Copyright @ Spring 1996 by the Journal of Afro-Latin American Studies and
Literatures-JALAS&L, ISSN 1051-1865. All rights reserved. No portions of
these article highlights may be printed and distributed without permission
of JALAS&L. Electronic circulation of these highlights within other
Internet fora and/or Internet/Bitnet private e-mail addresses must include
this copyright note as well as the complete and appropriate bibliographic
citations posted herein.
Greetings and thanks for the tremendous support and interest constantly
expressed in JALAS&L through your letters, e-mail, etc. We are also
particularly pleased with all the libraries from ivy league schools and
from schools with strong African, African-American, and Latin American
Studies programs who have subscribed to JALAS&L recently.
The two articles from the 1995 JALAS&L to be highlighted here are
"Writing, Legitimation, and Ethnicity: Turn-of-the-Century Latin American
Lyric," by Dr. Jerome Branche, from University of Kentucky, and "Maryse
Conde's -Tituba- as Subversion of Essentialism," by Dr. Kapanga M.
Kasango, of University of Richmond.
Before we start the highlights, I would like to briefly ratify that the
theme for the 1996 JALAS&L will be "Race and Gender in Latin America and
Iberophone Africa." A call for papers has been issued, mailed, and/or
posted on AFROLAT (our Internet forum for Afro-Latino issues housed at
Arizona State University) and in various other Internet fora. Submissions
of articles in English, Spanish, Portuguese, or French considering the
intersection or interaction of race and gender in these two targeted areas
will be accepted until July 5, 1996 (online submissions are not
encouraged). If you did not receive a copy of our call for papers, send
an online request to <egkbrasil@aol.com> or <rmvieira@cldc.howard.edu> and
it will be forwarded to you asap.
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS:
First Article: "Writing, Legitimation, and Ethnicity: The
Turn-of-the-Century Latin American Lyric," by Jerome Branche.
BEGINNING OF QUOTE
The issue of writing, legitimation, and ethnicity in Latin American
colonial and post-colonial societies is a complex one that derives its
importance as well as its dynamism from many sources. It simultaneously
brings into play, among other things, questions relating to the real and
symbolic power consonant with literary institutionalization and
canonization--i.e., authorial prestige--, as well as to the tensions
generated in Latin American literary voicing and identity, under the
polarizing and Manicheistic racial thinking so important to the ideology
of colonialism during and before the nineteenth century.1
(Footnote 1: In this essay I explore writing and power relations, using
the cluster of meanings Said refers to in -Beginnings: Intention and
Method (qtd. in Sandra Gilbert's "Literary Paternity," published in
-Critical Theory Since 1965-, 486-496) where writers are associated with
authority and generative ability, as well as institutional, social, and
peer prestige, and exclusivism (Bourdieu, Pierre. "The Field of Cultural
Production, or: The Economic World Reversed." -Poetics- 12 (1983):
311-356), (Foucault, Michael. "The Discourse on Language." -Critical
Theory Since 1965-. Eds. Hazard Adams & Leroy Searle. Tallahassee:
University Presses of Florida, 1990. 148-162).
The highly limited access to literacy and to literary goods that Haberly
discusses in relation to Brazil up to the middle of the twentieth century
(Haberly, David T. -Three Sad Races: Racial Identity and National
Consciousness in Brazilian Literature-. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1983. 4-5) was also largely typical of traditional Hispano-American
societies where few women or members of the so-called 'castas' (castes)
wrote or were published. This situation vividly accentuates the prestige
of the few at the top of the social pyramid who could aspire to and
achieve the enviable status of 'men of letters,' attesting for example to
the prominence of such figures as Andres Bello or Jose Enrique Rodo' in
Latin American intellectual history. In this context, the importance of
race in the social polarization of the Latin American societies, shaped
as they were by centuries of slavery and rigid caste divisions, becomes
self-evident.
The relevance of the question of race to the area of literature finds, in
fact, an appropriate example in the constitution of the new Brazilian
Academy of Letters in 1896 and the election of mulatto writer Joaquim
Maria Machado de Assis as its first president. In a context in which the
consumption and production of literature by non-whites helped in their
'whitening' and, as such, their social acceptability, what Pierre
Bourdieu might call the 'cultural capital' of Machado de Assis may well
rank as being of equal importance to his reputation as his novelistic
prowess itself, consisting as it would of his refined education and his
carefully cultivated social profile, which included mastery of the
important European languages and literatures, as well as his marriage
into a prestigious Portuguese family (Haberly, 72-74).
The episode, in which a distinguished contemporary critic and
statesman--Joaquim Nabuco--'corrected' fellow critic Jose' Verissimo for
actually referring to Machado de Assis as 'mulatto,' is highly
illustrative on this point. On that occasion Nabuco was at pains to make
it clear that:
"I would not have called Machado a mulatto, and I believe that
nothing would have hurt him more than this classification ...
Machado was white to me, and I believe he thought of himself in
the same way; whatever alien blood there might have been (in his
veins), it in no way affected his purely Caucasian character. I,
at least, saw in him only the Greek (qtd in Haberly, 73).
While this is also evidence of how the racist ideology of
'embranquecimento' (whitening) worked to reify white superiority even as
it denigrated associations with Africanness, it demonstrates as well the
legitimating authority in a critic like Nabuco, that is at the heart of
the question of canonization.
END OF QUOTE
Second Article: "Maryse Conde's -Tituba- as Subversion of Essentialism,"
by Kapanga M. Kasongo.
BEGINNING OF QUOTE:
In the last two decades, the themes in francophone Caribbean literature
have dramatically shifted in focus from the Negritude's celebration of
Blackness to the discussion of concrete issues, with the identity
question attracting the most attention. If -Le Discours antillais-
(1981) by Edouard Glissant and -L'Eloge 'a la creolite' (1989) by
Confiant, Barnabe', and Chamoiseau have come to epitomize this identity
issue, the ongoing debate is not, however, confined to the realm of
speculative discussions so common to French-educated intellectuals.1
(Footnote 1: Of a more recent date, explorations of the identity question
subtending the Caribbean discourse have to their addition the following
publications: -La Poetique de la relation- (Gallimard, 19909) by Edouard
Glissant and -Lettres creoles: tracees antillaises et continentales de la
litterature: Haiti, Guadalupe, Martinique, Guyane (Hatier, 1991) by
Chamoiseau and Confiant. But these have not yet superseded earlier
texts.)
It has rather touched in a direct and pragmatic way those involved with
artistic and literary creation. In this vein, Maryse Conde's -Moi,
Tituba: Sorciere de Salem- (1986)--in short -Tituba- -- could deservingly
be seen as a voice in this newly launched soul searching endeavor.
Perceiving it as the site of several competing voices, the study focuses
on two antithetical discourses engaged in a dialogical relationship.
These consist, on the one hand, in the enunciation of essentialist claims
informing the basis of social formation, and, on the other hand, in a
strong corrective resistance by the protagonist to what seems to be an
irresistible co-optation into coerced conformity.
As Paul de Man would put it, we witness here an act of "exotopy," that
is, the recognition of "otherness," but filtered through the lenses of
racial ideology (Danow, David K. -The Thought of Mikhail Bakhtin: From
Word to Culture-. New York: St. Martin Press, 1991). Divided into three
parts, the paper aims at showing how the underlying essentialist
discourse is subverted by a concurrent subtext, whereby Tituba, the
protagonist, leads a kind of life rooted in a rationale that refutes the
core assumptions of mainstream culture. The first part examines how the
stylistic and narrative strategies engage the bedrock tenets shaping the
foundation of social matrix. The second part focuses on how Tituba, by
her behavior, actions, and values, bears witness to the irrationality of
the premise of the dominant ideology. The third part hypothesizes how
the novel projects the construction of a Caribbean identity that could
respond adequately to new internal as well as external constraints.
Maryse Conde' is known for her mimetic representational strategy into
which she absorbs narratives, concrete issues, historical sites,
recognizable characters, and situations in order to create a believable
novelistic framework.2
(Footnote 2: The most noticeable examples are both her saga novels,
-Heremakhonon-, and -Segou-. Other works such as -Traversee de la
mangrove- and -Les Derniers rois mages- also show the influence of her
mimetic strategy.)
Rather than aiming at a high degree of verisimilitude, this specific mode
of writing is primarily geared towards expressiveness and strong
suggestiveness. ... In -Tituba-, this close relationship between facts
and mimetic value is made possible by placing the story in a highly
expressive context. Of the several narrative strategies used to this end,
three especially are worthy of attention, namely the slave-narrativized
context itself, the role played by the narrator, and the initial tone of
the novel.
The fictional landscape within which Tituba's story evolves is a coded
novelistic construct that subsumes race as the ontological determinant
for social categorization.
END OF QUOTE
The next two articles to be highlighted from the 1995 JALAS&L will be:
"Criollismo and Cultural Hegemony," by Dr. Jerry Williams, from West
Chester University, and "African Roots of Creole Culture in Belize," by
Dr. Michael C. Stone, of University of Texas at Austin.
Only highlights of these articles are offered online. Copies of articles
in their entirety are not available electronically, or through the
Internet. To receive an application for subscription to JALAS&L send an
online request to <egkbrasil@aol.com> or to <rmvieira@cldc.howard.edu>;
you may also write to P.O. Box 2662, Kensington, MD 20891-2662. The 1995
JALAS&L, a 342 page book, will be sent to the subscriber immediately after
his/her application is processed. Please bear in mind that JALAS&L is an
annual scholarly journal and that all subscriptions need to be renewed
yearly as well. Due to the high demand for this title, as well as the
limited number of its editions, gratis copies are not made available
neither to institutions, subscription agencies, nor individuals.
(Respectfully submitted by Rosangela Maria Vieira, JALAS&L Editor and
Founder <rmvieira@cldc.howard.edu>).
END OF THIS MESSAGE