarly, Fernando Ortiz, in his Cuban Counterpoint (1941), applied the concept of transculturation to explicate the complex cultural dynamics of the island nation, the same that both Piñera and Lam were trying to incorporate in their works. 2 The drive to create a new Cuban culture was generalized among the intelligentsia, and artists such as Piñera and Lam participated in it. These artists’ cosmopolitan approaches to poetry and the visual arts placed them at odds with local discourses on art. Additionally, the fundamental racism of the colonial imaginary provided a scaffold for the rejection of their contributions to Cuban culture. Their art sought to provoke, and was considered by some critics not white enough or Catholic enough to be authentically Cuban. In the following pages, these facts are illustrated through an examination of Piñera’s poem “La isla en peso” [The Whole Island]. This work was published in 1943, the same year as the first exhibition of Lam’s masterpiece “La jungla” [The Jungle]. Both works redefined and worked against the contemporary hegemonic view of Cuban art and culture by creating an alternative view that more closely resembled the postcolonial multiethnic and multiracial reality of Cuba at the time. The role of the author, the artist, or the intellectual in the development of the nation-state in Latin America has been explored by many scholars, including Ángel Rama (The Lettered City) and Julio Ramos (Divergent Modernities). While, from the beginning of Latin American cultural theory, the focus of many critics has been on the elucidation of the complex relations between cultural elites and the state, far less attention is paid to those authors, artists, and intellectuals who resisted hegemonic nationalism. By labeling Piñera and Lam as postnational, this chapter offers a new perspective on two authors that resisted the mechanisms of national cohesion through their dissenting artistic views of the Cuban nation. Piñera and Lam were pushed out of Cuban culture by critics because their

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works did not fit the nationalist cultural model. The consequences of exclusion are not simply restricted to losing sales, notoriety, and fame. By being marginalized in the process of the construction of national culture, pluralistic indigenous views of culture such as those that Piñera and Lam propose hardly make it into the canon, and by extension, the larger national imaginary. The connections between a writer and a painter may seem, at first sight, very limited, but soon one discovers interesting commonalities. Both artists lived extensively outside Cuba—Piñera in Argentina for twelve years and Lam in Spain (and briefly in France) for eighteen. Both left the island for professional reasons and found inspiration in Europe.3 Both participated actively in their new homes; Piñera, notably, engaged with intellectuals from Sur, and Lam participated in the defense of Madrid during the Spanish Civil War. Upon returning to Cuba, both Piñera and Lam produced, concurrently, pieces that were rejected by the majority of their peers. The parallels are apparent throughout the two men’s publication histories: Piñera’s “La isla en peso” and Lam’s groundbreaking “La jungla” both debuted in 1943; Piñera would publish his important essay “El país del arte” [The Country of the Arts] in the same 1947 issue of the journal Orígenes that Lam would illustrate; both artists shared an interest in Afro-Caribbean themes vis-à-vis Cuban culture. Among these parallels, however, the most relevant to this chapter is the expulsion of both men from the Cuban canon by their earliest critics: Cintio Vitier and Gastón Baquero in Piñera’s case and Guy Pérez Cisneros in Lam’s.4 Piñera’s and Lam’s international travels and residencies bring to mind Edward Said’s famous “Traveling Theory” in which he encouraged scholars to consider and explore the ways in which theory travels and the ways in which it is used (229). Contact and exchange are important keywords in the study of the culture surrounding traveling artists and their practices, but so are tension and rejection. Canon formation and debates about national culture do not fit easily within Said’s academically pleasant study of adopting and adapting ideas, or even within a narrative of institutional and cultural cooperation and inclusion—rather, these concepts are necessarily implicated within discourses of colonialism and capitalism, which dictate a hierarchical reality where canons are formed by exclusion and withering criticism. What is at stake is the creation of the myth of the “organic” nation, where culture expresses a unique essence of the country,

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which is in turn realized politically by the state. In the Cuban case, Rojas has argued that the postcolonial Cuban elites established their ethnic superiority by launching a cultural war, with a view to creating a national culture and a moral imaginary of the nation that justified their centrality in Cuban cultural identity (29–31). Abril Trigo has noted the important role that state and culture play as systems of national cohesion in Latin America. National literatures, particularly, have been understood as the “principales dispositivos de interpretación simbólica de los imaginarios nacionales de los estados modernos” [the main symbolic interpretative tools for the modern states’ national imaginaries] (Crisis 47). In the struggle for a homogenous and hegemonic national culture, those authors whose works did not fit within the emerging normative understanding of national identity—those who were not considered representative of the national arts—were excluded. Exclusion from the national canon is a fate often visited upon authors who are considered foreign, which is to say cosmopolitan. Cosmopolitan, however, is not a historically stable category.5 The term “cosmopolitan,” in its widest usage, has a long history of describing such diverse groups as Christian missionaries, diplomats, and intellectuals. As early as 1793, Immanuel Kant introduced a notion that we would today term “cosmopolitan patriotism,” which he understood as a form of moral transnationalism that begins by rejecting the sense that one’s nation is superior to others (Kleingeld 299). Since humans belong to a common moral community with obligations to one another, Kant contended, exclusive nationalism should be replaced by cosmopolitanism and patriotism.6 Kant’s proposal would later clash with that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who famously argued in the Geneva manuscript version of The Social Contract that cosmopolitans “boast that they love everyone [tout le monde], to have the right to love no one” (158). Rousseau’s “love it or leave it” philosophy clearly endorsed commitment to the nation, while Kant’s “postnational” framework established a relation between states and subjects, the national and the cosmopolitan. Rousseau insists upon love for one’s nation because his whole social contract and view of politics depends on a deep involvement of citizens with the legislative process. Within this philosophy, there was no room for the in-between-ness of the cosmopolitan. Martha Nussbaum introduced in the nineties a form of committed cosmopolitanism suggesting that a cosmopolitan individual

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is a person whose “allegiance is to the worldwide community of human beings” (For Love 4). Others, like Paul Rabinow and Benita Parry, have noted an emergent postcolonial cosmopolitanism that has none of the elitist traits of its modernist configuration but refers instead to the transnational experiences of unprivileged subjects (Rabinow 258, Parry 41). Cosmopolitanism has often found itself at odds with efforts toward nation building. Cosmopolitanism in the Latin American critical tradition has been seen, according to Mariano Siskind, in two fundamentally different ways. Before the 1980s, cosmopolitanism was a feature of the avant-garde but a “shorthand for supposedly elitist, denationalizing, apolitical, anti-popular, uprooted, Francophile, queer, displaced” (19). Franz Fanon, for instance, denounced the cosmopolitan aspirations of the middle class in many postcolonial nations as a form of “intellectual laziness” and “spiritual penury” that did nothing to help “make the totality of the nation a reality to each citizen” (149). After the 1980s, cosmopolitanism became a form of particularized universalism, “a way to disrupt a cultural field that was full of nationalistic signifiers” (Siskind 10). Artists such as Piñera and Lam can be better understood by considering how they incorporated their European training and inspiration to local images in order to offer an inclusive but particular contribution to the national culture. For instance, the storm of images offered in Piñera’s poem “La isla en peso” confusedly constructs a poetic representation of Cuba that is very different from the vision offered by his contemporaries.7 Full of hedonistic images, its religious themes—not Catholic, as one might expect, but Afro-Caribbean—illustrate Piñera’s antagonistic position toward Catholicism and his skepticism of Cuban whiteness.8 Through the use of popular culture and vernacular language, the poem paints sexual images that likely scandalized Piñera’s contemporaries. Denigrated also in the poem is the memory of Cuba’s colonial past, characterized as “La eterna miseria que es el acto de recordar” [The eternal misery of memory] (37). For Piñera, to remember Cuba’s cultural past is not to recover the island’s heritage or to narrate a harmonious story of civilization and progress, but to come to terms with conquest and colonization. To remember, in this poem, is to recall plunder and rape: “la eterna historia de la cínica sonrisa del europeo / llegado para apretar las tetas de mi madre” [the endless history of the cynical smile of the European/who had come to squeeze my mother’s

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teats] (42). Piñera’s poem’s last stanza summarizes his depiction of the Cuban community giving itself over to ephemeral quotidian pursuits: Bajo la lluvia, bajo el olor, bajo todo lo que es una realidad, un pueblo se hace y se deshace dejando los testimonios: un velorio, un guateque, una mano, un crimen, revueltos, confundidos, fundidos en la resaca perpetua, haciendo leves saludos, enseñando los dientes, golpeando sus riñones, un pueblo desciende resuelto en enormes postas de abono, sintiendo cómo el agua lo rodea por todas partes, más abajo, más abajo, y el mar picando en sus espaldas; un pueblo permanece junto a su bestia en la hora de partir, aullando en el mar, devorando frutas, sacrificando animales, siempre más abajo, hasta saber el peso de su isla; el peso de una isla en el amor de un pueblo. (42) [Beneath rain, beneath scent, beneath everything that is a reality, a people makes and unmakes itself leaving testimonies: a wake, a party, a hand, a crime, mixed up, confused, fused in the perpetual hangover, meeting casually, showing their teeth, beating their kidneys, a people descend determined in enormous piles of dung, feeling that water completely surrounds them, lower, lower, and the sea stinging their backs; a people stay next to their beast at the hour of departure, howling at the sea, devouring fruit, sacrificing animals, always lower, until they know the whole weight of their island; the weight of an island in its people’s love.] The fleeting images of coming together offered in “La isla en peso” —dancing, drinking, eating, sex—do nothing to validate transcendental national communities, nor do they substantiate the elitist and sublimated national poetics cultivated by the Cuban intelligentsia.9 Criticism for the poem came quickly and was unforgiving. Gastón Baquero protested in his article “Tendencias actuales de nuestra literatura” [Actual Trends in Our Literature] (1944) that the poem attempted to create an alternative history and an imaginary Cuba that contradicted what he considered to be “obvious” historical and natural evidence:

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La isla que sale de ese afán de “hacerme una historia” a contrapelo de la historia evidente—y de la geografía, la botánica y la zoología evidentes—es una isla de plástica extra-cubana, ajena por completo a la realidad cubana. Isla de Trinidad, Martinica, Barbados . . . llena de una vitalidad primitiva que no poseemos, de un colorido que no poseemos, de una voluntad de acción y una reacción que no poseemos, es precisamente la isla contraria a la que nuestra condición de sitio ávido de problema, de historia, de conflicto, nos hace vivir más “civilmente,” más en espíritu de civilización, de nostalgia, de Persona. Esta Isla que Virgilio Piñera ha levantado en el marco de unos versos inteligentes, audaces, a veces deliberadamente llamativos y escabrosos, en desconexión absoluta con el tono cubano de expresión, es Isla de una antillanía y una martiniquería que no nos expresan, que no nos pertenecen. (277–78) [The island that emerges from this desire to “make my own history” that runs counter to the evidence of history—and of geography, botany, and evident zoology—is a plastic island, extra-Cuban, completely strange to the Cuban reality. An island of Trinidad, Martinique, Barbados . . . full of primitive vitality that we do not have, of colors that we do not have, of a will for action and reaction that we do not have; it is precisely the opposite island to that of ours, an island conditioned by being a place eager for problems, history, conflict, all of which makes us live in a more “civilized” manner, more in a spirit of civilization, of nostalgia, of Personhood. This Island that Virgilio Piñera has raised, framed by some intelligent and audacious verses, even if sometimes willingly colorful and rough, in absolute disconnection with the tone of Cuban expression, is an Island with an Antillean and Martiniquesque character that does not represent us, that does not belong to us]. A few kind words about “intelligent verses” do little to soften Baquero’s total disavowal of the poem’s images and themes. Piñera is hallucinating that he lives on a different island, if we are to believe Gastón Baquero. According to the critic, nothing present in the poem describes Cuba, but rather Trinidad, Martinique, or Barbados. Full of “primitive vitality” and color, the poem, in the critic’s estimation, does not reflect the more civilized spirit of Cuba that is “evident” in its history and “inscribed” in its

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geography, plants, and animals. For Baquero, in short, the poem is too “black” and seemingly oblivious to the “natural” characteristics of Cuba, its culture and its history. Another contemporary critic, Mirta Aguirre, noted with more subtlety in La Gaceta del Caribe the relation of “La isla en peso” with the famous Return to the Native Land by Aimé Césaire, published in 1938 (30). This was a book of poetry that Piñera knew well, and one in which Piñera found inspiration for his poetic treatment of Négritude, or more specifically in “La isla en peso,” of Afro-Cuban motifs. Return to the Native Land was translated into the Spanish by Lydia Cabrera in 1942 and—in yet another intersection—was illustrated by Wifredo Lam, who was himself deeply marked by the work of Césaire. Odette Casamayor notes in an excellent essay how, surprisingly, the contemporary Orígenes publications include not one article evaluating Lam’s work, even though Lam illustrated three issues of the magazine (1945, 1947, 1952) and his work during that time, shortly after his return to Cuba, was inciting significant international interest. Casamayor explains how Guy Pérez Cisneros, perhaps the most important art critic of the time, dismissed Lam succinctly in an article summarizing Cuban plastic arts in 1943. Lam had studied in Spain and had made a career in Europe, becoming in the process a protégé of Picasso. He then returned to Cuba, forced out of Europe by the end of the Spanish Civil War and the fall of France to the Nazis. In Cuba, he found what would become his most recognizable, celebrated, and characteristic style. Despite the international attention his work enjoyed, however, Lam remained barely acknowledged in Cuban arts.10 In 1944, in an article for the Journal Grafos, Pérez Cisneros would contrast Lam’s work critically with that of other Cuban painters such as Portocarrero, concluding that the “terrible fetishes” that appear in Lam’s work made it different from all other Cuban art (qtd. in Casamayor 22). Cisneros concludes that the only legitimate understanding of Cuba is that of Martí or Casal, who depict a Cuba directly tied to the European influence, without which “no sería Cuba, sería una Antilla, una Antilla del Caribe” [It would not be Cuba, it would be part of the Antilles, the Caribbean Antilles] (qtd. in Casamayor 22). Indeed, in a lecture entitled “Presencia de ocho pintores” [Eight Painters’ Presence], Pérez Cisneros stated: “Creéis firmemente que el arte cubano es una mezcla de sones, de maracas, de rumbas o de poesías afrocubanas para turistas . . . pero estáis equivocados” [You firmly believe that Cuban art is a mix of songs,

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maracas, rumba and Afrocuban poetry for tourists . . . but you are mistaken] (122). In a diatribe reminiscent of Baquero’s comments, Pérez Cisneros contended forcefully that, without a hegemonic European influence, the island would be too black. Thus, for these critics, art emerging from Afro-Cuban culture or art that does not directly address the Catholic Hispanic Cuban heritage is necessarily Antillean and not Cuban. These critical positions are unsurprising; both were a product of the struggle for the Cuban nation and its culture, and a reaction against the vestigial cultural structures left over from colonialism. The subject of colonialism has been studied in depth by scholars such as Aníbal Quijano and Walter Mignolo, who describe the way in which colonial structures and old Western epistemologies continue to affect the way we think in the postcolonial West. Developing the concept of the “coloniality of power,” Quijano argues how the coincidental emergence of capitalism and colonization of Latin America produced a set of hierarchies based on racial/ ethnic biases that structure all aspects of society (342). This is a Eurocentric view of the world established by naturalization “de las experiencias, identidades y relaciones históricas de la colonialidad y de la distribución geocultural del poder capitalista mundial” [of experiences, identities, and historical colonial relations as well as the geocultural distribution of capitalist world power] (343). This cognitive perspective is not restricted to those in positions of power in Europe or North America, but rather is found in all those educated within a hegemonic European framework (343). Walter Mignolo has described it as “the hegemony of Eurocentrism as epistemological perspective” (“Geopolitics” 54). Eurocentric epistemologies and coloniality dominated the debates on the creation of a Cuban culture. Rafael Rojas gives a more detailed and local account of Cuban cultural and political development that might help to explain the critics’ coloniality. Rojas argues that the long struggle of the island to reach its independence, combined with the failure of the first political attempts to organize the Cuban state, had the perplexing consequence of improving Cubans’ retrospective vision of the colonial era (2). Even with the political problems of the time, the late nineteenth century provided a rich breeding ground for political engagement and solidarity as a result of which, paradoxically, the cultural and political framework of the late colonial period became the reference and benchmark of what Cuban civil society should

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be (4). It is here, Rojas contends, that the mythification of the colonial order begins: where idyllic images of the cultural, moral, and physical world of the Creole take center stage. The collapse of the First Republic and the rise of the artists of the “Grupo Avance” and the “Minoristas” inspired later critics such as Gastón Baquero and Guy Pérez Cisneros to look to the romanticized late colonial period as the basis for Cuban culture (80– 85). After independence, Cuban political and cultural elites had a strong incentive to control Cuban national identity; within this environment, it was logical that critics espousing a Hispanic Catholic view of Cuba would exclude authors whose works presented a view of the country that did not reflect their own. Enrico Mario Santí confirms: “The prevalent criterion in the construction of a Cuban canon has been the common perception of how the text contributes to forging a national identity” (368). The rejection of Piñera and Lam by contemporary critics had as much to do with their interpretation of popular Afro-Caribbean Cuban cultural topics as with their critical understanding of the role of art in the national project. In a 1947 Orígenes article illustrated by Lam, Piñera issued his strongest objection to the use of art as the foundation for the national community. In “El país del arte,” Piñera, in a mocking tone, criticizes artists’ posturing and use of clichéd vocabulary of art that includes words like “beauty,” “sacrifice,” “seriousness,” “ecstasy,” and “destiny.” Society, Piñera declares, only considers art’s conventional value: “Hoy el arte es una letra de cambio que se hace efectiva” [Today, art is a cashed check] (Poesía 136). In other words, art is a commodity fetish; its worth is derived from its exchange value.11 “El país del arte,” however, is not only a denunciation of the capitalist appropriation of art; after presenting his criticism of those that make art a reified sacred object, Piñera concludes his essay by developing a vision of art as an oppressive country. Art, Piñera argues, becomes repressive when it is used as the cultural foundation for a nation—a mirror for the country’s purported essential and transcendent self. When art is used to constitute and buttress national myths, or when it is subordinated to the ideals of a nation, it loses its creative potential. Piñera’s position could not have been further from that of his critics, who saw it as the responsibility of Cuban poetry to identify “authentically” Cuban themes and images. Those authentic images, as we have seen, had

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to match and therefore confirm Cuban elites’ idealistic conception of the island’s inhabitants and culture. Lam, too, had clear ideas about the kind of Cuba he thought to be truly “authentic.” In an interview with Max-Pol Fouchet, Lam explained his intentions upon his return to Cuba from Europe and Martinique: I decided that my painting would never be the equivalent of that pseudo-Cuban music for nightclubs. I refused to paint cha-cha-cha. I wanted with all my heart to paint the drama of my country, but by thoroughly expressing the negro [sic] spirit, the beauty of the plastic art of the blacks. In this way I could act as a Trojan horse that would spew forth hallucinating figures with the power to surprise, to disturb the dreams of the exploiters. I knew I was running the risk of not being understood either by the man in the street or by the others. But a true picture has the power to set the imagination to work, even if it takes time. (188–89) This need of Piñera and Lam to free art from the clutches of nationalist propaganda and to release it as a disruptive force into the hegemonic culture resounds powerfully in Alberto Moreiras’s book Tercer espacio: literatura y duelo en América Latina [The Third Space: Literary Mourning in Latin America] (1999). Moreiras presents a methodological proposal for literary analysis that relates literary texts to cosmopolitan aesthetics and criticism, all the while anchoring them as part of a local critical practice (4). This methodology supposedly generates a third critical space where the larger parameters and structures of colonialism are rethought and the traps of linguistic and conceptual binaries like modern/premodern, developed/undeveloped, and center/periphery are avoided. By breaking away from the hierarchies that these binaries generate and by freeing literature from the responsibility to uphold national identity, artists can access a new critical space where Latin American texts engage in a global critical intervention (Moreiras 7). Significantly, Moreiras does not cast this third space as the historical scaffolding for a Latin American cultural identity (26). He utilizes this model instead to question cultural hierarchies and metropolitan theories and to offer new interpretations that take into consideration the local. This conceptualization of art at the intersection of the national and cosmopolitan is essential to the argument

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advanced in this chapter. Moreiras proposes that we abandon language and nation as the exclusive criteria for organizing art criticism, embracing instead a critical practice located in the tense interstices between metropolitan paradigms and local practices. For Moreiras, literature, and art in general, exists in a continuous communicative flow through both national and transnational traditions and production (2). Considered from this perspective, we can envision art and literature as entities designed to resist the strict and normative local critical readings that affirm one type of national identity. This art would stand by itself, neither expressing the national culture nor enacting some detached cosmopolitan exercise of foreign aesthetics. As both Piñera and Lam exemplified, this third route allows us to sidestep the need to choose between hegemonic views of national culture and cosmopolitan elaborations of metropolitan artistic discourses. Cosmopolitan and postnationalist, Piñera and Lam embraced the political act that introducing the popular voices of the minorities is to probe, not the limits of the Western canon, but rather the possible plural modalities of national cultural expression. Throughout this chapter, we have seen that, while both the critics and artists of postcolonial Cuba had a Eurocentric bias, they differed substantially on their points of reference. While some critics found their models in the Spanish Golden Age and in an idealized understanding of the Creole experience in the late colonial period, Piñera and Lam found theirs in contemporary cosmopolitan modernist approaches to Cuban culture in its most multiracial sense. Following Moreiras, we have seen that the struggle between critics and artists was in a broader sense the struggle between an art considered to be foundational for the Cuban nation and an art that was not only freed from that responsibility but that sought to disrupt social and cultural structures by “disturbing the dreams of the exploiters” (Fouchet 188–89). Piñera’s and Lam’s art called attention to what was missing from that imaginary representation of the nation—namely, the development of Afro-Cuban culture as it truly was, and not as an object of study. These two artists therefore represent “an externality that questions and destabilizes self-centered discourses of national identity and that aspires to the remote paradigm of cosmopolitan patriotism” (Appiah, Cosmopolitics 91). Piñera and Lam were deeply concerned with the creation of a distinct national Cuban culture and, to this end, they appropriated and adapted

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European artistic practices to represent untamed images of Afro-Caribbean culture. That expression of culture was rejected by their critics, who operated from an idealized and orthodox “Hispanic” understanding of Cuban art. The marginalization of both Piñera’s and Lam’s visions of Cuban culture demonstrates how powerful the discourses and affects generated by the nation-culture complex can be. This marginalization is unfortunate because clearly, both Piñera and Lam believed in creating a recognizable Cuban culture through the use of elite artistic practices to represent popular topics, vocabularies, and images. Piñera and Lam were both cosmopolitan postnationalists in the sense that they refused to permit culture to be subsumed at the service of a national imaginary that excluded the noncentral, nonwhite Cuban culture present on the island. They faced similar challenges to those confronted today by postnational literary and cultural criticism: how to transcend the national logic by moving away from narratives that value literature or culture exclusively as purveyors and creators of national identity, and how to break from a no longer fruitful dialogical set up between cosmopolitanism and nationalism. Notes 1. See Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism. 2. For more on this, see Siskind’s discussion on Ángel Rama’s attempt to work through the concept of cosmopolitanism as the flipside of transculturation (12, 119–20). 3. Although Piñera traveled to Europe only once, he was particularly well versed in French letters. Many scholars have emphasized the influence of the European literary canon—most notably Franz Kafka, Eugène Ionesco, and Witold Gombrowicz—on Piñera’s work (see Anderson, Austin, García Chichester). 4. Wifredo Lam was only saved from complete ignominy in Cuba thanks to articles written by Lydia Cabrera and Alejo Carpentier. Virgilio Piñera was harder to ignore, as he picked fights with pretty much everyone in the Cuban cultural milieu. 5. Eduardo Mendieta has collected several understandings and definitions of cosmopolitanism: imperial, postmodern, patriotic, discrepant, multicultural, rooted, elite, consumerist, comparative, subaltern, and a few others (241). 6. “Cosmopolitanism” here does not refer to the relation between two sovereign states (for Kant, that is international law) but rather suggests a legal

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framework buttressed by moral imperatives that regulates the relation of any state to foreign nationals. For more, see Pauline Kleingeld and Kwame Anthony Appiah. See Mendieta for an illuminating discussion on the larger meaning of cosmopolitanism for Kant. 7. Written in 1943, “La isla en peso” was redeemed by Cuban artists in the 1990s. For instance, the famous line “La maldita circunstancia del agua por todas partes” [The dammed circumstance of being surrounded by water] appears in Sandra Ramos’s prints, while in sculptures like “Mi jaula” [My cage] by Kcho (Alexis Leyva) and in a video installation by Tania Bruguera, the poem figures prominently. 8. In this regard, García Chichester relates Piñera to innovative authors like José Lezama Lima, Alejo Carpentier, Nicolás Guillén, Lydia Cabrera, Arístides Fernández, and Félix Pita Rodríguez (“Codifying” 311). She notes specifically how these authors developed in their writing an exploration of racial and ethnic issues in Cuba (“Formulation” 238, 242–43). 9. This is not to say that Piñera was unconcerned with the construction of a national literature and cultural fields at large. Rather, he simply had no use for the cultural system in place at that time. For more on the national construction of the canon, see García Chichester and Fernández de Alba. 10. For more on Lam’s biography, aesthetics, technique, and evolution as a painter, as well as a general framing of Avant-Garde art and Latin America, see Fletcher, Hendrick, Sims Stokes, and Weiss. 11. For an analysis of how Marxist theory resounds through some of Piñera’s works, see Fernández de Alba, who explains, for instance, how the language of supply and demand in La carne de René provides a hidden structure for the novel.

9 E The Postnational Reception of Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s La sombra del viento Maarten Steenmeijer

Until recently, historical determinism was the dominating paradigm in Spanish political, historical, cultural, and literary discourse. The past not only explained the present but was also perceived as the source that offered the remedies for problems diagnosed as being “typically” Spanish. All political tendencies—conservatism, fascism, socialism, communism, liberalism—shared this essentialist and ostracizing frame. The idea that “Spain was different” was not only embraced by Franco, but also by hardcore dissidents like Juan Goytisolo. Or as Gonzalo Navajas put it, “Both the exaltation of institutionalized history as well as its critical rejection share one trait in common: their originating and constitutive premises focus on the unmitigated power of the past to determine and define the development of the present” (“Curse” 167). Consequently, foregrounding a political, national, heteronymous paradigm (Casanova 108), Spanish literature hardly stood a chance in the international arena. Accordingly, during decades or even centuries, Spanish literature was hardly present or, worse even, bluntly neglected in the world. According to Navajas, however, in the last decades Spanish literature has evolved from “una literatura subordinada a la circunstancia de una temporalidad local a otra muy distinta interconectada con el discurso transtemporal e internacional” [a literature subordinated to the circumstances of a local temporality to a very different one interconnected with the transtemporal and international discourse] (“Historia”)—so much so that, in Rafael Chirbes’ tongue-in-cheek view of the 80s of the

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last century, Spanish literature became totally focused on Europe, making Spanish names for characters in fiction tantamount to a taboo (Steenmeijer, “Schrijven” 54–55). This watershed in Spanish literature coincided with a fast growing interest for Spanish literature abroad. In particular, since the publication of Eduardo Mendoza’s La ciudad de los prodigios (1986), the Spanish novel became a fairly constant presence in the world republic of letters (Steenmeijer, “The New Capital”). In the opinion of Jordi Gracia, the increasing interest in the new literature is concomitant with its cosmopolitan spirit: “La novela o el ensayo de autor español no es leído en Europa porque sea español sino porque es recomendable leerlo” [The novel or essay written in Spain is not read in Europe because the author is a Spaniard but because it is worth reading] (Gracia 196–97). This postnational point of view then seems relevant for reception research, the more so if one takes into account the globalization of the publishing industry (Clark and Phillips 11–14), a decisive factor in the forging of the postnational paradigm in the world republic of letters. Nevertheless, old stereotypes can be persistent, as Javier Marías acknowledged. In the 80s, when his novels started to be successful in Spain and the first translations appeared, Italian publishers were not eager to publish his work “por no ser suficientemente españoles” [for not being sufficiently Spanish] (Ingendaay). Gracia’s affirmation then could be questioned. Does contemporary Spanish literature indeed tend to be received in a postnational frame of reference? Two phenomena stand out in the international reception of contemporary Spanish literature. On the one hand, we have the critical and commercial success of highbrow author Javier Marías, considered as one of Europe’s most important novelists. Marías is, in fact, the only contemporary Spanish author included in the prestigious Penguin Classics series and a serious contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature. On the other hand, there is the remarkable success of the so-called Spanish bestseller, a new genre that fits into the global phenomenon of what Casanova has labeled world fiction, that is “products based on tested aesthetic formulas and designed to appeal to the widest possible readership” (Casanova 171). Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Ildefonso Falcones, Javier Sierra, Julia Navarro, and María Dueñas are among the most successful authors of this phenomenon, which will be the focus of this chapter. In particular, we will analyze and evaluate the international reception of the Spanish bestseller

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author par excellence Carlos Ruiz Zafón, especially La sombra del viento (2001), the novel that ignited an international success that in terms of sales volume still is second to none in contemporary Spanish literature. For pragmatic reasons, we will confine ourselves to four countries with an important or even central position in the world republic of letters: France, Germany, England and the United States. La sombra del viento With more than fifteen million copies sold, Ruiz Zafón’s novel is, after Don Quixote, number two on the ranking of the best sold Spanish novels of all times. With its postmodern amalgam of genres (gothic novel, Bildungsroman, adventure novel, thriller, historical novel, romantic novel, mystery novel, picaresque novel, Dickensian novel) and its ambiguous literary status somewhere between high literature and sheer entertainment, La sombra del viento fits in a relatively new trend in the literary book market, one that Pascale Casanova has labeled world fiction, a genre that has “created a new composite measure of fictional modernity. Restored to current taste are all the techniques of the popular novel and the serial invented in the nineteenth century: between the covers of a single volume one can find a cloak-and-dagger drama, a detective novel, an adventure story, a tale of economic and political suspense, a travel narrative, a love story, a mythological account, even a novel within the novel (the last a pretext for false self-referential erudition that makes the book its own subject—an effect of the perceived necessity of imitating “Borgesian” modernity)” (Casanova 171). Initially, La sombra del viento’s volatile or ambiguous character made it difficult to brand. In some interviews Ruiz Zafón characterized his novel as a homage to Barcelona (Wielaert). In others he nuanced this comment, highlighting the “denationalized” character of the novel: “Lo que yo llamo ‘mi Barcelona gótica’ es simplemente un escenario literario, una estilización creada a efectos puramente narrativos, no es un reflejo de la ciudad real” [What I call “my gothic Barcelona” is simply a literary scenery, a stylization created for the sake of purely narrative effects, it is not a reflection of the real city] (Pita). And: “Yo creo una Barcelona irreal, una ciudad que no existe” [I create an unreal Barcelona, a city that does not exist] (Santos, “Ruiz Zafón”). Barcelona’s ambiguous status in Ruiz

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Zafón’s novel is reflected in Català Roca’s famous cover picture that would be copied or emulated in most foreign editions. In an interview, the author revealed that this picture was not taken in Barcelona, as is generally taken for granted, but in Madrid. As Ruiz Zafón stated: “Esta farola no puede ser Barcelona” [This streetlamp could not be Barcelona] (Santos, “Ruiz Zafón”). Similarly, Navajas emphasizes the postnational aspects of Ruiz Zafón’s novel, which “treats the tragic period of the repression of the post-Franco period from the perspective of the entertainment novel, mixing the denunciation of the dark aspects of a painful and violent period of Spanish history with the twists of the mystery novel reconfigured according to the aesthetic category of the gothic” (“Curse” 178). La sombra del viento’s relation with Barcelona is undeniable but highly fictional or literary while the novel itself has an eminently metafictional character. As Ruiz Zafón explains: “De hecho existe un nivel de lectura de la novela que juega con el lector y emplea numerosas referencias literarias enterradas en la trama. . . . La sombra del viento es una novela de novelas, un relato que está muy relacionado con el acto de leer, de fabular, de vivir la literatura desde ambos lados de la barrera. . . . Es un canto al propio acto de leer” [In fact, there is a level of reading of the novel which plays with the reader and uses numerous literary references hidden in the plot. . . . La sombra del viento is a novel of novels, a story that is very intertwined with the act of reading, of telling, of living literature from both sides of the barrier. . . . It’s an ode to literature] (García). In Bring on the Books for Everybody, Jim Collins labels this kind of fiction Lit-lit: “In these Devoutly Literary novels the act of reading becomes an all-sustaining pleasure that is available only between the covers of a book” (223). Collins foregrounds La sombra del viento as a paradigmatic example: “Here books have achieved the status of sacred relics, still filled with intrinsic, transformative power but in need of a cult of readers to serve as their guardians” (224). Also worth considering here is the following statement by Ruiz Zafón, in which he attributes the success of La sombra del viento to the novel’s global or universal impact: “Los lectores son los mismos en todas partes. Las personas que aman los libros y disfrutan leyendo buscan lo mismo en la literatura. Buscamos historias, personajes, magia . . . Desde Taiwan hasta México la respuesta es exactamente la misma” [The readers are the same everywhere. The persons who love

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books and enjoy reading are looking for the same thing in literature. We are looking for stories, characters, magic. . . . From Taiwan to Mexico the answer is exactly the same] (Belausteguigoitia). All this makes La sombra del viento an interesting case for reception research from a postnational perspective. Did Ruiz Zafón’s novel tend to be received as a postnational novel that coincidently but not importantly takes place in Barcelona? Did the novel’s chronotope in fact not play an important role in the reception process? Going Abroad: Germany If La Vanguardia’s Sergio Vila-Sanjuán—chief editor of the Catalan newspaper’s cultural supplement—started the fire in Spain (Steenmeijer, “CRZ o el prestigio”), it was Michi Strausfeld who stood at the basis of La sombra del viento’s international success. Working for Suhrkamp—in those days, by far Germany’s most important and prestigious publishing house of Spanish and Spanish American literature—and living between Paris and Barcelona, Strausfeld tracked down Ruiz Zafón’s novel “a través de un amigo y por un comentario elogioso aparecido en La Vanguardia. . . . En seguida vi claro que funcionaría” [through a friend and a highly favorable comment in La Vanguardia. . . . Immediately it was clear to me that it would work] (Vila-Sanjuán 2003). How did Strausfeld’s premonition became a reality? The novel was published in the summer of 2003 by Insel Verlag, an imprint of Suhrkamp guided by “criterios . . . menos rigurosos y más populares” [less strict and more popular criteria] (Krauthausen). The translation’s cover is an echo of the Spanish one. As we will see, this was not the only strategy employed to emulate the Spanish commercial success in Germany. Taking into account La sombra del viento’s poor reception in the Spanish press (Steenmeijer, “CRZ o el prestigio”), Insel Verlag was not sure about the novel’s positive reception by German literary critics. They proved to be right. In a long review published on July 7 in Germany’s leading national newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Felicitas von Lovenberg—one of the country’s most important literary critics—ran Ruiz Zafón’s novel into the ground, debunking the author as an epigone of Arturo PérezReverte, highlighting the friction between the novel’s literary pretentions and the “banalities” served by the author, and reproaching him to

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have lost control over the plot. Von Lovenberg (2003) focuses almost exclusively on the novel as a literary construction. In passing, she mentions Barcelona, claiming that “die gelungensten Passagen sind jene, die ein . . . altes Barcelona auferstehen lassen, eine gotisch anmutende Geisterstadt” [the best passages are the ones in which an . . . old Barcelona comes back to life, a gothiclike ghost city]. Meanwhile, Insel Verlag had tried to engage the German booksellers by sending them a questionnaire about Zafón’s novel, to which they responded with great enthusiasm, and by informing them about the zealous reactions of their Spanish colleagues, in an ambitious attempt to emulate the word-of-mouth publicity that had worked so well in Spain. This strategy paid off very nicely, as Strausfeld claims (Vila-Sanjuán 2003). It must have been due to the booksellers’ commitment, then, that Der Schatten des Windes entered Der Spiegel’s bestseller list at number 19 on August 18. The next weeks, it did not make Der Spiegel’s top 20, although the book kept on selling reasonably well. Then all of the sudden, on October 20, the book returned in Der Spiegel’s ranking, entering at number one. Since then, it was ranked in the top 20 for more than a year. What had happened? On October 7, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Joschka Fischer, one of the guests in the popular television program Lesen!, had recommended the book in superlative terms: “Anderthalb Tage—Sie werden die Nacht durchlesen. Sie können es nicht weglegen, bevor Sie nicht am Ende sind” [One day and a half—You will read the whole night through. You cannot put it down until you reach the end]. Fischer was the right person in the right place at the right time, the more so if one takes into account that the next day the Frankfurt Book Fair opened. Ruiz Zafón had his own stand, where Fischer met the author whose novel had kept him from sleeping until sunrise. Fischer—once a bookseller himself—had bought Der Schatten des Windes on the recommendation of his bookseller. Fischer not only praised the novel’s irresistible suspense but also its excellent depiction of the first years of the Franco dictatorship (Comas 2003). As López de Abiada and López Bernasocchi roughly sketched in their 2006 article, Der Schatten des Windes was received positively in the German popular and middlebrow press. The highbrow press was still a very different matter. On December 11, the renowned literary critic Martin Lüdke published a long review in the prestigious weekly Die Zeit. On one

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hand, Lüdke (2003) characterizes the novel as an amalgam of popular genres. On the other hand, he points to the story’s historical background, asserting that the author failed to fictionalize it in a proper way: “Er hat seinen Stoff nicht entwickelt, sondern mit Klischees aufgefüllt. Die Handlung, die zwischen 1945 und 1966 spielt, reduziert die Verhältnisse in der Franco-Diktatur nach dem Ende des Spanischen Bürgerkriegs auf eine Kulisse. Geschichte und Politik werden durch Psychologie ersetzt, Willkür und Terror aufs Schauerhafte reduziert” [He did not elaborate the plot but filled it with clichés. The story, set between 1945 and 1966, reduces the social conditions during the Franco Dictatorship after the end of the Spanish Civil War to a piece of scenery. History and politics are substituted by psychology, arbitrariness, and terror reduced to a horror story]. While Felicitas von Lovenberg focuses on La sombra del viento as a literary construction (which she clearly does not appreciate), both Fischer and Lüdke read the novel from a double perspective, attributing postnational characteristics to Ruiz Zafón’s novel (Lit-lit; a mix of popular genres) and, at the same time, foregrounding the national historical setting. Friendly Framed in France Unlike their German colleagues, the French critics appreciated the popular culture aspects of Ruiz Zafón’s novel, published in the spring of 2004 by the renowned publishing house Grasset. It was celebrated as an irresistible read. As the monthly literary review Lire asked rhetorically: “saurons-nous garder la tête froide et résister à l’épidémie? La réponse est encore plus simple: non, il n’y a aucune chance” [Will we be able to keep our heads cool and resist the epidemic? The answer is very simple: no, not a chance] (Sénécal 2004). The weekly L’Express used very similar terms, qualifying the zafonmanía as “une maladie cérébrale très contagieuse” [a very contagious cerebral disease] (Clavel 2004). Le Point, another important weekly, calls L’Ombre du vent “un vrai roman pour tout public” [a true novel for all readers] (Nourry 2004). And Le Monde, the standard of highbrow in France, echoes Joschka Fischer’s euphoric words that catapulted Ruiz Zafón’s novel to a big success: “un de ces livres qui vous font rater votre station de métro, veiller jusqu’au matin, manger d’une seule main

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une salade défraîchie, oublier où vous êtes et ce qui vous entoure” [one of those books that make you miss your subway station, make you stay up all night, eat a stale salad with one hand, forget where you are and what is going on around you] (Siclier 2004). Another striking difference between Germany and France’s reception of Zafón’s novel is that the French critics don’t have a problem with the novel’s mixture of lowbrow, middlebrow, and highbrow elements. In Lire, Didier Sénécal (2004) links the Cemetery of Forgotten Books to Jorge Luis Borges and associates Ruiz Zafón’s “strange Barcelona” with Fernando Pessoa’s Lisbon, adding that the comparisons actually are quite absurd and that it would be more appropriate to “parler d’un Eugène Sue ibérique, d’un Paul Auster en escabeche. Mais ses épisodes gigognes prennent une dimension poétique parce qu’il joue à merveille sur les distorsions du temps” [to talk of an Iberian Eugène Sue, a Paul Auster in escabeche. But its burlesque episode takes a poetic dimension because [Ruiz Zafón] plays so well with the distortions of time]. L’Ombre du vent’s Spanish facets or traits were highlighted though hardly from a heteronymous or national perspective. All reviews referred to the postwar Barcelona, setting emphasizing the literary nature of its representation in Ruiz Zafón’s novel. In this respect, the difference with Germany is striking. If Felicitas von Lovenberg painted a detailed portrait of Ruiz Zafón as an inferior emulator of Arturo Pérez-Reverte and Lüdke alluded briefly to Eduardo Mendoza’s and Pérez-Reverte’s superiority, the French critics—and especially Le Point’s Philippe Nourry—depicted the author of L’Ombre du vent as one of the pack. Nourry (2004) starts off with a bold statement: “Le roman espagnol se porte bien” [The Spanish novel is doing well], praising the return to the classicism found in the novels of Eduardo Mendoza, Antonio Muñoz Molina, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, and Juan Manuel de Prada, “en reprenant le flambeau d’une tradition romanesque toute de générosité, de fantaisie et de clarté, trop vite égarée chez nous dans les sables du ‘nouveau roman,’ du structuralisme ou de l’insignifiance misérabiliste” [recapturing a Romanesque tradition full of generosity, fantasy, and clarity that in France got lost too fast in the sands of the ‘nouveau roman,’ of structuralism or of miserabilist insignificance]. On the other hand, Nourry praises these writers’ preference for nineteenth-century authors like Balzac, Flaubert, and Dumas, while in Le Monde Martine, Siclier asserts that L’Ombre du vent is a classical novel

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only as far as the story’s chronology and its uncomplicated style is concerned. It transcends this status due to the novel in the novel structure ( Julián Carax’ L’Ombre du vent in Ruiz Zafón’s L’Ombre du vent) and the parodies of nineteenth-century adventure novels. Crossing the Ocean: Zafón in the United States In April 2004 The Shadow of the Wind—the first translation that did not use the Català Roca picture, though the American cover illustration is quite similar to the Spanish one—was launched on the American market by The Penguin Press with a first print run of 45,000 copies and book presentations in high-profile cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, New York, and Washington, DC. Expectations were high, as can also be deduced from the fact that Ruiz Zafón’s novel was extensively reviewed in a short span of time (only two weeks) in four of America’s most reputable newspapers: San Francisco Chronicle, New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. In spite of (or maybe because of) the high expectations and the prestige of the translator (Robert Graves’s daughter Lucia), opinions were mixed, as were the American reviews’ focuses and frames. In the San Francisco Chronicle Jennie Yabroff centers mainly on The Shadow of the Wind as a literary construction. As such, it is, in Yabroff ’s words, a “tepid potboiler.” She mentions the descriptions of postwar Barcelona but only to repudiate their artificial nature. The city “apparently never enjoyed a sunny day during the several decades of Daniel’s quest” (Yabroff). Richard Eder’s 2004 review in the New York Times is quite a different matter. The first paragraph sets the tone for a raving review that puts Ruiz Zafón in a sophisticated international literary context: “‘Gabriel García Márquez meets Umberto Eco meets Jorge Luis Borges’ for a sprawling magic show, exasperatingly tricky and mostly wonderful.” Eder also emphasizes certain national literary traditions: “The figures . . . give way . . . to the redoubtable wit and grit of the Spanish character despite a tormented past; and to sudden flowery oases (Spain and its language have their Arabic touches) of the impossibly romantic and erotic. The impossible and the earthy have lived braided in the Spanish soul back through ‘Don Quixote’ and beyond” (Eder). Historical elements are not overlooked. According to Elder, the

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Spanish Civil War is “ostensibly an undertheme to the pyrotechnics, in fact it is the theme—an enduring darkness that the pyrotechnics serve to light up.” And “under the appetites” we can detect “historical hunger.” Like Eder’s review, Michael Dirda’s 2004 article, published on the same day in the Washington Post, takes off by framing The Shadow of the Wind in prestigious international literary traditions: Try to imagine a blend of Grand Guignol thriller, historical fiction, occasional farce, existential mystery, and passionate love story; then double it. If that’s too hard to do, let me put it another way: If you love A. S. Byatt’s Possession, García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, the short stories of Borges, Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s The Club Dumas or Paul Auster’s “New York” trilogy, not to mention Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame and William Hjortsberg’s Falling Angel, then you will love The Shadow of the Wind. (Dirda) Contrary to Eder, however, Dirda hardly situates Ruiz Zafón’s novel in a Spanish historical, cultural, or literary context, apart from mentioning in passing the world fiction oriented writer Pérez-Reverte, the novel’s winks to Vicente Blasco Ibáñez and the Fermín-Sancho Panza parallel. After a lot of plot summary—the review’s lion part—Dirda concludes that The Shadow of the Wind is a “superbly entertaining book” and that “anyone who enjoys novels that are scary, erotic, touching, tragic, and thrilling should rush right out to the nearest bookstore and pick (it) up.” Peter Green (2004) of the Los Angeles Times couldn’t agree more. According to him, The Shadow of the Wind is “a compulsive page turner,” in spite of “the improbabilities” and the “implausibility of its context and background.” In Green’s opinion, Ruiz Zafón’s novel is clearly a bestseller, but Barcelona lovers will not find “picture-postcard nostalgia” in the novel. As Green remarks almost randomly at the end of his article, behind the bestseller façade “lurks the memory of a struggle that tore Spain apart.” A Celebration of the Imagination: England In England The Shadow of the Wind was released in May 2004 by the distinguished publishing house Weidenfeld & Nicolson, a month after the

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US launch. As was the case in Germany—where Joschka Fischer’s euphoric words (part of the English edition’s blurb and repeated in some reviews, for that matter) had a triggering effect—the novel’s big break was due to a rather random fact: in 2005, it was one of the ten books selected for that year’s editions of Richard and Judy’s Book Club, a television program in the vein of Oprah’s Book Club that was part of the chat show Richard and Judy broadcast on BBC’s Channel 4 (Grohmann 39). The Shadow of the Wind was highly covered by the British press, though opinions were mixed, as was the case in the United States. While some critics Ruiz Zafón’s novel was seen as sheer entertainment, others thought it was highbrow literature. As we shall see, historical elements in the novel were also touched upon. Christopher Taylor (2004) of the Sunday Telegraph finds Zafón’s novel “tremendously enjoyable” though not without asserting that “Zafón’s brow is less high than Pérez-Reverte’s.” In the Observer, Robert Colville (2004) emphasizes the “celebration of small triumphs in an unjust world” and “a celebration of the imagination” as the book’s central merits, applauses the smooth language, mood, and plot twists, and criticizes the medley of genres and the artificial revelations of Julián Carax’ life near the end of the novel (Colville). Lewis Jones’ (2004) raving words in the Daily Telegraph must have made Ruiz Zafón’s English publisher very happy because the review’s first paragraph is a goldmine of blurbs: “The Shadow of the Wind is a triumph of the storyteller’s art. I couldn’t put it down. Enchanting, thrilling, hilarious, and heartbreaking, this book will change your life. Carlos Ruiz Zafón, who is 40 and Spanish, has done that exceedingly rare thing—he has produced, in his first novel, a popular masterpiece, an instant classic” ( Jones). Most of Jones’ article can be considered an euphoric attempt to give as many arguments as possible to guarantee The Shadow of the Wind a place on the literary Olympus, highlighting the novel’s literary qualities and stressing that Ruiz Zafón “is not afraid to steal from the best (Cervantes, Rabelais, Bulgakov), and on this form looks set to join them” ( Jones). In the footsteps of Robert Colville, Michael Kerrigan (2004) interprets The Shadow of the Wind as a celebration of the imagination in Franco’s Spain, underscoring that “the 1940s Barcelona of Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s new novel is by no means the trendy tourist destination of today.” Kerrigan’s

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main frame is, however, postnational. In his opinion, the Russian dolls structure is “the standard stuff of doctrinaire postmodernism. . . . Zafón’s real virtues are more old-fashioned ones, though: what makes this novel so irresistibly readable is the emotional energy generated by the ups and downs of a big and varied cast of memorable characters.” Like Kerrigan, who touches on the novel’s mannerism, metaphor mix, and clichés, Andrew van der Vlies (Times Literary Supplement) (2004) brings to the fore the novel’s flaws and, on the other hand, highlights the story’s historical context, and frames the Cemetery of Forgotten Books in the context of historical memory: “[The books] are the wise ghosts, the shadows of the novel’s title, repositories of memory which hold in reserve humane values driven out by whatever terror currently reigns” (21). In the Sunday Times’ Adam Lively’s 2004 view, however, The Shadow of the Wind is an “old-fashioned adventure yarn,” “set in a picturesquely decaying Barcelona of the 1940s and 1950s, with flashbacks to the civil war and earlier.” In the same article Lively reviews Pérez-Reverte’s The Queen of the South. The contrasts are sharp: Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s “magnificent” novel is an “adventure of a different order,” “a stunning novel, one of the best I have read in recent years.” Conclusions Our objective was to determine to which extent La sombra del viento, the founding novel and prototype of the so-called Spanish bestseller, has been framed in a postnational context in the prominent literary press of Germany, France, the United States, and England. First of all, it should be noted that many reviewers refer to the novel’s chronotopic elements (Civil War; postwar Barcelona) though few perceive the setting from a mimetic, realist, or historical perspective. A case in point is that Ruiz Zafón’s novel has hardly been linked to the memoria histórica [historical memory] debate, a core issue in contemporary Spanish literature, while some critics emphasized that Ruiz Zafón’s Barcelona has little or nothing to do with the utterly popular tourist city it is today. The novel’s setting was highlighted, in fact, as an artifact, a literary construct, in line with the novel as a whole. There is also a remarkable similarity between the literary frames used in the four countries’ reception analyzed in this chapter. La sombra del viento is associated with certain Spanish literary archetypes

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and authors (Don Quixote/Sancho Panza; Arturo Pérez-Reverte; Eduardo Mendoza) but the literary contextualization is predominantly international and, for that matter, very varied, ranging from classical nineteenth-century middlebrow and highbrow writers (Sue, Dumas, Balzac, Flaubert) to the twentieth-century highbrow literature of Pessoa, Borges, Eco, and Auster. All this indicates that Ruiz Zafón’s novel has been perceived as world fiction. If a controversy in the international reception of La sombra del viento can be detected, then it is about the novel’s literary status or prestige. In this respect, there are salient differences between Germany (subliterature, according to the highbrow press), France (highbrow entertainment), the United States (both), and England (both). It goes without saying that, considering the relatively small scale of this research, the conclusions of this chapter can only be tentative. There can be no doubt, however, that there is a striking difference between the critical reception of Ruiz Zafón’s novel in Spain and abroad. With the exception of La Vanguardia’s Sergio Vila-Sanjuán, Spain’s literary critics hardly showed any interest in La sombra del viento when it was launched (Steenmeijer, “Miedo de tocar”). This was, evidently, much to Ruiz Zafón’s chagrin. In return, he ridiculed the elitism and snobbery of high modernism and the avant-garde, which in his view still constitute the dominant paradigm of the Spanish literary system (meanwhile, of course, he laughed all the way to the bank). This discrepancy between the reception in Spain and abroad is food for thought. Due to the extraordinary sales in Spain that were generated by massive word-of-mouth advertising, La sombra del viento became newsworthy, though not as a literary phenomenon but as a sociological one. And so, zafonmanía was born and triggered the interest of foreign publishers. As a consequence, the launching abroad took place under completely different circumstances. Contrary to when he was launched in Spain, Ruiz Zafón now had a history, an identity, an identity that was boosted by Joschka Fischer’s widely propagated words of praise: this was a reader’s writer, and a very good and successful one indeed. This frame was, of course, a much more favorable starting point for Ruiz Zafón’s novel than the author’s initial obscurity in Spain. But on the other hand, the zafonmanía could very well have consolidated the idea that Ruiz Zafón’s novel was sheer entertainment and, consequently, not of much interest for the critics and the serious reader. But this was,

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remarkably enough, only the case of the German highbrow press’s reception of La sombra del viento. Without papering the entertainment factor, prestigious critics in France, the United States, and England tended to appreciate certain literary qualities in the novel and to take into consideration the story’s historical context though not, as we have seen, as a heteronomous element. In the footsteps of Spain, Ruiz Zafón’s undeniable literary ambitions could have been denied or criticized abroad. With the exception of Germany, they were not, and that reveals a lot about the specific nature of his postnational status. Contrary to many Spanish highbrow writers whose work was widely translated but did not root deeply abroad ( Javier Marías is the exception that confirms the rule), Ruiz Zafón conquered a central position in the world republic of letters with La sombra del viento and maintained it with El juego del ángel (2008) and El prisionero del cielo (2011). It is true that after the huge international success of La sombra del viento, Spanish critics took interest in Ruiz Zafón’s next novels. But it is also true that they hardly reviewed El juego del ángel and El prisionero del cielo as literature, focusing mostly on the zafonmanía and hardly on the text itself (Steenmeijer, “CRZ o el prestigio”). This seems to be symptomatic for the low status of home-made world fiction as far as Spain’s literary system’s elite is concerned.

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CONTRIBUTORS

Francisco Brignole is assistant professor of Spanish at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. He has published in journals such as Chasqui and Revista de Literatura Mexicana Contemporánea, among others. Bernat Castany Prado is professor of Spanish philology at the University of Barcelona, Spain. He is the author of Literatura posnacional and has coedited volumes such as, among others, Tierras prometidas: de la colonia a la independencia. Ottmar Ette is professor of Romance languages and comparative literature at the University of Postdam. His recent books inlude Anton Wilhelm Amo: Philosophieren ohne festen Wohnsitz; Viellogische Philologie. Die Literaturen der Welt und das Beispiel einer transaerealen peruanischen Literatur; and Roland Barthes: Landschaften der Theorie, among others. Francisco Fernández de Alba is associate professor of Hispanic Studies at Wheaton College, Massachusetts. He has published in journals such asRevista de estudios hispánicos, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Hispanófila, and Iberoamericana. Silvia Goldman teaches at DePaul University in Chicago. Her articles have been published in journals such as RILCE, Rassegna Iberistica, INTI. Revista de literatura hispánica, and others. She is also the author of the book of poetry Cinco movimientos del llanto.

222 · Contributors

Natalia Matta-Jara is a Spanish teacher at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC. Her articles have been published in journals such as INTI. Revista de literatura hispánica, among others. Julio Ortega is professor of Latin American and transatlantic literatures at Brown University. Some of his books include Transatlantic Translations, Gabriel García Márquez and the Powers of Fiction, The New Latin American Narrative, and Poetics of Change: The New Spanish American Literature. Nil Santiáñez is professor of Spanish at Saint Louis University. He is the author of, among others, Topographies of Fascism: Habitus, Space, and Writing in Twentieth-Century Spain; Goya/Clausewitz: Paradigmas de la guerra absoluta; and Investigaciones literarias: Modernidad, historia de la literatura y modernismos. Heike Scharm is associate professor of Spanish at the University of South Florida. Her recent book is El Tiempo y el Ser en Javier Marías. She has published book chapters and articles in Ínsula and INTI: Revista de literatura hispánica, among others. Maarten Steenmeijer is professor of Spanish literature at the University of Nijmegen, Netherlands. He is coauthor of, among others, Más allá de Cervantes y Lorca. El éxito de la literatura española actual en el extranjero (with Alexis Grohmann) and Allí donde uno diría que ya no puede haber nada. Tu rostro mañana de Javier Marías (with Alexis Grohmann). Ricardo F. Vivancos-Pérez is associate professor of Latino/a and Latin American cultural studies at George Mason University. His latest book is Radical Chicana Poetics.

INDEX

alterity, 21, 38, 99; subaltern, 185n5 American, 40, 49, 51–52, 59, 60, 62, 68, 70, 76, 85, 89, 92, 94, 109, 137, 140–41, 144, 154, 195; American Studies, 8; Americas, 3; Latin America, 23, 25n2, 26n9, 46, 69–70, 91–92, 128, 130, 137, 174, 176, 181, 186n10; Latin American, 1, 3–4, 11–13, 19–20, 22–24, 63, 69, 84, 89, 92–94, 12–9, 131–33, 143–44, 149–50, 153, 155–56, 168–69, 171, 174, 177, 183; Latin Americanism, 13, 20; Latin American studies, 8 anti-modern, 72, 74 Appadurai, Arjun, 10, 33, 40, 173 Appiah, Kwame Anthony, 10, 26n7, 150, 165, 172, 186n6 Apter, Emily, 26n8, 45n7 archipelago, 22, 56, 60–61, 63–64, 67–68 archipelization, 64, 66 Arguedas, José María, 71, 83–84 Atlantic, 79, 85, 160 Bauman, Zygmunt, 5, 18, 30, 45n3 Beck, Ulrich, 15–16, 30 belonging, 3, 7, 12, 23, 32, 38, 42–43, 70, 80, 89, 95, 97, 100–101, 105, 130, 142, 173 Bhabha, Homi, 8, 26n6, 143, 173 bi: bilingual, 74, 83–84; bilingualism, 81, 104; binary, 2, 11, 12, 46, 94, 106; binational, 110 Bolaño, Roberto, 150, 153–55, 159, 160–62, 165, 168, 170n14 Borges, Jorge Luis, 11, 21, 24, 75, 81, 84,

149–50, 152–69, 169nn4,5, 170nn7,9, 171, 189, 194–96, 199 Bosniak, Linda, 6 capitalism, 109, 119, 121–23, 126–27, 146, 175, 181 Caribbean, 24, 51, 60, 76–77, 128, 174–75, 177, 180, 182 Casanova, Pascale, 18, 30, 187–89 Castellanos Moya, Horacio, 150, 161 Castells, Manuel, 31, 39, 43–44, 45nn1,2,4 center, 11, 51, 64, 82–83, 90, 99, 110; centerperiphery, 2, 12–13, 112, 183; central, 51, 56, 62, 65–66, 101, 116, 189; centrisms, 21; ethnocentric, 14; Eurocentric, 37, 181, 184; eurocentrism, 17, 26n8, 181; noncentral, 24, 185; non-Eurocentric, 13; phallocentric, 121, 123 Cervantes, Miguel de, 70, 75, 78–79, 83, 117–18, 162 Cervantine: irony, 72, 78, 80; language, 80, 121; process, 111; techniques, 119; theory, 81 Chicana/o, 115 citizenship, 6, 16, 21, 32, 41–43, 84, 140–41, 160–61, 172–73; world citizenship, 21, 143 colonial, 5, 11, 61–62, 67, 73, 108, 127, 131, 172, 174, 177, 181–82, 184; colonialism, 57, 175, 181, 183; postcolonial, 8, 12–13, 23–24, 171, 174, 176–77, 184; postcoloniality, 109 Cold War, 13, 14, 46, 62

224 · Index Columbus, Christopher, 49, 73, 77, 139 comparative, 2, 19, 35, 36–38, 43, 108, 185n5 compartmentalization, 2, 7, 69, 162 Connell, Liam, and Nicky Marsh, 11, 30 Cortázar, Julio, 72, 132, 150, 153, 155, 158, 160, 162 cosmopolitan, 1, 11–17, 19, 24, 26n7, 42, 136, 139–40, 143–44, 150–63, 165–68, 169n1, 171–74, 176–77, 183–84; cosmopolitanism, 5, 6, 8, 11–17, 19, 24, 25–26n5, 26n7, 145, 149–50, 156, 159–60, 163–65, 168–69, 169n2, 170n7, 171–72, 176, 177, 185, 185nn2,5, 185–86n6, 188; cosmopolitanisms, 12, 15; uncosmopolitan, 14 cosmos, 16, 150, 156–57, 159–60 cross: cross-cultural, 1, 6, 22, 76, 83; crossdisciplinary, 6, 12, 21; cross-epochal, 76; cross-national, 6, 107n5 Cuba, 47–49, 51–53, 55–61, 62–68, 68n3, 128, 136, 143, 172–79, 180–84, 186nn7,8; Cuban culture, 13, 24, 46, 48, 62, 66, 171–77, 180–85, 185n4; Cuban exile, 62–63, 137; Cuban literature, 13, 46–48, 62, 65–68; Cuban revolution, 46–48, 61, 64–67 culture: cross-cultural, 1, 6, 22, 76, 83; cultural, 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 12–16, 20–21, 25, 26n5, 26n8, 29–31, 35, 39–41, 44, 47–48, 63, 65, 67, 70, 84–86, 89, 91, 100–101, 107n5, 109, 114–21, 123, 129, 131–32, 140–42, 144–46, 149, 160, 171–77, 181–85, 185n4, 186n9, 187, 191, 196; cultural exchange, 23, 70, 110, 112, 119, 129, 130; cultural hybridity, 108; cultural identity, 19, 23, 173, 176, 183; cultural studies, 6, 12, 25, 30, 35, 40, 43, 109; intercultural, 118–19; multicultural, 17, 89, 112, 119, 123, 144, 185n5; transcultural, 1, 19, 47, 63; transculturation, 127, 174, 185n2 Damrosch, David, 18, 30, 35–37 Darío, Rubén, 75, 80–81, 84 de-centering, 6, 8, 98; decentralized, 42 democratization, 42 denationalization, 6, 31–33, 177, 189

deterritorialized, 14, 132 dialogical, 4, 8, 16, 71, 75, 86, 103, 94, 185; dialogic cosmopolitanism, 16; dialogism, 85 dialogue, 2, 6, 9, 12, 19, 22, 40, 43, 46, 69, 70, 73, 75–76, 83, 94, 95, 105, 114–15, 119, 151, 162 diaspora, 3, 23, 25, 63, 95, 99; diasporic, 1, 23, 42–43, 110–12, 136, 144 Díaz, Junot, 23, 108–16, 123, 127, 153 Diogenes Laërtius, 152, 160, 170n10 Diogenes of Sinope, 16, 149, 159–61, 170n10 displaced, 19, 177; displacement, 71, 85, 90, 95, 101–2, 106, 110, 127, 130–31, 134, 142, 146; self-displacement, 91 diverse, 5, 18, 42, 53–55, 86, 89, 92, 94, 97, 109, 143–44, 176; diversity, 1, 5, 24, 55, 112, 158, 173 Don Quixote, 78–81, 83, 119, 121, 123, 158, 165, 189, 195, 199 Durkheim, Émile, 15 elite, 174, 176, 182–83, 185 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 150, 152, 154–55, 168 Enlightenment, 17, 52 ethical, 13, 15, 38, 59, 86, 117, 156–58, 159, 164, 169n3; ethics, 20, 158, 164 ethnic, 29, 56, 70, 129, 172; ethnicity, 109, 113, 119, 127, 130, 137, 173, 176, 181, 186n8; multiethnic, 174 European, 12–14, 19, 24, 26n7, 36, 41–43, 47, 49, 52, 54–56, 60, 63, 76, 84, 104, 119, 122, 124, 160, 165, 173, 177, 180–81, 185; Europe, 3, 29, 34, 41–42, 49, 51, 53, 55, 62, 91, 119, 131, 143, 160, 175, 180–81, 183, 185n3, 188; Eurocentric, 37, 181, 184; eurocentrism, 17, 26n8, 181; non-Eurocentric, 13 exile, 23, 25, 57, 60, 62–64, 74, 81, 89, 105–6, 106n1, 110, 117, 128–29, 130–44, 154, 161 exodus, 130, 132 Fernández, Macedonio, 152, 155 Ferré, Juan Francisco, 20, 23, 108–10, 112, 117–27

Index · 225 Ferrufino-Coqueugniot, Claudio, 23, 129–33, 138, 140, 142–43, 145–46 fluid, 6, 94–95, 100–102, 104; fluidity, 10, 23, 83, 89, 91 Frassinelli, Pier Paolo, and David Watson, 17, 18 Frassinelli, Pier Paolo, Ronit Frenkel, and David Watson, 6 Gamboa, Santiago, 23, 129–33, 138, 140, 142–46 Garcilaso de la Vega, 2, 75, 81 Garcilaso de la Vega, Inca, 76–78 gender, 23, 25, 109, 113–15, 119–21; gender studies, 23, 109, 115 Giddens, Anthony, 10, 30, 172 global, 1, 2, 5, 7, 10–20, 22–24, 26nn4,5, 29– 30, 32–33, 35, 38, 40, 42, 45n3, 48–49, 54, 55–57, 60–64, 66, 90, 92–93, 106, 119–27, 143–45, 173, 183, 188, 190; capitalism, 123, 126–27, 146; Global Now, 1, 10–11, 15, 18, 23; globalism, 146; globality, 4; globalization, 3, 5, 6, 9, 10–14, 16–21, 23–24, 29–33, 35, 37–40, 44, 53, 56, 60–61, 63, 68, 85, 89, 101, 108–9, 112, 117, 119, 120–23, 125, 127, 146, 149, 164, 169, 173, 188; globalized world, 6, 8, 9, 18; globalizing, 31; island, 48–49, 53, 57, 61, 62, 66, 67, 68 glocal, 5, 12 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 17, 35, 149, 153–54, 165, 168 Góngora, Luis de, 75–78 Habermas, Jürgen, 10, 150, 165, 173 Hall, Stuart, 15 Heidegger, Martin, 43, 70 heterogeneous, 115, 118, 141; heterogeneity, 70 Hispanic, 1, 3–4, 6–9, 11–13, 19, 21, 23–25, 40, 93–94, 108–9, 127–28, 131, 174, 181–82, 185; Hispanic studies, 4, 6, 8, 9, 11, 13, 19, 23–24; Hispanism(s), 3–5, 12, 21, 30, 39–42

homogenous, 24, 144, 172–73; homogeneity, 13, 112 horizontal, 4, 8, 95; horizontality, 8 Hoyos, Héctor, 6, 11, 19–20 human, 13, 31–32, 38, 44, 60, 76, 81, 128, 146, 154, 156–57, 162–63, 170, 177; dehumanizing, 16; humanism, 14, 75, 84, 86; new humanism, 14 Humboldt, Alexander von, 2, 4, 19, 22, 51–57, 60, 66, 68 hybrid, 5, 8, 20, 33, 75, 103, 117–18, 124, 133, 144; hybridity, 8, 41, 48, 75, 144; hybridization, 40 identity, 5, 8, 14–15, 18–19, 21, 23–24, 40–42, 91, 93–94, 100–102, 104, 106, 109–10, 112–14, 116, 127–30, 132–33, 138–39, 142, 144, 160, 169, 172–74, 176, 181–85, 199 imperialistic, 49; imperialist, 3 insularization, 66 inter: interconnections, 54, 64; intercultural, 119, 144; interdependence, 123, 126; international, 14, 25, 32–33, 62, 121, 124, 126, 143, 145, 173, 175, 180, 185, 187–89, 191, 195–96, 199–200; internationalism, 13, 150, 164, 168 itinerant, 55, 89–91, 132, 142–43; itinerancy, 89 Iwasaki, Fernando, 150, 161 Jay, Paul, 10, 30, 112 Lam, Wifredo, 24, 171n7, 180, 182–85 Latin: Latin American, 1, 8, 11–13, 18–20, 22–24, 63, 69, 89, 93–94, 128–29, 131–33, 143, 149–50, 153, 155n6, 168, 171, 174, 177, 183; Latin Americanism, 13, 20; Latina/o, 1, 4, 8, 11–12, 25–26, 108–9, 111–15, 115–17 Lezama Lima, José, 58, 66, 85, 174, 186 linguism: bilingual, 74, 83–84; bilingualism, 81, 104; monolingual, 3; monolingualism, 86; multilingual, 85, 89, 98, 104; multilingualism, 69; plurilingual, 22, 70; plurilingualism, 4, 86

226 · Index machismo, 113, 115, 116, 121; machista, 110, 113, 116, 117; post-machista, 115 Marías, Javier, 72, 188, 200 Martí, José, 2, 57–62, 66, 67, 94, 180 Marx, Karl, 15, 34–35, 186 mestizaje, 22, 70, 77 migration, 23, 54, 55–56, 66, 102, 104, 106, 110; migratory, 57, 99, 100, 105, 164 modern, 4, 19, 33, 42, 49, 53, 71–73, 81, 84–86, 107, 146, 150, 152–53, 172, 176, 183; antimodern, 74; modernity, 2, 10, 12, 13, 15, 22, 25, 56, 66, 70, 74, 85, 86, 189; modernization, 73; postmodern, 108–9, 111, 158, 185, 189; postmodernity, 7, 9–10, 15; second modernity, 16 monolingual, 3; monolingualism, 86 Montaigne, Michel, 76, 152, 154, 162, 168–69 Moretti, Franco, 17–78, 26, 36–37 multi: multicultural, 17, 112, 119, 123, 144, 185; multiculturalism, 14; multiethnic, 174; multilingual, 85, 89, 98, 104; multilingualism, 69; multiracial, 174, 184 national, 1–3, 5–7, 11–4, 16, 18–19, 22–25, 25n2, 29, 31–32, 37, 40–43, 47, 61–63, 72–73, 89, 92, 110, 119, 126, 129, 132, 140–42, 144, 146, 169n2, 172, 174–75, 178, 185, 186n9, 187, 191, 193–95; binational, 110; cross-national, 107n5; denationalization, 6, 31–32; denationalizing, 33, 177; international, 14, 32–33, 62, 126, 143, 173, 175, 180, 185, 187–89, 191, 195–96, 199–200; internationalism, 13, 150, 164, 168; islandnation, 53; nation, 2, 3, 5, 7–8, 11, 21, 43, 53, 76, 93–94, 106, 107n5, 108–9, 130, 136, 140, 142, 164, 171, 173, 175–77, 181–82, 184; national borders, 6, 9, 78, 93, 146; national identity, 5, 19, 24, 40–42, 91, 109, 133, 160, 172–73, 185; national literature (s), 17–18, 29–30, 35–44, 47, 62, 67, 69, 159, 171, 186n9; nationalistic, 12, 22, 110, 117, 129, 177; national-territorial, 65; nationculture, 185; nation-state, 6–7, 15–16, 29,

31–33, 40–45, 52, 57, 65–67, 84, 93–94, 101, 169, 172–74; nonnational, 1, 7, 25n2; postnational, 1–10, 12–18, 20–25, 25n2, 26n8, 86, 92, 108, 110, 113, 115, 127, 130, 141–46, 151, 155, 161, 164, 169, 172–74, 176, 185, 188, 190–92, 193, 197–98, 200; postnational identity, 133; postnationalism, 169n2, 173; postnationalist(s), 184–85; postnationalistic, 112, 115; postnationality, 113, 127; postnational language, 70, 74, 82, 86; postnational literature, 7, 86, 150, 153, 156, 158–59, 165, 168–9, 169n2; subnational, 18; supranational, 37, 40–42, 172; transnational, 1, 6–8, 12, 18, 21, 25n2, 32–33, 37, 40–44, 92, 101, 108–10, 112–14, 127, 133, 143, 145, 173, 177, 184; transnational citizenship, 41–43; transnational identity, 101, 127, 133; transnationalism, 107n5, 116, 176; transnationalization, 31 native, 33, 36, 90, 100, 128, 139, 143 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 149, 151–55, 158, 166–67 nomadic, 117, 132, 139, 143 non: nonnational, 1, 7, 25n2; nonplace, 89, 94–95 Nussbaum, Martha, 14, 16, 17, 21, 152, 169n1, 176 patriotism, 172, 176, 184 Pease, Donald E., 8 Petrarch, 75–76, 80 Piñera, Virgilio, 24, 171–75, 177–80, 182–85, 185nn3,4, 186nn8,9,11 planetary, 2, 5, 8, 18, 20–21, 36, 38, 53, 122, 164; planetary rhizome, 2 Plato, 76; Neoplatonism, 75; Neoplatonist(s), 156, 162; Platonists, 156 pluralism, 14 plurilogical, 64, 66, 68 Plutarch, 152, 161–62 polis, 160–61 politics, 16, 32, 61–2, 64, 66, 122, 176, 193; geopolitics, 13 polyglot, 84, 86, 143

Index · 227 post: postcolonial, 8, 12–13, 23–24, 108–9, 171, 174, 176–77, 181, 184; postcoloniality, 109; postmodern, 108–9, 111, 158, 185n5, 189; postmodernism, 198; postmodernity, 5, 7, 9–10, 15; postnational, 1–18, 20–25, 25n2, 26n8, 92, 108, 110, 113, 115, 117, 122, 127, 141–46, 149, 161, 172–73, 188, 190–91, 193, 198; postnationalism, 6, 17, 169n2, 173; postnationalistic, 112, 115; postnationality, 113, 127; postnational language, 70, 74, 82, 86; postnational literature, 7, 86, 150, 153, 156, 158, 168–69, 169n2; postnational paradigm, 5, 7, 10, 13, 151, 155, 164, 169, 188 Quechua language, 23, 70, 83–85, 89–90, 93–94, 97, 100–102, 104, 107n6 Quintilian, 75–76 Rama, Ángel, 130, 171, 174 regional, 61, 64, 68, 74, 84, 125–26; identity, 19; literature, 18; regionalism, 73 relational, 56, 66, 68; relationality, 61, 64, 66, 68 relativism, 17 Reyes, Alfonso, 75, 78, 84–85 Robertson, Roland, 10 rooted, 142; rootedness, 106; rootlessness, 89, 105; uprooted, uprooting, 177 Ruiz Zafón, Carlos, 24, 188–200 Said, Edward, 17, 128, 165, 175 Sassen, Saskia, 30–33 Seneca, 150, 152, 162–64, 167 Simmel, Georg, 15, 142 Singer, Peter, 150, 165, 177, 185n2 Siskind, Mariano, 6, 19 Soja, Edward, 7 Spinoza, 149, 152–54, 159, 163, 168

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, 17, 20, 22, 26, 30, 37–39, 44 subaltern, 185n5 supranational, 37, 40–42, 172 trans: trans-areal, trans-aerial, 22, 55, 62; transatlantic, 2, 4, 22–25, 35, 40, 55, 76, 85, 108, 127; transcontinental, 19; transcultural, 1, 19, 47; transculturation, 127, 174, 185n2; transhistorical, 19; translational, 19, 21, 33; translingual, 63; translocal, 19; transnational, 1, 6–8, 12, 18, 21, 25n2, 32–33, 37, 40–44, 92, 101, 108–10, 112–14, 127, 133, 143, 145, 173, 177, 184; transnationalism, 107n5, 116, 176; transnationalization, 31; transoceanic, 56; transtemporal, 187 universal, 12–13, 38, 83, 164, 190; universalism, 5–6, 12–14, 17, 20, 150, 177; universality, 19, 172 Vallejo, César, 71, 82 Vargas Llosa, Mario, 23, 129–33, 138–40, 142–43, 145–46, 165 Vicuña, Cecilia, 23, 89–94, 97, 99, 101–7, 106n1, 107n1, 108nn2,3,4,5,6 Volpi, Jorge, 132, 150, 153, 168 Wallerstein, 30, 36 Weber, 15 Weltliteratur, 35–36 Western, 14, 17, 29, 47, 49, 51, 55, 120, 143, 150, 160, 168, 181, 184; non-Western, 26 Whitman, Walt, 150, 152, 154–55, 160, 166, 168, 169n6 World citizenship, 21 worldliness, 72, 142 World literature, 2, 21