Spanish IV: Literary Theory and Hispanic Criticism: "Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Transatlantic World.”

Session Coordinator: Rudyard Alcocer
Dept. of Modern and Classical Languages, Georgia State University
GCB 864, Atlanta, GA 30303
ralcocer@gsu.edu

“Flesh for Foreign Currency: Problematizing the Figure of the Emigrant in the Hispanic Discourse of Fin de Siècle”

The discourse of Hispanismo by the Spanish administration at the turn of the century constructed the Latin American emigrant as a cultural subject endowed with the social mission of renewing the transatlantic bond. In the body of academic works, Hispanismo has been generally approached as a cultural and social project based on common history. However, the commercial interests of the Spanish Government in its ex-colonies have been practically ignored (Mainer, 1988). This paper focuses on the contradictions of this rhetoric that concentrates the Hispanic cultural and social regeneration on a subject, the emigrant, whose mobility is eminently economic. Works by the Argentineans Antonio Argerich and Francisco Sicardi reveal the commercial character of Hispanismo by portraying the Spanish community in Buenos Aires. On the other hand, the Spanish writers Eduardo López Bago and Eva Canel problematized these transatlantic movements by depicting emigration as an economic phenomenon that provokes social instability and that is a target of moral corruption. I will analyze how these non-canonical texts offer a counter-portrait from the institutionalized discourses of Hispanismo by Ramiro de Maeztu and Ricardo Rojas.  

Diana Arbaiza

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

arbaiza@uiuc.edu

“The Limits of the Canon: the Current Debate in Cuban Literature”

Harold Bloom’s book The Western Canon (1994) became the center of a great debate about the literary canon in the United Kingdom and United States soon after its publication.  One of Bloom’s principle concerns was the erosion of aesthetic values in the Humanities which was brought about by the advent of Cultural Studies.  According to Bloom, the ideological focus on social justice brought irreparable damage to the study of literature. For this reason, he recommends a return to a strict notion of the Western Canon based on aesthetic values.  Despite the fact that scholars have been debating the formation and the place of the Cuban literary canon before the publication of Bloom’s book, Roberto González Echevarría’s position as one of the book’s advisors, rekindled the discussion. Typically, the discussions have not only centered on which writers and which works to included in the index Cuban national writers, but some have questioned the need of both a canon and a counter-canon (Rojas).  Given the circumstances of Cuban studies, the approaches to the canon that have had the greatest impact thus far have focused on the mechanisms of exclusion. My contention is that we will find a curious relationship between time and genre in the differing versions of the Cuban canon that establish the limits of canonical thinking. In this regard, it is only by seeing the limits is it possible to move beyond the canon.

James J. Pancrazio

Illinois State University

jjpancr@ilstu.edu

“Genre, Gender and Women’s Pseudoautobiography in Alonso de Castillo Solórzano’s La niña de los embustes, Teresa de Manzanares and Elena Poniatowska’s Hasta no verte Jesús mío”

Because early modern Spanish picaresque narratives and twentieth-century Spanish American testimonial novels are separated by centuries and continents, readers may not notice their shared features. To mention some basic similarities between the genres, both are Spanish-language pseudoautobiographies that present the experiences of socially peripheral groups from an eyewitness’s point of view and contain incisive socio-political commentaries. This paper examines one text with a female protagonist from each tradition, Alonso de Castillo Solórzano’s La niña de los embustes, Teresa de Manzanares (1632) and Elena Poniatowska’s Hasta no verte Jesús mío (1969). Thematically, both works explore the lives of women who travel in their countries of origin, support themselves economically, outlive their husbands, and critique marriage. Moreover, the two texts feature intercalations or framed stories that explore the nature of history. In this paper, after comparing the genres of the two works, I propose to illuminate how the self-conscious intercalations and frames in the texts challenge the limits of life writing. This comparison is informed by theoretical readings about life writing, metafiction, history, and gender. 

Gwen Stickney

North Dakota State University

gwen.stickney@ndsu.edu

“ID Check / Reality Check: Ethnicity and Cultural Identity in Nicolás Echevarría's Cabeza de Vaca”

Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca was part of a Spanish expedition that foundered off the coast of Florida in 1528. He was the only survivor and, before reaching his compatriots eight years later in Nueva España, he lived among numerous indigenous groups, many of whom had never even heard of Euopeans. The purpose of this presentation is to examine Nicolás Echevarría’s film, Cabeza de Vaca, in light of current polemics on race and ethnicity in the Americas, with a special emphasis on key moments in the film that depict his cultural alienation among the indigenous groups. My contention is that Echevarría’s circle motifs in the film provide a basis for understanding broader conceptualizations of Cabeza de Vaca’s abandonment of his Spanish cultural heritage and his acceptance of a new, Transatlantic identity.

Rudyard Alcocer

Georgia State University

ralcocer@gsu.edu