Calibán-Retamar-1971

 

culture and identity

Caliban- article available on JSTOR

Interesting lecture notes available here- http://www.mml.cam.ac.uk/spanish/sp5/nation/Ariel-Caliban.htm (See complimentary note on blog post of Ariel)

(These notes include info on Ariel, which is another required reading)

-Begins with explanation of Anderson’s Imagined Communities: ‘Imagined’ because no matter how small the nation, none of the individual members will ever meet or know all of the others, and so therefore the existence of some form of communion between a particular group of people must be imagined. A ‘community’  because no matter what the actual inequalities that exist within the nation it is at base ‘conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship.’

-narrative is at the heart of the imagined nation…. But what tropes structure this narration? One of the most important in Latin America is that of the movement from barbarism to civilisation.

- The history of America, for Sarmiento, for example, is that of ‘toldos de razas abyectas,’ of ‘un gran continente abandonado a los salvajes incapaces de progreso’. For such a vision, the act of governing, of creating a nation is one of destruction and conquest.

- As both Ernst Gellner and Benedict Anderson  point out, the nation-state suffers the contradictory desire to both affirm its modernity while at the same time attesting to an authenticity grounded in a distant autochthonous past.

- He returns to Shakespeare. Calibán is, of course, Shakespeare’s ‘savage and deformed slave’, the original inhabitant of the island that Prospero now rules. ‘Calibán’ is Shakespeare’s anagram of ‘cannibal’, and ‘cannibal’ derives from the Spanish deformation of ‘carib’ the original, warlike and supposedly anthropophagus  inhabitants of parts of the West Indies. A people extinguished by  Spanish genocide. For Fernández Retamar there is no doubt that The Tempest refers to America, that its island is one of America’s, and that Calibán is America’s Carib. 

-Calibán is truly America; indigenous and mestiza, no longer the provenance of a criollo elite. He quotes Simón Bolívar: ‘nuestro pueblo no es el europeo, ni el americano del norte, que más bien es un compuesto de África y de América que una emanación de Europa’

-Speaking of both language and rule: ‘The successes of history belong to those who are capable of seizing these rules, to replace those who had used them, to disguise themselves so as to pervert them, invert their meaning, and redirect them against those who had initially imposed them; controlling this complex mechanism, they will make it function so as to overcome the rulers through their own rules.’

- Bhabha highlights the possibilities of utilising the coloniser’s language as a tool of liberation because of what he terms the ‘ambivalence’ of dominant discourses. This ambivalence fractures the attempts of colonisers, or criollo elites to create a totally hegemonic national discourse.

- By rejecting, or attempting to reject long established European models of civilisation we do not arrive at a vision that more accurately represents America’s authentic autochthonous ‘reality’. What Fernandez Retamar provides is an analysis that demonstrates the ways in which no dominant discourse is totally hegemonic.

- It is thus in a resistance that works through the interstices of colonial discourse that America begins to exist, and it is here that Rodó and Fernandez Retamar, despite the radical differences in their work, strangely, coincide.

- The difference between these two authors is that Fernandez Retamar realises that there is no gloriously authentic past to be resurrected in the creation of the liberated Latin American nation - whether that past be European or American.

Notes from the text

-Opening ? from Euro journalist: Does a L.Am culture exist?

-Author thinks: Do you exist? Without culture, there is no existence.

-Capitalist countries achieve homogeneity, L.Am. is mestizo. 

-mentions different forms of mestizaje

-L.Am taken for rough drafts/dull copies of Europeans, all use languages of colonizers

Caliban=Cannibal, comes from word Carib (which is a stereotype perhaps propagated by Colombus)

-Colonizer’s version: due to irremediable bestiality, Carib must be exterminated (in the process, also exterminated peaceful Araucos)

-In 1945, UN changes terminology…colonial or backward areas à economically underdeveloped

-First writer to assume L.Am. identification with Caliban, Lamming notes that “Prospero’s gift of language to Caliban is the very prison in which Caliban’s accomplishments with be realized and restricted.”

-John Wain says: Caliban has the pathos of the exploited people everywhere…even the lowest savage wished to be left alone rather than be “educated” and made to work for someone else.

-In 1969, three Antillian writers take up Caliban as a symbol.

- Thesis: “Our symbol is not Ariel, as Rodó thought, but rather Caliban”

-Prospero invaded the islands, killed our ancestors, enslaved Caliban, and taught him his language to make himself understood.

-Rodós essential position against N.Am. penetration would thus appear to be an afterthought in the work.

Observations on the destiny of Martí’s work:

-well-read in his lifetime, harsh judgements against the U.S. were well known

-work fell into “relative” oblivion upon his death in 1895.

-Martí is just NOW being really appreciated; his work had a future-oriented importance.

-Martí: rejection of the ethnocide that Europe practiced is total, identification with aboriginal culture

-Sarniento, on the other hand= anti-indigenist (“a great continent abandoned to savages incapable of progress”)

-Borges also had a bit of imperialism in him: “I believe our tradition is Europe”…The work of Borges, written in a Spanish difficult to read without admiration, is one of the American scandals of our time. His works (e.g Jardin de los senderos bifurcantes.) are the painful testimony of a class with no way out.

-Martiátegui: The time of free competition in capitalist econ. has come to an end. We are in an era of monopolies/empires. The L.Am. countries are experiencing a belated entry into competitive capitalism….Dominant positions have been established and the rest are economies.

-Mentions Fuentes, Death of Artemio Cruz, trying to maintain a semblance of leftist philosophy…yet he’s a pretty right-wing dude

-“our culture is-and can only be-the child of revolution, of our multisecular rejection of all colonialisms. Our culture, like every culture, requires as a primary condition our own existence.”

\

So, Ariel can either serve Prospero as a slave or ally himself with Caliban in a struggle for true freedom.

-History is in the making!

-more interesting quotes: http://www.mml.cam.ac.uk/spanish/sp5/nation/Caliban.htm

Franco - Chapter 2 (Intro to Span. Amer. Lit)

Chapter 2: Literature and Nationalism

Comps people mentioned

-          Esteban Echeverría – El matadero (pg. 47-52)

-          Domingo Sarmiento (pg. 52-55)

-          Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda – Sab (pg. 61)

-          Juan Francisco Monzano – Autobiography (pg. 61)

-          Ricardo Palma – Tradiciones peruanas (pg. 68-70)

General Notes

Introduction

-          There were many tertulias/literary circles in post-independence Latin America, often formed with the goal of stimulating/encouraging the production of a national literature. These tertulias often also had some political ties rather than just literary (46)

-          There was lots of fascination with the Romantic movement, especially during the first half of the 19^th century (46)

o   “in Latin America, Romanticism was identified above all with individual freedom and nationalism” (46)

-          Link between political and literary revolution – “new literature was thus identified with political and social reform in the minds of young intellectuals who held on to these ideals during dark periods of oppression, dictatorship, and civil war” (46-47)

-          Literature (novel and poetry) was an instrument for attacking injustices, and for creating a sense of patriotism and civic pride (47)

-          Literature (especially histories and essays) often stressed differences between new countries and Spain, and to underline the mistakes made by Spain in her administration of the colonies (47)

o   My example of this would be: Carta de Jamaica by Simón Bolívar

o   Idea that Spanish colonial rule is responsible for backwardness of new republics

Civilization and Barbarism

-          Connection between Romanticism and the new countries’ determination to create original national literatures (47)

-          Romantics saw literature as a definition of the national spirit and literature and national identity were closely linked in their minds – Latin Americans focused on this idea, especially emphasizing the desire for originality (47)

-          Esteban Echeverría

o   Part of Creole aristocracy

o   Lived in Argentina during Rosas’ dictatorship. Echeverría was against Rosas because he was into the European scene and progress, while Rosas was stubbornly anti-Europe. (48)

o   He introduced Romantic ideas in Argentina (48)

o   He expressed the dilemma of his time: artistic tendencies teach the writer to love the countryside and the “folk,” but living experiences teach the man that the countryside and its inhabitants constitute a threat to all the values (48)

§  This dilemma was founded in the different contexts of European romanticism vs. Latin American romanticism (49)

§  In Europe, idealize the countryside and the simple life of the peasant

§  In Latin Amer., the country = savage Indians and half-wild gauchos

o   El matadero (50-52)

§  Defends European values and attacks primitive native barbarism

§  The conflict between the forces of primitive darkness (the tribe or the mass) and the civilized individual

§  Political allegory which attacks the dictatorship of Rosas and the barbarism of his supporters

§  Story relates an incident that took place in the slaughterhouse of Buenos Aires during the Lenten fast – the sudden arrival of 50 head of cattle after a period without meat is the occasion for an orgy of butchering

§  Butchers are symbolic for gauchos, the parts of the nation that supported Rosas

§  Image of a degraded society, in which men are ready to betray one another and Negro/mulatto men/women are too insensitive to realize the disgusting nature of their work

§  Death of a young man dressed in European style – symbolic; this is the story of the forces of civilization defeated by those of barbarism

-          Domingo Sarmiento (52-55)

o   Argentinean essayist, politician, and educationalist (52)

o   Humble yet respectable Spanish background; pride because he made his own way in the world since his parents were poor (52)

o   Was against the whole gaucho scene and Rosas (52)

o   He exiled to Chile for a bit, and when he returned to Argentina he actually became president of the republic from 1868-1874 (55)

o   Desire for the modern Latin American man to be like the European enlightened man of progress (55)

o   Vida de Juan Facundo Quiroga: Civilización y barbarie (53-54)

§  This essay was the biography of a local gaucho tyrant

§  Seeks to explain the dominance of barbarism and cruelty in Argentinean political life by studying the influence of the physical environment

§  “while Sarmiento appreciates the poetry of pampa life, he cannot accept the gaucho as a national stereotype. His [The gaucho’s] way of life is medieval”

§  Second part of essay: Gaucho values have encouraged the rise of cruel tyrants

Nationalism and the Novel

-          “the novel was a more recent genre, the seriousness of which still had to be justified” – this is why many novelists of the early 19^th century wrote explanatory prefaces justifying their use of the genre (56)

-          “All too often the nineteenth-century Spanish American novel is clumsy and inept, with a plot derived at second hand from the contemporary European Romantic novel” (56)

-          José Mármol – Amalia (56-58)

The Caribbean Novel and the National Cause

-          “nowhere was Romanticism associated with the struggle for freedom more fervently than in the Caribbean, and particularly in Cuba where the struggle for independence endured for the whole of the 19^th century” (59)

-          “since no liberal could support national independence without taking up the cause of the Negro salve, the novel also became an anti-slavery document” (59)

-          Cirilo Villaverde – Cecilia Valdés (59-60)

o   His novel was quite famous, romantic/realist influences

-          Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda – Sab, 1841 (61)

o   Her life: (1814-1873), Cuban birth but life in Spain

o   Hero of novel was a slave outcast and rebel

-          Slaves could not make themselves heard. One exception was Autobiography of the former slave, Juan Francisco Manzano. This text makes us realize the difference between first-hand experience and the descriptions of an outsider, however sympathetic said outsider may be. (61)

-          Eugenio María de Hostos (61-62)

o   Puerto Rican, Spanish American freedom fighter

The Historical Novel

-          Romanticism made the historical novel popular (62)

-          The historical novel was viewed as the best way of creating a sense of national identity, since you could expose the evils of Spanish colonial rule and celebrate the deeds of national heroes (62)

-          Greatest difficulty faced by the writer of historical novels was verisimilitude (62)

-          These novels brought forth subjects which were previously taboo, such as the heroism of the Indians during the conquest, the evils of the Inquisition, and the rights of Jews/Protestants to be considered human beings

The Historical Novel in Uruguay

-          Uruguay was special because it had to fight doubly for independence, first from the Spanish and then from the Portuguese, who took control in an invasion (63)

-          Alejandro Magariños Cervantes – Caramarú (63-64)

-          Acevedo Díaz (64-66)

o   Liberation of Uruguay is the central event in his novels

Nationalism and Literature in Peru

-          “Peru emerged from Independence bearing the weight of past magnificence from the period when Lima had been the intellectual, social, and political center of South America” (66)

-          “Even after Independence, the conservative and aristocratic traditions were strong” (66)

-          Felipe Pardo y Aliaga (66-67)

-          Manuel Ascensio Segura y Cordero (67-68)

-          Ricardo Palma (68-70)

o   He was famous as the inventor of an original genre, the tradiciones, which are short historical anecdotes that “covered every period of Peruvian history from pre-conquest times to the period in which he was writing” (68)

o   His tradiciones were published first in newspapers and then in a series of books

o   “Unlike the writers of historical novels, he does not preach nationalism in the tradiciones; at the same time, his correspondence reveals a man who was deeply concerned with the lack of national spirit which he witnessed during the Peruvian-Chilean war” (68)

o   Idea of author standing at a distance and allowing the reader to draw his own conclusion from the tale (69)

o   Best of the tradiciones are set in period of the Viceroys; Palma’s attraction to the formality and order of the colonial period (69)

o   Entertaining and witty feel to the anecdotes (70)

Altamirano and Mexican Literary Nationalism

-          Literary nationalism was a late development in Mexico, despite Lizardi’s early example (70)

-          Ignacio Altamirano (71-73)

o   Most conscious and determined effort to create a Mexican national literature

o   Belief that Mexican poetry and literature should be completely original