Dispositio - Latin American Subaltern Studies Revisited - Verdesio

Dispositio/n 52
American Journal of Cultural Histories and Theories. Vol. XXV, No 52
LATIN AMERICAN SUBALTERN STUDIES REVISITED

Gustavo Verdesio Introduction. Latin American Subaltern Studies Revisited: Is There Life After the Demise of the Group? 5 Ileana Rodrguez Is There a Need for Subaltern Studies?
43
John Beverley Adios: A National Allegory (Some Reflections on Latin American Cultural Studies) 63 Jos Rabasa Colonial/Postcolonial.. Sara Castro-Klarn The Recognition of Convergence: Subaltern Studies in Perspective..
81 95
Patricia Seed How Ranajit Guha came to Latin American Subaltern Studies 107 Javier Sanjins C. On Negation: Reflections from Andean Peasant Movements..
113
Walter Mignolo Un paradigma otro: colonialidad global, pensamiento fronterizo y cosmopolitan127 ismo critico. Bruno Bosteels Theses on Antagonism, Hybridity, and the Subaltern in Latin America Florencia Mallon Subalterns and the Nation
147 159
Eduardo Mendieta Re-mapping Latin American Studies: Postcolonialism, Subaltern Studies, Post Occidentalism and Globalization Theory 179 Horacio Legrs The Predicament of Cultural Studies: Subalternity and the Dialectics of the Image 203 Ximena Sorucco On Bearded Men, Devils and Soldiers. (Post) Colonial Dramas in Peru and Bolivia
227
Bram Acosta At the Margins of History, the Nation-State and Literature: the Discourse of Comparative Literature and Latin American Subaltern Studies... 249 Daniel Mosquera In Search of the Political within and without the Politics of Theory 265 lvaro Flix Bolaos Intelectuales, comunidades indgenas y la academia norteamericana Fernando Coronil Post-Obituary: We are Dead. Long Live Subaltern Studies in the Americas!
285 337
INTERVIEW
Fernando Gmez About the Subaltern and Other Things. A Conversation with John Beverley. 343
REVIEWS
Luis Fernando Restrepo. The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader. (Ileana Rodriguez) Gustavo Verdesio. Thinking from the Underside of History. Enrique Dussels Philosophy of Liberation. (Linda Martin Alcoff and Eduardo Mendieta, Eds.) Juan Poblete. Scenes from Postmodern Life.(Beatriz Sarlo)
373 383 389
Ana Peluffo. El taller de la escritora: Veladas literarias de Juana Manuela Gorriti: Lima-Buenos Aires (1876/7-1892) (Graciela Battituore) 393 Ana Del Sarto.The Art of Transition. Latin American Culture and Neoliberal Cri396 sis. (Francine Massiello) Laura Demara. Mapas de poder. Una arqueologa literaria del espacio argentino. (Jens Andermann) 401
Dispositio/n
American Journal of Cultural Histories and Theories
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Dispositio/n Department of Romance Languages 4108 MLB / 812 E. Washington Street University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1275 U.S.A.
2005 Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Michigan ISSN 0734-0591
Dispositio/n 52, vol. XXV 5 42 2005 Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Michigan
LATIN AMERICAN SUBALTERN STUDIES REVISITED: IS THERE LIFE AFTER THE DEMISE OF THE GROUP?*
Gustavo Verdesio University of Michigan
ome may ask, why bother to wonder about the fate of the Latin American Subaltern Studies (LASS) group now? Why discuss its accomplishments and failures at this point, after two of their most prominent members have declared it defunct? Well, the answer is simple: because the collective has been one of the most influential endeavors in the fields of Latin American literary and cultural studies in the
* I would like to thank some colleagues who made this issue of Dispositio/n possible. First and foremost, a big thank you to Ileana Rodrguez, without whose encouragement this volume would have never seen the light of day. In numerous and long conversations that took place at different geographic locations (East Lansing, New Orleans, Columbus, and Ann Arbor) and by more virtual media like the phone and e-mail, she was always ready to give, candidly, her invaluable input on, and support for, this project. Next, I would like to thank my friend and colleague Fernando Coronil, for finding time to write a brilliant and inspirational piece at a time that was not the easiest for him and his family. Another big thank you to my good friend, colleague and former landlord, Gareth Williams, for his willingness to discuss anything (from subaltern studies to 80s British pop, from Marxism to a certain soccer star who used to play for Manchester United) with me, with or without Scotch on the table. Thank you to my friend and colleague Javier Sanjins, for his permanent good spirits and his great sense of humor, and for having made some time, in spite of his busy schedule and the huge pressure he was under, to contribute a very important piece to this volume. A final thank you to my personal Guru and Meiga, Cristina Moreiras-Menor, who was there all the time to support, feed and psychoanalyze a very tired editor and friend.
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United States. It has been, also, a very controversial intellectual enterprise that found the strongest resistance to it among some of the most important progressive intellectuals who work in Latin America. The name calling that took placeLatin America-based scholars used words as strong as academic imperialism to refer to their US colleagues practices, while the latter called the former by such dismissive labels as neo-Arielistas or neo-Criollistasshould not stop us from analyzing the group's legacy from a calmer, more distanced perspective. This is possible, I believe, because, among other reasons, the worst of the name-calling has passed, and the time elapsed between the peak of the confrontation (the 1997 LASA conference in Guadalajara, Mexico) and the present allows us to have a more detached and productive view of the contributions of the group. When I planned this issue I thought very carefully about both its possible format and its potential contributors. I must admit that I tried to balance the need to be representative of all the tendencies that comprised the group and my personal opinions about who was influential enough to be asked to respond to a questionnaire. I finally decided to send it, also, to people who were not members of the group but who, in my opinion, could make an important contribution to the evaluation of ten years of subaltern studies presence in the field of Latin American studies: Ishita Banerjee, Saurabh Dube, Enrique Dussel and Ernesto Laclau. Unfortunately, none of them were able to send their contributions at the time of the writing of this preface. The other non-members I invited who contribute articles to this issue are Abraham Acosta, Bruno Bosteels, Horacio Legrs, Florencia Mallon, Eduardo Mendieta, Daniel Mosquera, and Ximena Sorucco. I invited some former members as well, like Gareth Williams and Alberto Moreiras, who, for different reasons, ended up not contributing to this issue. The ex-members I invited who have contributed to this volume are John Beverley, Sara Castro-Klarn, Fernando Coronil, Walter Mignolo, Jos Rabasa, Ileana Rodrguez, Javier Sanjins and Patricia Seed. I also sent a questionnaire to all the participants. They were not expected to respond to all the questions: it was just a way of communicating to them what issues I was interested in seeing discussed. Here's the questionnaire: Qu relaciones hay entre los estudios subalternos latinoamericanos y otras corrientes, tales como los estudios postcoloniales y los estudios
LATIN AMERICAN SUBALTERN STUDIES REVISITED:...
culturales? Qu relacin podran tener con la crtica cultural propuesta desde Latinoamrica? Piensa usted que los estudios culturales y los estudios subalternos latinoamericanos son proyectos con genealogas diferentes o estn conectados de alguna manera? De qu manera se relacion o se debi relacionar el subalternismo latinoamericano con el sudasitico? Por que los subalternistas sudasiticos ignoran, en general, olmpicamente a sus pares latinoamericanos? Qu ventajas o desventajas tuvo, en su opinin, el formato escogido para funcionar? Es decir: fue preferible ser un grupo a ser un movimiento ms abierto? Qu tipo de influencia han tenido los estudios subalternos latinoamericanos en el campo de los estudios latinoamericanos en general? Han pasado la barrera de los departamentos de lengua y literatura? Qu influencia especfica han tenido en estos ltimos? Qu legado concreto ha dejado el grupo? Es posible construir algo distinto a partir de lo producido hasta su disolucin como tal? Es decir: son posibles los estudios subalternos latinoamericanos sin que exista el grupo? Qu limitaciones tuvo el grupo? Qu pudo haber hecho y no hizo? Por qu hubo y hay, en Latinoamrica, tanta resistencia a los estudios subalternos latinoamericanos? Cul es el camino a seguir, hoy, por aquellos que siendo o no parte del grupo simpatizan con la mirada subalternista? Cul debera ser el o los objetivos de una teora o una corriente de pensamiento que intente entender a Latinoamrica en el contexto acadmico de hoy? [What relationship do you see between Latin American Subaltern Studies and other theoretical trends such as Postcolonial Theory and Cultural Studies? What relationships do you see between these trends and the different kinds of cultural critique proposed from Latin America? Do you think Cultural Studies and Latin American Subaltern Studies are connected somehow or are they projects with different genealogies? How did Latin American subalternism relate-or how should it have relatedto the South Asian one? Why do South Asian subalternists olympically ignore the work by their Latin American peers?
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What advantages and/or disadvantages had the group format? Was it preferable to be a group or to become a more open movement? What kind of influence has LASS had on Latin American studies at large? Have Latin American Subaltern Studies reached people beyond the departments of language and literature? What kind of influence have said studies had on language and literature departments? What are the legacies of the group? Is it possible to build something different in the future, the foundation being the work produced by the group? Are Latin American Subaltern Studies possible without the existence of the group? What were the limitations of the group? What could the group have done that it did not do? Why was there so much resistance to the group in Latin America and why does such resistance still exist? What are the paths open to those who were not members of the group but who sympathize with a subalternist perspective? Which should be the goals of a theory or a thinking that attempts to understand Latin America in the framework of today's academic context?] As the readers will see later, some of these questions remained unanswered by some of the contributors. As a matter of fact, the question I was most interested in, the one about the possible theoretical and academic roads we should walk today and in the future, was left unanswered by most of them. Is this reason to worry about the future of a progressive academic agenda that builds upon the advances contributed by theoretical endeavors such as LASS? Not necessarily. However, it is reasonable to ask yet another question: are some of the contributors still so invested in past theoretical practices that they cannot see what lies ahead? Or is it that we need to wait yet some more time until the waters become even calmer? Regardless of the answers one could give to all these questions, it seems to me that the future of Latin American theoretical efforts in the fields of literary and cultural studies is not clear. In the absence of new theoretical agendas, I believe the responses LASS was trying to give to the configuration of the world after the fall of actually existent socialism are still worth our attention. The articles included in this issue of Dispositio/n touch upon so many topics that it is difficult to give a comprehensive overview of their contents.
However, in this Introduction I will try to at least offer a precarious mapping of the standpoints and intents they reflect. Let us start with the articles written by commenting on the responses, direct or indirect, to the first series of questions I posedthose that deal with theoretical genealogies. The personal narrative that has had the most exposure until now is that of Ileana Rodriguez, who has told the story of the group several times (Reading Subalterns, La encrucijada, El grupo latinoamericano and her contribution to this volume). This version has become something like the official history of the Group and it entails a narrative of origins as well as a theoretical genealogical tree. John Beverleys own memories on the creation and evolution of LASS and the ideological and theoretical provenance of its members, did generally corroborate Rodriguez's version (see, for example, the Introduction to his Subalternity and Representation). However, as we see in Sara Castro-Klarens and Jos Rabasas contributions to this issue of Dispositio/n, there are other former members who have different stories to tell. The official narrative goes more or less like this: a group of Marxists disenchanted by the failure of actually existing socialist regimes finds itself in search of a new theoretical and ideological program. As Beverley says in the aforementioned book, Subaltern Studies is not a Marxist project but it can be considered, at least, a project that emerges from Marxism (21). It is, so to speak, the offspring of a disenchanted group of Marxist scholars. This may have been so at the inception of the group, but as some other narratives of origins tell us in this issueand other significant silences tell us as much or even more about this particular topicothers joined the enterprise for different reasons. As Castro-Klarn says, for example, her personal narrative might illustrate the fact that not all scholars who find Subaltern Studies a productive and promising theoretical and political vantage point depart from the same location, sense of crisis or search (96). She retraces her own intellectual itinerary as one that starts at a traditionally less politicized point of departure: literary studies. More concretely, she starts thinking the notion of difference and other topics that will later lead her to join LASS thanks to her readings of authors like Julio Cortzar and Jos Mara Arguedas. The latters work, according to Castro-Klarn, was a challenge for the then predominant critical paradigms, which could not account for it satisfactorily. Cortzar and his treatment of the fragment were other sources of inspiration for her. She was, in her own words, not so much concerned with the general dimensions of an epistemological and
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thus a political crisis, as both Ileana Rodriguez and John Beverley state they were (99). Another member of the group, Jos Rabasa, was an intellectual interlocutor of Castro-Klarn in the early nineties, a time when they coincided in the Washington DC area, where Judith Butler was teaching a seminar on her book Gender Trouble. Interestingly, Butler's syllabus did not include a single Latin American intellectual. This notorious absence will be discussed later in this Introduction when I address the reception of LASS among South Asian subalternists. But let us go back to Rabasa, who invited Castro-Klarn to the group. He, also, has a different genealogy to offer: he was doing postcolonial theory without knowing it (malgr lui?) and his affinities were closer to what was known at that time as minority discourse. Others, like Walter Mignolo, do not give us his own narrative, but I can do it in his stead: he started as a semiologist from the French school who later opened up to other schools of semiotics and epistemological thinking, only to take a surprising turn at the beginning of the 1980s towards colonial Latin American studies. He can be considered, together with Rolena Adorno, as one of the founders of the most recent mode of intellectual production in that field. For reasons that he does not explain fully in his contribution to this issue, but which are understandable to anybody who is familiar with his work, he ended up embracing the LASS cause. Patricia Seed and Fernando Coronil, unlike most of the ex-members of the group, come from a different discipline: historiography. This is not an insignificant difference, for the disciplinary background of the diverse members of the group was, at times, an issue. As Seed herself asks in the piece she has contributed to this volume: why was subaltern studies so successful among literary scholars in the field of Latin American studies? Why did not it have a similar reception among scholars from other disciplines? These questions entail, I believe, a not-so-veiled critique of the group for not being able to incorporate scholars from other disciplines outside literature or cultural studies. But this is a topic that I will go back to when I comment on Rabasa's musings about disciplinarity and its role in partially determining the relationship between LASS and the South Asian Subaltern Studies group. The official narrative also states that most of the founders of LASS had been political activists before they became academics. This narration is given at length by Ileana Rodrguez, who provides a detailed list of former
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activists/founders in Reading Subalterns (2-3). This narrative is corroborated by Seeds own account of the process through which she joined the group (see her contribution to this volume). This may be true in most cases with regard to founders, but it may not be as accurate a depiction of some of the members who joined later. In any case, this emphasis on political activism, prevalent among the founders, would clash, over time, with other, newer members, in several occasions at the very few meetings of the group that took place (see Rodrguezs description of those meetings in, for example, El grupo latinoamericano). These confrontations at the ideological or, if you prefer, theoretical level, led to a characterization of the internal conflicts of the group as follows: there was a core of people more interested in social activism (or in understanding the subaltern as a real-life, social subject) and another sector of the group that favored a more philosophical approach to subalternity. At least, this is the way in which Ileana Rodrguez and Bruno Bosteels (see his contribution to this issue of Dispositio/n), in different ways and from very different philosophical points of view, depict the major conflict at the core of the group. The former has expressed, repeatedly, that confrontation between the deconstructionist wing (which according to Bosteels, was comprised of at least two people: Alberto Moreiras and Gareth Williams) and the Marxist one (that Bosteels, again, identifies with at least two people: John Beverley and Ileana Rodrguez herself) was one of the things that led to the demise of the group (El grupo latinoamericano 77, A New Debate 14-15). According to Rodrguez, for the deconstructionist wing, the subaltern was a pre-text for flexing our intellectual muscle and using it as a way of thinking the unthinkable (A New Debate 14). This treatment of the notion allowed its practitioners to play with logic and syntax and to come up with prestigious texts that put us at an advantage in the market. In this respect, the subaltern was used as exchange value and we cashed on it (A New Debate 14). For others, subalternity was a real and not only a discursive condition of subordination, and as such it stood for a social position embodied in the oppressed, a condition that generated the coloniality of power (A New Debate 14). I quote Rodrguez at length because the following passage confirms that Bosteels's assumption about her alignment with the Marxist wing is not utterly whimsical: These works were not characterized by their theoretical bent but by their interest in excavating sites and explicitly or implicitly setting up policy recommendations... We considered that making the
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subaltern and the subaltern positions more visible was a way of demonstrating solidarity with the poor (A New Debate 14). The first tendency could be characterized as the philosophy of praxis (because of its more theoretical orientation), while the other is better described as a praxis of philosophy, due to its more political or historical tendency (A New Debate 15)1. She continues: those subalternists who are less politically or even historically inclined tend to dismiss as mere activism the tendencies implicit in those more historically or politically oriented, while the latter, in turn, tend to see the work of those theoretically inclined as careerist, or merely academic exercises, mere academicism (A New Debate 15). Finally, she states that while
some scholars were concentrating on the deconstruction of ideas and epistemes, others were still interested in subaltern consciousness and agency. The question was whether or not we could really limit ourselves to thinking the subaltern solely as a metaphor or negation and limit of hegemonic knowledge or whether we were willing to seriously entertain the agency of flesh and blood sufferers (15)
First, I must say that I do not agree with Rodrguez's representation of the motives of those she characterizes as members of the deconstructionist pole: I am persuaded that they were looking for the same kind of progressive thinking the Marxist sector was. The difference between the two factions could be found more in their theoretical preferences than in their intentions career-wise. I am persuaded that it would be unfair to say that the careers of the members of the more theoretical (the one Rodriguez calls deconstructionist) pole benefited more than the others from their embrace of subalternist theory. If the group had a positive effect-due to the aura or prestige that surrounded it at a certain historical moment-on academic careers, I think it is safe to say that it had it on all members of the group. I strongly suspect that in Rodriguez's dichotomous presentation of the two main trends that coexisted in the group, Walter Mignolo, who would be surprised and probably hurt if he were labeled as a deconstructionist (which, he will hasten to say, he is not), would enter the ranks of those more preoccupied by theoretical issues than by the flesh and blood subaltern. Let me pause here to clarify why I am consciously going against Bosteels's recommendation in the first version of his paper (read at
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the MLA Congress held in New Orleans, December 2001), to think without relying on the proper name. I am doing so because not everybody is an insider (one of the most salient traits of the group, in my opinion, is that it operated as an exclusive clubbut more about this later) and most people who read these lines may not know exactly who is who in the divide Rodriguez describes. Having said that, I acknowledge there is a very high probability that I am misinterpreting or misconstruing the situation. Nevertheless, I believe it is worth our time to try to unveil the identities of some of the key players in the creation, development and dissolution of the group. Let us go back to Mignolo, whose case I am focusing on because I think his situation could help me shed some light on the limitations of Rodriguezs explanation of the distribution of forces within the group and the scholarly agendas and ideological tendencies that were part of it. As I mentioned earlier, his background is not that of the sixties activist that Seed, Beverley and Rodriguez talk about. It should also be pointed out that in his last book-length effort he has made it clear, repeatedly, that it is necessary, in his opinion, to think outside the framework provided by Marxism, a school of thought he identifies with modernity and the West. Besides, he has always been considered a very (and in the context of a very anti-theory milieuthe world of Spanish programs in the USperhaps too) theoretical scholar. These considerations lead me to surmise that Rodrguez would include him in the ranks of those more interested in the subaltern as a category from which to think than in the group of those promoting a political activism that would result in activities that entail solidarity with the flesh and blood subalterns of the world. Yet, as I said earlier, he cannot possibly be characterized as a deconstructionist. I am trying to fit Mignolo in the taxonomy Rodrguez proposes only to show how reductionist it may be. I am persuaded that the intellectual, theoretical and ideological variety within the group was much wider, and richer, than Rodrguezs classification may lead us to believe. Her representation may be useful for a description of how two of the important trends at work in the group related to each other (maybe a relationship that was based on a struggle for leadership?), but it is wanting, nonetheless, as a depiction of the wealth of theoretical trends and backgrounds that its members brought to the collective. We could also consider Castro-Klarn's case, who openly admitted, in her contribution to this volume, that politics and the left were not her main reasons to join the subaltern studies group.
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Does this make her a member of the deconstructionists? I do not think so. What Rodriguez's depiction tells us is, I believe, how she views the forces at work in the group, and their struggles for leadership. Other members may view things differently, as some of the contributions to this volume suggest. Another issue to take into account is the following: how would the so-called deconstructionist members react to Rodriguez's depiction of the distribution of forces in the group? Or, better yet, how would they describe themselves in theoretical and academic terms? Would they call themselves deconstructionists? Or would they imagine themselves in a more complex fashion? My guess is that they would not be very pleased by such a simplified depiction of their theoretical interests. They might say, for instance, that Marxism also informs their work. Moreiras, for example, has written an article strongly based on the Marxist notion of primitive accumulation and Williams considers himself a serious reader of Marx (countless personal communications). Yet, this is just my take on what they could have said. My only excuse for putting words in their mouths is that although they were invited to contribute a piece to this volume, they decided not to do so. This brings us to another issue: the meaning of silence. TheirsMoreiras's and Williams's- is symptomatic: the two so-called deconstructionist or theoretical members of the group decide not to talk about the deceased collective. This should be telling us something, but what? I honestly do not know for sure. What I do know is that it would have been very interesting to see what these two scholars had to say about, for example, the process that led to the demise of the collective-or about how they viewed the development of the group from its inception. Other silences that are also very significant and that I regret enormously are Dussel's and Laclau's. It would have been very interesting to see how these two important thinkers from outside the field of literary and cultural studies saw the contributions and limitations of LASS, and how they saw their work in relation to the collectives. As of today, we are left wondering about all these non-contributors opinions about the aforementioned-as well as other-issues. Yet, because I am not much of a mind reader, I will leave it at that. Another point of contention that is not directly addressed by all the contributors I invited, is whether LASS comes from a US version of cultural studies or stems directly from the admiration some of its founders professed to Ranajit Guha and the South Asian group. Beverley seems to
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favor the first genealogy mentioned (in his Subalternity and Representation, among other texts), while Rodrguez has clearly stated that the inspiration came directly (at least to her) from Guha's workwhich seems to be the case of Seed too, according to her personal narrative published hereas can be seen in her El grupo latinoamericano and other texts. In any case, for readers interested in the diverse personal genealogies, I refer them to the detailed ones with which some of the contributors have provided us. An alternative way to understand the diversity within the group, as well as the reasons that got it together, is to focus on several key topics they discussed throughout the years. In their respective solo efforts, the members of the group dealt with several issues that seemed to be crucial for understanding the passage of a bipolar to a unipolar world, and the advent of what most people call globalization. One of them was the status of the Nation-State as both a vantage point from which to think and an object to be thought about. I am convinced that this is a productive site of inquiry and I am going to briefly explore it in the paragraphs that follow. However, I must warn the reader that the examination of this and other topics might reveal as many similarities as differences in the ways in which the collective's members dealt with the same issues. As Florencia Mallon clearly states in her contribution to this volume, the relationship between subalternity and the Nation-State is much more complex than some of the subalternists would desire. She reminds us that, according to Beverley, it is theoretically impossible that the subalterns play a significant role in the discourse of nation-building. However, in her opinion, it is necessary to de-romanticize some of the conceptions certain intellectuals have of the subaltern, which present him or her as a pure subject that has been permanently left out of the structures and institutions provided by the Nation-State. In her book and in her article for this issue of Dispositio/n, she reminds us that subaltern subjects have been, in more than one occasion, complicitous with state power (172); that subaltern politics vis--vis the State have not always been, at least in Latin America, strictly based on negation (173). However, some subalternists do not want to admit that subalterns have often sat down at the table of the nation-state (172). Beverley, for example, believes that to keep the antagonism people/ power block today is a way of legitimizing the state (Subalternity and Representation). This statement, according to Mallon, comes from an understanding of the state as a tool that serves only the dominant class.
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Such an understanding forgets that in order to be effective, the state cannot always act on behalf of the dominant class: the state needs to open the possibility for other classes to have a say on the elaboration of policies and on the way state institutions operatefor example, by using one sector of the state against another (173).2 And as Mallon herself reminds us, the Chiapas movement, considered as one of the most conspicuous new movements or new social agents, has been in constant negotiation with the Mexican state, of which it claims to be a part (173). It is interesting to notice that despite Beverley's belief in the need to rethink the state from the vantage point of subalternity (Subalternity and Representation 151), he, at the same time, avers that subalterns cannot ever win even if they take over the state, because by doing so they become its other and, therefore, reaffirm the values and structures that had been the stronghold of the dominant class (Puede ser gay la nacin? 93; Subalternity and Representation 133). So, in order to become the rulers, the argument goes, they have to embrace or reassert the values of the former hegemonic block. This view of subaltern identity is, as Javier Sanjins states in his contribution to this volume, a synchronic one. In other words, it is a static view of subalternity and it does not allow much room for a diachronic perspective or for historical change. I believe Sanjins is right and I will add something to his argument: a representation of a subaltern culture as something identical to itself throughout time, regardless of its development at different historical conjunctures as well as of its changing social positionalities, entails several dangers. One of those dangers is that it freezes the subaltern as a pure essence that remains always identical to itself. Gareth Williams, for his part, rightfully warns against understanding the subaltern as an identity instead of as a series of practices (86). For him, negative difference (of which the subaltern is an incarnation) is always a practice, not an identity (90). This definition resonates with the one proposed by Ximena Sorucco in her contribution to this volume: to be an Amerindian (a subaltern) does not mean to be an essence, but to have a relational identity (232). The most dreadful danger of imagining subalterns in terms of fixed identities is that it precludes any possibility of evolution for them. It precludes, also, the possibility of any active role of the subaltern in the framework of the state and its institutions. However, as Mallon (Peasant and Nation) and other authors (such as Karen Spalding and Steve Stern,
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just to name only two authors who have studied the relationship of Amerindian subalterns with the colonial and postcolonial states in the Andes) have shown, subalterns have chosen, throughout history, to negotiate with, and to participate in, state institutions when they thought such a strategy could be appropriate for the advancement of their cause. And from the very ranks of subaltern studies, Marcelo Bergman and Mnica Szurmuk show, in their study on citizenship and new social movements in Argentina, that subaltern subjects are often trying to struggle for citizenship and they are doing it in the framework of the state and its (bourgeois) legality (385). The legal, bourgeois rights they are fighting for are not a gift from the state, but a product of a political and social struggle that demands a space and a recognition for the individual within the framework provided by the law and their rights as citizens of a modern state (389).3 Subalterns do not remain identical to themselves because, like any culture or human group, they change over time. Institutions do not remain identical to themselves either, and the state is no exception to this rule. It seems to me that to declare, as Beverley does, that subalterns cannot possibly win a war against the hegemonic block because that would turn them into something else (that is, they would lose their identity, which is conceived of as fixed) while at the same time affirming the need to rethink the state from a subalternist perspective is, at least, a contradiction. It is my contention that in that new state, subalterns could still be faithful to their cultural roots (what Dipesh Chakrabarty calls the time of the gods) while being able to operate successfully from the structures of a state (a secular institution that belongs, again in Chakrabarty's parlance, to the time of historyProvincializing Europe 72-96) that would now be at the service of the subaltern classes. The limitations of some subalternist thinking involving the NationState are shown, also, in the article by Ximena Sorucco included in this volume. In this piece, the author shows how misleading it can be to neglect to take into account the national histories of the different Latin American Nation-States. In her analysis of Beverley's classification of the Quechua play Ollantay as a case of transculturation from below, she avers that the way in which that kind of transculturation is conceived ends up essentializing subalternity (229). In her opinion, Beverley's thinking is based on an opposition of fixed identities that depends on the power relations between a given pair of subject positionalities (230).4 To classify
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the play as subaltern because of the language in which it is written, without taking into account the social context of its reception during postindependence times, is a way of both essentializing the play and making the position of subalternity a fixed one (230, 234). In Sorucco's opinion, subaltern products are not frozen in time but are, instead, negotiated constantly. This is why she finds the concept transculturation from below wanting: because it omits the struggles for power that underlie the product and its successive uses (230). Her study of the reception of the play by the Cuzco elites in need of recognition before the national hegemony exerted from Lima's elite shows that Ollantay was reappropriated by the lettered city and incorporated into the canon of Peruvian national literature. That is, her study shows the long and changing life and meanings of subaltern cultural products in the framework imposed by the Nation-State and its national narratives. Finally, I would like to refer to the ideas advanced by my dear friend and colleague Gareth Williams (who excused himself when invited to contribute a piece to this issue of Dispositio/n), because he, like those who penned the Founding Statement, sees a logical relationship between the vindication of subaltern histories silenced by the Nation-State and a toutcourt rejection of dependency theory, because this theoretical corpus rests upon a worldview that presents a center/periphery model (Williams 84). It has always mystified me that most of the subalternists are so persuaded that the subalternization of subjects by the Nation-State somehow precludes any consideration of the unjust international division of labor that organizes the world. What I mean is that by rejecting the basic tenets of dependency theory, they forget that whatever processes of subalternization the NationState undertook in Latin America, they were often strongly encouraged, and most of the time directly engineered, from outside those Nation-States. The center/periphery model proposed by dependency theory is vilified, I believe, for reasons similar to the ones Williams himself uses to explain the limitations of Nestor Garcia Canclini's thoughts on citizenship and consumption. Williams states that the Argentinean critic too readily accepts the intellectual rules of the game proposed by neoliberalismthat is, the categories and concepts with which neoliberalism wants us to understand the world (84). I believe Williams himself too readily accepts the death certificate the international right has issued to dependency theory and to center/periphery models. Like James Petras, I am convinced that some intellectuals from the left end up accepting, and using in their own work,
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the notions and categories, the knowledge and the protocols produced and/ or recommended by the right (Petras 1-2). The attitude of most of LASS's members against dependency theory (with the exception of Beverley, who, at least since Subalternity and Representation, is rethinking the relationship between subaltern studies, the Nation-State, and the popular frontsee 103-104, for example) seems to be to fall into this trap: they accept, at face value, the advent of a world organization and a conceptual framework that makes the center/periphery model unthinkable and obsolete. The authors who adhere to this portrayal of the way in which the world works give very few arguments and zero data to support their statements on the demise of domination of poor countries by the rich ones. At best, their arguments circle around invectives against either dichotomous thinking or models based on fixed positionalities.5 But nothing is said about how the economic systems of the world and the policies they enforce work. For this reason, their opinions on this topic are nothing but opinions or, better yet, a matter of belief. In the same vein, and without feeling compelled to respond to belief with data or science, I, as a believer as well, but of a different creed, consider theirs simply wrong and dare to affirm: there still are countries that impose policies and rules of behavior on others; there are countries at the center of the world system and others at its margins. The last war on Iraq should have made this very clear by now. There would be much more to say about this complex and slippery subjectthe relations between the nation, subaltern studies and subaltern nationsbut let us now move to another, somewhat related, relevant topic: the relationship between LASS and their Latin American colleagues working in Latin America. The polemics that took place after the reading and publication of some papers by Mabel Moraa and Hugo Achugar in the Latin American Studies Association meeting in Guadalajara, in 1997, have been extensively commented upon by some subalternists, among them, John Beverley (see, for example, his discussion of what he calls NeoArielismo in Subalternity and Representation 18) and Ileana Rodrguez. I would like to point out, very briefly, that I see a milder, less confrontational tone in their contributions to this volume. Beverley, for example, says that the things that unite Latin American critics to their North America-based ones are, in the long run, more important than those that separate them (70). And Rodrguez dedicates a long paragraph to point out the points of convergence of both camps (43). Of course, both Beverley and Rodrguez
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keep voicing their differences with Latin American critics, occasionally labeling them under not very flattering terms such as Neo-Arielistas or social-democrats (Beverley 70; Rodriguez 50; both in this volume). However, there are signs of tiredness and a growing awareness that the differences of the recent past, whose causes are complex and related to the new international distribution of intellectual powera globalization that displaces Latin American intellectuals and depletes the economies of the universities they work for (Beverley 70, this volume)should be overcome. They do not say it in so many words, but this is what I read from the tone in which their most recent pieces are written. As a matter of fact, one of the reasons I decided to put together this issue of Dispositio/n is my feeling, shared by many colleagues of my generation and younger, that these disputes between intellectuals from the North and the South and, to judge from the demise of LASS itself, between intellectuals who work in the North, are in the end internecine disputes whose only consequence is to debilitate the intellectually progressive forces in the face of the multiple threats posed to education by the most recent version of the corporate university: the neoliberal one. This is why I have been always mystified by the violence of the debate between Latin America-based and North America-based Latin Americanists, and by the worhip some members of LASS showed for intellectuals so far removed from their more immediate intellectual and professional ties. I am referring, of course, to the admiration shown by some members of LASS for intellectuals like Ranajit Guha and other members of the South Asian Subaltern Studies group. Rodriguez has explained in several venues (in most of her pieces quoted in this Introduction) what attracted her and/or the founders (sometimes it is not clear who she is speaking for) to the South Asian collective. I understand some of her reasons but still remain skeptical about the convenience of naming the group after its South Asian counterpart. Fernando Coronil, in his contribution to this volume, brilliantly analyzes the consequences of the act of naming after a role model that does not belong to one's familyfamily, in this case, standing for the Latin American intellectual tradition, of course. In his opinion, LASS established affinities with distant subjects at the risk of not acknowledging how much it owed to their own intellectual ancestors in the field of Latin American studies (339). To LASS's credit, though, Coronil avers, they did not copy either the structure or the disciplinary orientation of the South Asian group, but took their work just as a source of inspiration
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(340). For example, LASS did not have a leader like Guha nor did it take the form of an editorial collective (340). It was the spirit or the drive behind the South Asian group that prompted the founders to name their Latin American group after them. There is still another issue related to the relationship between both groups that I would like to touch upon. I am referring to the evident lack of reciprocity between both groups. I can say, without hesitation, that this is the first time that I see members of the group addressing this issue. Rodrguez, for example, has admitted, in her answer to my question about the one-sided nature of the relationship between the groups, that the South Asians never showed, to her knowledge, any intellectual interest in engaging the work of LASS (55). She attributes this lack of interest to the structure of area studies, which is a consequence of the coloniality of power (55). It is interesting to see that several ex-members (Sanjins, CastroKlarn, Rodrguez) and non-members (Abraham Acosta) responded to my questionnaire having recourse to this termcoloniality of powerthat Mignolowho first borrowed it from Anbal Quijanoelaborated on in his Local Histories/Global Designs. This is a very useful concept coined by a Latin American intellectual producing in Latin America and it illustrates, partially, what Coronil means by the risks, and the potential losses, of ignoring the intellectual legacy coming from one's own intellectual family. Rodrguez continues her acknowledgement of the lack of reciprocity in the relationship between the two groups of subalternists by remembering that
they always dismissed us by sustaining that ours was a different thing, but they never took the trouble of seriously engaging in a conversation on the nature of that difference. So, while we did our thing they did theirs, and in so doing, we all remained locked within our own forms of localism.... That was our loss. We transnational peripheral intelligentsia missed the opportunity to converse (55).
Jos Rabasa also responded to my question about the silence kept by South Asian subalternists on LASS. He asks himself whether I am mocking the ex-members of the Latin American group (for the record: I am not) and states that I grant importance to recognition. I shall admit it: I do. I believe that one should not pay homage, endlessly, to people one does not even know without at least having some significant feedback. This has never
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happened, as Rabasa himself acknowledges: there has been no reciprocity (84). On the contrary, in the occasions that South Asian subalternists have been invited to contribute a piece to a volume edited by a member of LASS (I am thinking of the volumes compiled by Rodrguez), they have written about whatever problems they were concerned with and never addressed any issues that could possibly be considered of mutual interest. Good examples of what I am saying are the articles by Guha and Chakrabarty in the collections edited by Rodrguez. Honestly, I, as a Latin Americanist, have no use for those pieces. They reflect no interest whatsoever in dialogue with LASS and the theoretical problems they posed. I must admit that I am almost certain that no South Asian subalternist will ever read these lines, but that should not stop me from pointing out their lack of interestand I would dare say sensitivitytowards their Latin Americanist counterparts. Besides, this text is mostlyalbeit not exclusivelyintended for a Latin Americanist audience, given the fact that English language and Comparative Literature departments have shown no interest whatsoever in any theoretical elaboration coming from Latin Americanism. The article by Abraham Acosta in this collection states, precisely, how much Comparative Literature loses by ignoring, at its own risk, the contribution of LASS. In Acosta's opinion, this discipline is reaching an impasse that could only be solved by questioning two of its most solid foundations: the notions of literature and the nation. The work by some members of LASS, in Acosta's opinion, could be of great help to accomplish such a questioning of the discipline. According to Rabasa, in his contribution to this volume, the subalternists working in Englishand I will add, following Acosta's reflections, Comparative Literaturedepartments, are too busy with their multicultural debates and do not have any need to incorporate other theoretical contributions coming from Latin Americanism: it is enough, for them, to incorporate the novels of the Latin American literary boom (I suspect Rabasa is thinking here mostly of Magical Realism and lo real maravilloso) and the testimonio of Rigoberta Mench (82). He also suggests that the lack of interest of the original South Asian subalternists may come from their disciplinary background as historians (85). Most LASS members, Rabasa avers, are not good historians in the sense given to the expression by the South Asian group. Actually, this should not surprise anybody, because most members of LASS were not very interested in producing good history or in confining themselves to that or any other
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discipline: they defined the group as non-disciplinary, so as to be able to transcend the constraints of the disciplinary boundaries and protocols (85). This brings us to another question: did a desire for non-disciplinarity preclude the possibility of incorporating non-literary critics to LASS? Was it precisely the corporate interests of its members, who came in their majority from literature departments, what determined the composition of the group? Did non-disciplinarity end up meaning no other disciplines? This has been a shortcoming of the group, I believe, and it has constrained its efforts to the limited world of literature departments. To be more precise, it has limited its area of influence mostly to Spanish literature departments. There were, of course, the token historians, like Coronil and Seed, but the group never went out of its way to incorporate anthropologists, archaeologists, political scientists or economists to its ranks. It is my impression that a more multi-disciplinary constituency would have made it easier to live up to the promise of an eventual non-disciplinary work. Then again, this is contrary to fact and we will never know if this conjecture is correct. Eduardo Mendieta, a non-member who comes from another discipline, philosophy, seems more inclined to put emphasis on the intellectual heritage produced by Latin Americans to which Coronil was referring. In Mendieta's contribution, that shows a clear support of the work by Argentinean philosopher Enrique Dussel, a rather thorough overview of the different phases of Latin Americanism is offered. He is more interested in the movement he calls post-occidentalism, which encompasses the theories developed in Latin America in the 1960s. Post-occidentalism was, according to Mendieta, an epistemological revolution that took place much earlier than postcolonialism and subalternism, both produced by Indian intellectuals in more recent times (195). In his view, postcolonial theory is so young and it is concerned with such a recent historical period that, as a consequence, it is not capable of offering a long-term view of the development of colonialism (196). He follows arguments advanced by Mignolo when he states that postcolonial theory is concerned only with the second wave of colonialism and that is why its practitioners have developed an obsession for the issue of the nation and the national (197). He also takes issue with the solutions given to the problem of the subaltern by Indian scholars. He believes that respecting the absolute alterity of subaltern subjects leaves the status quo intact, and that the solution is to respond to them without trying to assimilate them. This latter solution was, in
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Mendieta's opinion, directly addressed by Dussel's ethics of liberation (197). To sum up Mendieta's position, let me quote him directly: The critique of the political economy of knowledge that is developed by the postoccidentalist critique proceeds further by stepping back farther since it seeks to begin from the crisis of reason itself at the moment of its inception, before the thrust to turn narrative into onto-logical ineluctability is ever launched (198, emphasis in the original). That is, the advantage of postoccidental thought over postcolonial theory is that its point of departure is the study of the first form of colonialism. This position is very close to the one Mignolo has been maintaining since, say, The Darker Side of the Renaissance. Although there are differences between Mignolo's views and Dussel's, they have been known to work together and even to co-teach a seminar at Duke University, so Mendieta's views could be viewed as akin to Mignolo's. Post-occidentalism for Mendieta holds the promise of future universality enunciated from a world that is multiple and one in its plurality. If I am not mistaken, LASS recovered or revisited, without acknowledging it, the spirit of post-occidentalism. To my knowledge, the only subalternist who found some inspiration from Dussel was Mignolo an inspiration that still shows in his contribution to this volume, which is, by the way, one of the two articles written in Spanish. He has been, also, the only one to wonder (in print) why LASS never found inspiration in Dussel's work in spite of the fact that the collective had goals and views so similar to the Argentinean philosopher (Dussels Philosophy of Liberation 40-41). I believe that Mendieta, by not acknowledging the genealogies and contributions of other theoretical traditions, and by refusing to see the similarities between the ideas and intent of Dussel and LASS, is making a mistake similar to the one made by LASS when it did not recognize its debt with Latin American thinking. The fact that he criticizes the South Asian subalternists but does not address directly the tenets advanced by LASS, prevents him from acknowledging the contribution of LASS, which, in my opinion, is different from the ones that can be credited to the Indian collective. As a matter of fact, I would even go as far as to respond affirmatively to the question Rabasa asks himself (83): has LASS gone beyond the goals and objectives of the South Asian group? One of the reasons why I am responding yes to this question is that it is people like Rabasa himself who think, unlike people like Chakrabarty, that it is possible for subalterns to write their own history without the
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mediation of intellectuals educated in the Western tradition (Writing Violence 275, 277-278). For Rabasa, subaltern subjects have been and are still capable of inhabiting two worlds at the same time since the beginning of colonization in the sixteenth century (Writing Violence 283; Los Franciscanos 385 and passim). Those Amerindians who were able to remain loyal to the time of the gods while being able to negotiate their way out of the problems posed to them by secular or historical time are worlds apart from the passive subalterns in need of Western-educated intellectuals presented by Chakrabarty (Writing Violence 284). Rabasa is thinking mostly of colonial times Amerindians, but his thoughts are applicable to present-day ones too. I am thinking, for instance, of people like Roger-Echo Hawk, who is a Pawnee Indian who not only writes history but who also repatriates indigenous remains successfully. In him we see Western science at the service of the subaltern, but this time it is not the non-subaltern intellectual who masters the hegemonic knowledgeand uses it to graciously help the subalternbut the subaltern himself in his role as historian. There is also another aspect in which LASS has gone beyond, in my opinion, the South Asian group's agenda. The project was presented, in a special issue of Dispositio/n, as one that should go beyond the boundaries of the disciplines and reach for the flesh and blood subaltern subjects: one of the group's tasks was to elaborate strategies for local struggles and for the new forms of social agency, as well as to develop new forms of thinking and acting politically (Rabasa and Sanjins v, vii). This agenda is partially confirmed by the Founding Statement reproduced in that very same issue, where one reads that the group does not intend to elaborate a new form of viewing or understanding the subaltern, but to build new forms of relating to that subject (10). This plan is completed by their call for solidarity with the academician's Others (see Rabasa and Sanjins x). None of these goals and plans are at odds with Dussel's ideas, which makes more notorious the lack of awareness of his works and ideas in the texts penned by former LASS members, with the exception, as we already saw above, of Mignolo. I would like to move now to the question of the concrete political strategies that should arise from a dialogue like the one I have just described. On this subject, there are at least two possible attitudes: the one expressed by John Beverley, who avers that subaltern studies is a project within the university that, despite proposing a certain solidarity with
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subaltern subjects, does not need to leave its academic home to go out and reach for said subjects (Subalternity and Representation 38; and in the interview included in this issue354). The other attitude, as we already saw, is the one advanced by Rabasa and Sanjins in the Intro to the issue of Dispositio/n on subaltern studies (v, vii) and by the Founding Statement (10): one that attempts to transcend the physical and ideological boundaries of the university in order to be able to enter in a dialogue and in a relationship of solidarity with the subaltern. Although it is not easy to elaborate strategies to have an impact on society and to escape the teaching machine prison house , I believe that the democratization of the university that Beverley proposes (Subalternity and Representation 38) does not need to be the scholar's only educational goal. On the contrary, there is a lot left to do with regard to both the knowledge we produce in universities and what we do with it. To help change, as I propose elsewhere (Todo lo que es slido), the curriculum at the primary and secondary levels of the educational system is a doable task that does not imply an attitude like the one promoted by narodism, a movementridiculed by Beverley, by the waywhich defended, for example, the idea that intellectuals should work in the fields with the peasants (38). It is my contention that we need to develop an agenda for the intervention of scholars of Latin American studies that goes beyond the boundaries of the academy. Such an agenda necessitates, in my opinion, a subalternist inflection. However, it is important, first, to review some of the limitations of the subaltern studies project. One of those is the lack of concrete political strategies or plans that has characterized the Latin American Subaltern Studies group's activities. This is surprising, because of the positions we saw both the Founding Statement and the aforementioned Introduction by Rabasa and Sanjins advanced. To this lack of concrete political strategies one can add the striking lack of monographs that actualize the theoretical foundation of the subalternist project. One of its former members, Alberto Moreiras, wrote once that the moment had come to stop writing metacritical papers and start writing monographs about case studies. Otherwise, the use of a subalternist perspective will never be demonstrated (141). To this limitation, one could add another, which is the shortage of studies based on empiric data produced by subalternist scholars. A consequence of this limitation is that there are very few Latin American subalternist studies on the materiality of social life,
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past or present (for a call to give more importance to the material in our studies, see my Todo lo que es solido and En busca de la materialidad). Although as academics we have less contact with flesh and blood people, as Clifton Poodry rightly states (29), I believe that projects that promote solidarity with subaltern subjects are still possible for us. For example, a project that attempts to retrieve from oblivion the role of the labor and the knowledges of indigenous peoples across the Americas in the emergence of modernity may be a way of practicing solidarity with the subaltern. An activity of this kind may have very immediate consequences for those Amerindian groups who struggle for their rights, today, from a position of subalternity against the dominant system. Of course, the incorporation of subaltern knowledges and cultural production to our research agendas should be done in the understanding that they deserve the status of critical discourse, as Horacio Legrs proposes in his contribution to this volume, instead of being regarded as hallucinated difference (211). Additionally, there are other kinds of academic work that could have consequences for the different indigenous groups of the Americas. I am referring to studies like the one by Andr Luis R. Soares on the Guarani from Brazil, that purport to demonstrate, through a study of that ethnic group's material culture, the continuity of some of their cultural traits and practices throughout a period of sixteen centuries. A work of this kind, that establishes ties between Guarani societies from the distant past and from the present, could be used both to substantiate their land claims and to legitimize the rights of one of the ethnic minorities of modern-day Brazil. This latter case brings us to one that hits closer to home for those of us working in the US academic system. I am referring to the new situation created by the passage of a law known as NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act), which has forced archaeologists and physical anthropologists to work together with Amerindians who were considered, before that law, as mere objects of study. This law has made the positionality of Native American stronger than ever and their claims to ownership of their own history more effective, by taking into account their own views on indigenous pasts as knowledge to be considered as serious as that produced by Western science. I believe that we Latin Americanists can learn a lot from the struggles and the achievements of subaltern subjects in the framework of NAGPRA (for a history and a study of the content of this act see: Jack F. Trope and Walter R. Echo-Hawk).
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Since, and even before that legislation passed in congress, some indigenous groups, like the Zuni, the Hopi, and the Navajo, have been organizing their own archaeology programs (see, among many other articles, the ones by T.J. Ferguson, Roger Anyon and Edmund J. Ladd; Billy L. Cypress; Richard M. Begay). This raises the question about the role of Western science in the production of indigenous knowledge and the degree to which it could condition their writing of their own history. That is a valid concern. However, it has, at the same time, the potential of helping different tribes to identify the cultural affiliation of human and associated remains of the past. It is, of course, a trade-off for the subaltern, but one with which some indigenous groups have started to experiment. This choice entails, of course, as Larry J. Zimmerman avers, the training of indigenous subjects in Western science so that they can apply it to the reconstruction of their own history (301). In this way, these tribes are being able to write their own version of their very own pasts, as Rabasa proposes. There is another side to this story and it has to do with the impact of the participation of subaltern subjects in the elaboration and control of our disciplinary agendas (Zimmerman 300). This would entail teaching an indigenous past that has nothing or very little to do with the one we have been telling hithertoan indigenous past that would incorporate, now, the views of those subjects, the Amerindians, who had been hitherto considered as objects of study in our disciplines (Zimmerman 302). This is why archaeological knowledge is now supplemented by oral indigenous traditions, whose degree of trustworthiness and historical content can be distinguished from its fictional or ornamental parts6that is, those segments storytellers employed both to entertain their audiences and to make their stories more memorableif analyzed through methods that follows certain reasonable rules, as Roger Echo-Hawk has shown (Ancient History and Forging a New Ancient History). Science in general, Zimmerman tells us, must be put in a social context (303). This should be interpreted, I believe, as a warning to any discipline that dispenses with the knowledge of subaltern subjects. In his opinion, archaeology in particular would be able to realize its humanistic potential if it were at the service of the indigenous subjects it studies (304).7 In other words, archaeology and the disciplines in general would be better served and would be much more dignified if they were put at the service of the subaltern. This way of reasoning is very close to that of Paul Feyerabend's, whose ideas on the responsibility of scholars vis--vis the
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general public could serve, despite their hyperbolic formulation, as inspiration for our academic practices. His rule R5 states that the important issues in any given society must be considered and decided upon by the people affected by them and not by abstract agencies or distant experts (Notes on Relativism 48). This is very close to Dussels opinions on the role of the philosopher of liberation: he or she should never propose the guidelines or the goals but will instead reflect in solidarity and, from the rear guard, justify theoretically (or introduce suspicions into) the decisions of a given community (Epilogue 272). Of course, there are risks involved in a position like this. For example, it could degenerate into a position like Richard M. Begay's, who expects archaeologists and other Western intellectuals to help Amerindians to reconstruct their pasts, but without having the chance to disagree with whatever the indigenous subjects they are working for want them to say (165). This is very far from the way Dussel envisions the role of the Western intellectual with regard to the subaltern, as we saw in the previous paragraph. Begay's position is surprising because indigenous peoples have been able, for centuries, to live in, and to understand, two worlds, as Rabasa and others remind us (see, for instance, the article by Jeffrey van Pelt, Michael S. Burney and Tom Bailor171) and, therefore, they know that other human groups have beliefs that differ from theirs. I seriously doubt that a dogmatic affirmation of only one of the possible worldviews is the best way to advance the cause of indigenous peoples. The resentment of indigenous peoples with regard to archaeology is very well founded historically (see, for a review of the horrors committed in the name of science, the article by Robert E. Bieder and the book by David Hurst Thomas, among many other texts). Yet, this does not mean that archaeology as a profession (with a long history of crimes and misdemeanors) is the same as archaeology as a way of knowing.8 It is as a way of knowing that archaeology holds some promise for the subaltern. In the same fashion, and despite all their differences as far as disciplinary frameworks and protocols go, literary and cultural studies can be of some help to subalterns. Admittedly, literary and cultural studies, unlike archaeology and Anthropology, do not always have subalterns as objects of study, but they are always, sometimes unwittingly, studying texts that either produce subalternity (because of their endorsement of the official narratives of nationhood) or represent it in various derogatory ways: either as background (almost like part of the landscape or decorative folklore) or as a
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lack that should be eliminated in order for progress to develop. However, as I argued elsewhere (Forgotten territorialities and Todo lo que es slido), we can give the tools traditionally used to dominate subaltern subjects a different role: we can put them to work for a research agenda that would be at the service of the subaltern.9 I have said elsewhere, also, that despite its problems, there is one thing archaeology can do for Latin American literary and cultural studies scholars: to put us in contact with the actual objects, with the material aspects of a culture that we usually study only through textual production (Todo lo que es slido). Archaeology can also teach us some lessons because, although it is a discipline that has been forced by law to respect the subaltern, it has started doing it effectively. Its trajectory could be compared to our disciplines: their long process of disregard for the Amerindian ended up in this current, albeit forced, collaboration with their victims of yesteryear. Our discipline celebrated for decades a literary canon that exalted Western values and despised the marginal classes and ethnic groups of Latin America or represented them from an Occidental perspective, even in the case of the best intentioned of critics. Today, the situation is different for Latin American literary and cultural studies: we can be proud to have witnessed the development of LASS with its proposals of voluntary solidarity with the subaltern, shown by several means, one of which is worth mentioning: to get out of the teaching machine and reach for the flesh and blood subaltern. There is still another way of reaching out for the subaltern and it is related to what I proposed above (which is what is being enforced in other disciplinary fields, as we saw in the case of archaeology under NAGPRA): to bring subalterns, or their opinions, to academia, in order to get their input about our research agendas so that they can be a part of the process of shaping them. This is, if I interpret him correctly, Alvaro Felix Bolaos's proposal in his article published in this issue: to bring the subaltern (the real person, flesh and blood) to the university. This is not, as a colleague from the History department at the University of Florida told him, (286) to make the indigenous subject a part of a circus or a freak show. Or as Beverley would have it, some kind of radical otherness that can be brought into the classroom in the manner of a scarecrow (interview 362). It is, on the contrary, an attempt to make the people we have, as university professors, contributed to oppress, to the very same place that creates subalternity, so that they can at least express their own demands in their own words in a
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framework and a milieu that has almost always been deaf to their message. The conference he proposed to his colleague from history was intended, then, to give indigenous subjects the opportunity to express themselves in their own words and languages. It was, too, a logical consequence of a subalternist agenda and a way to express solidarity with the descendents of the oppressed Amerindians he studies as a colonial expert (287). The apparently respectful attitude of the history professor (who did not want to make Amerindians be part of a denigrating show) has at least two problems, according to Bolaos: first, it fosters a comfortable passivity on the academics part or, even worse, an avoidance of the bothersome contact with subalterns,; and second, the foreclosure of any possibility of solidarity with subaltern subjects coming from scholars and professors (293). In sum, LASS has been a very progressive attempt to open the fortress of the teaching machine to the subaltern. It has left, as Coronil and Rodrguez in their contributions to this volume rightly point out, a legacy to younger generations. It has had, also, a significant influence both in the US academy and in Latin America. It has, as Acosta has shown in his piece, the potential to help other disciplines (Comparative Literature and English) in the US academy to overcome some of their political and epistemological limitations. It shares, too, the ideals promoted by Mendieta as a spokesperson for Latin American post-occidentalism, and it contributes to what Mignolo, in his article published in this volume, calls an-other paradigmthat is, one that tries to understand subalternity and social injustice from the vantage point of the coloniality of power and the colonial difference. But most of all, it has given us a lever to help us produce a thinking, a space from which to imagine things otherwise, a sort of external negativityas Horacio Legrs (Subalternity and Negativity), and before him, Enrique Dussel, have proposedthat makes a critique of Occidental reason possible, a limit, as Gareth Williams declares, to constituted power from which to create constitutive alternative ways of thinking and acting (11). That space gives us the chance to both revisit and vindicate those knowledges produced by subalterns that Western society has dismissed, ignored or destroyed. I am referring to what Michel Foucault called subjugated knowledges, those that have been de-authorized by the dominant epistemic rules and discourses for being local and partial. However, they, unlike Western dominant knowledge, do not construct
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unitary, totalizing theoretical systems that seek to subsume all local elements within a single umbrella, and their validity, according to Foucault, is not dependent on the approval of the prevalent regimes of thought. It is here, in these local popular knowledges, these disqualified knowledges, that criticism performs its work (Two lectures 21). The subaltern as a place from which to think gives us the vantage point needed to criticize our present. As Linda Martin Alcoff's interpretation of the role of subjugated knowledges in Foucault's work suggests, the historical a priori, the social conjuncture, can only be subverted from the outside, from beyond what that historical conjuncture can comprehend or accept (Alcoff 261). This Foucauldian position is akin to Enrique Dussel's in that the latters philosophical project presupposes a criticism performed from an exterioritythat is, an outside that is not only ideological but also material, whose ultimate instance is life itself (Dussel, Epilogue 273). And it is from the realm of the material, more concretely, from the material recognition of the suffering of the oppressed that, according to Dussel, many critical movements have departed (Epilogue 274).10 For Linda Martin Alcoff, there are at least two good reasons for the assignation of epistemic privilege to marginal or subjugated discourses: the way in which they relate to powerthey require less violence than Eurocentric knowledgesand the fact that they allow for a more effective critique of totality due to their exteriority (262). Those knowledges deserve, then, a respect that it is based not only on ethical but also on epistemic grounds. Without a basic respect for the oppressed and their knowledges, it will be impossible to take their contribution to humankind seriously. This respect should be the point of departure of our research, understood less as a merely academic enterprise than as a de-totalizing practice of solidarity with the Other. I believe this line of thought is not alien to, or at least not incompatible with, some of the agendas proposed and embraced by diverse members of LASS. In spite of all the praise the trajectory of LASS deserves, it is true that, as some of its members admit, there were internecine disputes and terrible struggles over power within the group. As Rabasa tells us in the article published here: The worm of desiring recognition, of jealousy, of possessiveness, and the ambition of laying claim for the latest paradigm in Latin American Studies devoured the Latin American Subaltern Studies group (86). It is also true that, as Rodriguez admits, some members of the
33
group who thought of themselves as the left of the left, manifested symptoms of a vanguardism that we should dispense with (see her contribution to this volume, 50). That self-perceptionthat is, of being the most revolutionary onestogether with a sense of belonging to an exclusive club, may have been some of the causes behind the numerous attacks the group suffered from Latin Americanists based in both Latin America and the US academy. If you add to these signs of disfunctionality Rodrguez's declaration that the internal differences were never discussed in public and that the lack of internal dialogue precipitated the end of the group (El grupo Latinoamericano 77), it is clear that the group had real problems as a collective. Beverley, for his part, offers (in the interview by Fernando Gmez published in this issue) a different, very personal interpretation of what happened to the group due to what he seems to characterize as a certain flirting with elite institutions that took place at a certain moment of the group's life:
that position of our own manufactured relative subalternity in the profession energized, I think, the work of the initial group. Then we started to catch on. Mignolo and Alberto Moreiras joined. And Duke comes into the picture with its great resources, and there is this big conference. Lots of money. Big names. MLA-style. Whereas our previous meetings had been very informal, low budget affairs. We would sit down for a weekend at someone's campus and talk like you and I are doing now. Nobody gave papers. Audiences were not invited to come or anything like that. So the Duke thing was much more dramatic and ambitious (interview 358).
A little later in the interview, Beverley remembers that the Dean of Humanities at Duke announced that Subaltern Studies was going to be the model for the Humanities at said university and that they (the members of LASS) did not want to resist that [that is, being welcome to the house of knowledge and power], because in a sense we took seriously that Subaltern Studies wanted to hegemonize the field by providing a new paradigm. Because it was a political project. We did not want to be abject and humble (358). And later he adds, in praise of resentment:
I think if we all had been at prestigious Ivy League institutions and had been getting grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, our
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work would not have the kind of consequences that it had. It would have been perceived as yet another high-level academic project with little force behind it other than careerism. So you can say there was an element of subalternity operative in our own project. I am not trying to make any special claim to political correctness here. We were all college-educated, middle-class, etcetera. But there is relative subalternity and relative resentment. We say to ourselves how come they are getting all the grants? O.k. Fuck them. We are going to do our thing, we are going to do it differently, collectively. We are not into academic ego-trips, nobody will present papers, we are going to be more like a sixtiesstyle affinity group (366).
Others, like Bosteels, who were not part of the collective, sees generational differences in the ranks of LASS (149), but they are, in his opinion, less important than the uneasy encounter that took place between the two strands of thought (the Marxist and the Deconstructionist) that predominated in the collective and the challenge to articulate them (149). Basically, he asks himself how to achieve the fusion of theory and practice (149). His take, like mine, is that we don't need to choose between the two forms of subalternism, but to seek a harmonic combination of both (150). He is proposing, in sum, a theorization of the death of revolutionary politics of the past and a politicization of the deconstruction of the metaphysics of presence (150). Instead of looking for that harmony, the members of LASS kept upping the ante in the debate regarding politics, trying to show who is the most revolutionary thinker. If I read him correctly, what Bosteels is proposing as a cause of the group's demise is its inability to solve the tension between a logic that remains transcendental and forms of thought that are sequential and evenmental and thus are to be thoroughly historicized without renouncing the rigor of deconstructive negativity (157). Although it is a simplification to present the group as one comprised only of Marxists and Deconstructionists, it is undeniable that the tension between two theoretical tendencies lies behind the demise of the group. In other words, it could be said that it was their inability to bridge the theoretical gap, the theoretical differences between the main-albeit not the only-two strands that comprised LASS that led to its dissolution. All these internal criticisms show us a portrait of LASS as a project that included members with very different and divergent views, who provide us now with conflicting versions or accounts of the process that led to its demise, and that lay bare its several flaws and problems. However, it
35
is my contention that the group's complex and rich legacy cannot be thrown away just because it had the aforementioned problems and because it has been recently declared defunct. There must be life after the demise of the group. As Mosquera states in his contribution to this volume, following Beverley: one can still be loyal to a subalternist agendaa more modest oneby keeping a constant watch on its genealogy, its methodologies and affiliations (270). Some people would like to see a new edition of the group. Among these people is Ileana Rodrguez, who believes that there is a need to rethink the project and its structure; that it is necessary to avoid the mistakes of the past (see her contribution to this volume 59). She also believes that if a new group is to emerge, it will be necessary both to write a new manifesto or founding statement and to find new leadership (59). Her opinion is based on the assumption that without a structure there is no subaltern studies project (59). Others, like Coronil, believe that the influence exerted by the group and the plethora of works it inspired, made subaltern studies outgrow the confining framework of its Founding Statement... It is perhaps the multifarious richness of these openings that made it difficult for the Group to contain them (341). The very structure of the group, then, was not able to comprehend the wide variety of subaltern studies it triggered: the project it allowed [us] to imagine exceeded its incarnation in the group and even its identification as subaltern studies (338). Subaltern studies, in his opinion, is the promise it [the group] generated but could not quite contain (341). And he concludes, free from parental tutelage, subaltern studies may now grow ever stronger and perhaps eventually, like its parent, will shed its skin and give rise to even more empowering engagements under different outfits from locations no longer identified by our familiar cartography (341). Whether practitioners of the discipline decide to continue their efforts individually or whether they prefer to create a new group, the legacy of LASS cannot be ignored by those who believe their work is not just a mere intellectual exercise or a way to be protected from the ills of everyday reallife.11 Beverley says at the end of his essay that perhaps a certain melancholy perceptible in some of the recent work of the founders is peculiar to their generation:
The nature of the impasse our own work has contributed to produce, plus the clear signs of mid-life crisis in our discourse, produce a kind of melancholy or desengao which is not necessarily shared by our younger colleagues, who bring new
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energies, new experiences and new imaginaries to the field. Perhaps the time has come for them to take the banner from our hands and to find some way of changing the terms of the debate (75).
Whether one agrees or not with Beverley about the role his generation needs to play in the present (I, for one, wish they would stay around and keep contributing to the field's theoretical debates), it is also true that the legacy of LASS needs to be re-actualized by younger scholars. And when I say younger, I really mean it: I am referring to young assistant professors and graduate students. This would bring fresh air to the space opened by the group. This would also be a celebration of, or a homage to, not only LASS, but also to the Latin American post-occidentalist tradition. As Fernando Coronil aptly puts it: However brief and stormy, the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group had a fecund life. This note celebrates its achievement and the mutable vitality of subaltern studies; it is postobituary, not an obituary. We are dead. Long live subaltern studies in the Americas! (341). I am one of those who are willing to help contribute to the after-life of the spirit, or if you prefer, of the inspiration that brought LASS into being. This special issue is an attempt to discuss the history, the multiple agendas, the limitations and the various legacies of the group. Hopefully, more venues will offer their pages to a renewed and refreshing debate about this seminal group and the theories that came from Latin America in the sixties. Those who believe, like Choctaw archaeologist Joe Watkins states in Indigenous Archaeology, that our role as members of a privileged segment of society is to feed the hungry, clothe the poor, and establish global peace (170), will share Fernando Coronils post-obituary's optimistic ending. However, if you find Watkins's wishes too ambitious, here's what he has to say about it: Okay, perhaps the heading for this section is a rather tall order, but sometimes I feel that that is what final chapters are supposed to be (170). I, too, sometimes feel that the ending of papers or introductions should take the form of a rather tall order. Otherwise, why bother? Long live critical thinking that seeks the liberation of the poor and the oppressed.
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NOTES
It is interesting that Beverley says, in the interview published in this very same issue of Dispositio/n, that in his own articulation of subaltern studies there is a moment in which deconstruction and subaltern studies move away from each other. And this has to do with a recognition of the limits of critical thinking and the limits of intellectuals. I think one of the key issues that brought together initially the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group was a sense of the limitations of intellectuals as agents of history and hegemony (348). He also states, later in the interview, that deconstruction is still an ideology of intellectuals that is text centered, still essentially framed by the legacy of European Humanism, in the sense of creating a way to read texts to educate an elite no longer adequately educated in principles that derive from theology and scholasticism (353). He adds that deconstruction becomes for me the new ideology of the literary at a moment when the literary itself has come into crisis. Deconstruction offers itself as a way of saving the essential impulse in literary criticism and therefore redeeming the role of intellectuals (354). 2 I discussed precisely this kind of situation that consists of a sector of the state operating against the rest of the state apparatuses in an article on the reinforcement of the social fabric promoted from the Municipal Government of Montevideo (La democratizacin de Montevideo). 3 See also Rabasa's study of a rebellion in Tzepotlan, Morelos, where the Amerindians are shown fighting a battle in the legal framework provided by the Mexican state without losing sight of their own traditional legal and political practices (Beyond Representation? 193, 208 and passim). 4 Interestingly, Beverley himself has insisted on the fact that subalternity is not a fixed identity but a relational position (Against Literature 104; Subalternity and Representation 30). 5 Williams, for example, states that the center/periphery models isolate the object as a specific position, defined as a particular place within a network of global objective relationships, which corresponds to a belief in the singularity of cultural identities. Well, I beg to differ: the domination exerted by central NationStates on the peripheral ones has very little to do with identity and much more with the power relations that develop between states as a consequence of a history of colonialism and neocolonialism. 6 I add the quotation marks to the word fictional which is used, in EchoHawk's study, in a somewhat nave and uncritical way. 7 This is a view shared by, among others, Cecile Elkins Carter (154-155).
1
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8
About which, mind you, I have also my reservations, as I have shown in Todo lo que es slido. 9 See the case I mention in Forgotten Territorialities, where cartographers put a science (cartography) traditionally oppressive to subalterns at the service of an indigenous people from modern-day Guyana. 10 Again, I have been calling for a focus on materiality and material culture in at least three articles: Todo lo que es solido, En busca de la materialidad, and Forgotten Territorialities. Daniel Mosquera also calls, in his contribution to this volume, for an emphasis of the study of material culture. 11 There is a mystifying article by one of the founders of LASS, Robert Carr, who is apparently in possession of information that nobody I have consulted seems to be aware of. He declares, throughout his contribution to a recent LASA Forum, that there is already an evil version of LASS conspiring against the spirit of the original LASS. Let us hope that, if this is true, Carr tells the public where this group operates, what kind of work it publishes and who are its members.
WORKS CITED
Achugar, Hugo. Leones, cazadores e historiadores. A propsito de las memorias de las polticas y el conocimiento. Revista Iberoamericana 180 (1997): 379-387. Alcoff, Linda Martn. Power/Knowledges in the Colonial Unconscious. A Dialogue Between Dussel and Foucault in Thinking from the Underside of History. Enrique Dussel's Philosophy of Liberation. Eds. Linda Martn Alcoff and Eduardo Mendieta. Lanham, Boulder, New York, Oxford: Rowan and Littlefield, 2000. 249-267. Begay, Richard M. The Role of Archaeology on Indian Lands. The Navajo Nation in Native Americans and Archaeologists. Stepping Stones to Common Ground. Eds. Nina Swidler, Kurt E. Dongoske, Roger Anyon and Alan S. Downer. Waltnut Creek, London, New Delhi: Altamira P, 1997. 161-166. Bergman, Marcelo and Mnica Szurmuk. Gender, Citizenship and Social Protest: The New Social Movements in Argentina in The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader Ed. Ileana Rodrguez. Durham and London: Duke UP, 2001. 383-401.
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Beverley, John. Against Literature. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1993. , Puede ser gay la nacin? Subalternidad/Modernidad/Multiculturalismo in Convergencia de tiempos. Estudios subalternos/contextos latinoamericanos, estado, cultura, subalternidad. Ed. Ileana Rodrguez. Amsterdam, Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 2001. 91-102. , The Im-possibility of Politics: Subalternity, Modernity, Hegemony in The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader. Ed. Ileana Rodrguez. Durham and London: Duke UP, 2001. 47-63. , Subalternity and Representation. Arguments in Cultural Theory. Durham: Duke UP, 1999. Bieder, Robert E. The Representation of Indian Bodies in Nineteenth-Century American Anthropology in Repatriation Reader, Who Owns American Indian Remains? Ed. Devon A. Mihesuah. Lincoln and London: U of Nebraska P, 2000. 19- 36. Carr, Robert. Elitism and the Death of Subaltern Studies LASA Forum 33.2 (2002): 12-13. Carter, Cecile Elkins. Straight Talk and Trust in Native Americans and Archaeologists. Stepping Stones to Common Ground. Eds. Nina Swidler, Kurt E. Dongoske, Roger Anyon and Alan S. Downer. Waltnut Creek, London, New Delhi: Altamira P, 1997. 151-155. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Adda: una historia de socialidad in Convergencia de tiempos. Estudios subalternos/contextos latinoamericanos, estado, cultura, subalternidad. Ed. Ileana Rodrguez. Amsterdam, Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 2001. 425- 469. , Provincializing Europe. Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton UP, 2000. Cypress, Billy L. The Role of Archaeology in the Seminole Tribe of Florida in Native Americans and Archaeologists. Stepping Stones to Common Ground. Eds. Nina Swidler, Kurt E. Dongoske, Roger Anyon and Alan S. Downer. Waltnut Creek, London, New Delhi: Altamira P, 1997. 156- 160. Dussel, Enrique. Epilogue in Thinking from the Underside of History. Enrique Dussel's Philosophy of Liberation. Eds. Linda Martn Alcoff and Eduardo Mendieta. Lanham, Boulder, New York, Oxford: Rowan and Littlefield, 2000. 269-289. , Etica de la liberacin en la edad de la globalizacin y de la exclusin. Madrid: Trotta, 1998. Echo-Hawk, Roger C. Ancient History in the New World: Integrating Oral Traditions and the Archaeological Record in Deep Time American Antiquity
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GUSTAVO VERDESIO 65.2 (2000): 267- 290.
, Forging a New Ancient History for Native America in Native Americans and Archaeologists. Stepping Stones to Common Ground. Eds. Nina Swidler, Kurt E. Dongoske, Roger Anyon and Alan S. Downer. Waltnut Creek, London, New Delhi: Altamira P, 1997. 88-102. Ferguson, T. J., Roger Anyon and Edmund J. Ladd. Repatriation at the Pueblo of Zuni: Diverse Solutions to Complex Problems in Repatriation Reader, Who Owns American Indian Remains? Ed. Devon A. Mihesuah. Lincoln and London: U of Nebraska P, 2000. 239- 265. Feyerabend, Paul. Notes on Relativism. in Paul Feyerabend, Farewell to Reason. London: Verso, 1999 [1987]. 19- 89. Foucault, Michel. Two Lectures in Critique and Power. Recasting the Foucault/ Habermas Debate. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: The MIT P, 1994. 17-46. Guha, Ranajit. Subaltern Studies: Projects for Our Time and Their Convergence in The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader. Ed. Ileana Rodrguez. Durham and London: Duke UP, 2001. 35-46. Hurst Thomas, David. Skull Wars: Kennewick Man, Archaeology and the Battle for Native American Identity. New York: Basic Books, 2000. Latin American Subaltern Studies Group. Founding Statement. Dispositio/n 46 (1994) [1996]: 1-11. Legrs, Horacio. Subalternity and Negativity Dispositio/n 49 (2000): 83-102. Mallon, Florencia. Peasant and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru. Berkeley: U of California P, 1995. Mignolo, Walter. Local Histories/Global Designs. Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges and Border Thinking. New Jersey: Princeton UP, 2001. , The Darker Side of the Renassaince. Literacy, Territoriality and Colonization. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1995. , Dussels Philosophy of Liberation: Ethics and the Geopolitics of knowledge in Thinking from the Underside of History. Enrique Dussel's Philosophy of Liberation. Eds. Linda Martn Alcoff and Eduardo Mendieta. Lanham, Boulder, New York, Oxford: Rowan and Littlefield, 2000. 2750. Moraa, Mabel. El boom del subalterno Revista de crtica cultural. 15 (1997): 48-53. Moreiras, Alberto. The Order of Order: On the Reluctant Culturalism of AntiSubalternist Critiques Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 8.1 (1999): 125- 145.
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Pelt, Jeffrey van, Michael S. Burney and Tom Bailor. Protecting Cultural Resources on the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Native Americans and Archaeologists. Stepping Stones to Common Ground. Eds. Nina Swidler, Kurt E. Dongoske, Roger Anyon and Alan S. Downer. Waltnut Creek, London, New Delhi: Altamira P, 1997. 167-171. Petras, James. Left Intellectuals and the Desperate Search for Respectability ALAI, Latin America in Movement (11-07-2000) http://alainet.org/docs/ 994.html Poodry, Clifton. How to Get What Indian Communities Need from Science in Science and Native American Communities. Legacies of Pain, Visions of Promise. Ed. Keith James. Lincoln and London: U of Nebraska P, 2001. 29-35. Rabasa, Jos. Beyond Representation? The Impossibility of the Local (Notes on Subaltern Studies in Light of a rebellion in Tepoztln, Morelos) in The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader Ed. Ileana Rodrguez. Durham and London: Duke UP, 2001. 192-210. , Los franciscanos y los dominicos bajo la mirada penetrante de un Tlacuilo. Cmo residir en una pluralidad de mundos, segn un cdice pictrico in Convergencia de tiempos. Estudios subalternos/contextos latinoamericanos, estado, cultura, subalternidad. Ed. Ileana Rodrguez. Amsterdam, Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 2001. 381-403. , Writing Violence on the Northern Frontier: The Historiography of Sixteenth Century New Mexico and Florida and the Legacy of Conquest. Durham and London: Duke UP, 2000. Rabasa, Jos and Javier Sanjins. 1994. Introduction: The Politics of Subaltern Studies. Dispositio/n 19.46 1994 [1996]: v-xi. Rodrguez, Ileana. Reading Subalterns Across Texts, Disciplines and Theories: From Representation to Recognition The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader. Ed. Ileana Rodrguez. Durham and London: Duke UP, 2001. 1-32. , La encrucijada de los estudios subalternos: postmarxismo, deconstruccionismo, postcolonialismo y multiculturalismo in Convergencia de tiempos. Estudios subalternos/contextos latinoamericanos, estado, cultura, subalternidad. Ed. Ileana Rodrguez. Amsterdam, Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 2001. 5-47. , El grupo latinoamericano de estudios subalternos: una entrevista con Ileana Rodrguez Revista de crtica cultural 24 (2002): 72-77. , A New Debate on Subaltern Studies? LASA Forum 33.2 (2002): 14-15.
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Soares, Andr Luis S. Guaran: Organizao Social e Arqueologia. Porto Alegre: EDIPUCRS, 1997 Spalding, Karen. Huarochir. An Andean Society Under Inca and Spanish Rule. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1984. Stern, Steve. Peru's Indian peoples and the challenge of Spanish conquest: Huamanga to 1640. Madison, Wis.: U of Wisconsin P, 1982. Trope, Jack F. and Walter R. Echo-Hawk. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act: Background and Legislative History in Repatriation Reader, Who Owns American Indian Remains? Ed. Devon A. Mihesuah. Lincoln and London: U of Nebraska P, 2000. 123- 168. Verdesio, Gustavo. Forgotten Territorialities: The Materiality of Indigenous Pasts. Nepantla. Views from South 2.1 (2001): 85-114. , Todo lo que es slido se disuelve en la academia: sobre los estudios coloniales, la teora poscolonial, los estudios subalternos y la cultura material. Revista de Estudios Hispnicos 35 (2001): 633 660. , En busca de la materialidad perdida: un aporte crtico a los proyectos de recuperacin de las tradiciones aborgenes propuestas por Kusch, Dussel y Mignolo Revista Iberoamericana 192 (2000): 625-638. , La democratizacin de Montevideo: Entre la sociedad de control y la comunidad que viene. Escenario 2. Revista de anlisis poltico. 5 (2001) http://www.escenario2.org.uy/numero5/cultura_verdesio.html Watkins, Joe. Indigenous Archaeology. American Indian Values and Scientific Practice. Waltnut Creek, London, New Delhi: Altamira P, 2000. Williams, Gareth. The Other Side of the Popular. Neoliberalism and Subalternity in Latin America. Durham and London: Duke UP, 2002. Zimmermann, Larry J. A New and Different Archaeology? With a Postcript on the Impact of the Kennewick Dispute in Repatriation Reader, Who Owns American Indian Remains? Ed. Devon A. Mihesuah. Lincoln and London: U of Nebraska P, 2000. 294- 306.
IS THERE A NEED FOR SUBALTERN STUDIES?

Ileana Rodrguez Ohio State University
he questions Gustavo Verdesio, the editor of the present volume, sent us to guide our contributions can be grouped into four different sets of interests.The first refers to the place of Latin American Subaltern Studies (LASS) in the field of Latin American Studies, and asks for the relationship between Subaltern, Cultural, Postcolonial Studies, and the type of cultural criticism produced in Latin America. Perhaps the impetus behind this set of questions is to make us ponder the commonalities of our efforts as Latin Americanists and to make us realize that, in fact, we belong to one and the same field and share the same genealogies. The second group aims at establishing the particularities of the relationship between the South Asian Subaltern Studies Collective and LASS, and points in the direction of a desencuentro between the two groups. The third refers to the organizational structure of LASS, its advantages and disadvantages, and wonders if it would have been better to choose a different formatan open rather than a closed structure, a movement rather than a group. And finally, the fourth set asks for the conditions of possibility of continuing the subaltern studies discussion by other means, with other people, and under a different format. Naturally, engaging in this dialogue implies, were we to comply with the request of the editor, to discuss the errors committed, speak about the possibilities overlooked, and re-examine the limitations of our collective practice. In the interest of collaborating with Verdesios project, I return to the praxis of the group to re-examine our past endeavors. The nature of LASS and the type of work it did is gathered in the volumes we published.1 In the introduction to the two volumes I edited, I addressed issues related to who we were, our interests, differences, and particular approaches to the field.2
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ILEANA RODRGUEZ
And more recently, I took a somewhat different route in an interview for Revista de Crtica Cultural.3 Whatever we were as a collective is all recorded there and I think there is very little I can add to what I have already said on the subject. In this piece I am interested not only in revisiting the proposal of subalternism as an alternative and counterhegemonic epistemology that for me marked the continuity of the legacy of Marxism by other means, but also in presenting a retrospective situational analysis of the juncture that brought us together, and in reconsidering some of the real structural issues that caused the final demise of the group under that light.
Subaltern, Cultural, and Post-colonial Studies: Their Genealogies

Subaltern Studies is in many ways for me the name of a transition. Given the available choices within the field at the timea Marxism whose limits were already a hindrance in thinking about the social processes inflected by high modernity, and the most festive, triumphant, and market oriented current of Cultural Studies, heavily dependent on deconstructionI, together with the historical founders of the group, chose the path of Subaltern Studies.4 Our program, project, and intentions are all made explicit in our Founding Statement, a piece that was very well received in the field and that became the object of desire for many in the profession.5 In that piece, our politics were explicit and they turned around two central axes, one was the principle of solidarity with the poor, and the other the affinity of the groups members. Our recalcitrant faith in the social agency of the poor, in the belief that they were endowed with consciousness and a political will that could serve as a foundation for theory, and the affinity (defined as a political sensibility) between the members of the collective was our investment, a way of micro-managing the transition from an engaged past to a demobilized present and an uncertain future. This is our first legacy to the field. The work of Ranajit Guhafor instance Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India, which contains the kernel of his thinkingis permeated by this idea, and although we post- and neo- Latin Americanist Marxists can think twice about the use of categories like peasant, or feudal to refer to class and mode of production (the discussion around these themes in Latin American scholarship is huge), his work
45
was already in transit to other ways of thinking the poor. Guha brought the mediation of Antonio Gramsci to our work and this led us in the direction of Ernesto Laclaus and Chantal Mouffes work on the concept of hegemony, a revisitation of the genealogy of this term in relationship to the development of the great International European workers movements First, Second, and Thirdand to the uneven development that provided useful concepts in understanding the transition in Latin America. Guha was our mediator and compass during those disorienting days.6 Nonetheless, in no way or manner does this alliance with the poor, its consciousness and political will imply that we were a nave or populist left (la izquierda boba)a discussion we entertained in our second meeting at Ohio State. There was no Manichean bent implicit in this conception, no ethical distinction between good and evil, not even the idea of victims and oppressors. There was, on the contrary, the necessity of revising, or rather, constructing, a theory of resistance grounded on the practices, consciousness, and will of the poor. The question was, if class and class-consciousness were no longer the guiding light, the trump card that served to adjust the unadjustable and explain the unexplainable (that was what hegemony did for Laclau and Mouffe), what were the new and old ways of performing that consciousness? Where had we gone wrong in our understanding of the agent of change? Enough water had run under the bridge for us to realize that the projects and practices of the left that we had been part of, in their multifarious and metamorphosed ways, were not only already severely pass but also to some extent corrupted. We knew that the determination in the last instance (that gave rise to theories of reflection in art and literature and to the nave belief in the transparency of language, and the immediacy of political, ideological and class consciousness) proposed by the two tier model of Marxism had fallen into disrepute, and the displacement of the key organizing concept of class by new theories of the subject and subjectivity (mainly those proposed by feminism and ethnic studies) had left a vacant space, a vacuum that urgently needed to be theorized. We were Marxist, we had read our Marxism, we were aware of the polemics within Marxism. This knowledge notwithstanding, we could not let go of the desire to construct a critical approach to culture from the viewpoint of the subaltern and in solidarity with them. We did not share the disposition of demobilizing the poor or of depriving them of their agency, and we were not going to make them pay for the corruption of party politics or for the necessities his-
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tory and tradition brought to bear on these types of social, political, and cultural organizations. And agency was the magic word or formula we seemed to encounter in the South Asian collective use of the term subaltern. Agency plus the term subaltern itself seemed to give meaning to cultural criticism and value to a field left empty by the evacuation of Marxist categories. In the work of the South Asian collective we found the vehicle to perpetuate what could be rescued of a depleted epistemology, and we used Subaltern Studies to make a statement: we used it as a pretext to put forth yet another agenda of field work in the transition from a bi- to a unipolar world system. We said that much in our Founding Statement. However, by the time the historical founding members met for the very first time at George Mason University, a very important body of work on this transition was already at work in Latin America. We were conversant with this type of work. The fact that we are always called to make the distinction between Subaltern and Cultural Studies, more than between Subaltern and Postcolonial Studies is proof that the difference between us could not be so easily discerned. This was a sign not only of the contemporaneity of our scholarship but also of the sharing of some presuppositions and concerns. After all, we are in the same field, we belong to the same professional group, and yes, we share our genealogies. All of us, fin de siglo cultural workers in the field of Latin American studies, were of one and the same generationten years of difference between us, give or take. As students, most of us were brought up under the aegis of Marxism, whether of the orthodox or revisionist kind, which was the dominant paradigm during our formative years. Most of us, at least in our early youth, were politically engaged, some militants in social movements, most of us became public intellectuals who participated in public debates in our respective societies, marched against the war in Vietnam in the U.S., worked in the solidarity committees in favor of all the movements in Latin America, and supported the revolution. We were engaged intellectuals, people who took a stand, wrote for the newspapers, and read the same books. Also, we were influenced by the Frankfurt and Birmingham Schools that gained so much notoriety in the works of Cultural Studiesfor all of us, ex- or post- Marxists, cultural analysts had been the seedbeds of large polemics on the constitution and role of culture with regards to society, class, and party construction, and yes, important elements in the discussion of ideology and class struggle. Who is not going to remember the polemic between party intellectuals like George Lukacs and Bertolt Brecht? Who
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ignored the power of Adornos negative dialectics? Who was not learned in the Benjaminian warnings of art in the age of mechanical reproduction and the art of story telling? Who did not know the polemic on class undertaken by Eric Hobsbawm, E. P. Thompson, and Raymond Williams? In fact, Guha belongs to that generation of historians who, so the oral history goes, did not give a damn about his or her work. All those bibliographies were recognized by all of us, those bibliographies were our common ground, our true home base. We had also been schooled in the Ecole des Annales founded by Lucien Fevbre and Marc Bloch in 1929, and knew first hand the works of Fernand Braudel, Henry Pirenne, and Pierre Vilar. Also the French School of criticism; Pierre Macheray, Lucien Goldman, and Louis Althusser. And if Macheray and Goldman were already gathering dust in the attic or consigned to the garbage heap of history, the same is not true of the work of Louis Althusser, key to the transition to the new French theoreticiansFoucault, Lacan, and Derridawho were to become the stars of the new firmament, the munificent and opulent theoreticians of the transition back to the unipolar world of capitalism, whose theories traveled widely without ever being considered traveling theoriesSpivaks Can the Subaltern Speak stood as a groundbreaking exception.7 We all had been breastfed by the same tradition and we all were in the process of being weaned. The difference between us at that moment, the difference that was being emphasized and paraded, was our place of enunciation. Where we lived became a determining factor at the juncture of globalization. This was nothing new because this was also true at the time of the revolution. Knowledge was equated with lived experience and I dont have any argument against that. However, in my view, our posture before the transition, what each of us chose to emphasize, distinguished the two approaches to the field. The transition from liberalism to neo-liberalism was the real parting of the waters. One way of articulating this transition is Silviano Santiagos statement about Brazilian culture, yet equally applicable to Chilean and Argentinean culture (see Nelly Richard):
In those three years we are referring to [1979-1981], the struggle of the leftists against the military dictatorship ceases to be the hegemonic question in the cultural and artistic Brazilian scene, opening up space to new problems and reflections inspired by the democratization in the country (I insist: in the country, not of the country). The transition of this century to its end is defined by
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the bereavement of those who exit, supported by their companions in struggle and by the memory of the recent political events, and, at the same time, by the audacity of the new generation that comes in, pushing the door as impotent radicals without memory of the present. To the sorrow of those who leave is opposed the emptiness to be inhabited by the acts and words of those who come in (my translation). 8
This transition from what Raul Antelo calls the Declnio da Arte, Ascensao da Cultura (this is the title of his book that includes Santiagos article) was characterized by taking off the black and somber cloths of the military dictatorship to dress in the festive and transparent garments of the democracy. One of the books Santiago mentions to illustrate this change carries the very telling title of Patrulhas Ideolgicas, a book that is more a gathering of the polemic that establishes the balance of the generation that resisted and suffered during the regime of exclusion and less as a platform of a new generation that desired to take literally the diastole of the militarization of the country (my translation, 12).9 Without question, the most significant book at that time was Nestor Garca Canclinis Culturas Hbridas. Jean Franco, George Ydice, Renato Rosaldo, and Juan Flores brought that book to the attention of the North American academy. But the important work of Renato Ortiz, Jess Martn Barbero, Roberto Schwartz, Silviano Santiago, Beatriz Sarlo, and Nelly Richard (to mention solely those living in Latin America, because the question raised implies a comparison between forms of continental Latinamericanismmainly in the US and in Latin America) was in circulation and being vehemently discussed by all of us. Some of these scholars represented the cutting edge of the field, and if they were not the vanguard they were the postmodern avant-garde. The greatest rubric of these works was the analysis of mass, electronic, and industrial pop cultures, but looking at these texts with the wisdom of hindsight, they represent the scholarship of the transition from a world with telos to one without it: they were in fact the effects of the transition to democracy fostered by the programs of neo-liberalism. All these works responded to the needs of peripheral societies as they adjusted themselves to the new logic of high modernity or postmodernity. They were adamant in analyzing the new profile liberalism projected in the programs of neo-liberalism. After all, the defeat of the revolutionary lanor even of serious popular and social democratic projects of governanceran from
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South to North. Looking at the body of work from this perspective, I can understand the reluctance on the part of Latin American scholars to be grouped under the festive rubric of Cultural Studiesa current of thought they associated with the North American academy. Actually, to my knowledge, their work officially circulated under the rubric of Cultural Studies only after Mabel Moraa edited her volume titled Nuevas Perspectivas desde/sobre Amrica Latina: El desafo de los estudios culturales, the result of the first conference she organized in Pittsburgh under that title.10 But I could be wrong. These Latin American scholars based in Latin America were serious analysts of the transition to the neo- and the post-. They proposed new and alternative paths for the field of Latin American Studies, reflected on the disciplines that had formed the identities of the former nation-states, identified the new profiles of fragmented, shattered, and dispersed social subjects and social movements locally, and discussed the inadequacies of the liberal paradigms circulating in mimicry of civil society. In this respect our interests converged. They spoke about modernity, modernizing, and modernization: we spoke of Western Reason and the philosophies of the Enlightenment. And in their cultural analysis they, like us, made a move to include all forms of culturenot only high but also pop, mass, industrial, and electronic cultures. These themes were also present in the discussion forums established by the national and international commissions on truth and reconciliation. These forums fostered the production of testimonials and changed the notion of historiography, bringing the disciplines of history, anthropology, and sociology closer to the spirit of Subaltern Studies. In these efforts, their work and ours dovetailed. However, and this is clearer to me now that we have moved to another juncture, one question has us equally baffled, this time not so much because we dont understand what is going on but because we understand it all too well. In those days, LASS scholars were more invested in revising and insisting on the left than in debating the aporias of liberalism. We were more interested in finding out what had gone wrongthe future possibilities for the left, and the nature of radicalismthan in civil society, the new social movements, or the debates on pluralism and democracy. This divergence of interest is explained, I believe, in terms of the moment in which we came together as a group, and the distance between the 1970s in the Southern Cone and the 1990s in Central America and the Caribbean remember that the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989)and with it the demise of
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actually existing socialist regimes that sympathized with Latin American onesand the defeat of the Sandinistas (1990) are just one year apart. The bottom line was that, at that moment, we saw ourselves as radical scholars and thought Cultural Studies scholars were liberal social democrats. Yet, back then, all of us were looking for new vocabularies for a situational analysis of culture, an analysis that described a saturated public sphere in which the new forms of opposition had to be re-imagined. It was clear that the opposition had taken new, unedited forms, some of which were going to derive from the performative, the queer, and beyond. If I am going to pinpoint our intervention in the field, it is its insistence upon the power of negative dialectics and radicalismnot so much governability as ungovernability. In the notion of subalternity, I believe we come closer to the gatherers of testimonials. I am thinking in particular of the works undertaken in Colombia, Jamaica, El Salvador, and Guatemala by historians, journalists, and all kinds of social agencies.11 This type of intellectual work compiles the experiences and opinions of the downtrodden subaltern. Some were part of the insurgency, some experienced the violence that came as a result of the insurgency, and some the effects produced by the transition to democracy. I am thinking of the sicarios, sufferers, traitors, HIV positive individuals...the residues and shreds of the transition. Their voices constitute what Nancy Fraser calls the subaltern counterpublics.12 Their ideas constitute part of the discussion of the public sphere in Latin America and the basis for a true democracy. Living in the hegemonic nation, fully inserted within high modernity, we took electronic and mass culture for granted and insisted upon dwelling in the residual memory of the left. It was not that we minimized the importance of the medias thematization of the transition because who could deny the importance of mass mediation in the formation of the new Latin American identities and/or the formation of public opinion worldwide? See, for instance, Lauren Berlants work on the public sphere that constitutes a counterpart of the work done in Latin America, Sarlos work on consumption, or Frasers idea of the counterpublics that is conversant with Richards, not to speak of the analysis of civil society by Michael Hardt which could be a companion to Martin Barberos.13 We were more interested in what was left of the left, and in how to think left, or at least left of center within the hegemony of the right. This was one of our major concerns and part of our legacy. Living in the metropolis, is it really that hard to understand that gesture?
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Mass consumption and the new forms of consumerism were certainly not attractive venues from which to think the field. In this I believe we were closer to Richard than to Sarlo, to Barbero than Canclini, to Santiago than Ortiz. The remnants, the leftovers and shreds of the big defeat were more attractive to us. I personally was much less interested in the cultures of consumption than in the great duelo. We were aferrados, we clung to the memories of the past, hopes and memories that were also part of the transition, and if being obstinate is just another name for the virtue of persistence and resiliency then our legacy to the field is precisely that: we were the empecinados. For that reason alone South Asian Subalternism was a proper vehicle for us. I am sure they went through the same circle of hope and defeat, of uncritical allegiance and critical distance, of the direct experience of the rising hopes for a better future for the poor and the betrayal of corrupt leaders, hardened dogmas, and local cultural determinations. They had a wealth of knowledge concerning their own local experience that they wanted to revise, unhinge, and untangle. They too were discontented with the liberal national leadership, the ideas of modernization and the development western stylethat the comprador bourgeoisie had displayed for purchase. We reached the same point in several different parts of the world at different historical junctures and, to our credit, we recognized our affinities. We owe this to the mediation of Gayatri Spivak who made South Asian subalternism available to U. S. academic readership. The difference between localitieswho was where whenwas also a factor in the constitution of that South Asian Subaltern Studies collective. The relation between Subaltern and Postcolonial Studies was much more organic and fluid at the very beginning. In my view of things, these two approaches were very compatiblethe South Asian Subalternists even called themselves postcolonial and as postcolonial scholars they circulated within the First World academies. In the Latin American version of Postcolonial Studies, there was an explicit validation of ancient Amerindian cultures, a desire to unearth their old epistemological ways of organizing the universe and a desire to validate them. There was also a need to link old indigenous epistemologies to new indigenous struggles and this demanded a systemic analysis of capitalism. The old Marxist hermeneutics was resuscitated and Immanuel Wallerstein, Gunder Frank, Anibal Quijano, and the Theology of Liberation came to be important referents. True, some read this group of scholars because they were interested in system theories, in
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hermeneutics, and some because they were interested in politics. That constituted a divide among them. The impetus behind hermeneutics was conversant with the criticism of Western reason and the desire to provincialize Europethe phrase is Chakrabartysand is a desire that was accompanied by the realization of the difficulty of carrying out such a task, namely, of reading against the grain or in reverse, in viewing the world from the viewpoint of subalternity. For those interested in ancient indigenous cultures, the epistemes provided therein constituted an alternative to Western reason and an appropriate method for thinking subaltern studies. For given that the great genealogies and the great narratives have been written from above, thinking from below is one of the most difficult endeavors, and therefore an intellectual challenge to deconstruction. The crucial question was the necessity of understanding globalization. Was globalization the name for the last readjustment of capitalism? If so, the geopolitics of geoculture brought us together because we could easily plug in familiar notions that had formerly circulated under the Leninist rubric of imperialism and were given a new twist in the neo-version of Empire. In all cases, we were talking about capitalism as a world system, a familiar frame of reference. The suggestion to read the works of Antonio Negri and Giovanni Arrigui alongside Quijano and Gunder Frank originated in this necessity to understand the global as the new systemic term. But what were the repercussions and rearrangements that globalization brought to knowledge production? For better or for worse, some of us tied the discussion of globalization to University politics and the discussion of Area Studies. Actually, we took it upon ourselves to discern the relationships between the local and the global. Here the discussion of localization and the home base of intellectuals held its sway. The question wasand still iswho knows what best? Which necessities does the new knowledge address? Who does knowledge help and whom does it wreck? Knowledge became a question of hegemony and power. Therefore it became imperative to recognize not only that there was knowledge produced in the periphery but also that this knowledge was worth studying, that it was important locally and globally, and that it ultimately crossed Area Studies. Granted, the struggle over Area Studies was a localized struggle but it was nevertheless a struggle to set the tendency that would later spread out throughout the world.14
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This was our way of speaking about the coloniality of knowledge, and our attempt at provincializing the center. Hamid Dabashi put it very eloquently when he stated that Our task is a recasting of the world map in which the primacy is to local geographies, to the polylocality of our historical exigencies, the polyvocality of our voices, and the polifocality of our visions (54).15 So, for those of us with home bases at the center, what were our localities, vocalities, and focalities; where did we speak from, where was our community, our neighborhood? We saw ourselves as the periphery of the center whereas our colleagues in Latin America were the center of the periphery. However, these positionalities have never been acknowledged. More often than not, there is a conflation of locality and positionality and all of us are lumped together within dominancecosas de gringos. Ours was a call for a dialogue among and between minority subaltern intellectuals that never came to fruition. This can be part of the agenda for the new project, and the idea our legacy to the field. In this new phase of geopolitics and geoculture, there is, once again, the possibility of going back to revise the common ground of Cultural, Postcolonial, and Subaltern Studies, and to understand how the work of social scientists and cultural critics converge in the use of bibliographies and approaches. Two of the most recent books I have read, Martin Hopenhayns Neither Apocalypse, nor Integration and Arturo Escobars Encountering Development are clear instances of the cross between social scientists and cultural workers.16 Hopenhayn is interested in combining the literature produced by development institutions like CEPAL, UNESCO, PNUD, etc. and the contribution provided by the cultural analysis of consumption and symbolic vindications. Arturo Escobar is interested in colonial difference, in Saids fashion of Orientalism, and he proposes Developmentalism as the construction of Latin America. This social and cultural confluence is found in other studies that utilize the notion of subaltern counter spheres, particularly in the new energy of NGO sponsored intellectual work that relies on the archives of the living, productive agents and brings their voices to bear on public discussion. In these studies we find the convergence of Cultural, Subaltern, and Postcolonial Studies approaches, new ways that social and cultural analysts reinsert themselves within the social fabric and feed the discussions of the public sphere. Through these works subalterns constitute themselves as dialoguing partners and active agents within contemporary society.
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In summary, for all of us as cultural analysts, the end of the century was characterized by an epistemological break, a snap in the semiotic chain. The consciousness of that break generated the new approaches to the field. We felt the need to revisit the old sites and to rework the production of knowledge, the workings of culture, and the agency of people. I like Hopenhayns phrasing of this transition when he asks what to do the day after the revolution. To paraphrase him, how must we understand the world now that we are neither apocalyptic nor integrated?
South Asian and Latin American Subaltern Studies Collectives

Of all the members of the South Asian collective, the one we privileged was Ranajit Guha, the founder, and our senior. It was his work that we read and discussed and it was him that we wanted to meet and invite to one of our gatherings. Patricia Seed organized a special meeting with him at Rice for us. The opening article in our English volume published by Duke UP was the piece he read at that reunion and it is in that piece that he speaks of the intersection of the times and argues that it is this particular phase of global temporality[that constitutes] the ground that should suffice to compare [our] two projects (36-7). Global temporalitypostmodernity, if you willwas his way of approaching us. But in that article he also explained that the genesis of their project was grounded in the South Asian experience and that they had never entertained aspirations to universality; they did not count on any readership abroad. They were local intellectuals dedicated to the study of their local community, their region, South Asia.17 Whatever approach Guha used was at the level of abstraction, and he continually acknowledged that he knew very little about our field. Frankly speaking, we do not know much about theirs either. In fact, in an effort to reach us, he used the mediation of literature, availing himself of Gabriel Garca Marquez metaphor when he thanked us for making it possible for them to break out of their confinement in two hundred years of solitude (35)18 A few years later, at the conference at Duke, we got to know Dipesh Chakravarty and Gyan Prakash, and at Columbia, at the homage Gayatry Spivak and Hamid Dabashi organized for Guha, a group of us heard Partha Chaterjee speak. Other types of associations we had with them are limited
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to my publication of the articles by Chakravarty, Dipesh, and Dabashi in our Spanish language volume. These three pieces remind me of our own analysis of modernism and modernization. I heard there had been two other meetings with them, one in Chicago, organized by Chakravarty, and one in Mexico, organized by Saraub Dube, to which only a couple of us were invited. By the times these events took place, LASS was already in total disarray. Some of the members of LASS engaged the work of Chakrabarty too. Overall, in their individual relationships with us, the members of the South Asian collective were courteous and deferential but never to my knowledge intellectually engagingthe exception is Dube, who works in Mexico. At Duke they remained mostly to themselves because they were conscious that they were not part of our field discussion but, in private, I know that they thoroughly enjoyed the conference and considered it of high caliber. Therefore when the statement that they olympically ignore us comes my way, I understand by it that some of us have noticed, and resented, that they are indifferent to our work, field, and bibliographies, and that these have no bearing on their work. Thinking seriously about their indifference to our work, I can only interpret it in light of the sharp division between fields and Area Studies South Asia, Latin America, etc. This division fosters a tradition of ignorance amongst the regions of the world and favors the mediation of knowledge via Europe and Western thought. This division is also part and parcel of the coloniality of power and part of our discussion of Area Studies. While in general the division between rigidly classified disciplines prohibits interdisciplinary dialogue, the division between the social and human sciences is especially marked. Historians and literary specialists hardly ever cross-reference each other. It is as if we work at cross-purposes with each other, them with their archives and us with our figures of speech, them with the real thing and us with the metaphysics of presence. Granted, for all appearances, the South Asian collective had nothing, or very little, in the way of a dialogue with us. In talking to themselves about us, they always dismissed us by sustaining that ours was a different thing, but they never took the trouble of seriously engaging in a conversation on the nature of that difference. So while we did our thing they did theirs, and in so doing, we all remained locked within our own forms of localism. Hence we chose to relate to each other through the European mediation of Antonio Gramsci. That was our loss. We, the transnational
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peripheral intelligentsia missed the opportunity to converse. Perhaps the moment was unpropitious. Perhaps when we came onto the scene, their collective work had lost its cohesion and political impetus and the pervading cynicism of the era had dimmed its light. Perhaps the transition also introduced an element of distrust that disconcerted them as much as it did us. Perhaps all of us, the most radical flank of the international intelligentsia, were turning into social democrats. Perhaps we were losing our grip and becoming openly conservative. Who knows! But in their desconocimiento or disavowal of us, I see a negation of themselves and of their own excellence and importance. They turned their faces away from the image we provided for them in the mirror of Latin American Subaltern Studies. Had we all recognized the productivity of a dialogue amongst ourselves, we could have moved from a national and regional form of localization to a continental and even global peripheral, one from below. To my knowledge, only Dabashi and Spivak recognized this angle. At Columbia University Guha said he had transcended subalternism and implied that we should do likewise. To settle his scores with Marx, Guha had turned to Hegel and high Indian culture, to the literature of the elite. It was in response do this new turn that Dabashi ironically drew the dividing line by stating, in a paraphrase of Marx, that he was not a subalternist. This is then a good vantage point from which to consider the future agenda of subalternism.
The Organizational Structure of the Group

Considering the historical juncture of our coming together, the collapse of LASS (and I almost dare to say of the South Asian collective as well) is part of the collapse of the left and its forms of organization. During our formative years we organized study groups to instruct ourselves and read the material not included in the curricula. Drawing on this model, we came together as a collective and ignored that collective formats were a thing of the past. The idea itself was vitiated and contaminated on all flanks due to the similitude collectivities held with models pertaining to political parties and organizations on the one hand, and the corporate world on the other. That was strike one against us. Strike two was the waning interest in the poor. Latin America is one of those areas Arrigui calls redundant or obsolete. He argues that in capi-
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talisms new structural transition from an organizational phase to an eclectic phase of capital accumulation, [e]ntire communities, countries, even continentshave been declared redundant, superfluous to the changing economy of capital accumulation on a world scale (330). He further states that now [c]lass struggle and the polarization of the world-economy in the peripheral localesboth of which played a prominent role in [his] original conception of the long twentieth centuryhave almost completely dropped out of the picture (xii) and that the equality of courage and force which, by inspiring mutual fear, can alone overawe the injustice of independent nations into some sort of respect for the rights of one another (21) was also a done deal. If that was so, who was going to be interested in the Latin American poor? We had to think hard and fast about that question. The interest in the Gulbenkian Commission Report regarding social sciences and the book on the invention of the Latin American field by Mark T. Berger is related to this awareness.19 Strike three was character: We were not empresarios, entrepreneurs, or brokers. We were not bureaucrats. We did not want to invest time in organizing the group. We wanted the group to exist de facto, spontaneously. We came together at the annual conference and at the annual conference we decided who was to plan the next one. Had we made a real and genuine effort, we could have worked out bylaws, thought about membership, organized research agendas, and founded a journal. We did none of that. We limited ourselves to organizing panels at LASA and the MLA and to preparing our annual gatherings. There were voices proposing a more coherent plan of action as there was sometimes assiduous communication between us via email, but nothing came of it. In spite of this negative climate, and of all of LASS shortcomings, ours was an attempt to keep subalterns at the center of the theoretical agenda, and it was a historical and theoretical project tied to politics. It still is. When subalterns are transformed into theoretical categories, they are given the status of active agents in the production of knowledge. The South Asian collective, and Guha in particular, makes them absolutely pivotal to the structure of imperial historiography and hence of politics. When he points out the slippery character of subalternity he is referring to the anxieties produced in the minds of hegemonic subjects and how it affects their writing and knowledge production. The mere existence of subalterns constituted an interruptus that made the entire history of colonialism a failed enterprise in spite of the high rates of capital accumulation. Our effort
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resided in trying to foment a paradigm of postcoloniality based on subalternity, that is, in subordination, and what subordination represented for the production of knowledge, for the historical archive, at the precise moment in which the institutional agendas were turning towards a corporate model of knowledge production that launched a severe offensive against any type of subaltern agenda. Industrial and electronic cultures came to bear on this great leap forward of North American universities.20 In opposing this agenda LASS became attractive and desirable. Looking at it from this perspective, the project is even more attractive today. I think that had we worked out a solid organizational structure, and had we had a clear research agenda, that our project could have survived. In retrospect, there were several ways of constructing affinities in our group. There were the young and the old; those established and those beginning; the European, the Africans, and the Latin Americans, men and women, blacks and non-blacks, gay, straight, and bisexual, but all those signs and discourses were conveniently disregarded. Differences were in fact never discussed. We ignored the fact that rank and hierarchy of all kinds are part of social relations and that the distinction between elite and subaltern is duplicated in all social structures. Ours was no exception. The effect of all this unfinished business was a climate of distrust and this distrust translated into a form of disrespect amongst the members. This is, I dare say, a very masculine way of approaching group dynamics but what else is new? Masculine protocols were coming back into fashion. Our differences, our heterogeneity, could have been a source of wealth, instead they became a hindrance. Difference was the big and unresolved question raised at our meeting in Puerto Rico. Rather than confronting difference head on, we spoke about it procedurally, in terms of membership and group structure, mechanically, harried, and pressed. But, one thing is certain, and that was that no one wanted to organize the group on the basis of exclusions because exclusions reeked of party politics and all of us were sick of that. If I am going to sum up our problems, I would say that our academic discussion was harassed by historical, political and academic distrust. I am sure each one of us felt at a certain moment unwanted. Was distrust a symptom of the perception of incompatible research agendas? Did we transfer our political discrepancies to our organizational discrepancies? Nothing was ever spelled out. We tried doing it at our last meeting at Duke. My fondest memories are of that meeting, one of the best I have ever attended, because I could see all our potential displayed. We were strong, obstinate,
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brave. To this day I lament our demise because, together, we were, simply, a formidable group. Disregarded by the South Asian collective and somewhat ignored by the Latin American Latin Americanists residing in Latin America and in the U.S., the group as a group nonetheless had strong appeal in the field and much of the emerging discontent was due to the desire to join us. For the young we were providing models of academic interventionnot only theoretical models (that too) but also energy, ways of organizing, ways of having an impact. That is another of our legacies to the field.
Policy Statements and Forecast for the field: The Groups Legacy
This is a free country and we are free agentsso the individualist motto reads. We all abide by it. So, if the purpose is to do Subaltern Studies por la libre, then there is no purpose in questioning that decision. But if what was attractive was the collective nature of the endeavor and some of the questions we raised, then what is needed is to rethink the project, its purposes, and its structure. First of all, there is a need for a coupure, a clean break. Any attempt to duplicate the past will duplicate the vices of the past. If there is going to be a new collective endeavorbe it a group or a movementwriting a new statement of purpose, manifesto, or foundational position statement is a must. Whoever is interested in being part of this new project must contribute to this new dialogue but there must also be leadership and initiative. One of the structures that I saw we could have adopted was a mixture of a movement and a group. That is, to have a core group of people interested in carrying out on a rotating basis the bureaucratic functions of the group and in identifying the issues around which research was necessary, and then inviting people to participate in it. This makes the situation very clear to the profession and gives the collective the structure of a think-tank. The easiest way would be for each scholar to continue his or her own work while engaging with and organizing panels with other scholars working on compatible approaches. To do collective work requires funds, time, energy, and a debate on the institutional character of the project. Without structure there is no project. Inevitably this discussion will cross all the divideslocal/global,
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national/transnational, center/periphery. To pre-empt internal strife, the new stage must rely on trust, the kind of trust that is reflected not only in the open nature of the structure but in the open discussion of difference. If there is a new collective, the members must know on what basis they are constructing their affinities; they must define their research issues and approaches, and know well who they can and want to work with. I welcome this project and wish whoever wants to undertake the effort to organize it, good luck.
NOTES
Jos Rabasa, Javier Sanjins, Robert Carr (eds.). Subaltern Studies in the Americas. A special issue of Dispositio/n 46, 1996. 2 Ileana Rodrguez (Ed.) The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader. Durham, London: Duke UP, 2002; Convergencia de Tiempos: Estudios Subalternos/Contextos Latinoamericanos: Cultura, Estado, Subalternidad. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002. 3 El Grupo Latinoamericano de Estudios Subalternos. Revista de Crtica Cultural. Junio 2002, No. 24: 71-77 4 For a similar discussion on multiculturalism see Nancy Fraser. Justice Interruptus. Critical Reflections on the Postsocialist Condition. New York & London: Routledge, 1997; 5 Latin American Subaltern Studies/Founding Statement. In John Beverley and Jos Oviedo. The Postmodernism Debate in Latin America. A special issue of boundary 2. Vol. 20, Number 3, Fall 1993: 110-121. 6 Ranajit Guha. Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India. Durham, London: Duke UP, 1999. 7 Gayatry Spivak. Can the Subaltern Speak? In Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg. Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988. 8 Nesses tres anos a que estarmos nos referindo [1971-1981], a luta das esquerdas contra a ditadura military deixa de ser questao hegemonica no cenario cultural e artistico brasileiro, abrindo espaco para novos problemas e reflexois inspirados pela democratizacao no pas (insisto: no pas, e nao do pas). A transicao deste sculo para o seu fim se define pelo luto dos que saem, apoiados pelos
1
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compannheiros de luta e pela lembranca dos fatos politicos recentes, e, ao mesmo tempo, pela audacia da nova geracao que entra, arrombando a porta como impotents e desmemoriados radicais da atualidade. Ao luto dos que saem opo-se o vazio a ser povoado pelos atos e palavras dos que estao entrando (12) . Silviano Santiago Democratizaco no Brasil1979-1981. (Cultura versus Arte) Declnio da Arte. Ascenso da Cultura. Raul Antelo et al (ed). Florianopolis: Letras Contemporneas, 1998. 9 generacao que resistiu e sofreu durante o regime de excecao e menos como a plataforma de uma nova geracao que desejava tomar ao pe da letra a diastoleda militarizacao do pas Santiago, ibid. 10 Mabel Moraa. Nuevas Perspectivas desde/sobre Amrica Latina: El desafo de los estudios culturales. Santiago de Chile: Cuarto Propio, 2000 11 I am thinking in works like Alfredo Molano. Los aos de tropel: relatos de violencia. Bogot: Fondo Editorial, 1985; Norma Vzquez, Cristina Ibez, Clara Murgialday. Mujeres-montaa. Vivencias de guerrilleras y colaboradoras del FMLN. Madrid: Grafistaff, 1996; Laurie Gunst. Born Fi Dead. A Journey through the Jamaican Posse Underworld. Great Britain, Caledonian International Books, 1995; Mark Danner. The Massacre at El Mozote. New York: Vintage, 1993; Luz Arce. El Infierno. Santiago: Planeta, 1993; Maria Alejandra Merino. Mi verad. Santiago de Chile, AGT, 1994. 12 Nancy Fraser. Justice Interruptus. Critical Reflections on the Postsocialist Condition. New York & London: Routledge, 1997; Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy. In Craig Calhoun (ed.). Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 1992. 13 Lauren Berlant. The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship. Durham & London: Duke UP, 1997l Beatriz Sarlo. Escenas de la vida postmoderna. Intelectuales, arte y videocultura en la Argentina. Buenos Aires: Ariel, 1994; Nelly Richard, Residuos y metforas. (Ensayos de crtica cultural sobre el Chile de la Transicin. Santiago de Chile: Cuarto Propio, 1998; Michael Hardt, The Withering of Civil Society. Deleuze & Guattari: New Mappings in Politics, Philosophy, and Culture. Eleanor Kaufman & Kevin Jon Heller (eds.) Minnepolis: U. of Minnesota P., 1998: 158-178; Jesus Martin Barbero. De los medios a las mediaciones. Mxico: Gustavo Gili, 1987. 14 An good article to understand the institutional position of Spanish in the academy is Idelber Avelars The Clandestine Mnage a Troi of Cultura Studies, Spanish, and Critical Theory. Profession 1999. The Modern Language Association of America: 49-58. 15 Hamid Dabashi. No soy subalternista. In Ileana Rodrguez. Conver-
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gencia de Tiempos. Estudios subalternos/contextos latinoamericanos: estado, cultura, subalternidad. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001: 49-60. 16 Martin Hopenhayns Neither Apocalypse, No Integration. Modernism and Postmodernism in Latin America. Durham & London: Duke UP., 2001; Arturo Escobars Encountering Development. The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton UP., 1995. 17 However in his book Elementary Aspectswe can see that to illustrate subaltern consciousness he is not only a local scholar. In fact, he draws from the experiences of peasant uprisings in Europe, Asia, and Africa and he mentions Latin America a few times, once in reference to the Amazonian Amerindians he knows through the work of Levy-Strauss and who, in his opinion, are people living in conditions of a Stone Age culture in the Brazilian jungles (52). 18 Ranajit Guha. Subaltern Studies: Projects for our times and their convergence. Ileana Rodrguez (ed.) The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader. Durham & London: Duke UP., 2001: 35-46. 19 Gulbenkian Commission. Open the Social Sciences: Report of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford UP., 1996; Mark T. Berger. Under Northern Eyes: Latin American Studies and US Hegemony in the Americas 1898-1990. Indiana: Indiana UP., 1995. 20 See my article on this subject. Ileana Rodrguez. Conocimientos fatigados y actividades en desuso: Cultura popular/arte de elite; microelectrnica/telecomunicacin. Estudios. Revista de Investigaciones Literarias y Culturales. Ao 5, Julio-diciembre 1997, No. 10: 31-54.
ADIOS: A NATIONAL ALLEGORY (SOME REFLECTIONS ON LATIN AMERICAN CULTURAL STUDIES)

John Beverley University of Pittsburgh
want to start by noting what seems at first sight a paradoxical coincidence between the terms of David Stoll's much publicized attack on Rigoberta Mench1 and the various critiques by Latin American intellectuals identified with the left of the pertinence of postcolonial and subaltern studies to the field of Latin American studies that have appeared in the last several years.2 As those familiar with his book can attest, Stoll's argument is not only or perhaps even mainly with Mench, or about whether several key details of her narrative are factually true, but rather is directed against what he perceives as the hegemony of the discourses of postmodernism and multiculturalisnm in the North American academy, which he feels consciously or unconsciously colluded to perpetuate international support for armed struggle in Guatemala by promoting I, Rigoberta Mench and making Mench into an icon of political correctness.3 The connection between multiculturalism and postmodernism that bothers Stoll is predicated on the fact the multiculturalism carries with it what, in a well-known essay, Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor calls a presumption of equal worth.4 That presumption implies a demand for epistemological relativism that coincides with the postmodernist critique of the Enlightenment paradigm of modernitywhat Habermas would call communicative rationality. If there is no one universal standard for truth, then claims about truth are contextual: they have to do with how people construct different understandings of the world and historical memory from
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the same set of facts in situations of gender, ethnic, and class inequality, exploitation, and repression. The truth claims for a narrative like I, Rigoberta Mench depend on conferring on testimonio a special kind of epistemological authority as embodying subaltern experience and voice. But, for Stollwho is arguing also against the emergence of a postmodernist anthropologythis amounts to an idealization of the quotidian realities of peasant life to favor the prejudices of a metropolitan academic audience in the interest of a solidarity politics that (in his view) did more harm than good. Against the authority of testimonial voice, Stoll wants to affirm the authority of the fact-gathering procedures of traditional anthropology or journalism, in which accounts like Mench's will be treated simply as raw material that must be processed by more objective techniques of assessment. The argument desde latinoamericato borrow a phrase from Nelly Richardagainst what I will call in a kind of short hand studies (postcolonial, subaltern, cultural, women's, africana, gay, latino, and so on) as a discourse sobre Latinoamerica seems to have three major components (I am aware that I am conflating distinct and perhaps incompatible positions here): 1) Studies represent a North American problematic about identity politics and multiculturalism, and/or a historically recent British Commonwealth problematic about decolonization, that have been displaced onto Latin America, at the expense of misrepresenting its diverse histories and social-cultural formations, which are not easily reducible to either multiculturalism or postcoloniality.5 2) The prestige of studies as a discourse formation emanating from and sustained by the resources of the Euro-North American academy occludes the prior engagement by Latin American intellectuals on native grounds, so to speak,with the very questions of historical and cultural representation they are concerned with. That prestige portends, therefore, an overt or tacit negation of the status and authority of Latin American intellectuals, a willful forgetting of what Hugo Achugar calls el pensamiento latinoamericano. The new hegemony of metropolitan theoretical models amounts in Latin America to a kind of cultural neo-colonialism, concerned with the brokering by the North American academy of knowledge both from and about Latin America. In this transaction, the Latin American intellectual is relegated to the status of an object of theory (as subaltern, postcolonial, calibanesque, etc.) rather than its subject (Antonio Cornejo Polar, in particular, was concerned in his
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valedictory essay with the fact that the language of Latinamericanist theory had become English rather than Spanish). 3) By foregrounding the theme of the incommensurability of subaltern or marginalized social subjects and the nation-state, postcolonial and subaltern studies contribute to incapacitating Latin America's ability to implement its own projects of national or regional identity and development. Beyond an appeal to the agency of an abject, precapitalist or pre-modern Other that remains outside of (any possible) hegemonic representation, studies lacks a sense of the political as grounded in the continuity of the nation, a more or less active and politically informed citizenry, a Habermasian public sphere, local memory, and projects that seek to affirm the interests of both individual Latin American nation-states and Latin America as a whole in a differential, even antagonistic, relation to globalization.6 Beatriz Sarlo's contribution to the debate takes the more specific form of a resistance to what Sarlo calls the media neopopulism of cultural studies, and amounts to a kind of Latin American version of Frankfurt school critical theory. Her claim is that the postmodernist celebration of mass or popular culture in the context of globalization and the soft authoritarianism of neoliberal hegemony undermines the authority of high modernist aesthetic culture, and it is only from the possibility of negation of the dominant reality principle of the instrumental rationality of capitalist society that is contained in that culture that resistance to neoliberal consumer society is possible.7 Both Stoll and the Latin American critics of studies coincide in seeing the discourses of US multiculturalism and postmodernist relativism as the culprits. They are also both, in some ways, attempts to police their respective disciplinary fields (anthropology and literary criticism) to prevent their destabilization by the intrusion of the negativity of a subaltern subject that academic knowledge and aesthetics are in part implicated in constructing in the first place. As such, they both represent forms of what has come to be called in the United States left conservatism, which I would define (inadequately) as the combination of social-democratic or Third Way politics with positivist epistemology and/or modernist aesthetics. What complicates the identification of Stoll and the Latin American critics of studies, however, is the fact that Stoll is a North American writing critically about an indigenous Latin American organic intellectual
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Rigoberta Menchwhereas the Latin Americans are criticizing what they see as essentially a new North American critical fashionel boom del subalterno, as Mabel Moraa puts it. Whether he meant it to or not (and I take his claim that he did not at face value), Stoll's critique of Mench has served the interests of the right in both the United States and Guatemala by partially de-legitimizing Mench. But Arturo Arias points out that there are Guatemalan intellectuals of the right who have attacked Stoll precisely as a North American denigrating a Guatemalan national figure.8 Here a different kind of cutting edge comes into play, an edge that separates and places in antagonism what on the surface might seem like a shared critique of postmodernist relativism and multiculturalism. That cutting edge takes us back to the Ariel-Caliban question, except that now Rigoberta Menchthat is, almost literally Caliban, the deformed slave, in Shakespeare's characterizationis in the place of Ariel, facing the power and vulgarity of the Colossus of the North, represented by Stoll. This seems to be the appropriate moment to recall the famous passage in The Philosophy of History where Hegel envisions the future of the United States. Hegel writes:
North America will be comparable with Europe only after the immeasurable space which that country presents to its inhabitants shall have been occupied, and its civil society will be pressed back on itself.... America is therefore the land of the future, where, in the times that lie before us, a world historical significance will reveal itselfperhaps in a conflict between North and South America.9
Hegel is intimating here what would be called the end of frontier thesis in US historiography, which is quite farseeing considering that the lectures which make up the work date from 1830-31. What is more interesting for our purposes here, however, is the notion that a conflict between North and South America will be necessary for the United States to attain world historical significance. Today perhaps the opposite could be said: that Latin Americas attainment of world historical significance in the times that lie before us might entail a conflict with the United States. That prospect suggests Samuel Huntington's idea of the clash of civilizations: the notion that new forms of conflict in the post-cold war world will no longer be based on the bi-polar East/West model, but will crystallize along heterogeneous fault lines of ethnic-cultural-linguistic-
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religious differentiation: the Anglo-US axis, Europe (and then Europe divided into Western and Orthodox Christian or Eastern regions), Confucian East Asia, Hindu South Asia, the Islamic world, etc.10 What this vision portends for the coming period, Huntington suggests, is a new kind of bipolarity which, borrowing a phrase from Kissghore Mahbubani, he calls the West versus the Rest. In Huntington's taxonomy, Latin American states are torn countries, split between the West and the Rest.11 Will they define their future in a symbiotic and dependent relationship with North American cultural and economic hegemony, or will they develop, singly or a in new kind of critical regionalism, as Alberto Moreiras would have it, their own projects in antagonism with North American hegemony? The nature of these questions provides the occasion for me to introduce my national allegory. It is Richard Harding Davis's novel Soldiers of Fortune, which at the time of its publication in 1897 became something of a best seller and fed public enthusiasm for American intervention in Cuba. Because of its coincidence with the centennial of the 1898 war, it has attracted quite a lot of attention in American studies in the recent past. Soldiers of Fortune (which bears an obvious, albeit unacknowledged, debt to Conrad's Nostromo), is set in the fictional Latin American republic of Olancho, recognizably Venezuela (where, as it happens, I was born). The hero, Robert Clay, is a civil engineer who is hired by Langham, the owner of Valencia Mining Company, to manage the latters iron mines in Olancho. Langham's concession depends on a contract negotiated with the president of Olancho, Seor Alvarez, which provides the Olanchan government with a ten percent share of production. The nationalist opposition to Alvarez in the Olanchan senate, led by General Mendoza, objects to the concession, and introduces legislation to obtain a larger share of the mine's production. In a kind of Machiavellian double cross, Clay meets secretly with Mendoza and offers him a huge bribe to block this legislation, which Mendoza accepts. Clay then reneges on the bribe, threatening at the same time to make public Mendoza's acquiescence in his plot. Mendoza responds by preparing a coup d'etat to overthrow Alvarez and nationalize the mines. He puts into circulation the rumor that president Alvarez is a dupe of foreign interests: namely the Valencia Mining Company, Alvarez's wife (who is Spanish, and who Mendoza claims is plotting to restore the Spanish monarchy in Olancho), and Alvarez's chief of security, Stuart, who is a British subject. Mendoza also enlists in his plot a shadowy figure called Captain
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Burke, a gringo arms smuggler and filibustero, on the model of William Walker (Burke anticipates in some ways the character of Mr. Danger in Rmulo Gallegos's Doa Brbara). Clay and Stuart get wind of Mendoza's plans and discover that Burke has smuggled in a shipment of weapons for the plotters. Clay, who has won the loyalty of the Olanchan mine workers, organizes them into a kind of contra army avant la letre. They locate the smuggled arms and capture them. This precipitates Mendoza's coup, initially successful as Mendoza captures the Presidential Palace and imprisons Alvarez. A sector of the army, however, remains loyal to Alvarez's vice president, Rojas. They put themselves under the command of Clay, whom they designate, in Bolivaran style, the Liberator of Olancho. Mendoza's coup collapses and he is eventually shot to death in combat. The United States Marines arrive just in time and Clay directs them to preserve order until Rojas can be installed as the new president of Olancho. Rojas, it goes without saying, pledges to recognize the virtues of free trade and protect the security of the Valencia Mining Company. At the beginning of the novel, Clay is engaged to Langham's older daughter Alice. Alice and her younger sister Hope come to visit Olancho on the eve of Mendoza's coup. Alice is the archetypal North American upper class genteel woman: elegant, refined, ultra-feminine, and educated according to European models. She seems an ideal match for Clay, who is clearly the man who will inherit the place of her father. In Olancho, however, the two come to regard each other differently. Escaping an ambush by Mendoza's forces, Alice sees Clay working with his hands to try to repair a ship engine. The experience convinces her that he cannot be the man of her dreams, as he represents an epistemological framework fundamentally at odds with her own. Like the nationalist opposition in the Olanchan senate, her values are anachronistic: they represent an older North American bourgeois culture that is being displaced by the dynamic new forces of corporate imperialism. In contrast, her younger sister Hope, only eighteen, and not yet come out into society, epitomizes these new forces. In a manner reminiscent of Henry James' Daisy Miller, her very youth and naivet permit her to be open to new ideas, since she is as yet uncorrupted by the worldly wisdom of inherited privilege and arranged marriages, represented on the one hand by her sheltered upbringing in New York, on the other by the oligarchy in Olancho, whose carefully coded distinctions of status she ignores. She is a more suitable match for Clay than Alice because her values are,
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like his, democratic, egalitarian, and pragmatic. She is a figure of modernity, the New Woman or Gibson Girl, energetic, self-motivated, physically active, and, unlike her sister, curiously androgenous or masculinized, in the novel's own words, like a boy. Hope, like the Rojas and the Olanchan mine workersand it is significant that it is the workers and not the elite who choose to side with Clay against Mendozasymbolize the advantages of an alliance with the emerging forms of American imperial power, involving a remapping of older national and regional loyalties and values, a remapping which is also Clay's raison d'etre, and which requires the displacement of the traditional elites in both the United States and Latin America. To put another way, the libidinal economy allegorized in the ClayAlice-Hope relationship serves as a foundational fiction (in Doris Sommer's sense), not so much for the nation as for the emerging supra-national territoriality of corporate imperialism which follows the close of the Western frontier in the United States. It goes without saying that although this territoriality is supra-national, the values that govern its identity remain in some significant sense North American: the triumph of those values, which the plot of the novel enacts, symbolizes the hegemonization of the Latin American imaginary by US culture and values. I want to use Soldiers of Fortune to reflect on the resistance to studies desde America Latina. I propose to read Clay-Hope, and their alliance with a new Latin American subject represented by Rojas and the miners, as a figure for studies. Studies, like Clay-Hope, speaks the language of democracy, anti-elitism, the popular, the subaltern, the new; but (in the eyes of many Latin American intellectuals) it remains at the service of US global and regional hegemony. By the same token, the resistance to studies desde America Latina must be figured as Mendoza and the nationalist opposition, that is, as a reactionary (or, perhaps more generously, a reactive) position. Let me be clear, because the possibilities for misinterpretation or willful misunderstanding are rife here, that there can be no question that the main enemy of democracy in Latin America has been US hegemony (time and again democratically elected regimes have been overthrown with US support or connivance). But the obstacles to democracy and social equality are also internal to Latin American nation states; it is often those internal barriersusually tied to forms of upper class and middle class privilege
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that US policy has used historically to destabilize the left and democratic regimes. I believe that what divides studies from its Latin American critics may be less important in the long run than the concerns we share. I am sensitive in particular to the concern with the prestige and power of the North American academy in an era in which Latin American universities and intellectual life are being decimated by neoliberal policies connected in great measure to US hegemony at all levels of the global system, but particularly in Latin America. Nevertheless, if in fact globalization entails a displacement of the authority of Latin American intellectuals, then the resistance to studies is itself symptomatic of the unequal position of Latin American culture, states, economies, and intellectual work in the current world system. Paul de Man memorably described the resistance to theory as itself a kind of theory. If I were to characterize the theory implicit in the resistance to studies, I would say that it amounts to a kind of neo-Arielism: a reassertion of the authority of the literature, literary criticism, and literary intellectuals as the bearers of Latin America's cultural memory and possibility against forms of thought and theoretical practice identified with the United States. But Arielism almost by definition is an ideologeme of what Jos Joaqun Brunner usefully calls the cultured vision of culture: that is, the vision that identifies culture essentially with high culture. For it is not only in theory (subalternist, postcolonial, marxist and postmarxist, feminist, queer, or the like), or from the metropolitan academy that the authority of the Latin America lettered city is being challenged. This is also a consequence of the effects of globalization and the new social movements inside Latin America itself. Subaltern studies shares with cultural studies a sense that cultural democratization implies a shift of hermeneutic authority from the philological-critical activity of the lettered city to popular reception, a shift which entails a corresponding displacement of the authority of what Gramsci called the traditional intellectual (and literary intellectuals are, along with priests or clergy, almost paradigmatically traditional intellectuals). The problem is, of course, that the displacement of the Latin American intellectual occurs not only from below but also from the right, so to speak, as neoliberal policies restructure the Latin American university and secondary education system, and revalorize significant academic or professional credentials in a way that devalues literary or humanistic
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knowledge. One can understand neo-Arielism in these terms as a recation/ ressentiment of the authority of US culture and the pernicious effects of US hegemony on Latin American intellectual and cultural life, just as Rods Ariel was a model of resistance to Anglo-American values at the turn of the century. But by rejecting explicitly or implicitly the validity of forms of socio-cultural difference and antagonism based on subaltern positions in Latin America the argument against studies may also entail a kind of unconscious blanqueamiento a la Sarmiento, which misrepresents the history and demographic heterogeneity of even those countries its claims to speak for. By challenging subaltern studies with the authority of a prior Latin American literary-intellectual tradition, and by identifying that tradition with the affirmation of national or regional identity against a foreign other, the resistance to studies undercuts, in a way, its own argument. In order to defend the unity and integrity of individual Latin American nationsand of Latin America itselfagainst their re-subordination in the emerging global system, the critics are forced to occlude some of the relations of exclusion and inclusion, subordination and domination that operate within the frame of those nations and what counts as their national culture. But the questions posed by these relationsbeginning with the fact that the most important social groups that the concept of the subaltern designates are women and indigenous groups, that is, over half the population of Latin America in terms of the former and, in some Latin American countries, anywhere from a a quarter to a half of the population in terms of the latter are crucial in rethinking and reformulating the political project of the Latin America left in conditions of globalization.12 We arrive in this fashion at the following impasse. The new forms of theory emanating from the mainstream US academythat is, what I am calling studiesmay find allies in Latin America, but, as in the case of Clay in Soldiers of Fortune, only at the expense of destabilizing (or, perhaps more to the point, being accused of destabilizing) a prior progressivenationalist Latin American tradition of critical thought. Studies runs the risk in this sense of constituting, unwillingly, perhaps, but effectively, a new kind of pan-Americanism in which metropolitan knowledge centers work out their problem in knowing and representing Latin America. But the point of studies in the first place was not to contribute to expanding US hegemony over Latin America but rather to open up a new understand-
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ing and possibility of solidarity with forms of popular agency and resistance in Latin America. The prior Latin American tradition displaced in the name of egalitarianism by studies may reassert or reinvent itself against the influence of studies, but it does so at the expense of reaffirming exclusions and hierarchies of value and privilege that are internal to Latin America and that represent survivals into modernity of colonial and postcolonial forms of racial, caste and gender discrimination. In this sense, the resistance to studies, although it is undertaken in the name of the project of the Latin American left, creates a barrier to fulfilling one of the key goals of that very project, which is the democratization of the Latin American subject and field of culture.13 That is because what is at stake in this project, as Angel Rama began to intimate in his last book, is inverting the hierarchical relation between a cultural-political elite, constituted as such in part by its possession of the power of writing and literature, and the people, constituted as such in part by illiteracy or partial literacy or otherwise limited access to the forms of bourgeois high culture. In a fascinating study called Acadmicos y gringos malos on five novels by Latin Americans about their experiences in North American universities, Fernando Reati and Gilberto Gmez Ocampo register the articulation of what they also call a neoarielist position. They see that position as entailing a kind of premature foreclosure based on an anxiety about the loss of identity, rather than an opening out to the future:
En todos los [cinco] casos, el choque inicial con la cultura norteamericana afirma de modo casi instantneo la identidad latinoamericana de los protagonistas, y salirhuirde los Estados Unidos para retornar a America Latina se impone como condicin para ganar una perspectiva crtica que les permita producir una imagen opuesta a los cliches y estereotipos contras cuales reaccionan. No es de sorprender entonces que varias novelas coincidan en finales que enfatizan un sentido de cierre mas que de apertura hacia lo nuevo.14
US Latino critical thought might seem to point to a way beyond this impasse, since it is located in between the Latin American and the North American. But, it is currently dominated by a version of the same problematic: if it seeks a genealogy in a prior tradition of progressive Latin America
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cultural thought, as Jose David Saldivar tried to do in his Dialectics of Our America, then, like the neo-arielistas, it reinscribes the authority of the lettered city and its characteristic high culture ideologemes: mundonovismo, mestizaje, transculturacin narrativa, neo-barroco, and now hybridity. If it gestures too much at assimilating the values of popular and mass culture, as Saldivar has attempted in his new book or Gustavo Prez Firmat in Life on the Hyphen, it risks becoming an essentially affirmative discourse of US exceptionalism with little relevance to Latin America (in fact, some of the critics of studiesI am thinking of Hugo Achugar, in particular also argue that despite the fact that the United States may become by the middle of this century the second largest Spanish speaking nation in the Americas after Mexico, US Latino cultures are not part of Latin American culture; they respond rather to the urgencies of US culture and to the needs of Latin American immigrants to naturalize themselves as US subjects. What is at issue here is not the correctness of arguments on one side or the other of the debate, but the existence of a polarization between North America and South America and the charged affective fields that it sets up. Recalling a point made by Marx in his preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, this polarization is an objective force, independent of our wills. It is not subject to argument or dialogue, in other words, and that is why the debate has been signally unproductive. The most promising road out of the impasse would be the development of a subalternist and multiculturalist critical and political practice desde America Latina, one sometimes in resonance with US based projects like the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group, at other times originating in grass roots local and regional problematics. I would refer here, for example, to Nestor Garcia Canclini's project (for all my differences with him), Jesus Martn Barbero's work on popular culture in Colombia as a mode of what Walter Benjamin called the experience of the poor, Victor Gaviria's attempt to create a new kind of neo-realist testimonial film, Xavier Albo, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, and the always exemplary work of filmmaker Jorge Sanjines in Bolivia, Marcos and the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Antonio Cornejo Polar's Una heterogeneidad no dialctica, the new discourse of pan-Mayan identity politics in Guatemala (opened, in part, by Rigoberta Menchs prestige), the ongoing genealogical studies by Beatriz Gonzalez, among others, of the formation of Latin American elite culture, and Ricardo Salvatore's historigraophic reconstruction of the formation of the Argentine working class in the nineteenth century.
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I think these projectsand many others like them at all levels of Latin American society and knowledge productionrepresent the most promising line of Latin American social thought today. However, the question remains: Is it still possible to do cultural criticism from the US academy sobre Latinoamerica which is in solidarity with the cause of Latin America? In other words, is a progressive form of Latin American studies still possible? Like Latino criticism, progressive US Latin Americanism also seems to be caught in a bind: To the extent that it is something like an academic version of the preferential option for the poor of Liberation Theology, the political and epistemological implications of studies are to destabilize the field of area studies, including Latin American studies, as such. Studies are concerned with a postmodernist convergence of temporalities (I borrow this term from Ranajit Guhafor example, between the histroical dynamics of South Asia, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africathat cannot be expressed adequately within the framework of area studies or by the signifier of regional or national identity). As in the case of Clay and the Olanchan mine workers, there is a possibility of solidarity between studies and the Latin American subaltern, but it is at the expense of solidarity with the Latin American resistance of US domination. On the other hand, the possibility of solidarity with Latin American intellectuals and with the agendas of Latin American regional and national interests which are, in the last instance, of course, largely the agendas of the ruling classes of Latin Americaprecludes the possibility of solidarity with the Latin American subaltern: that is, the workers, peasants, women, indians, blacks, subproletarians, street children, prostitutes, descamisados, rotos, who are subaltern in part precisely because they are not adequately represented by the values and agendas of the lettered city of the intellectuals. Does the identification with a Latin American subaltern or popular subject preclude then the possibility of solidarity with Latin American intellectuals? We should not be in too much of a hurry to say no, of course, it doesn't. Because, as Ileana Rodrguez puts it, our choice as intellectuals is to make a declaration either in support of statism (the nation-state and party politics) or on behalf of the subaltern. We chose the subaltern.15 Speaking for myself, that is, from the position of a gringo bueno who saw his critical work as being linked to solidarity politics, what all this means is that the terrain of Latin American studies, as a discourse formation sobre latinoamerica, has become slippery and ambiguous. During the Cold War, one could say that the terrain of Latin American studies was con-
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tested, but it wasor at least seemedsolid. To the extent that it was more than an ethical impulse, the possibility of solidarity rested on the recognition of a synergy between the fortunes of the Euro-North American left and the Latin American left, a sense that the fates of both were, for better or worse, connected. To deny the possibility or the desirability of solidarity, which is the point of coincidence between Stoll and neoarielism, amounts to saying that this is no longer the case, if, indeed, it was anything more than an ideological illusion in the first place (what Nicaraguans call sandalismo). I am beginning to think that the gringo bueno is a bit of a fool, like don Quijote (remembering as I write this Foucault's remark about the embarrassment of speaking for others). I conclude that the time has come for me to distance myself from Latin American studies, a distance that would be marked, as my national allegory suggests, by a reinvestment in my always problematic and always deferred identification with the United States. I had thought of this as a taking leave, an adis, hence the title of this essay. But I was persuaded by friends that things could not be as simple as that. And that is so in part because of the very logic of wanting to move into a US frame, for if one wants to speak of the political and cultural future of the United States, which now has the fifth largest population of the Hispanic world (after Mexico, Spain, Colombia, and Argentina) then it is clear that Latin America has become, in a sense, the internal front or Fifth Column of that future. What would it mean to pose the question of the United States desde Latinoamericathat is, from my own investment in Latin America and Latin American radical politics and criticisminstead of, as I have been doing for so many years, posing the question of Latin America from the United States?16 Perhaps, though, what I define here as an impasse in Latin American criticism and in my own work is peculiar to my own generation: the generation of the sixties in Latin America, the United States and Europe. The experience of that generation, it goes without saying, was framed by the rise and defeat of a very ambitious revolutionary projecta project that, in one way or another, we were connected to; and it is the name of that project that we argue (as I do here) on one side or another of the current debate. The nature of the impasse our own work has, in some ways, produced, plus the clear signs of a mid-life crisis in our discourse, produce a kind of melancholy or desengao which is not necessarily shared by our younger col-
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leagues who bring new energies, new experiences, and new imaginaries to the field. Perhaps the time has come for them to take the banner from our hands and to find some way of changing the terms of the debate.
NOTES
David Stoll, Rigoberta Mench and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans (Boulder: Westview, 1998). See, for example: Antonio Cornejo Polar, Mestizaje e hibridez. Los riesgos de las metforas, Revista Iberoamericana 180 (1997): 341-344; Hugo Achugar, Leones, cazadores e historiadores: a propsito de las polticas de la memoria y el conocimiento, Revista Iberoamericana 180 (1997): 379-387; Rossana Barragn and Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Introduccin, Debates post-coloniales: Una introduccin a los Estudios de la Subalternidad (La Paz, Bolivia; Rotterdam, Holanda: Historias; SEPHIS ; Aruwiyiri, 1997); Nelly Richard, Periferias culturales y descentramientos posmodernos (marginalidad latinoamericana y recompaginacin de los mrgenes), Punto de Vista XIV, 40 (1991): 5-6; Beatriz Sarlo, Los estudios culturales y la critica literaria en la encrucijada valorativa. Revista de crtica cultural 15 (1997): 32-38; Mabel Moraa, El boom del subalterno, Revista de crtica cultural 15 (1997): 48- 53. Many of these essays are anthologizaed in Santiago Castro Gomez and Eduardo Mendieta. Teoras sin disciplina, Latinoamericanismo, poscolonialidad y globalizacin en debate. (Mexico City; San Francisco, CA: Porra; University of San Francisco, 1998). Thus, for example: [i]t was in the name of multiculturalism that I, Rigoberta Mench entered the university reading lists (Stoll, 243). Or, with postmodern critiques of representation and authority, many scholars are tempted to abandon the task of verification, especially when they construe the narrator as a victim worthy of their support (274). Charles Taylor, The Politics of Recognition, in Multiculturalism, Amy Gutman ed. (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1994). Expressing a similar concern, J. Jorge Klor de Alva has argued that the conditions of coloniality were radically different in Latin America than in Asia or Africaso much so as to challenge the viability of the very concepts of the colonial and postcoloniality for Latin America: The Postcolonization of the (Latin)
5 4 3 2 1
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American Experience: A Reconsideration of Colonialism,'Postcolonialism, and Mestizaje. in After Colonialism. Imperial Histories and Postcolonial Displacements. ed. Gyan Prakash. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1995). 241-75. It is interesting to note in this respect that the aversion to US derived forms of studies is not matched by the Latin American critics with a parallel rejection of Western Europeanand particularly German and Frenchtheory: witness, for example, the extraordinaryand to me inexplicableprestige of Habermas in contemporary Latin American social thought. Sarlo herself is at pains to differentiate British cultural studiesRaymond Williams and Stuart Hall from the bad US kind; see, e.g., Raymond Williams: una relectura, in Nuevas perspectivas sobre/desde Amrica Latina: El dasafo de los estudios culturales, Mabel Moraa ed. (Santiago de Chile: Ed. Cuarto Propio/IILI, 2000): 309-318. Achugar writes, for example: [L]a construccin que se propone de Amrica Latina, dentro del marco terico de los llamados estudios postcoloniales, parecera apuntar a que el lugar desde donde se habla no es o no debera ser el de la nacin sino el del pasado colonial.... [El] lugar desde donde se lee Amrica Latina parece ser, por un lado, el de la experiencia histrica del Commonwealth y por otro...el de la agenda de la academia norteamericana que est localizada en la historia de su sociedad civil (Leones y cazadores 381). Achugar echoes without apparently being aware of a previous critique of US-based Latin American studies studies as a kind of neo-Orientalism by Gareth Williams, Fantasies of Cultural Exchange in Latin American Subaltern Studies, in Georg Gugelberger ed., The Real Thing. Testimonial Discourse in Latin America (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996): 225-253. In remarks at the LASA panel on Rigoberta Mench at the 1999 LASA meeting in Miami, Florida.
9 8 7 6
The Philosophy of History (New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1902).
Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations?' Foreign Affairs 72/3 (Summer, 1993): 22-49. Huntington recounts the following anecdote: In 1991 a top adviser to President Carlos Salinas de Gotari described at length to me all the changes the Salinas government was making. When he finished, I remarked,: 'That's most impressive. It seems to me that basically you want to change Mexico from a Latin American country into a North American country.' He looked at me with surprise and exclaimed: 'Exactly! That's precisely what we are trying to do, but of course we could never say so publicly' (Huntington, 51).
12 11
10
Moreover, what complicates the assumption that one can speak desde
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latinoamerica unproblematically is the fact that Latin America's knowledge about itself now passes through the North American and European academy , because of the massive diaspora provoked first by the military dictatorships of the 60s and 70s, and then the effects of neoliberal economic policies on the professional middle class in the 80s. This mediation is not only a question of geographic location: even a nominally oppositional project like that of Richard and her colleagues at the Universidad Arcis in Santiago, for example, is funded partly by the Rockefeller Foundation, whose strategic connection relation to corporate imperialism is a matter of record. Michael Aronna's argument that Rodo's anti-egalitarian construction of the Ariel/Caliban binary involves not only the opposition to the United States, but also both class anxiety and homosexual panic, seems pertinent in this respect. ...Rod retained the sexually degenerate characterization of Caliban, which is inextricably tied into the gendered, biological denigration of the indigenous populations.... The suggestion of Caliban's ethnic and sexual enervation is also indicated by intimations of sexual deviancy within democracy.... Rod refers to egalitarian democracy as a zoocracia.... Rod's vision of Caliban also borrows from Ernest Renan's reactionary and racist version of The Tempest, Caliban, suite de La Tempete (1878). In this work Renan condemns the Commune of 1870 as the product of a congenitally and sexually degenerate working class which Rod calls the entronizacin de Calibn.... The concept of an uncontrollable and unjust national uprising led by supposedly inferior elements of society, the Calibans and their barbarie vencedora, clearly reproduces the nineteenth-century Latin American discourse of civilization versus barbarism.... Rod links his proposal for pan-American regeneration to sensually charged yet rigidly chaste masculine enclave of learning and introspection... Yet the therapeutic program proposed in Ariel is plagued by anxiety concerning the potential for excessive self-absorption and homosexuality within Rod's idealized and repressed vision of male bonding. Michael Aronna, 'Pueblos Enfermos': The Discourse of Illness in the Turn-of-theCentury Spanish and Latin American Essay (Chapel Hill: North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, 1999), 117-118, 134. 14 The paradox is that in very same journalI refer to Nelly Richard's Revista de Critica Culturalin which someone like Alberto Moreiras evokes the idea of critical regionalism as a modality of Latin American cultural agency in globalization, subaltern studies and US-style cultural studies are faulted for reducing the Latin American subject to the status of the exotic or the marginal. But that criticism of subaltern studies and cultural studies is itself, of course, a symptom of
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ADIOS: A NATIONAL ALLEGORY the very critical regionalism Moreiras is talking about.
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Reati and Gmez 606: Fernando Reati and Gilberto Gmez Ocampo. Acadmicos y gringos malos: La universidad norteamericana y la barbarie cultural en la novela latinoamericana reciente Revista Iberoamericana 64.184-185 (1998 July-Dec): 587-609. 15. Ileana Rodriguez, Reading Subalterns Across Texts, Disciplines and Theories: From Representation to Recognition The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader. Ed. Ileana Rodrguez. Durham and London: Duke UP, 2001. 1-32. (Quoted from manuscript). It is the signal virtue of Eve Cherniavsky's Subaltern Studies in a U.S. Frame, boundary 2 23/2 (1996): 85-110, to transfer the problematic of the subaltern to US history, which Cherniavasky represents as essentially a postcolonial one.
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COLONIAL/POSTCOLONIAL
Jos Rabasa UC Berkeley
ustavo Verdesio asks us to consider: Por qu los subalternistas sudasiticos ignoran, en general, olmpcamente a sus pares latinoamericanos? [Why do the Indian subalternists ignore, generally speaking, in an olympian fashion their Latin American counterparts?]. This is a very embarrassing question; he is touching a nervea ticklish nerve I should add. In asking this question, Verdesio would seem to mock those of us who have worked with Latin American Subaltern Studies Group, by the same token his question conveys the importance he grants to recognition and conveys a perception from those in Latin American Studies outside the group. If all desire of recognition were narcissistic, wouldn't it be further exacerbated in work on subalternity where elite scholars end up being the subject of debates circumscribed by metaphysics of denegation and privilege? The en general, the generally speaking, offers some of us a space to wiggle out and claim exception to Verdesio's perception that the Indians have ignored the Latin American subalternists. Wouldn't this recognition at the expense of the others suggest a token to which we subscribe all too willingly when we qualify our interventions with such phrases: in Latin America, from a Latin American perspective, or as a Latin American(ist)? Is it thatas far as the Indians are concernedone or two, perhaps three, Latin Americanists would suffice? Is Verdesio being excessively harsh on the Indians in his belief that they have ignored us olympically? They have always struck me as a generous, if rigorous, bunch. In my case, melancholy for a lost affinity group leads me to reflect on my personal motivations and investment in the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group. I resist mourning, letting go, but look towards mania as a resolution of melancholy that leads to a new form of activism and the per-
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verse: I cannot resist thinking of how the concept of the subaltern and the enterprise as a whole have turned into an intellectual fetish. The easiest answer to Verdesio's question is that the Indians are just ignorant, but that would not be satisfactory because they do read some Latin Americanist historians and anthropologists (e.g., Wolf, Scott, Mallon, Womack, Taussig), and not just the work of the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group. Verdesio may, perhaps, have in mind those working in English departmentsthey are too busy establishing their primacy in the multiculturalist debates. But why should they bother with the intellectual production of the Latin American subalternists when they can incorporate Rigoberta Mench, Gloria Anzalda, and the great novels of the Boom into their versions of multiculturalism? Why should they read us? Why should we care? But by mimicking (even if willy-nilly) the Subaltern Studies project, were we inevitably soliciting their acknowledgement and falling prey to one of the most famous phrases in postcolonial theory: almost, but not quite?1 Were we playing minors begging for the blessing of the new master? On the Latin American side, I cannot forget the dismissal of an arrogant Argentinean historian who represented our relation to the Indian group as one in which we borrowed a ready-to-assemble kit. I started producing academic work in the early 1980s under what has come to be defined as postcolonial theory, then an emerging field with ample visibility in the History of Consciousness Program at the University of California at Santa Cruz where I was writing a dissertation on the invention of America. It was part of the semio-sphere that enabled me to ask some of the questions that have determined my work. It was not called postcolonial theory yet or at least in my absentmindedness I did not pick up on its aspirations to define a movement, perhaps because there were other equally interesting approaches circulating in the program, namely Hayden White's work on historiography, James Clifford's readings of the poetics and politics of ethnography, and Donna Haraway's feminist history of science. Cultural studies as invented by the Birmingham School were also very important. Little did I know thatby reading and reflecting on Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Peter Hulme, and Gayatri Spivak among othersI was inscribing my work under postcolonialism. Actually, I did not grasp this term in its current definition until years later when a colleague of mine helped me articulate the ideological differences that had emerged in the aftermath of the national liberation movements that followed World War II, of which Franz Fanon was the emblematic thinker. My friend whis-
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pered in my ear, don't say post-World War II, say postcolonial. So, this was what I had been doing all along! Obviously, questions of recognition haunted my project, but they had more to do with writing an acceptable dissertation, finding a job, and publishing my work. It never occurred to me that I was courting the Indian group or that I was writing as a Latin American(ist). I discovered the Latin American Studies Association after my first appointment at the University of Texas. Certainly, I was pleased to learn that some liked my work, invited me to conferences, published my work in anthologies, and were willing to hire me in a Spanish department, but I never conceived of my project as seeking the recognition of a postcolonial elite recently arrived to the position of master discourse. My affinities were closer to those who were writing under the sign of minority discourse with no aspirations of constituting a new master code, of establishing a new paradigm unless this effort was understood as a new sensibility with little patience for absolutes, models, or even concepts that claim universal applicability. Isn't the application of theory and concepts an unarmed discourse? Beyond a concern with being derivative, shouldn't we interrogate our desires to produce paradigms for others to derive their discourses? In the case of the Latin American group, setting models and concepts in English for others writing in Spanishi.e. promoting derivative discoursescould not but be perceived as an imperialist gesture. But this was hardly the case of the South Asian Subaltern Studies project: they confined themselves to debates within India. Should we continue to read them with no regard for the particular appropriation of the Latin American subalternists, if anyone clinging to this affiliation still exists? What is retrievable in the work of the Latin American group? Have we claimed to go beyond the South Asian proposals? Is this will to go beyond the South Asian group a textbook sample of the master/slave dialectic? Would it manifest resentment over Verdesio's claim that we have been ignored olympically? Some of us actually have been questioning the universality as well as the desirability of investments in the dialectic of the master/slave in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, so dear to some of the practitioners of South Asian Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory. The push for a beyond would inevitably invoke the rails of a dialectic in which one situates and defines one's project. Why not ignore the interpellation of the masters? Why internalize the hate and the love speech-acts that solicit our investment in their claims to universality? The notion in Latin America of Indians as refractarios of modernity, an attribute often given to prove the inability
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of simultaneously being Indian and participating in modern life forms, should serve as an emblem to the idea of lending a deaf ear to the summons of those claiming power. We in subaltern studies have much to learn from the strategies of selective acknowledgement of interpellations. One of the reasons the South Asian scholars have ignored us is simply because at least some of us have different agendas, even if we have subscribed our names to a project that borrowed the term Subaltern Studies from the South Asian group. I will suggest that it is precisely in the differences and not in the similarities between their projects and their specific colonial pasts that we benefit from reading their work. The call is for comparative studies, not for an application and importation of theory. In my readings, oppressed indigenous groups in Latin American have produced accounts of the European invasion since the sixteenth-century, not with the objective of being recognized as able to practice history as conceived by Europeans, but as devising native vocabularies that incorporated the new realities into their systems of representation and narrative structures, and as questioning or using symbolically the imported life forms. In using western forms symbolically they codify systems of representation as emblematic and practices such as the confession and the inquisitorial processes attest to their ontological and epistemological pertinence and power. But then again, the Spaniards did not define their practice of history as a model, as the English did centuries later in the spirit of the Enlightenment, but rather sought to understand the indigenous arts of memory and systems of writing, which often held more authority than those texts written using the Latin alphabet. I refrain from speaking of native practices as history because I question the value of recognizing forms of memory, narrative, painting and normative systems in the European categories that define history, literature, art, and law: such gestures lead to the erasure of the specific indigenous practices. I cannot fully elaborate this point here but let me just add that there are no traces of an internalization of a European denial of the practice of history, or of writing for that matter, among the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Nahua tlacuilos (native painter/writer) that I have studied, in the ways that one can trace an internalization of the values of European history in Bengali historians of the nineteenth-century who felt pressed to prove that Bengali was an appropriate vehicle for history and modern discourse in general. To my mind, the possible transformation of native languages for the transmission of modern thought should be obvious; however, this process might entail the loss of life forms particular to native
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languages. I refer to this forms of life as linguistic, epistemological, and ethical elsewheres to Greco-Abrahamic categories, genres, and disciplines, regardless of the languages in which they are articulatedbe they English, Spanish, Nahuatl or Bengali. Nahua tlacuilos in the sixteenth-century and their counterparts today practice their arts of painting, narrating, and justice without apology or a need to imitate and derive their discourse from European models. If they request recognition, it is of their right to practice these forms of life without being subjected to criteria of universality defined outside their own horizons of universality. This is what I call radical relativism: the possibility of conceiving truth regimes within specific horizons of universality in any given language or style of thought. The objective is no longer to deconstruct truth statements, rather to envisage a plurality of worlds in which deconstruction would not make sense or amount to one more rhetorical practice. What would be the import of exposing the principles grounding truth and authority in a situation in which one assumes a multiplicity of horizons for establishing truth and authority? Verdesios question conveys a perceived desire for recognition that has not been reciprocated. It is as if the Indian scholars have emerged as the new masters of academic discourse and we Latin American(ist)s must, at least as subalternists, seek their recognition. In this narrative, the Indian pursuit of recognition from the imperial masters reaped its rewards in the 1980s and 1990s as they constituted a new academic vanguard. The terms postcolonial and subaltern have achieved the questionable status of required citation. Obviously, some of us will say that we have been dialoguing with the Indian group all along and that we have not been ignored. Indeed, we might even share the olympian detachment and consider the work of the rest as not good enough. If you happen to be a historian you might face the consideration that your work is not good history, a preferred dictum of the Indian subaltern historians. Or be proud of the recognition of doing good history. This might be the reason why some of us were ignored: we are not good historians, but let us inflect this statement by adding that some of us don't care to be considered good historians. Indeed, one might actually view the institution of history as irremediably constraining in its disciplinarity. Indeed, the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group is on record for conceiving its work as non-disciplinary. In making this pronouncement we were not seeking the recognition of the Indian historians; it flies in the face of their disciplinary efforts. They are good historians, but few of us conceive of our work as history, hence we should not be
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surprised that they have ignored us. But this, again, is too easy. What about those postcolonial literary critics in English departments? And again, why should they pay attention to us? Wounded egos, unproductive narcissism that breeds resentment and insatiable thirst of recognition haunt us all in academia. The worm of desiring recognition, of jealousy, of possessiveness, and the ambition of laying claim to the latest paradigm in Latin American studies devoured the Latin American Subaltern Studies group. Instead of defining our work as singular enterprises with no expectations of constituting a paradigm but with the hope of providing good readings that would provoke a reflection without apology or end, we vied for ownership. We lost track of the ways the singular both underlies and produces the communal. We became petty as we struggled to possess the term subaltern to lay claims to its patent. In the end, subaltern studies no longer consisted of a style of thought, a critical program, and a revolutionary movement which cannot be ownedbut a name: a fetish? The project became a futile passion, which should not be taken as synonymous of pretending to be able to write as if the momentous contributions of South Asian Subaltern Studies and Postcolonial Theory are no longer of significance in what we say about colonial pasts and postcolonial presents and the intersection of the two temporalities. They still matter. Although I teach a course in Spanish on Colonial/Postcolonial studies, I always use the title in English. The term slash, at least in its spoken form, doesn't translate well. Technically one could say diagonal, and even though this geometrical term has much to offer for a topology of the colonial and the postcolonial, it lacks the directness, indeed the onomatopoetic ring of the English slash. Of course, one can speak in Spanish of the intersection of the colonial and the postcolonial, but the options in the bilingual dictionary for slash, i.e., cuchillada, tajo, corte largo, cortadura, don't quite translate the punctuation term nor its meaning. The entry does not include diagonal, nor does diagonal appear in Mara Moliner's entry for punctuation in her Diccionario del uso del espaol. The closest in meaning is cuchillada, not as in knifing, but as in costura, sewing, which calls to mind suture and seam. But then again, what does a / do? In slashing the Latin American colonial and the South Asian postcolonial, one binds these two entities together. This brings me to the narrow definition of the postcolonial as that style of thinking we generally identify with studies of colonial pasts and presents defined by the imperialist dominions of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe, in particular the
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work of Edward Said, Peter Hulme, Gayatri Spivak, David Lloyd, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Homi Bhabha, and Ranajit Guha, just to mention some of the most prominent in my own thinking. In naming these scholars, I map an area of inquiry and influence rather than imply a school of thoughtthey know each other, some are friends, some hold long standing debates. Here I am folding subaltern studies under the postcolonial. As for the Latin American colonial, the readings include Spanish, mestizo and indigenous texts from the pre-colonial world up to the wars of independence at the turn of the nineteenth century. The point is not to apply postcolonial theory but to create a montage in which the production of meaning surfaces in disparity and friction. Again, the end is not to define nor to provide an exhaustive account of postcolonial or subaltern studies, but to interrogate both ends of the divide colonial/postcolonial. The course also incorporates Latin American responses, dialogues, and challenges to Postcolonial Studies, e.g. Walter Mignolo, Ricardo Kaliman, Armando Muyulema, Ileana Rodrguez, and John Beverley. Comparative studies would have less to do with drawing similarities than with learning from the differences. The question, then, would be what can we learn from the Indian group in as much as they differ from us (but note that the similarities might very well appear in the least expected places, as with the Criollo and the Bengali middle classes), and stop asking the futile question of the applicability of Subaltern Studies and Postcolonial Theory to Latin America. One would no longer speak of the postcolonial as an event or a cultural formation that comes after the colonial. The postcolonial marks the place from which we write as it defines topics, ethics, psycho-biography, epistemology, aesthetics, in short a historical consciousness that emerged in the last quarter of the twentieth-century. A historical consciousness that is bound by advances in Euro-American philosophy (this term comprises the philosophies produced in Europe and in the Americas, as well as their intersection in North American academic circles). If the genealogies of the postcolonial and Subaltern Studies have different origins (the former is typically traced back to Franz Fanon and Edward Said, the latter to the founding of the South Asian Subaltern Studies collective in the early 1980s by Ranajit Guha), one often finds scholars working and identifying themselves with both movements. Literary types tend to fall under the Postcolonial, whereas historians and social scientist under Subaltern Studies. Both fall within and build on the debates in Structuralist, Poststructuralist and Postmodern theory: Benveniste, Barthes, Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, and
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Lacan, just to mention the most prominent European thinkers that have influenced the postcolonial and the subalternist projects. These projects share a strong Marxist ingredient, but tempered by the history of European imperialism there is a common agreement to question the Eurocentric Marx of, for example, the newspaper articles on India. I place quotes around Eurocentric not because I want to question the appropriateness of this attribute when speaking about Marx, but to underscore the Eurocentricity of the work done in Postcolonial and Subaltern Studies, perhaps nowhere clearer that in the phrase by one of its most influential exponents: mainstream 'Indian' culture is as distant from the Aboriginal subaltern in India as Aristotle.2 There is no room for an Aboriginal subaltern in an India that circulates in mainstream circles and reads Aristotle without abdicating his/her own world. Obviously by Eurocentricity I do not understand the work that privileges Europe as a geographic entity or as a paradigmatic history, but the privilegeif not the inevitabilityof thinking with terms, categories, histories and epistemologies of what for lack of a better term I call the Greco-Abrahamic tradition.3 Needless to say, what I am doing right now is part and parcel of this Greco-Abrahamic tradition. But it does not suffice to acknowledge it, especially if one turns around and argues that being educated is synonymous with being well versed in the Euro-American understandings of culture and the cultured. In passing let me observe that the South Asian scholars and the history they tell of elite groups (e.g., the Bengalis of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries) in India shares similar class determinants and impulses to transculturate European thought and institutions with those of the Criollos of Latin America. Not unlike our debates over the derivativeness of Criollo discourses, the South Asian scholars also alternate between critiques that expose the derivative nature of the Bengali middle class and readings seeking to recuperate their unique contributions. The great difference between India and Latin America apparently resides in the subaltern classes, at least with respect to the tendency among South Asian scholars to establish an absolute ontological break as constitutive of subalternity. The Criollos and the Bengali middle classes (even when conceived as subaltern vis--vis the imperial powers) have more in common than we have tended to assume.4 As I have pointed out above, indigenous peoples in Latin America cannot (there are exceptions, of course) be categorized as producing discourses derivative of European models, at least in writing and painting in their native languages. As for their participation in Greco-Abrahamic
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culture, the same paradoxes and aporias of the Criollo sectors would haunt them. In participating in western life forms, (Amer)Indians express little or no concern with the derivative nature of their discourses. All forms pertaining to the Greco-Roman (including Postcolonial and Subaltern Studies) are equally alien (hence appropriable). The Latin Americanism (derivative or not) of the Criollos is as suspectif not more sothan the western philosophical traditions that never thought in terms of el problema del indio.5 In fact, why not go to the origin of the discourses and debates (Euro-American discourses) rather than passively receive the mediated versions of the Criollos. We may further consider whether intellectual work inflected by the Greco-Abrahamic can be done other than from the space of the Criollo (if you prefer, criollo being mestizo-with-an-emphasis-on the-western, differing from mestizo-with-an-emphasis-on-the native), which should not mean that by practicing western forms of discourse one would be doomed to lose the ability to dwell in and articulate other worlds. In participating in the debates of the Greco-Abrahamic one would aspire to the dissolution of the violence it inflicts on life forms dwelling elsewhere. As such, the constitution and reflection on the Greco-Abrahamic in indigenous categories, languages, and life forms remains a possibility when not already an actuality. In constituting the subaltern in absolutist terms, the South Asian subalternists ban the possibility of dwelling in multiple worlds. The loss of this ability sets the tone for a postcolonial melancholy that ends up constituting personal psychobiography as a norm circumscribed by an inevitable telos. Colonial legacies haunt the postcolonial project to the extent that the latter proposes alternatives to the civilizing missions of imperial projects. The desire to educate subalterns (in the ways of the Greco-Abrahamic discourses and the western forms of democracy) inevitably carries the burden of an internal colonialism, of a let me do it instead. As such, the promise of learning from tribal groups and indigenous peoples amounts to a pious gesture, to a learning to learn from below, which in the end amounts to teach me how to teach you. The pedagogical imperative either displaces the role of vernacular languages or, as in the case of India, it furthers the agenda set up by the Britishas in Thomas Macaulay's Minutes on Indian Educationto create a class of Indians that would make indigenous languages suitable vehicles for implementing modernity. I am merely touching on this sensitive point and would ultimately refer readers to the critiques by Indian scholars who have said it much better than I.6 It is not my purpose to undermine these projects nor the accomplishments of
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those who developed modern vocabularies and grammatical structures in vernacular languages, but to note the colonialist impulse that emerges when (native) versions of modernity seek to constitute themselves as the only valid representations and supplant indigenous forms of life. This position dismisses all speech of indigenous forms of life as anthropologisms.7 There seems to be nothing worse for an Indian postcolonialist than to become an anthropologist: as pedagogues and policy makers there is little room for learning from indigenous peoples in and on their own terms. This hubris would find its limit in indigenous intellectuals who cross the limits of the Greco-Abrahamic without finding the imperative to impugn and abdicate indigenous forms of life, which would furthermore reflect and represent the Postcolonial intellectual in their own terms and languages. But this would entail subjects whose psycho-biography is grounded in the indigenous and have learned to resist the interpellations of a version of modernity that demands the abdicationif not the hatredof one's own. In this respect, the Indian elite and the Latin American Criollos partake of similar assimilationist policies: by conceiving tribal societies and (Amer)Indians as problems, they (at best) inadvertently play into a bio-politics that proscribes the right of indigenous peoples to exist. In cutting the postcolonial from a colonial period strictly defined as under the direct tutelage and sovereignty of another nation, the postcolonial situation can very well be neocolonial. Indeed, the slashing of the postcolonial conveys a condition in which the possibility of reiterating the categories, the subordination, the mentality, and the oppression of the colonial is an ever-recurring legacy. The awareness of this legacy, however, involves an ethical commitment to interrogate the linguistic, historical and philosophical categories upon which we build our postcolonial discourses. Thus, a reflection on the colonial period entails an awareness of the implications of one's statements for the present. As such, the colonial/postcolonial would not aspire to create a current or a paradigm. Rather, movements, currents and paradigms in their insistence on being anti-colonial would reiterate the same colonial impulse they set up to overturn. In retaining the slash or /, the gesture is counter-colonial in being aware of the inevitability of the colonial in our reflection and practice. Ethical rigor would consist of the tenacity to denounce and to make manifest the colonialist impulse in paradigms. This is an anarcho-communist proposal that would not exclude the possibility of a movement, better yet, of a multitude, comprised of strong
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subjectivitiesclearly, not a mere multi-cultural assemblage under some common banner. Indigenous peoples would not be educated in the ways of democracy and secularism given that the multitudes they would comprise would speak in the vernacular and would demand a right to practice their own normative systems within their own horizons of universality. The slash of the colonial/postcolonial should also remind us that there is no pure state but a plurality of worlds in which there is porosity between the modern and the non-modern through which information, categories, ideologies and concept travel back and forth without erasing the poresthe limits that define elsewheres to the Greco-Abrahamic and the modern. Elsewheres give the possibility of dwelling in a plurality of worlds without incurring a contradiction. The concept of elsewheres enables us to conceive indigenous understandings of modernity in which native subjects would not respond to the interpellations of modernity that demand the abandonment of their life forms. There would be a give and takea light treading on the limits of modern and the non-modernthat would entail moving beyond melancholy for a lost world and the trauma of colonization to the mania of insurrection and the perversity of laughter at the hubris of (neo- or internal) colonialist impulses to redeem the subaltern.
NOTES
In Bhabha (199?) this formulation takes an additional turn in a racial variation, almost, but not white that he derives from a most unfelicitous passage from Freud's essay The Unconscious: We may compare them with individuals of mixed race who taken all around resemble white men but who betray their colour by some striking feature or other and on that account are excluded from society and enjoy none of the privileges (Quoted by Bhabha, 89) I derive this passage from an essay by Spivak (2000: 337) in which she addresses the new location of subalternity in bio-politics and issues concerning the education of the ST (Scheduled Tribal). This essay is in the background of the comments that follow. Also see Spivak (1988). I have explored the concept of elsewheres and the Greco-Abrahamic in Elsewheres: Radical Relativism and the Frontiers of Empire (n/d).
4 3 2 1
The most important studies of the Bengali middle classes are Chatterjee
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(1986, 1993), but also see Guhas (1997) essay An Indian Historiography of India. For a critique of the privilege granted to the Latin in prescribing solutions to Indian problem in Criollo discourses, see Muyulema (2002). Even if the Spanish missionaries adapted Indigenous languages to convey Christian concepts, these tended to incorporate words and phrases that conveyed concepts alien to Native cultures. There was no effort to transform the syntax of native languages to create more efficient vehicles of Christianity and modernity. In fact, the effort pointed towards an indianization of Christianity (but one could add of pagan writers like Ovid who were translated into Nahuatl) that required understanding and practicing rhetorical and grammatical forms that would not sound false or make absurd statements. In this respect there is no equivalent yet of the simultaneous edition of the South Asian Subaltern Studies volumes in native languages. For collections of essays that document the debates in the Indian Group, see Chaturvedi (2000) and Ludden (2001). Ileana Rodrguez has edited two volumes (2002a, 2002b) that collect essays representative of the debates among the Latin American subalternists and their Latin American critics. See Chakrabartys (2000) brilliant discussion of Guhas treatment of the Santal's rebellion as a combination of the anthropologist's politeness . . . and a Marxist (or modern) tendency to see religion in modern public life as a from of alienated or displaced consciousness. Chakrabarty goes on to say: Here is a case of what I have called subaltern pasts, pasts that cannot enter academic history as belonging to the historian's own position (105). Is it that a Santal must stop being a Santal to do history or is it that when he or she does history she inhabits another space wherein the Gods must not speak because the Greco-Abrahamic prescribes a secular history? There is no reason for the Santal to stop being as a Santal who invokes the Gods when he practices history, if there remains the option of exposing the pretence and violence of secularity in writing history. Then, again, he or she might simply ignore the precepts of modern history and do something else, cultivate another genre with little or no concern for the recognition of the master historians. Also consider Spivak: The single female of the Lodha tribe who made it into the universitystudying, heartbreakingly, anthropologyhanged herself under mysterious circumstances some years ago (334).
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WORKS CITED
Bhabha, Homi.. 1994. Of Mimickry and Man. The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge. Pp. 85-92 Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2000. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thourght and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Chaturvedi, Vinayak, ed. 2000. Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial. London: Verso. Chatterjee, Partha. 1993. The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton: Princeton University Press. , 1986. Nationalist Thought in the Colonial World: A derivative discourse. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Guha, Ranajit. 1997. An Indian Historiography of India: Hegemonic Implications of a Nineteenth-Century Agenda. Dominance without Hegemony. History and Power in Colonial India. Pp. 152-212. Ludden, David, ed. 2001. Reading Subaltern Studies: Perspectives on History, Society, and Culture in South Asia. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Muyulema, Armando. De la Cuestin iondgena al indigena como cuestin. Rodriguez 2002a: Nelson, Cary, and Lawrence Grossberg, eds. 1988. Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Rabasa, Jos. N.d. Elsewheres: Radical Relativism and the Frontiers of Empire. Rodrguez, Ileana, ed. 2002a. Convergencia de tiempos. Amsterdam: Rodopi. , ed. 2002b. The Subaltern Studies Reader. Durhama: Duke University Press. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorti. 2000. The New Subaltern: A Silent Interview. Chaturvedi 2000: 324-340. , 1988. Can the Subaltern speak? Speculations on Widow Sacrifice. Nelson and Grossberg 1988: 271-313.
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THE RECOGNITION OF CONVERGENCE: SUBALTERN STUDIES IN PERSPECTIVE

Sara Castro-Klarn The Johns Hopkins University
n what follows I am going to adhere in a general way to the questionnaire that Gustavo Verdesio has prepared as the point of departure for a reflection on the work that the initiative of the Latin American Subaltern Studies group has performed in the various fields that constitute Latin American Studies and the disciplinary knowledges that conform it. Obviously I cannot address all the questions that Verdesio poses. This is partly because more space and effort would be needed than what is possible here, and also because I am sure that the other respondents will take up much of what is not said here. Parts of the questions asked have been addressed already and in different moments by some of the founding members of the group. I am thinking of the Introduction that John Beverley writes to his recent Subalternity and Representation: Arguments in Cultural Theory (l999)1 where he takes up the crisis of Marxism and the epistemological thrust of Subaltern Studies in conjunction with the polemical reception accorded to it by both historians and literary critics in the field of Latin American Studies. In The Im/possibility of Politics: Subalternity, Modernity, Hegemony2 Beverley discusses amply the relation of Cultural Studies to Subaltern Studies. Likewise in the Introduction to The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader (2001) Ileana Rodriguez provides the reader with a brief intellectual history of the Latin American Subaltern Studies group, a discussion that spells out how Subaltern Studies appears in a canvas of epistemological crisis in which it was necessary to find ways of producing scholarship to demonstrate that in the failure to recognize the poor as active, social political, and heuristic agents reside the limits and the thresh-
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olds of our present hermeneutical and political condition (3). Another founding member of the group, Jos Rabasa, has written recently on the conjunction of postcolonial theory and subaltern studies in order to establish a ground for dialogue between scholars who investigate the colonial past in Latin America and the post-colonial initiative which, coming from the periphery of the former British empire dates colonialism to the eighteenth century, traces its epistemological roots to the Enlightenment and erases both the Spanish colonial past and its impact on the very formation of modernity.3 Finally Walter Mignolo has written repeatedly and amply on a good deal of the problematic outlined in Verdesio questionnaire. Suffice it here to make reference to his recent Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking (2002). In a shorter form I addressed earlier the overlaps as well as the divergences between the new colonial studies inflected by discourse theory, semiotics and testimonio theoryand key questions in postcolonial theory as presented in the work of Homi Bhabha and Bill Ashcroft.4 Given that I am not one of the founding members of the Group and that I did not participate in the writing of the Group's manifesto, I think that it might be of interest to attempt a brief narrative of how I came to participate in the Group's third meeting in Puerto Rico in l996, went on to the meeting at William and Mary, then to Duke University and finally to the meeting at Rice University. In a way this narrative might illustrate the fact that not all scholars who find Subaltern Studies a productive and promising theoretical and political vantage point depart from the same location, sense of crisis or search, nor, once in dialogue with Subaltern Studies in its South Asian or Latin American modality, walk in the same exact path or towards a universally agreed goal. After all, one of the salient features of Subaltern Studies is the attempt to secure a democratic and more self-conscious field of enunciation. For me, tracing the different genealogies of the interlocutors in the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group or in Subaltern Studies at large constitutes one of the most significant learning experiences that group formations can afford in an otherwise academic environment designed for isolated and insolating intellectual work. My early work on Jos Mara Arguedas, as the author of beautifully crafted novels, had left me with more questions than answers. I chose to write on Arguedas at a time when neither Los ros profundos (l958) nor Arguedas ethnographic essays had achieved canonicity. Outside Peru Arguedas was indeed regarded as a provincial writer and some of the
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claims made by the authors of the nueva novela, later called the boom Vargas Llosa and Carlos Fuentescame nothing short of writing Arguedas' epitaph. In the United States academy it was clear that Arguedas could not be compared to Alejo Carpentier for the Cuban writer had been wrapped in the prestige of the barroco de Indias, a label in which critics teaching at major United States universities and writers such as Lezama Lima had invested a great deal of historiographical acumen. I often wondered why artists and intellectuals who came from areas of Latin America where the colonial baroque had not produced the great architectonic feats of the Jesuit churches in Mexico or the Andes, nor the paintings of the Cuzqueo School, nor the sculpture of the Alejaidinho or the Guaran, took such pains to identify contemporary writers like Severo Sarduy and Lezama Lima with a barroco de Indias, but that is material for another discussion. In comparison to the barroco de Indias, Arguedas was not only associated with the lowly and ex-centric Indigenismo, but, to complicate matters further, he had criticized Indigenismo from a position of authenticity claiming that Indigenismo presented a false portrayal of Andean social formations. He was particularly keen on questions of representation, both in the modern and the postmodern sense of the term. Arguedas' critique of Spanish as his possible literary language was an indication that our current understanding of the conquest and the colonial period called for thorough revision. The problems that Arguedas's fiction and ethnography posed for the question of culture in colonial situations and the construction of the speaking subject under conditions of epistemological dominance resisted the then available tools of analysis. This seemed especially true when Arguedas himself rejected the harnessing of his reflection for the various political struggles of the time. When he finally came out and said no soy un aculturado in response to Angel Rama's efforts to include ethnic narratives into a globalizing theory of Latin American literature, it seemed perfectly clear that his work exceeded the existing paradigms. Once again Arguedas rejected the explanatory power of a universalizing ambition of the concept of acculturation indicating that the local could beought to bea place for theorizing. At the time the field of study called Latin American Literature offered, as two oppositional sides of the same coin, a text centered hermeneutics sometimes called New Criticism, and or, but mostly or, a sociology of literature. This latter approach often blurred with dependency theory. Critics felt that the aesthetic or literary quality of canonical works
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was being compromised by the contextual emphasis of both methods of interpretation. It followed that if the singularity of the objects of inquiry ceased, so would the place of the discipline that interpreted them. Increasingly the question devolved around problems of interpretation rather than the particulates of each enthroned text or author. Master texts and master authors began to lose their explanatory powers. Barthes thesis on the death of the author weighted heavily right at the very time when scholars working in departments of Spanish, that is, literary critics, had begun claiming for literature texts that had before been considered cronicas, eyewitness reports, letters to the King, reports and even state sponsored narratives of conquest. Moreover, few pointed out the connection between Barthes' theoretical assumptions at the base of his claim on the death of the author and Borges' own deconstruction of the author in his Biblioteca de Babel and Tlon Uqbar Orbis Tertius to name only two of his devastating texts. But the seeds that Borges planted began to germinate even if it were, perhaps, the kind of tree that they would grown into had not yet been envisioned. Foucaults critical essay What is an author? both clarified the question as well as exacerbated the construction of the debate in oppositional terms. If some of the differences between the two approaches were perceived as inimical it was in part because the epistemological object, literature, was already in question and there was a general denial about this eclipse. It was also because such formulation had not yet come to the fore with full visibility as it would a decade later when the field of English New Historicism and Cultural Studies overtook the crisis and moved to establish it as the very place of innovative thinking. The Modern Language Association's publication of Redrawing the Boundaries: The Transformation of English and American Literary Studies, edited by Stephen Greenblatt and Giles Gunn in l992, put the Good Housekeeping seal of approval on the transformation that interdisciplinary initiatives, together with deconstruction, cultural materialism, gender studies, new historicism and subaltern studies, had already brought about5. The anxiety and discomfort that Subaltern Studies causes in some areas of the fields of study dedicated to Latin America today is not unlike the discomfort that literary critics and social scientist felt as the impact of postmodern theory dismantled boundaries and introduced new methods and perspectives to the study of English. Above all it redefined the object and its relation to the subject. Some of this anxiety is also related to the fact that SUBALTERN STUDIESwith capital lettershas been perceived as the
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sole initiative of historians and that as an originally South Asian theoretical move it is thought to be incompatible with the standing cognitive map that assigns certain types of intellectual labor to certain areas of the globe. There is no problem, or less of a problem with French theory but... This anxiety could be better understood in relation to the formation of the grid that Anbal Quijano and Walter Mignolo call the coloniality of power. But I have skipped over what for me was really the key portal to finding a way out of the prison house of literature conceived as a series of aesthetic objects located in a space of splendid isolation. What begun to open the way out the dilemma was the reading of Julio Cortzar and his ground breaking questioning of the categories which constituted the aesthetic as the beautiful, the bourgeois subject and literature as an expression of the nation or the national or the psychological depth of the author. Of course Borges had already done much of that, but Cortzar's displaced and gyrating subjects unfolded the cognitive problematic. In Cortzar, the death of the author was already, indeed, the crux of the matter. His call for more a compatible reader underlined the problem of interpretation and put into question, undeniably, the arbitrary separation of texts into genres whose lines could not be traversed lest we as readers transgressed what turned out to be short lived but naturalized cultural agreements. There was nothing essentially novelistic about any particular narrative nor was philosophical reflection on culture necessarily divorced from narrative form. What is more, the author of Rayuela (1963) took me on a journey through French speculative anthropology, surrealism and several of the maudit writers in whose work, as it turns out, Michel Foucault was also finding paths that lead outside of the established boundaries.6 The cronopios and the modelos para armar showed me the corrosive power of laughter before the self appointed seriousness of literature. Rayuela gave me the gift of the fragment and underscored the crisis of continuity as a principle of meaning. It took me to Gaston Bachelard and his The Philosophy of No (1938), to the idea of a counter history of science that would enable me to read Michel Foucault at the Dartmouth Faculty Seminars on Theory. At the time I was not so much concerned with the general dimensions of an epistemologicaland thus politicalcrisis, as both Ileana Rodriguez and John Beverly state that they were. I was more concerned with the growing idea that the discussion in the seminars on theoryBakhtin, Kristeva, Lyotard, Derrida, Foucaultimplied a serious and irreversible turn in the
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way we had understood our received history of Latin American Culture. Feminism was of course already in full bloom and its challenge to the sovereign subject of patriarchy dovetailed the inquiry that Cortzar had provoked by requiring that in order to find out what was going on in Rayuela his reader trace every lead he put out and situate every name he dropped in and out of the vast intertext that he manipulated to produce an unhinged novel. Arguedas had introduced the question of the past not only as a problem for historiography but also as an unresolved and inextricable part of the living present in his approach to the portrayal of Andean culture. From very different perspectives and locations it seemed to me that both Arguedas and Cortzar were questioning the linearity of time that thus far had governed our efforts to make sense of the pastthe writing of history. Cortzar was in search of a narrative theory that would abolish the distances created by Western time and psychology. His narrative signals a search for simultaneity, for multiple and diverse presences and performances in a single moment. His interest in jazz and its structural capacity to abolish time and even authorship did not seem that distant from Arguedas' own search for a seamless connection between present and past in the music of the Andes. The question of the representation of the past, or rather of the impossibility of the representation of the past as inherited in current cognitive structures and academic thinking, was only exacerbated for me with the reading of Guamn Poma. Like my first reading of Rayuela from a modernist understanding of literature, El primer nueva coronica y buen gobierno (1615) appeared as a total chaos. Once again Cortzar's gift of the mobile fragment, of the restless puzzle that is for ever trying to achieve form only to unravel once more, opened an avenue by which to enter a world in which the clash and struggle of epistemologies and paradigms sets every object previously fastened and subjected adrift. Postmodern theory began to fall into place as a relocated ground from which to formulate questions on the received narratives of the past that would not repeat the modernist teleology. Fredric Jameson's The Political Unconscious (1981) emphasizes the idea that we never apprehend a text in all the freshness of the thing-in-itself but rather that texts come before us always-already-read....through the sedimented reading habits and categories developed by those inherited interpretative traditions (9). His work seeds the path for a reconsideration of a historiography that had always already written principles of depen-
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dency, imitation and copying into our understanding of the formation of Latin American cultures. Jamesons objective to restructure the problematics of ideology, of representation, of history and of cultural production around the all-informing process of narrative (9) allowed the passage from novel to crnica and from crnica to most colonial texts. While the question of agency appeared ever more complicated, Foucault and de Certeau, with their notions of spatiality, locus of enunciation, discourse and especially the dismantling of the Western modern subject as the only subject of knowledge seem to dovetail into epistemological concerns that I now had to consider to represent the core of a Latin American thinking: coming from below. This started with the attempt by both Garcilaso de la Vega, Inca and Guamn Poma to wrestle with historyor rather with the appropriation of the past by Spanish historiography. With those concerns in mind I made the acquaintance of Jos Rabasa. He had moved to the University of Maryland and I had gone to Johns Hopkins. There Judith Butler, whose Gender Trouble (1990) I had devoured, was offering a seminar on post-colonial theory. Her Foucauldian assault of the sovereign subject spelled out uncanny connections with the French artists and philosophy that I had read to get a hold of Cortzar. This time, the topics to be treated in the syllabus of post-colonial theory seemed oddly familiar. However, not a single Latin American intellectual was present in the list of readings. And yet the sense of recognition was unmistakable, especially when it came to Franz Fanon. As it turned out, Rabasa and I spoke of having a reading group. I missed the Dartmouth seminar experience and learning of Rabasa's writing on historiography the idea of a reading group in the Washington area seemed propitious. This convergence of concern s entailed a shared sense that in certain domains of what was generally post-modern theory one could find a basis for asking questions about the construction of the other that did not entail an acceptance of negativity about the dominated nor an alienation of the subaltern, and much less a reinscription of orientalism. The dialogue that started in this reading group led to an invitation to join the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group. In writing an incomplete but highlighted narrative of how I came to attend the third meeting of the Latin American Subaltern Studies group, I am responding to Verdesio's question on the genealogies of Latin American Subaltern Studies, Cultural Studies, Post-colonial Theory in the United States. Having read similar and perhaps more self-conscious accounts on
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the genealogy of their epistemological situation by Ileana Rodriguez, John Beverley and Walter Mignolo, the latter in the Afterword to his The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality and Colonization (1995), I have come to the conclusion that as individuals we have indeed been walking in different paths but moving, as Guha puts it, towards a shared horizon that each can recognize as his own (The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader 37). It is clear that some of the founding members felt a particular urgency and recognized with unusual clarity the crisis that ensued for the Left after the defeat of the Nicaraguan revolution and communism at large. Others, as I have pointed out earlier in Writing with His Thumb in the Air,7 had already embarked on an inquiry that interrogated history as writing, that is to say as a problem of representation. Anthropology's own postmodern crisisthe predicament of culturehad brought the question of the other, oral cultures and the construction of peoples without history into critical focus. Methods of inquiry and styles of writing, together with Eurocentric assumptions on the normativity of alphabetic writing and the subsequent intellectual deficiency marked by its absence, were now the hot topic of discussion. For a student of colonial cultures, this debate seemed to have the events of the Spanish conquest of Aztecs, Mayas and Incas at its very core. Ethno-historians were also grappling with problems of representation and agency as they wrote in the matrix of the discourses that allowed and validated their disciplinary formations as the selfrepresentations of the dominated. Testimonio was only one of the many areas of cultural production where subjects' agencies and representations were contested. The problem of subaltern knowledges in the Americas tested the limits of the paradigms of knowledge. Moreover, these debates were not exclusively given in the North American academy as part of the polemic over postmodernism and subaltern studies might lead one to believe. No less strident they were alsoand continue to bea part of the Latin American intellectual tradition that, while strongly critical, did not and does not necessarily see itself as other from the Europe's own critical avant-garde, for in constructing these genealogies we must not forget that Latin America and Europe are constitutive of each other. Thus when Ranajit Guha writes in the opening paragraphs of Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India that his inquiry intends to take up the question of history as writing (xiii), one does not so much have a sense of revelation but rather the exhilarating feeling of recognition. Guha's key question: who writes the history of the sub-
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jugated people? was indeed already broached some 500 years ago by Garcilaso de la Vega Inca in his Comentarios reales (1609). Likewise, when Guha delves into the language question and cogently argues that in asking who asks the question: who is the king of Bengal? there is already a historiographical move that leads to critique of the epistemological categories that inform history. We can hear a clear sounding of the same note in the Comentarios. Indeed the case made by Garcilaso on the question of Quechua as the seat of categories for thinking and understanding the Andean social and cosmological organization is more subtle and stylistically sophisticated than Guha's take on the hierarchical relation between English and Bengali. Five hundred years apart, both Garcilaso and Guha write on historiography in order to wrestle with the conqueror's appropriation of a past. Both argue that once the past is rendered in European categories it no longer coincides with the memory that the dominated had, for it is interrupted when questions like Who is the King of Bengal? or How did the Incas win this kingdom? demand a reshuffling of what had sedimented in the before. Guha mounts a formidable attack on what he calls Liberal Historiography in order to dispel the myth of ideological neutrality (6). Garcilaso de la Vega Inca constructed a subtle intertextuality, but an equally devastating attack on Spanish historiography, by pointing out that in not knowing the language, language as categories of thinking, the Spanish asked the wrong questions, got the wrong answers and thus wrote the accounts of the past that conquest and epistemological violence allowed. Despite the differences forged by a distance of 500 years and the experience of two different types of coloniality, one cannot but see that in both cases colonialism entails the pathos of a purloined past ( Guha xiv). The question here is not as much restitution as it is the effort to clear the ground for the understanding of the power of writing and its historical legacy for post-colonial subjects. It would seem that the South Asian critique of nationalist and bourgeois history has as its objective halting the writing of India's history as a pedestal on which the triumphs and glories of the colonizers[...] could be displayed (Guha 3). This move dovetails only too well with the preoccupations over a historiography that had constructed Latin America as a savage, other or backward periphery. Both challenge a Eurocentric way of establishing the world's past, of making other people's past inaccessible outside of the forms given by English or Spanish (Guha 175) and seek to advance an epistemology that is not merely imitative or derivative of its
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colonial center. Not unlike Arguedas, Guha aims to show that the colonialized also construct versions of their past and they do so for purposes quite different from those who dominate them. And they do so with their own discursive rules (3). However, the reclamation of the Indian past, of both the time before British colonialism as well as the time of the Raj, is not a simple move to the before. It demands a deeply complicated move which comes down to the expropriation of it from England's previous act of expropriation (Guha 194). For the author of Dominance Without Hegemony the questions finally devolve on the matter of power for: No historiography of colonial India would be truly be Indian except as a critique of the very fundamentals of the power relations which constitute colonialism itself (195), a position very close indeed to Anibal Quijano's own sense of the coloniality of power. One could discuss many other points of convergence between a Latin American reflection on the power-knowledge connection and the question of dominance and the work of Dipesh Chakrabarty, Gyan Prakash and other Indian Historians associated with the South Asian Subaltern Studies Group. The point here has been to show that what we have is a convergent inquiry into coloniality. For that convergence to go beyond the point of recognition it would be necessary, as Dipesh Chrakrabarty has put it many times in personal conversations, a sharing of archives. That is a formidable task. I think that the fact that Guha writes so insightfully into the question of colonial historiography as a question of dominance without hegemony without ever having even heard of the Royal Commentaries by Garcilaso de la Vega Inca constitutes an excellent example of the work of coloniality8 and the magnitude of the task of sharing archives. The dismantling of the legacy of coloniality will first require the recognition of a shared location in the vast intersections of the power-knowledge machine.
NOTES
See John Beverley, Subalternity and Representation: Arguments in Cultural Theory. Durham: Duke UP, l999, 1-40. See Ileana Rodriguez. ed. The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader. Durham: Duke UP, 2001, 47-63.
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See, Jos Rabasa, Writing Violence on the Northern Frontier: The Historiography of Sixteenth-Century New Mexico and Florida and the Legacy of Conquest. Durham: Duke UP, 2000, 16-20. Juan Zevallos-Aguilar, Teora pocolonial y literatura latino americana: Entrevista con Sara Castro-Klarn. Revista Iberoamericana. LXII, 176-77, 1996. 963-971. See, Stephen Greenblatt and Giles Gunn, eds. Redrawing The Boundaries: The Transformation of English and American Literary Studies. New York: Modern Languages Association of America, 1992, 1. See James Miller, The Passion of Michel Foucault. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1993. See especially The Death of the Author, Waiting for Godot and The castle of Murders. See, Castro-Klaren, Writing With His Thumb in the Air, in Alvaro Flix Bolaos and Gustavo Verdesio. eds. Colonialism Past and Present: Reading and Writing about Colonial Latin America Today. Albany:SUNY Press, 2002, 261287. When Guha expanded his inquiry into the question of an English education for India's intellectuals he brings in Bernal Diaz del Castillo and his account of the conquest of Mexico (175-177). It is not clear to me what Guha learned about either the Spanish language policies of the period of conquest or about the Mlanguage map of pre-conquest Mexico.
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HOW RANAJIT GUHA CAME TO LATIN AMERICAN SUBALTERN STUDIES

Patricia Seed Rice University
became interested in Subaltern Studies in the late 1980s, not long after the volumes began to appear, and began lobbying our university library to purchase them in 1987. The task turned out to be an immense hassle, because even though the volumes were being produced under the Oxford University Press imprint, they were assembled and printed in Delhi. At the time, Oxford University Press (New York) had less than perfect connections with their Delhi office. Eight months was the time it would take to order a Subaltern Studies volume from Delhi and at that speed they had to be sending the books by elephant to Bombay, and then by dhow to Aden, and possibly by trireme to Gibraltar, and by glass bottle to New York via the Florida Gulf Stream. However, once I got them I was delighted to read these early volumesI found the theoretical sophistication about reading historical texts fascinating. Here, for the first time, I was reading historians who questioned the transparency of the archivesthe still widely held belief that simple and often nave readings of documentary sources could somehow produce the truth. There was, and still is, nothing natural about reading. We learn it in schools, where we are taught what and how to read, how to summarize, and above all how to judge. Teachers drill these techniques into our heads, so that by the time academically successful students reach college or university, they have successfully assimilated all the cultural criteria for reading. At no point are students of history taught about historical or cultural differences in writing styles. They are not taught about sixteenth or eighteenth-century salutation styles in epistolary genres, and are unprepared to
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understand the clues provided by the opening and closing lines of a letter. Nor are they instructed that a topic sentence in French does not appear where a topic sentence belongs in English, that the introductory paragraph or chapter necessary in English writing remains regarded as a sign of intellectual immaturity in Dutch writings, etc. As a result, students bring their contemporary prejudices into their reading of primary sources, and take out exactly as much as they have taken in. Teachers compound the problem by allowing writing about the documents in twentieth-century language familiar to themthereby transforming the historical text into a culturally transparent artifact peculiar to their own culture and period. This super-imposed cultural transparency of explanation cloaks an unexamined projection of contemporary political and cultural issues into the past. Perhaps one of the best examples (for US readers) is the phrase race relations. As Julie Novock has recently discovered, the phrase race relations first appeared in 1900 in a privately printed U.S. pamphlet on labor laws. It became widely deployed to analyze a broad variety of social injustices characterizing US politics during the twentieth century. But what can we make of books such as Charles Boxers Race Relations in the Portuguese Colonial Empire, 1415-1825)? Are we trying to excuse our conduct by claiming that others discriminated as wellor that we are not to blame for our contemporary problems because people in the past handed us these problems? In short, what are the agendas, implications, and assumptions behind such use of anachronistic terminology? For me, the most appealing dimension of the Subaltern Studies group rested in its willingness to confront potentially troubling issues of reading historical texts. How do you understand what you read? How do you explain it, and why? In the spring of 1989 my husband was invited to be a visitor to the Humanities Research Centre at Australian National University in Canberra for their winter term, which began at the end of June. I was very pleased because I knew that Ranajit Guha, the intellectual founder of the Subaltern Studies movement, was at that time a Research Associate with the School of Asian and Pacific Studies at Australian National University. I wrote to him in advance of our arrival, and made arrangements to meet and talk with him during our stay in Canberra. We arrived, trailed by our three-year old daughter and her suitcase full of possessions she declared indispensable for life in Australia. Other interesting people in Canberra at the time included Derek Freeman (of the
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now infamous Mead-Freeman debate). Freeman met us at the door to his home, but ordered us to remain in his entryway while he interviewed our daughter out of earshot on his lawn before letting us sit down. (Our limited parenting skills obviously passed his test, for he continued to send us Australian toys until the year he died.) Ranajit was an entirely different person. Unlike many academics, he had been a left-wing political activist for his first twenty years, turning to academics after wearying of constant political danger. Given his leadership skills, he recruited a small number of south Asian scholars to the University of Sussex (England) where he obtained a teaching post. Dissatisfied with the portrayal of Indian history in the British academic history departments of the time, and with the none-too-subtle disdain with which prominent left-wing British historians such as E. P. Thompson treated him and wrote about the history of India, he resolved to embark upon a program of rethinking Indias relationship to Britain. And to do that he began editing the series called Subaltern Studies. When we met in the winter (June) of 1989, he talked about Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency, which he considered his best work to date. When I read the book for the first time in the library of the Australian National University, I was enthralled. Here was a man who had spent twenty years of his life politically organizing rural India, writing about the way British officials of his century (and before) had written about peasant rebellions in areas of the world in which he himself had worked. Here was the complete panoply of an insiders understandingshow drums transmitted informationwho was traveling among the regionshow easy or difficult that wasall from the era immediately after the British withdrawal from India. To use the immediate post-withdrawal knowledge of political organizing to understand the earlier period seemed eminently reasonable, and very exciting. British colonial texts could not be assumed to transparently communicate the activities of natives. Regardless of whether all of his insights were correct, here at least was someone problematizing the act of reading. Not long after arriving in Canberra, I met Ranajit one day for coffee and he pulled out a white book that had just arrived in the post. Look at what has showed up, he said, showing me the book. It was the edited Selected Subaltern Studies bearing his name after Gayatri Spivaks on the cover. This is the first I have heard of this volume, he said, astonished that a book would appear with his name on the cover without his consent.
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That first inauspicious foray by Gayatri Spivak in fact signaled what was to become the reception of Subaltern Studies in the United States. Far from a former activists re-interpreting the texts of the former rulers of India, subaltern studies became adopted in literary circles which both at the time and since have been far more willing to think critically about reading. Furthermore, the slim volumes publication coincided with the South Asian literary worlds rethinking of the colonial projecta task apparent in the works of, most notably, Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha. Thus when John Beverley and Ileana Rodriguez wrote me in 1993 to say that they were interested in a Latin American Subaltern Studies group, I was more than willing to join. I had never met either one of them, but they had read an article I had done for the Latin American Research Review on colonial and postcolonial discourses, and had rightly thought that I would be interested in the project. I met Ileana Rodrguez, Michael Clark, and John Beverley for the first time at the organizational meeting of the Latin American Subaltern Studies group in Washington, D.C. What I found was a largely congenial group, with whom I shared more than I had anticipated. Beyond our mutual admiration of the Subaltern Studies collective, most of us had been active in Latin American politics prior to becoming academics. Ileana had been the most courageous of all, giving up a tenured academic position in the United States to become Vice-Minister of Culture in Nicaragua during the Sandinista government. After the Sandinistas were voted out of office she returned to the United States where she, remarkably, was able to re-establish herself in Latin American literary circles. Javier Sanjines, then teaching literature at Maryland, had been active in developing the political use of what we now call talk radio in his native Bolivia. There we were, a group of academics who knew a lot about politics on the ground in various Latin American countries, and who wanted to think about the different ways in which literature from and about Latin America should be taught and understoodespecially from within the United States. And there too was the basis of the connection with Ranajit. Like us, Ranajit had been involved in politics before his academic experience, and had brought both his political and his academic experiences to the writing of history. In the mid 1990s, Latin American Subaltern Studies was an intellectually exciting and dynamic community whose members grew to include many of the best-known names in the literary field. Walter Mignolo, Jos
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Rabasa, Sara Castro-Klaren all came to participate, expanding the range of literary scholars whose work I respected, and whose intellectual projects I came to understand sympathetically. And as for why Latin American Subaltern Studies never had quite the same impact in history that it did in anthropology? I think the question is equally well asked of its South Asian inspiration. Why is and was Subaltern Studies far more successful in U.S. literary circles than it ever was in historical ones? For that answer, I think you would need to address a broader cultural and historical question, one that goes beyond the boundaries of this issue of Dispositio/n.
WORKS CITED
Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. New York Routledge, 1994. Boxer, Charles Ralph. Race Relations in the Portuguese Colonial Empire, 14151825. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963. Guha, Ranajit. Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India. Delhi: Oxford, 1983. , ed. Subaltern Studies. Writings on South Asian History and Society. Vol. 1-7. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982-1989. Novock, Julie. Associate Professor Political Science, University of Oregon. Personal communication. 2003. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty and Guha, Ranajit, ed. Selected Subaltern Studies. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
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ON NEGATION: REFLECTIONS FROM ANDEAN PEASANT MOVEMENTS

Javier Sanjins C. University of Michigan
he following reflections on the study of subalternity in/on Latin America seek to answer some of the questions editor Gustavo Verdesio asked us regarding the work done by the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group (LASSG) during its short, but fruitful, existence. However, my intervention will touch Gustavos questions only in relation to those topics which keep me thinking that subalternity is a valid intellectual endeavor with political consequences. I refer here to issues that connect my work to the political participation of peasant movements in the Andes. It is my belief that the need to reflect on the real subaltern political movements is more urgent than stopping to find out why our scholarship does not seem to engage our South Asian counterparts in a constructive dialogue. Likewise, my response is also motivated by the vitality of the social movements rather than by the discussion of why our research causes deep concern and mistrust in other Latin Americanists interested in cultural studies, or whether we should have been born as a group or as a more open research movement. I think that in her introduction to The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader, Ileana Rodrguez expresses eloquently the reasons why LASSG was born. She states that our past struggles with academia can explain why we were attracted to the work of the South Asian group and established with them a kind of unmediated recognition and spiritual affinity (2). Indeed, Ileana is right in affirming that we organized LASSG as a group of friends whose intellectual past coincided because it had been one of situated knowledges and participation in the praxis of theory (2). While we started in the early nineties to adamantly oppose the traditional
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categories of our own academic practices, we were also discontent with the rise of neo-liberal policies in Latin America in the aftermath of the failed national-popular revolutions of the previous decades. As a founding member of LASSG, I perceived in the South Asian group a new kind of social sensibility that, coupled with a theoretical stubbornness and a spirit of academic militancy, was in agreement with what we called a new humanism (Rodrguez 3). While I now believe more than ever in a new humanism as an involvement with the struggles of the poor, I am also inclined to think that this humanism must be revisited. Consequently, I will start by pointing out some instructive differences between the Founding Statement (1993) and the Introduction to the Dispositio/n issue on Subaltern Studies that Jos Rabasa and I wrote a year later (1994, published in 1996, v-xi). I think that these differences are related to the category of negation which is at the base of subaltern identity formation. Finally, my remarks on Negation take me back to the Marxist humanist tradition which, going beyond the straitjacket that structuralism imposed on Marxist analysis during the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, can be useful in understanding the paradoxes that spring from the clash between modernity and colonialitythe constitutive, hidden, and dominating side of modernity. As part of this discussion, I will be touching on issues of both the postmodern and the postcolonial; on the influence exerted by subaltern studies on Latin American scholarship, mainly on the social sciences; and on how I differ with Ranajit Guhas conceptualization of subaltern identity formation. Some of these issues connect with Verdesio's questions, while others do not. We organized the LASSG in order to encompass the quest for new ways of thinking and acting politically. The commonalities were geographic area and a deep concern with the crises of the nation-state under the impact of globalization. At the core of our project was the revision of established paradigms used in representing colonial and postcolonial societies as well as previously functional epistemologies in the social sciences and the humanities. Our Founding Statement emphasized reading historiography in reverse to recover the cultural and political specificity of peasant insurrections. We were particularly interested in the two components of Guha's reading in reverse: identifying the logic of the distortions in the representation of the subaltern in elite discourse and uncovering the social semiotics of the strategies and cultural practices of peasant insurgencies themselves.
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The Founding Statement noted that Guha's insight was that the subaltern, by definition not registered or registrable as a historical subject capable of hegemonic action, is nevertheless present in unexpected structural dichotomies. In other words, while the tendency is to see the subaltern as a passive or absent subject that can be mobilized only from above, it also acts to produce social effects that are not necessarily predictable or understandable by the logic of the structures of power, nor by the state policies and projects they authorize. It is the recognition of this very specific role of the subalternhow it modifies our life strategies of learningthat underlies the doubts besetting the traditional disciplinary paradigms, themselves related to the social projects of national, regional, and international elites seeking to manage or control subject populations by filtering cultural hegemonies all the way across the political spectrum. One of the key aspects of our Foundation Statement was its insistence on thinking the subaltern from the standpoint of post-modernity (a name given to a series of global changes that are the result of the crisis of the nation-state and the trans-nationalization of the economy), and on studying its position from structural dichotomies. Conceptualizing the nation as a dual space (elites/subaltern groups) of counter-positions and collisions, we affirmed that the nation is a fragmented entity resulting from tensions between assimilation (ethnic dilution and homogenization) and confrontation (insurgency, strikes, terrorism). We also observed that the subaltern functions as a migrating subject, both in its cultural self-presentations and in the changing nature of its social pact with the state. According to the modernization narrative of sociological functionalism, we believed that a migrating subject must be plotted against its static position in the stages of development of a national economy under modernization. While I agree with the subversive nature of the subaltern, I believe that we must now question the validity of studying subalternity with a strategy that ties it too rigidly to structural dichotomies and links it exclusively to the postmodern version of social fragmentation. Let me point out here what I see in retrospect as a constitutive difference between the Founding Statement and the Introduction to the Dispositio/n issue on Subaltern Studies in the Americas. At the core of subaltern strategies against elite domination is Negation, the category that defines subaltern identity. While in the Founding Statement Negation is tied to a postmodern reflection of society, in the Introduction of the Dis-
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positio/n issue it is open to a wider discussion of coloniality and, I think, treated with more flexibility. Asking ourselves what it meant to translate Negation into our own work on contemporary indigenous movements, Rabasa and I indicated that heterogeneity and migrant subjects are particularly relevant to post-modernity, but not an exclusive phenomenon of post-modernity. There is also a postcolonial reflection of these subjects that I am now inclined to think of as significantly different. Indeed, there is an important geo-cultural difference between postmodern and postcolonial studies. Briefly stated, the postmodern debate in Latin America, close to cultural studies, is predominant in the countries of the Atlantic coast, mainly Argentina and Chile, with a low demographic presence of Amerindian and Afro-American populations, unlike Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Mexico. Given the disparities between these regions, it is not surprising that the postcolonial question has remained central to subaltern studies in countries like Ecuador and Bolivia, while having little or no intellectual resonance in Argentina and Chile. Inversely, coming from both Argentina and Chile, the postmodern cultural reflections on a peripheral modernity (Sarlo) have had little applicability in Ecuador or in Bolivia, and are understandably ignored by the research of the most prominent scholars of the Andean region on internal colonialism, such as Xavier Alb and Silvia Rivera. From a postcolonial perspective (a way of critiquing modernity from colonial histories and legacies, not from the limits of hegemonic narratives of Western history), some of these Andean scholarsAymara and Quechua intellectuals and activists themselvestake a significant step forward with respect to modernity and to the postmodern reflection of its incompleteness and fragmentation. Thinking from their own local cultures, rather than from the epistemic assumptions of cultural studies or the social sciences, Andean scholars begin to conceptualize coloniality not as a regressive, pre-modern factor that modernity (Western culture) will overcome in time, but simply as the constitutive and negative hidden side of modernity.1 Consequently, modernity/coloniality is not a structural dichotomy which can be overcome through inversion, or reversion, but a dichotomous concept meaning simply that there is no modernity without coloniality. However, since existing narratives were told from the perspective of modernity (including that of the elites in the periphery whose dream was to be modern), the perspective from coloniality remained hidden and impossible. Most of Latin American letradosupper and middle-class men
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of letters as far to the right as nineteenth-century Sarmiento and as far to the left as twentieth-century ngel Ramafought at the limit of modernity, blind to the historical weight of silenced coloniality. Present day indigenous Andean movements enter the political history of Bolivia or of Ecuador speaking from that silenced and hidden zone, the zone of coloniality. The most radical intellectual movements in Latin America consist precisely in moving to the side of modernity, a movement that implies a postcolonial reflection of coloniality that takes the local culture (and not Hegel, Althusser, Saussure, Benveniste or Guha) as the starting point for thinking, knowing, and understanding. There are important epistemological differences here, which I think are connected to a different interpretation of Negation as the category at the base of subaltern identity formation. Indeed, this category can be interpreted differently when reflected from the starting point of the local indigenous movements. Approaching subalternity from the postmodern debate in Latin America, my friend John Beverley, who has written some of the most lucid essays on subalternity (Beverley 25-40), thinks synchronically when he accepts Guha's conceptualization of Negation in non-dialectical terms. While I admire John's struggle to re-imagine communism not only in the context of post-modernity but also in some sense from post-modernity, I have second thoughts when it comes to agreeing with his adherence to Guhas linkage of subalternity with structuralism. Guha sees negation as a simple inversion, as opposed to dialectical sublation. In this sense, his explanation of peasant insurgency through a Saussurian general form which makes it a process of inversion turning, a cut in time, is apparently the only way to experience history and the possibility of historical change in a non-teleological way. Synchrony dominates diachrony in this explanation of subalternity. As I said before, I have my doubts about the feasibility of this reduction of subaltern identity formation to Western linguistics wherein understanding local histories consists in translating the complexity of local reality into another, in this case Western, form. Can we formulate necessary laws applicable to modern as well as savage man? Is there a law ordering non-modern2 human beings to act exclusively in a time of gods, incapable of comprehending the teleological time of history of modern citizens? Why affirm that the subaltern can only experience history by bringing back the Golden Age? Is subaltern identity just a function of difference within a Western system of signs?
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In Guha's explanation of identity formation (1983) the key seems to be synchrony, not genesisla langue, not la parole; the code, not the message; the how, not the what. The universal in subaltern nature is to be discovered by synchronic analysis, not through what is immediately manifest at a given moment. The object of study is elaborated in terms of its coherent internal structure, exclusive of its genesis or cultural context. Just as Saussure sought out the abstract model of linguistic structures underlying language, similar to a model in the natural or physical sciences, now Guha seeks the meaningful system of signs underlying subalternity. Since linguistic structuralism leads to theoretical anti-humanism, I also have a problem with any approach to Negation that takes Althusser's structuralist rendering of Marx. I ask: Is subalternity just an epistemological obstacle that can only be conceptualized from the viewpoint of the subject of knowing, the subaltern studies scholar? We know perfectly well that epistemological ruptures underlie Foucault's theory of the episteme and also the structuralist Marxism of Louis Althusser. These ruptures, however, do not give sufficient space to the historically conscious human agency of the subaltern insurgent. Likewise, revolutions are not the result of real historical crises but of the overdetermination and condensation of contradictions on various levels. History, then, is not the self-development of humanity. Rather, human beings play nameless roles and have various functions in different structures. Synchronic analysis becomes primary. A science of history must concern itself with such structures (i.e., relations of production), and in Althusser's theory these structures parallel Saussure's use of la langue, Foucault's use of episteme, and more recently, Guha's use of Negation or simple inversion. One of the results of the Introduction was to reaffirm the notion of human agency. Of course, by agency we did not mean a way of doing history, with the people, so to speak, because we were clear in establishing the differences between the scholar who writes history and the subaltern insurgent who makes it. We simply meant that structures are composed of human beings who live, suffer, and act in the world, and, in so doing, modify reality. In this sense, I would add that reducing human beings to relations of production is nothing less than a reification. Who creates and sustains these structures? Did they appear ex nihilo? I am very much opposed to theoretical anti-humanism that turns the structures themselves into reified subjects. In this sense, Althusser's discussion of overdetermination becomes a mode of reification because it obfuscates who and what
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provokes social and political change: not structures or structural dichotomies in abstraction, but, rather, human communities, collective actors composed of individuals in an ensemble of structural relations at a given historical conjuncture. I now return to the question of what negation means to me after reflecting these past few years on contemporary Andean indigenous movements. I do so from the belief that theory cannot be spoken of as an autonomous realm apart from history and human communities because I live within history and reflect subalternity from the viewpoint of indigenous trans-individual subjects. To me, Althusser's theoretical practice becomes, therefore, a species of positivism based on an opposition of subject and object that, paradoxically, does not question or overcome Cartesian epistemology. In this sense, Althusserianism remains within the cogito, which is logo-centric and ocular-centric because it sees reality with one eye, the mind's eye. As Rabasa and I indicated in our Introduction, Cartesian epistemology is readily identified with the emergence of the distinction between objectivity and subjectivity. This split of the subject and object of knowledge implies a series of forms of disciplining subjectivity (VIII-IX). Since the problem resides in the production of the subaltern as an object of knowledge, subaltern studies cannot continue to practice a Cartesian epistemology where the subject refines its cognitive apparatuses only to gain a more objective perspective (IX). This modernist project presumes wrongfully that the form of life of the subaltern can be contained within the objectification of the intellectual; moreover, it obviates the conflict between Western epistemology and forms of life with different truth values (IX). The ethics of epistemology that we outlined in this Introduction had to be considered in relation to politics. Just as we were careful to distinguish the subject of historical knowledge from the subject of political action, we were also mindful of the fact that knowing and divulging the sources of oppression cannot be conflated with acting against them. Furthermore, we were careful to point out that this distinction would not preclude intellectuals from theorizing on a parallel plane, and we did indeed envision this practice as central to our projects. The new ethics, the new humanism, that informed my work at the moment when we wrote the Introduction, and which informs my work today, cannot be reduced to some sort of postmodern literary sensibility. On the contrary, what we were proposing then, and what I am still proposing now, is a politics of sensibility where our task as intellectuals consists of articulating emergent new
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structures of feeling, to borrow Raymond Williams's phrase, in which the plurality of the Indian peoples would be recognized and respected in their very concreteness (IX). My research on subalternity over the past decade began conceptually from the indigenous Andean movements that have shaken Bolivia to its foundations. These movements led me to identify three interrelated themes which connect to the topics I am discussing now, and which have helped me understand why Andean modernity is unrealizable as a cultural and social project. The first is seeing with two eyes, a mechanism which allows Andean indigenous movements to position themselves at the other side of elite discourse; second, the connection between this seeing with two eyes and the local histories of those indigenous movements (these are the starting point of my research); and third, the way in which the local histories of these movements require me to rethink Marxist humanism, and open up new venues of research. Seeing with two eyes helped me position my own findings on indigenous movements in relation to the overarching question of whether and how critical knowledge stemming from new social movements can counteract the models of Western reason. Seeing with two eyes answers this question clearly. The two eyes is not a metaphor but a form of understanding reality from the point of view of the radical indigenous movements. It is a visual process in which contemporary Andean subaltern movements start to free themselves from the dominant criollo-mestizo (criollo being the term used throughout Latin America for non-immigrants who are nonetheless not culturally indigenous and mestizo the term employed for the hybrid populations who are perceived to be more white than Indian) sectors of society by developing their own identity. In this sense, they need to see and solve their conflicting situation with two eyes: that is, to see themselves as a problem of exploited social classes, and as a problem of racially oppressed nations (peoples, ethnic groups, etc.) (Alb 1987, 379419). Only by seeing themselves with the second eye of racial oppression could these indigenous movements resist giving up their identity to rationalist Western discourses and to the single-eyed character of the criollomestizo nation which keeps them under the homogeneous vision of mestizaje (the melting-pot racial ideology that pervades Bolivia and many other Latin American republics). In this sense, seeing reality with two eyes helped me explain mestizaje on new grounds. I was now seeing reality not
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only from the cultural forms of Western tradition, but also from the local history of contemporary indigenous movements. While seeing with two eyes is at the intersection of both local indigenous histories and global Western designs, it expresses the perspective of subalternity, and above all, it helps define the limits of Western thought. Both in the humanities and in the social sciences, modern world views are generally blind to local categories of thought such as negation [I decapitalized this because he was inconsistent], predominantly seen as a catastrophic, non-Western way to turn the world upside down, a way in which indigenous populations experience history and the possibility of historical change. Western thought sees history as a teleological processthe time of historyand is alien to the historical vision of indigenous movements, which is more particularistic, Manichean, anti-historicistthe time of the godsand reactive. The problem is that Western thought is blind not to indigenous movements and cultures (so long as they are an object of study), but to the local knowledge these movements generate and the emergence of new dimensions of knowledge. Let me now offer an example of why I think seeing with two eyes reintroduces the diachronic into the synchronic and provides an experience of negation which is more complex than Guha's simple inversion or seeing in reverse. For Guha, negation is the rejection of modernity, a clear no to the modern structures of power, including political parties. Since negation is not dialectical negation, but synchronic inversion, it is one of the ways in which indigenous groups experience history, opposition in no ambiguous terms, the catastrophic time of gods with the linear time of history. I believe that future research on subalternity must go deeper into the category of negation. This rethinking of negation must be done, as I mentioned before, at the intersection of local histories and global designs. While South Asian subaltern history uses a linguistic logical model to understand the properties of negation, thus prioritizing a synchronic cut in time (the aim of peasant insurgency is to take dominant elites by surprise, to put the existing relations on their head and do so for good (Guha 1983, 36)) over a diachronic, evolutionary, approach I think that subaltern movements must be approached somewhat differently, insisting on a dialectic between synchronic and diachronic analyses, and on looking at structure and history at once. In this sense, I hypothesize that indigenous movements may not be as catastrophic as one is led to believe. Members of the indigenous intellectual groups are particularly aware of the need to balance the
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synchronic and the diachronic into a new totality (most recently, Bolivian Aymara historian Marcelo Fernndez Osco gives a totalizing explanation of indigenous consuetudinary law through a careful examination of the Andean concept of qhip nayra, which consists precisely of seeing the past and the present as a holistic totality (Fernndez Osco 2000)). Indeed, in the struggle between the time of history and the time of the gods, indigenous memory has been able to balance the remembrance of the past with the dynamics of present-day political reality. If the logic and rationality of historical events seem to indicate that modernity achieved the much-desired homogeneous construction of the nation, recent indigenous movements have challenged that alleged accomplishment. The mestizaje promoted by criollo-mestizo elites, under the banner of nationalist discourse, had undertaken the extirpation of traditional indigenous culture (the time of the gods), yet that indigenous world has returned more rebellious and autonomous than ever, with its own ideological discourse. Let me add another example from local history of how this totality connects the synchronic to the diachronic, one that will need further exploration in the future. In Bolivia, the Aymaras perceive the sequential stages of modernityConservatism, Liberalism, Nationalism, and so onas having been synchronically superimposed on a continuing, unresolved colonial situation that was oppressively imposed on a once-free and autonomous society (Rivera Cusicanqui 1992, 10-86). They also know that the myth of the return of the anti-colonialist past into the present gives ideological strength to their movement (the Aymara movement is called Tupaj Katari after the Indian rebel who was sentenced to death by the Spanish in the late eighteenth century). Consequently, the time of the gods is not as far apart from the time of history as subaltern theory tends to believe. On the contrary, the time of the gods that constitutes the core of indigenous discourse is also translated into the historical temporality of trade-union struggles (Rivera Cusicanqui 1984). Indeed, the myth of the return of the past makes little sense if it is not coupled with the actual power of the union-organized peasantry. In this way, the re-elaboration of history by indigenous ideology has connectedin a new totalitythe historical time of the peasant unions with the time of the gods of the mythical return to the past and this gives the movement its ethnic cohesiveness. As we will see next, however, this totality of historical time and the time of the gods cannot be conceived of as a Hegelian solution, as an Aufhebung in which one pole dominates the other.
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In their long history of upheaval against external and internal colonialism, Amerindian people have not only restituted the time of the gods in view of a better future, but their present day intellectuals are also following the path opened in the 1920s by the Peruvian Jos Carlos Maritegui ([1928] 1998), opening a new space of thought which implies a double translation (Mignolo 2001, 66-71), a translation of Marxism into Amerindian cosmology and Amerindianism into Marxist cosmologya process that involves both Amerindian and criollo-mestizo intellectuals. I would argue that this translation could also introduce new approaches to and findings in European historysimilar to the traces of the challenges posed by Amerindian agencies to the promotion of Western civilization in the Americas. The lesson I extrapolate from today's Andean movements is the coexistence of order and chaos, expressed in the ambiguous yes and no that these movements give to modernity. A Hegelian synthesis would be expected at this point, following a philosophical analysis in which two poles of cultural process have been identified. But this hierarchical synthesis cannot be found in subaltern thought. In my view, subaltern epistemology (seeing with two eyes) does not have a Hegelian vision of totality capable of solving with dialectical unity the conflict-ridden societies with deep colonial pasts. Quite the contrary, the ambivalent yes and no construction of subaltern identity indicates that coloniality remains hidden within a modernity that knows of no Hegelian Aufhebung, within a nation that cannot come to its own, as Guha defined the colonial state. Could we find similar traces of this tragic impasse in Western thought? I see here the need to recuperate a Mignolian border thinker of the twentieth century whose thought was unjustly buried by the avalanche of structuralism during the 1960s. I speak of the Romanian-born philosopher and critic Lucien Goldmann, and of his genetic approach to the human sciences ([1959] 1964). I close my remarks on subalternity with three reasons why I think Goldmann's tragic dialectics could be a useful tool for future research on Andean peasant movements. First, much like 1920s Peruvian thinker Jos Carlos Maritegui, whose groundbreaking analysis on Amerindian de-colonization was shaped as a tension between Marxism and the non-modern indigenous question in Peru, Goldmann also questioned the immutability of Marxism, challenging its scientificity with the need to permanently reinvent Marxism according to concrete situations and human needs. Gold-
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mann's insistent humanism would have placed him no less at odds with the theoretical anti-humanism that, pursuant to structuralism, pervaded postmodernism (Goldmann died in 1970). Theoretical anti-humanism was, more often than not, entwined with contempt for liberal values, and Goldmann, though not a liberal, always upheld the importance of liberal principles for radical values. When left-wing anti-humanists negated liberalism, it was to break with it and to place themselves in opposition to it. When the humanist Goldmann transcended liberalism, he did so in the specific Hegelian sense of negating and preserving at once, absorbing its vital aspects into socialism while annulling its abstractions. After all, Goldmann conceived socialist humanism as the culmination and not the annulment of Western thought, though, for him, the specter of tragedy haunted Marxist hopes. Where postmodernists say no and scorn humanism as a throwback, Lucien Goldmann insisted on yes and no. A wager of transcendence contaminated by the authority of tragedy. Second, Maritegui introduced the need for religious myth into his Marxian analysis of a modern Peru torn by the coloniality hidden in its insides. Without being himself religious, yet imbued with a religious spirit in the sense of a moral revitalization, Goldmann was a Marxist who did not portray his aspirations for humanity's future as an inexorable unfolding of history's laws, but as a wager akin to Pascal's in God. For Goldmann, the time of history also needed to be balanced with the time of the gods. Indeed, risk, possibility of failure, hope of success, and the synthesis of the three in a faith (which is a wager) were, for Goldmann, the essential constituent elements of the human condition. Goldmann the dialectician, by accepting the possibility of a historical dialectic unfulfilled opened the possibility of a tragic Marxism. This brought him to an existential dialectic, that is, to one that never attains ultimate synthesis. As Goldmann wagered on totality, so too do today's social movements wager on revolution as an urgent necessity, as a question more than a certainty.3 Here Goldmann joins Maritegui and Ernst Bloch in affirming that communism is not linear progress, but a hard and dangerous voyage, a search for hidden roots, a movement replete with tragic interruptions. Finally, I believe that as a thinker from the borders, or border thinker (Mignolo 13), Goldmann was particularly sensitive to social formations in which legal structures are superimposed on a largely peasant, pre-capitalist society. Goldmann, a town boy, was born in Moldavia and was exposed to a marginal existence in a profoundly troubled country.
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Rural poverty and backwardness in Eastern Europe were in many ways similar to the economic structures we find in the Andes. Indeed, this fact is well known by historians who apply Witold Kula's analysis of the Polish land tenure system to the understanding of the Spanish American colonial hacienda system. Furthermore, political conditions in Eastern Europe, much like those in the Andes, were dominated by Liberal and Conservative parties at the turn of the twentieth century. There was, in brief, a modern liberal superstructure with a feudal base, and the fundamental question of social development, the agrarian question, could not be solved within parties in which the tone was set by serf-owning landlords dressed in European liberal clothes. Of course, Goldmann was long gone from Romania when he created his studies on Pascal and Racine, but the categories he assimilated during his youth in Moldavia (humanism, secular religiosity, and socialism) remained within him. It is the coming to grips with these antagonisms that matches Goldmann's dialectics with Maritegui's critical thought, placing both of them beyond or, better yet, aside positivism and Cartesian epistemology.
NOTES
I refer here to Walter Mignolo's observations on an-other paradigm (Mignolo 2001, 66-71). By an-other paradigm Mignolo means that the perspective from coloniality, being thought out and implemented by indigenous leaders and new radical movements, is a different way of understanding reality, a way of understanding from the point of view of the subjugated and of the oppressed. I follow Jos Rabasa's observation that indigenous identity is not premodern, but non-modern. In this sense, indigenous ways of being and thinking are an-other way of thinking, not a previous or backward stage of thinking, nor can it be measured by a Western teleological dimension (Rabasa 1998, 53-68). The observations I make here regarding the wager on revolution coincide with recent reflections on Zapatismo made by Guillermo Almeyra at Mexico's Universidad Autnoma Metropolitana (Almeyra 2002).
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WORKS CITED
Alb, Xavier. 1987. From MNRistas to Kataristas to Katari, In Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World. Ed. Steve J. Stern. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Almeyra, Guillermo. 2002 El dificultoso no-asalto al n-cielo. Presentation of John Holloway's book Cambiar el mundo sin tomar el poder at the Universidad Autnoma Metropolitana, Unidad Xochimilco, on November 28. Beverley, John. 1999. Writing in Reverse: The Subaltern and the Limits of Knowledge, in Subalternity and Representation. Arguments in Cultural Theory. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. Fernndez Osco, Marcelo. 2000. La ley del ayllu. La Paz: PIEB. Goldmann, Lucien. [1954] 1964. The Hidden God: A Study of Tragic Vision in the Penses of Pascal and the Tragedies of Racine. Tr. P.Thody. London and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Guha, Ranajit. 1983. Elements of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Latin American Subaltern Studies Group. 1993. Founding Statement, boundary 2 20: 3. Maritegui, Jos Carlos. [1928] 1998. Siete ensayos de interpretacin de la realidad peruana. Mexico: Ediciones Era. Mignolo, Walter. 2001. Local Histories/Global Designs. Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Rabasa, Jos. 1998. Del zapatismo: reflexiones sobre lo folclrico y lo imposible en la insurreccin subalterna del EZLN, Kipus. Revista Andina de Letras (Quito) 9.2. Rabasa, Jos, and Javier Sanjins. [1994] 1996. Introduction. The Politics of Subaltern Studies, in Subaltern Studies in the Americas. Dispositio/n 46. Rivera Cusicanqui Silvia. 1984. Orpimidos pero no vencidos. Luchas del campesinado aymara y qhechwa 1900-1980. La Paz: Hisbol-CSUTCB. , 1992. La raz: colonizadores y colonizados, in Violencias encubiertas en Bolivia. Ed. Xavier Alb y Franz Barrios. La Paz: Hisbol. Rodrguez, Ileana.2001. Reading Subalterns Across Texts, Disciplines, and Theories: From Representation to Recognition, in The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader. Ed. Ileana Rodrguez. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. Sarlo, Beatriz. 1988. Una modernidad perifrica: Buenos Aires 1920 y 1930. Buenos Aires: Nueva Visin.
UN PARADIGMA OTRO: COLONIALIDAD GLOBAL, PENSAMIENTO FRONTERIZO Y COSMOPOLITANISMO CRITICO

Walter D. Mignolo Duke University
n la ltima dcada se fue produciendo una confluencia entre un grupo de intelectuales y acadmicos, en distintas partes de Amrica Latina y tambin en Estados Unidos, cuyas reflexiones ms o menos independientes de cada uno se fueron acercando hasta formar una suerte de grupo-red en el que circulamos fsicamente, por Internet y por encuentros parciales entre cada uno de nosotros. El punto de encuentro lo fueron dando las reflexiones y publicaciones de Enrique Dussel y de Anbal Quijano, desde fines del 80 y principios del 90. Conceptos claves en Dussel como el de transmodernidad, encubrimiento del otro, revisin del concepto de dependencia en la obra de Marxen los cuales fue repensando las primeras tesis en cuanto a la filosofa y la tica de la liberacinofrecieron a varios de nosotros temas para la reflexin. Anbal Quijano estuvo elaborando, desde finales de los 80, el concepto fundamental de colonialidad del poder, sus consecuencias epistmico y ticas y el concepto de socializacin del poder como orientacin de proyectos descolonizadores.1 Paralelo a las contribuciones de Quijano y Dussel cabe mencionar la produccin intelectual y poltica del economista y telogo de la liberacin alemn, radicado en Amrica Latina desde principios de 1970, Franz Hinkelammert. Aunque Enrique Dussel fue y sigue siendo estrecho colaborador de Hinkelammert desde los aos 70, la obra de este ltimo slo recientemente comienza a ser integrada y discutida en este contexto. En fin, Dussel, Quijano y Hinkelammert han provisto (y siguen contribuyendo) a la configuracin de lo que aqu describir como un para-
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digma otro de pensamiento critico. Por qu un paradigma otro? Puesto que, como lo explico a continuacin, no se trata de un nuevo paradigma ubicado en la misma epistemologa de los cambios paradigmticos estudiados por Thomas Khun o los cambios de episteme estudiados por Michel Foucault. Un paradigma otro es, en relacin a los cambios paradigmticos de Khun y a las rupturas epistmicas de Foucault, un cambio paradigmtico y una ruptura epistmica espacial. Esto es, surge no de la cronologa monotpica y totalizate del concepto autopoitico y reflexivo de la modernidad, sino desde los espacios coloniales que la auto-narrativa y auto-perfil de los pensadores modernos que concibieron la modernidad y se concibieron en ella, neg como posibilidades de pensamiento. Si en un primer momento el ateo y el pagano quedaban fuera de la totalidad por su equivocacin en trminos religiosos, en un segundo momento (y desde la emergencia del indio americano), el espacio que la modernidad y la modernizacin deba ganar era un espacio vaci de pensamientos o que haba que vaciar para llenarlo con la episteme moderna. La justificacin de la expansin moderna revela su cara oculta, la colonialidad, que le es constitutiva. Pero como cara oculta de la modernidad, la coloniadad tiene un pie en cada lado, es el lado oscuro de la modernidad que al mismo tiempo re-orienta las energas de quienes tienen que soportar su negacin (espacio vaco) y la violencia (la desocupacin a la que estn sujetos). Un paradigma otro surge en y desde las fronteras de las historias coloniales, donde la colonialidad se hace ms visible. Un paradigma otro busca la descolonizacin epistmica, pero no ya dentro de la modernidad misma (en la cual la descolonizacin no sera otra cosa que un nuevo paradigma pero no un paradigma otro), sino en su exterioridad: all donde la modernidad se mira en el espejo sucio e invertido de su marcha triunfal y triunfante cristiana, civilizadora liberal, marxista, desarrollista neoliberal. Un paradigma otro surge de los limites de las grandes narrativas, totalizadoras y totalizantes, de la modernidad, en sus dobles caras, emancipatorias y reguladoras. La descolonizacin epistmica a la que apunta un paradigma otro no es por lo tanto un proyecto que consiste en producir una nueva colonizacin en el mbito de los universales abstractos (cristianismo, liberalismo, marxismo), sino que al emerger en los espacios de frontera requiere epistemologas fronterizas, por un lado, y la apertura hacia la di-(o pluri)versalidad y no ya la cerrazn en un nuevo paradigma dentro de la universalidad.
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Se trata, aqu, de bosquejar un paradigma otro de pensamiento. Esto es, de pensamiento analtico y pensamiento visionario que contribuya a construir espacios de esperanzas en un mundo en donde la prdida del sentido comn, el egotismo ciego, los fundamentalismos religiosos y seculares, el pensamiento crtico que piensa los conceptos que piensan los conceptos y olvida la razn por la cual los conceptos fueron inventados, llegan a celebrar lo cyborg, la matriz, la genmica, etc., y a olvidar la mera cuestin de la generacin y reproduccin de la vida en el planetano slo de la vida humana, sino de la vida simplemente. La genmica se transforma as en la posibilidad de producir nuevas mercancas ms que de contribuir a celebrar el vivir, el gozar, la creatividad. Comerciar con rganos humanos como si fueran semillas o frutas es ya un procedimiento casi naturalizado; comerciar con cuerpos humanos como si fueran productos de KMart, son prcticas tambin comunes y reveladoras de formas de pensamientos y de subjetividad en los que la ganancia, la acumulacin, el consumo, la posesin de bienes son los nicos destinos justificables en el proyecto de civilizacin neo-liberal. O el desprecio de vidas humanas en pro de ideales, estatales o contra-estatales, como hemos visto en y a partir del 11 de septiembre, en ambos lados. O en el teatro de Mosc que, en Octubre del 2002, aunque no se tratara de un caso de terrorismo contraestatal, dio lugar a una especie de terrorismo estatal. Las crticas a tal proyecto, an en el interior de la matriz epistmica en la cual el proyecto se inscribe, estn llegando tambin a su estado de agotamiento. Mi discurso en pro de la vida, del vivir, no tiene sus fundamentos en el vitalismo de la filosofa europea sino en el grito del sujeto, al decir de Hinkelammert, de las vidas que gritan, a travs del sujeto, las miserias a las que fueron llevadas por aos de colonialismo y, ltimamente, de civilizacin neoliberal. De ah la necesidad de imaginar no ya nuevos paradigmas inscritos en el proyecto de la modernidad (tanto colonizadores como liberadores), del cual el proyecto del neoliberalismo es parte y consecuencia, sino paradigmas otros. En este espacio, intento contribuir a futuros posibles construidos sobre distintos principios polticos, ticos, econmicos y epistmicos. Un paradigma otro es distinto y complementario de la transicin paradigmtica que identific y present con fuerza argumentativa, Boa de Sousa Santos. Ambos surgen de la misma constatacin: el agotamiento del proyecto de la modernidad. Sin duda, esta constatacin no es novedosa puesto que es uno de los argumentos de las variadas crticas a la modernidad agrupadas bajo el nombre de postmodernidad; esto es, tanto el con-
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junto de cambios sociales detectables como la toma de conciencia crtica de las circunstancias que llevan a esos cambios. Sin embargo, Sousa Santos toma un camino divergente y sus argumentos estn enderezados a configurar un postmodernismo oposicional. En que se distingue la propuesta de Sousa Santos de las ideas y las tesis postmodernistas que surgieron en Francia (Lyotard, Baudrillard, Foucault, Derrida) o Estados Unidos (Jameson, Harvey)? Puntualizo dos aspectos centrales: a) una mayor apertura a la variedad epistmica y poltica del mundo, particularmente atento a la variedad de historias locales en relacin y conflicto con la modernidad europea, principalmente en contextos coloniales y neocoloniales en los cuales la cultura Occidental se las arregl para imponerse y prevalecer como la cultura hegemnica (1995, xi) y b) una direccionalidad prospectiva a sus anlisis, una utopstica en trminos de Wallerstein, que Sousa Santos conceptualiza en los dos proyectos contradictorios de la modernidad (regulacin y emancipacin). El agotamiento de la modernidad es, para Sousa Santos, doble. Por un lado, histrico social en la medida que la civilizacin neoliberal de ms en ms impone el principio regulador de la modernidad y, por otro, en el agotamiento de las ideologas modernas (cristianismo, liberalismo y marxismo) para imaginar futuros posibles. La emancipacin adquiere, en Sousa Santos, un carcter y una dimensin muy diferente a la que tiene, por ejemplo, en Ernesto Laclau. Mientras que Laclau piensa la emancipacin en los lmites de las ideologas de la modernidad, Sousa Santos abre el proyecto a una escala planetaria que se concretiza, en la actualidad, en el proyecto auspiciado por la Fundacin McArthur Reinventing Social Emancipaton. Un paradigma otro, complementario a la transicin paradigmtica emerge, en su diversidad, en y desde las perspectivas de las historias coloniales. Los movimientos indgenas, por ejemplo, en Amrica Latina; el levantamiento zapatista; la historia del colonialismo desde la perspectiva de los actores que lo vivieron en las colonias (Criollos, Mestizos, Indgenas o Afro-Americanos), como sus equivalentes en frica y Asia, es el lugar epistmico en donde surge un paradigma otro. Este ltimo no es un paradigma de transicin sino un paradigma de disrupcin. Se entronca en la discontinuidad de la tradicin clsica que ocurre en el primer momento de la expansin colonial cuando Cristbal Coln, cargado de sus lecturas antiguas y medievales, se encuentra con gentes para quienes esa tradicin les es ajena, y tampoco les importa. Pero esas gentes pagaron las consecuencias de ser ajenos a la tradicin Greco-Latina y de no importarles tampoco. Las
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consecuencias fueron el silencio, la imposibilidad de ingresar en el dialogo de pensamiento y, por lo tanto, de pasar solamente a ser pensados. La situacin inicial, la diferencia epistmica colonial, se repiti luego, a lo largo de la expansin colonial. Por cierto que la reduccin al silencio no signific que quienes desconocan la tradicin greco-latina se sujetaran, no se resistieran, ni tampoco escribieran. Sino que lo que escriban o decan no llegaba a la imprenta controlada por quienes imponan el silencio; ni tampoco las lenguas de las zonas colonizadas eran afines a la historia del griego, el latn y las lenguas vernculas. Hasta el rabe, idioma al cual tanto le debe la modernidad europea fue acallado, y es as que hoy la memoria mutilada del rabe, junto con otros saberes de lenguas marginadas, es un componente fuerte en el surgimiento de un paradigma otro (Al-Jabri, 1994). En suma, un paradigma otro en su diversidad planetaria est conectado por una experiencia histrica comn, el colonialismo; y un principio epistmico que ha marcado todas sus historias: el horizonte colonial de la modernidad. Esto es, la lgica histrica impuesta por la colonialidad del poder. Tal paradigma est disperso en el papel (libros, artculos) y en las acciones (talleres, actividades polticas, reuniones de distinto tipo) pero est claro en las ideas de quienes han estado trabajando, dialogando y participando en estas reuniones. El paradigma otro al que me refiero no tiene un origen especfico, un autor en el que todo se resume y donde los curiosos periodistas y estudiantes pueden ir a enterarse. El origen del paradigma otro se le encuentra en el siglo XVI. La colonizacin hispnica y lusitana de Amrica produjo, necesariamente, un pensamiento otro (en el sentido en que quienes vivan en Tawantinsuyu y Anhuac, y en las costas del Atlntico) no tenan ni la ms remota idea, ni tenan por que tenerla, de quien sera Aristteles o Platn; Ibn Shina (Avicena) o Ibn Rush (Averroes). Los espaoles s saban quienes eran estos ltimos dos autores, pero preferan no saberlo u olvidarlo. El paradigma otro se contina en los autores indgenas del XVI y mediados del XVII (Waman Puma, Pachacuti Yamki, Alvarado Tezozomoc, Chimalpain, etc.), en los annimos gritos, quejas, conversaciones, murmullos y rumores de los esclavos negros en las costas del Atlntico y en las Islas del Caribe, tanto hombres como mujeres. Se manifiesta por escrito en la lite disidente, pero ms afortunada, de pensadores criollos y mestizos, en Amrica Latina, que tenan-contrario a los indgenas y negros-acceso a la imprenta y a la pgina escrita, aunque sus escritos no tenan la circulacin y visibilidad que tenan los autores castellanos (Seplveda, Las Casas, Vitoria, Acosta, etc.). El paradigma otro surge
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en ese silencio que grita detrs de cada pgina de autor castellano sobre la conquista y la colonizacin de Amrica; surge de ese silencio que llega a dejar de existir porque es silencio y solo se ve lo que cuentan los autores europeos: de Las Casas o Vitoria a Kant y Hegel; de Locke a Marx. De a poco, sin embargo, el rumor del paradigma otro va encontrndose en las pginas, en la imprenta. Surgen W.E.B. DuBois en Estados Unidos y Jos Carlos Maritegui, en Per, a principios del siglo XX; Anibal Quijano y Enrique Dussel que siguen los pasos de Maritegui en la segunda mitad del siglo XX; Aime Cesaire y Frantz Fanon en la segunda mitad del siglo XX, en el Caribe Francs; Sylvia Winters, George Lamming, Lewis Gordon y Padget Henry; en el Caribe Ingls (Barbados, Jamaica, Antigua); el grupo de estudios subalternos del sur de Asia, en los 80; los movimientos indgenas a partir del 70 en los pases andinos, y Felipe Quispe, El Mallku, en los ltimos aos (Sanjins, 2002); y tambin el movimiento Zapatista; surge la filosofa africana a partir de los 70, fundamentalmente en el sur de frica; surge un pensamiento critico chicano/a/latino/a en el sur de Estados Unidos, a partir del 70, que tiene ya un cuerpo fuerte y visible (Gloria Anzaldua, Jos y Ramn Saldvar, Norma Alarcn, Chela Sandoval, Linda Martn Alcoff, Eduardo Mendieta) que se extiende hoy hacia lo hispnico; surgi un pensamiento critico del sur de Europa que le da una nueva dimensin al Antonio Gramsci de la cuestin surea (Franco Cassano y Roberto Dainotto en Italia; Boaventura de Sousa Santos en Portugal). No estoy sugiriendo que hay una unidad, una coherencia frrea exigida por el pensamiento de la modernidad que une a todos estos proyectos. Todo lo contrario. Por eso estoy hablando de un paradigma otro y no de otro paradigma que sera simplemente uno ms, el ltimo en llegar, siguiendo la lgica de todos los anteriores. No, no hay una constitucin que ligue a estos proyectos y los fuerce a seguir la ley de la coherencia. Estos proyectos forman un paradigma otro porque tienen en comn la perspectiva y la crtica a la modernidad desde la colonialidad; esto es, no ya la modernidad reflejada a s misma en el espejo, preocupada por los horrores del colonialismo, sino vista por la colonialidad que la mira reflejarse a s misma en el espejo. Todos estos proyectos surgen de la toma de conciencia que no se trata de diferencias culturales sino que de lo que se trata es de diferencias coloniales. Las diferencias coloniales fueron construidas por el pensamiento hegemnico en distintas pocas, marcando la falta y los excesos de las poblaciones no-europeas, y ahora no-estadounidenses, que era necesario corregir. La diferencia colonial o las difer-
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encias coloniales fueron enmascaradas de diferencias culturales para ocultar el diferencial de poder; esto es, la colonialidad del poder. Entre las muchas cosas que los pueblos no-europeos carecan era de la posibilidad de crear pensamiento (no de pensar porque eso ya sera mucho decir) a la manera en que el pensamiento se conceba en el Renacimiento, cuando comenz el proceso de colonizacin y la clasificacin de las poblaciones del planeta por su nivel de inteligencia. El paradigma otro al que me estoy refiriendo tiene sto en comn: pensar a partir y desde la diferencia colonial. No transformar la diferencia colonial en un objeto de estudio estudiado desde la perspectiva epistmica de la modernidad; sino pensar desde el dolor de la diferencia colonial; desde el grito del sujeto, como dira Franz Hinkelammert. El pensamiento fronterizo sera precisamente el del rumor de los desheredados de la modernidad; aquellos para quienes sus experiencias y sus memorias corresponde a la otra mitad de la modernidad, esto es, a la colonialidad. No tiene importancia, es ms, sera un peligro generalizar el pensamiento fronterizo y sacarlo de la historicidad de donde surge, en la colonialidad de la modernidad. Pero tambin, el rumor de los disidentes imperiales (como las polticas estatales de Rusia, China o Japn) con un ojo mirando y negociando con Occidente y con el otro mirando hacia sus excolonias o territorios antes controlados. Es en la lgica de un pensamiento historizado por y en la colonialidad, que pienso en un paradigma otro y el pensamiento fronterizo como uno de sus puntos de articulacin. Tal paradigma no tiene su anclaje en Aristteles o Platn, o en Adn y Eva, en Dante o Marx, o en el Big-Bang sino en el momento en que comienza a gestarse la modernidad y, por lo tanto, la colonialidad. Es a partir de este momento en el que el antes del siglo XVI y despus del siglo XVI se piensa. No es nada nuevo. As lo ha hecho el cristianismo, Hegel, Marx, Prigogine y tantos otros que han creado o tomado un punto de anclaje para contar la historia, del mundo o de la humanidad. El pensamiento fronterizo tiene su anclaje en el siglo XVI, con la invencin de Amrica y se contina en y con la historia del capitalismo (Arrighi, 1994; Arrighi y Silver 2000), y con la reproduccin de la lgica de la colonialidad y la celebracin de la modernidad como punto de llegada de la civilizacin mundial.? Si un paradigma otro no estuviera ya en marcha en varias partes habra que inventarlo. La poltica exterior de Estados Unidos intensifica da a da el hecho de que la dominacin es necesaria frente al debilitamiento de su hegemona. Los paradigmas de la modernidad (cambios de epistemes,
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cambios de paradigmas, los post que se acumulan, etc.) han tocado fondo. La utopstica imaginada y requerida por Immanuel Wallerstein no puede ya generarse y ser liderada por nuevas vueltas de tuerca a la herencia grecolatina de pensamiento, y a sus dos paradas (como los trenes o los autobuses) histricas: el Renacimiento europeo y la Ilustracin en Europa. Lo utopstico significa, para Wallerstein (1998), la evaluacin seria de las alternativas histricas, el ejercicio de nuestro juicio para ponderar alternativas racionales para el futuro. El futuro son ya muchos futuros y es impensable que esos mltiples futuros sean ideados, diseados y ejecutados por las transformaciones del pensamiento honesto liberal (a la John Rawls) o las transfiguraciones del materialismo histrico. Esa utopstica est siendo y tendr que seguir siendo imaginada y ejecutada en los variados bordes del planeta. Si el capital, hoy, no puede seguir extendindose porque ya ha ocupado todos los territorios (literal y figurativamente) disponibles, ser en sus lmites (esto es, los lmites trazados en el sistema inter-estatal de los aproximadamente doscientos estados nacionales existentes hoy, tanto como los lmites cada vez ms visibles generados por la inmigracin del sur en Europa y en Estados Unidos) que se imaginar esa utopstica. Si la utopstica es, en otras palabras, la evaluacin sobria, racional y realista de los sistemas socio-histricos, las zonas abiertas a la creatividad humana con fines que no son los del lucro, la acumulacin de objetos, la dominacin a toda costa, esa evaluacin difcilmente podr ser solamente ejecutada en y desde las disciplinas. El conocimiento disciplinario es uno, y no cubre el conocimiento no-disciplinario-esto es, no-academico) acumulado en el planeta durante quinientos aos de expansin capitalista y colonialista; conocimiento generado y acumulado en los bordes y en los mrgenes; esto es, un conocimiento generado en la conciencia de que no era conocimiento; y que lo que contaba como conocimiento era slo aquel producido en las instituciones imperiales y en el cuerpo de los expertos entrenados en tales instituciones imperiales, tanto en el imperio como en los mrgenes coloniales. Y sobre todo, las vas posibles de constante liberacin y emancipacin de las estructuras de explotacin y dominacin. Curiosamente, el paradigma otro al que me refiero es compatible pero diferente del paradigma en el que se sita el propio Wallerstein. Y por cierto, aun ms diferente del pensamiento de la postmodernidad, tanto en su fase nihilista (Vattimo), psicoanaltica (Zizek), marxista (Jameson), o de la incompleta modernidad (Habermas); como as tambin de las vertientes posmodernas del feminismo noratlantico (Cixoux, Butler). En cambio,
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pienso que el paradigma otro est en consonancia con el pensamiento crtico de las mujeres de color (Anzaldua, Alarcn, Moraga, Mohanty, bell hooks, etc.). Veo en este pensamiento crtico un cruce entre raza y gnero en el que se anuda la colonialidad, ausente en el pensamiento del feminismo postmodernista noratlntico. Y-de ms est deciropuesto al paradigma neo-liberal y sus variantes. La mera concepcin de un paradigma otro presupone un anlisis de la geopoltica del conocimiento, la cual es paralela a la geopoltica de la economa. Hay economas fuertes y dbiles, economas desarrolladas y subdesarrolladas, economas emergidas (es decir, que ya emergieron) y economas emergentes. Un proceso semejante ocurre en el mbito del conocimiento y de las lenguas. Hay lenguas de conocimiento (ingls, francs, alemn) y lenguas de traduccin del conocimiento (espaol, italiano, portugus); lenguas de traduccin pero tambin coloniales (el castellano en Amrica Latina o el spanglish en Estados Unidos) y lenguas de cultura (aymara, bengali) y lenguas entre la traduccin y la cultura (chino, rabe, hind). Un paradigma otro est surgiendo en la discontinuidad de las fronteras, desde las experiencias coloniales, y desde el sur de Europa (de Souza Santos en Portugal; Franco Cassano en Italia; el proyecto editorial de Desclee y la Junta de Andaluca sobre derechos humanos). Por claridad pedaggica convendra tener en cuenta tres zonas de diferencia y relaciones de poder epistmico sobre las que se asientan las reflexiones que siguen: a) El imaginario moderno se estructur sobre cinco ideologas bsicas. Una-el cristianismo-fue dominante en la primera modernidad, durante los siglos XVI y XVII. Otras tres surgieron despus de la revolucin francesa, segn Wallerstein: el conservadurismo, el liberalismo y el socialismo (marxismo) secular. El cristianismo se sum, un tanto degradado, a las ideologas seculares de la segunda modernidad, de la modernidad secular. Finalmente, el colonialismo fue la quinta ideologa oculta ?que no menciona Wallerstein? puesto que, contrario a todas las otras, el colonialismo fue una ideologa de la que no se poda estar orgulloso. El colonialismo como ideologa es paralela a la conquista y colonizacin de Amrica, y se re-estructura en el siglo XVIII, cuando el Imperio Britnico y Francia se extienden por Asia y frica. Fue una ideologa necesaria para el avance civilizatorio de Occidente, pero de la cual, en el proyecto mismo de Occidente, nadie poda estar orgulloso. Esto ocurri en el siglo XVI, en el XIX, en el XX y en el XXI. En el nmero 81/2 de Foreign Affairs, de Marzo del 2002, Sebastin Mallaby, editorialista del Washington Post, inicia el vol-
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umen con un artculo titulado The Reluctant Imperialism. El resumen es suficiente, no hace falta leer el artculo: El fracaso de los Estados hace que estos se vean atrapados en ciclos de pobreza y violencia. La solucin para los Estados Unidos y sus aliados es aprender a amar el imperialismo nuevamente. Esto es, as como la modernidad/colonialidad son dos caras de la misma moneda, tambin lo son imperialismo/colonialismo. Desde el imperio espaol hasta el imperio de Estados Unidos y sus aliados, pasando por el britnico y sus aliados, la colonia fue la otra cara del imperio: el colonialismo es el lado oscuro del imperialismo. Las discusiones sobre si hoy conviene hablar de imperialismo o colonialismo son discusiones sin sentido. El imperialismo es la cara visible, el colonialismo es el mal necesario. En este momento, el mundo est tan mal que es necesario, a pesar del deseo de los Estados Unidos, nos sugiere Mallaby, apelar al imperialismo de nuevo y por lo tanto a la reactivacin de las polticas coloniales. Lo curioso e interesante es que desde 1950 Estados Unidos no est haciendo otra cosa que rearticular el colonialismo afianzndose como imperio, aunque sus idelogos enuncian el discurso de la libertad y la soberana. El colonialismo es la mala conciencia del imperialismo; la colonialidad el lado oscuro y necesario de la modernidad; b) Cuatro de las ideologas de la modernidad tienen una doble cara, la cara genocida (al decir de Dussel) y la cara emancipatoria o liberadora. El cristianismo es a la vez liberador (la teologa de la liberacin) y genocida (la historia colonial de la cual el Papa enunci una lista incompleta de disculpas); el liberalismo es tambin compaero del imperio y de la emancipacin; el conservadurismo no es una ideologa diablica que propone la exterminacin de la humanidad, sino el orden, las buenas costumbres y la moral recta; el socialismo/marxismo, surgi como propuesta de liberacin del ser humano, aunque cay en los mismos males del cristianismo, liberalismo y conservadurismo. El colonialismo fue una ideologa distinta, en la medida en que su implementacin significaba integrar distintos pueblos a las ideologas de la modernidad europea; hacer que distintos pueblos que no tenan nada que ver con el cristianismo se convirtieran a la cristiandad; distintos pueblos cuyo modo de vida no tena nada que ver con el de Inglaterra y Francia se integraran a la civilizacin; distintos pueblos que estaban lejos y distantes de la revolucin industrial, se convirtieran y afiliaran a la revolucin del proletariado. Para eso fue necesaria la ideologa colonialista, para homogeneizar al planeta e integrar a las pobla-
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ciones a las ideologas (distintas, pero compatibles) liberadoras de la modernidad europea. c) Pero el colonialismo dio pie a historias otras y no slo a otras historias integradas y absorbidas en el super-paradigma de la civilizacin occidental y de la modernidad Europea, sino historias otras; es decir, historias que emergieron de rupturas y discontinuidades; que salieron de la tirana del tiempo lineal, del progreso, y de la evolucin. Estas historias otras fueron las rupturas que se produjeron con los procesos de descolonizacin. Si bien poltica y econmicamente las descolonizaciones no terminaron con los lazos econmicos y polticos de las metrpolis, esa misma imposibilidad hizo que a partir de ellas surgieran pensamientos disidentes, pensamientos otros, historias otras. Hay dos etapas en esta historia y, en general, dos proyectos que se entrelazaron de manera no siempre clara. Una etapa fue la de la primera descolonizacin, la descolonizacin en las Amricas (Revolucin de Estados Unidos, 1776; Revolucin Haitiana, 1804; Independencias de pases hispanoamericanos y de Brasil, durante la primera mitad del siglo XIX). La Segunda etapa correspondi a los procesos de descolonizacin en Asia (India) y frica (Argelia, Tnez, Nigeria, etc.) desde 1947 hasta 1970 aproximadamente. De esta segunda etapa de descolonizacin surgi la ideologa contra-colonialista o de la descolonizacin no slo poltica sino intelectual. Frantz Fanon fue uno de estos idelogos, que surgi de la descolonizacin de las colonias francesas. En Estados Unidos, a principios de siglo, W.E.B Dubois fue tambin quien avanz en la ideologa de la descolonizacin intelectual. Un proyecto fue poltico (independencia y construccin de estados nacionales). El otro proyecto fue epistmico, y este proyecto es el que se est construyendo con ms fuerza y claridad desde la segunda mitad del siglo XX. Un paradigma otro surge del pensamiento que piensa la descolonizacin no como objeto (esto es, las ciencias sociales que estudian y explican los movimientos de descolonizacin) sino como fuerza de pensamiento: Cmo descolonizarme y ayudar a la descolonizacin de todos aquellos que, como yo, fueron llevados a creer que no podemos pensar si no pensamos en alguna de las variantes de las cuatro ideologas de la modernidad? Por necesidad, ese pensamiento que comienza a construir un paradigma otro tiene que pensarse en la interseccin de las experiencias que el saber de la modernidad releg a objetos del colonialismo con la descolonizacin como fuerza crtica del sujeto que no quiere estudiarse a s mismo
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como objeto, sino pensarse a s mismo en proyectos liberadores, emancipadores; el pensamiento de un sujeto que no quiere que le den la libertad sino que quiere tomarla por s mismo, construyendo su propio proyecto en un paradigma otro; no dejarse atar al paradigma de la modernidad, en cualquiera de sus variantes liberadoras que son ya parciales en la medida en que se agotaron las posibilidades de que las soluciones y los proyectos futuros puedan slo surgir de las agotadas posibilidades de la modernidad. La contribucin desde la colonialidad es fundamental para el futuro, y de ah la necesidad de la diversidad que se congrega en un paradigma otro. Un paradigma otro no es lo mismo que un nuevo paradigma que se suma a los ya existentes en el ascendiente proceso de la historia moderna y occidental. No slo que no es lo mismo sino que (para decirlo con una expresin comn de Anbal Quijano) es todo lo contrario. Un paradigma otro est en germen y germinando en variadas genealogas de pensamiento generadas por el diferencial de poder instituido por la colonialidad epistmica. Por ejemplo, un pensamiento otro (Khatibi), una lengua otra (Arteaga), una lgica otra (Dussel). Un paradigma otro marca la discontinuidad en la historia de la modernidad, contada desde la perspectiva de la propia modernidad; e introduce la del momento de ruptura y de discontinuidad. No surge, digamos, la mirada de Coln mirando a los indios mientras se acerca a la costa sino la de los indios mirando ese objeto extrao, en el agua, que se acerca a la cosa. Esas dos miradas se ligaron, se entrelazaron en una relacin de poder; se plant la semilla de la colonialidad del poder y con ella el paradigma silenciado durante mucho tiempo de quienes ven el mundo desde las costas a la que llegan los barcos, los ferrocarriles, los bancos, los aviones. La perspectiva de quienes creen que no hay modernidad sin colonialidad y que la colonialidad origin miradas de encono, de necesidad de liberacin, de reaccin frente a la arrogancia y la ceguera tanto de la crueldad de algunos como de la bondad de otros. La perspectiva de quien mira desde la costa, el cuento de la superacin del colonialismo, de que el colonialismo es cosa del pasado y que ahora estamos en la postmodernidad del imperio suena, francamente, a cuento. La postmodernidad del Imperio no es sino post-colonialidad en el sentido literal del trmino: nuevas formas de colonialidad, esto es, de colonialidad global. Partir del reconocimiento de este hecho significa partir de una diferencia epistmica, de una ruptura epistmica espacial irrecuperable en la trayectoria tanto de las rupturas epistmicas temporales de Michel Foucault o de la temporalidad, lineal, de la ruptura de paradigmas de Thomas Khun. Fou-
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cault y Khun nos hablaron de otros paradigmas, no de paradigmas otros, los cuales, intuyo, estaban fuera de las posibilidades de ambos. Aqu se trata de un paradigma otro o mejor an de la diversidad de un paradigma otro en la medida en que este se articula en la diversidad de las historias coloniales (Amrica Latina, frica, Asia) pero tambin desde el Sur de Europa, la Europa devaluada en la geopoltica del conocimiento y de la esttica de Hegel y Kant.
La doble cara de la modernidad/colonialidad.

Mientras que por un lado se cantan, y se cantaron desde siempre, loas a la cristianizacin, a la civilizacin, al progreso, a la modernizacin, al desarrollo (la cara de la modernidad), por otro se oculta que para que todo ello ocurra es necesario la violencia, la barbarie, el atraso, la invencin de la tradicin, el subdesarollo (la cara de la colonialidad). Desde siempre, es decir, desde el siglo XVI, la modernidad y la colonialidad van juntas; no hay modernidad sin colonialidad aunque los discursos siempre pronunciados desde la perspectiva de la modernidad presentan a la colonialidad no como un fenmeno constitutivo sino derivativo: la gran mentira (o quizs el gran error y la gran ignorancia, si se prefiere) es hacer creer (o creer) que la modernidad superar la colonialidad cuando, en verdad, la modernidad necesita de la colonialidad para instalarse, construirse y subsistir. No hubo, no hay y no habr modernidad sin colonialidad. Por eso, necesitamos imaginar un futuro otro y no ya la completud del proyecto incompleto de la modernidad. Un cosmopolitanismo no-kantiano, que emerger del pensamiento fronterizo ms que del orden natural de los estados-naciones; de la integracin de las diferencias ms que de la marginacin del otro lado de las fronteras, es una posibilidad. Ese cosmopolitanismo deber ser un cosmpolitanismo crtico, nepantlesco, es decir, un cosmopolitanismo crtico que no tenga como objetivo defender el territorio sino buscar la integracin de las diferencias y la socializacin del poder. Estoy insistiendo en lo que es comn en el pensamiento crtico que identifico aqu como un paradigma otro. Con ello no quiero decir epistemologas alternativas a la epistemologa de la modernidad y la modernidad como epistemologa sino alternativas a la epistemologa de la modernidad y a la modernidad como epistemologa. Esas epistemologas otras, formadoras de paradigmas otros, estn construyndose geopolticamente, desde la experiencia y la toma de conciencia de la diferencia colonial. Por
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qu y para que? Porque, como lo explico enseguida, los principios que guan la concepcin moderna del conocimiento y su estructura estn sustentados en cuatro grandes ideologas y sus herencias greco-latinas: el Cristianismo que fue hegemnico en Europa y en las Amricas desde el siglo XVI al XVIII y las tres ideologas seculares que surgieron de la Revolucin Francesa (conservadurismo, liberalismo y socialismo). El Cristianismo por cierto no desaparece con la secularizacin. Por el contrario, se re-articula. Las contradicciones diacrnicas funcionan de manera diferente a la lgica del mercado para el cual el producto viejo es descartado y reemplazado por el nuevo. Las crticas a esas ideologas por parte de pensadores como Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger o Derrida constituyen una crtica muy importante pero interior al sistema constituido por las cuatro ideologas y sus constantes cruces, siempre internos. No importa de dnde se mire y cmo se mire, esas cuatro ideologas configuran la cosmovisin y la cosmologa de lo que se denomina Occidente u Occidentalismo. Por cierto, las cuatro ideologas se cruzan y se mezclan, a veces de manera contradictoria. Tambin a veces dejan que entren elementos exteriores que provienen de la ideologa islmica, bant, confuciana o amerindia. Pero son siempre controlables; hay medicinas fuertes que evitan la infeccin cuando se da el contacto con elementos extraos. Entiendo que comunidad en libertad es la contribucin a la bsqueda crtica de formas cosmopolitas de convivencias; no ya en el modelo kantiano derivado del orden natural que Newton descubri en la naturaleza, sino el cosmopolitanismo crtico que emerge en el dilogo cuyo objetivo es la liberacin de las ataduras impuestas por la diferencia colonial, por la tirana del pensamiento moderno y postmoderno. No sera ya suficiente, y habra que evitar la tentacin postmoderna, pensar que en la medida en que Prigogine transform el orden natural en el caos organizado, al cosmopolitanismo habra que adaptarlo hoy y pensarlo a partir de Prigogine y no ya de Kant. Esto es posible (Edgard Morin), pero me parece limitado. Es, una vez ms, un porcentaje de la solucin en la historia sucesiva de paradigmas. Podra ser, en todo caso, un nuevo paradigma cuya contribucin no es desdeable, pero la transformacin deber ser liderada en la gestacin de un paradigma otro que surge no del modelo del caos en el orden natural, sino del modelo de la modernidad/colonialidad en el orden socio-histrico del cual las teoras fsicas, an la del caos, son un subproducto y una consecuencia de ninguna manera la solucin! Entiendo que comunidad en libertad surge de la necesidad vital
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de pensar en y desde los bordes en los que me siento vivir pero que no son mos (al contrario, son los bordes los que me hacen y no me pertenecen) ni son recientes; se fueron constituyendo a lo largo de la formacin y configuracin del mundo moderno/colonial (desde el siglo XV hasta la fecha). Las fronteras geogrficas, en ltima instancia, son la expresin material, y tambin mvil, de dos principios claves de la articulacin conceptual e ideolgica del mundo/moderno colonial: la diferencia colonial y la diferencia imperial. En principio, y en primer lugar, la diferencia colonial y la diferencia imperial fueron necesarias en el discurso de la modernidad occidental desde el Renacimiento hasta hoy, pasando por la Ilustracin, para producir las diferencias que aseguran la mismidad y superioridad de un mundo construido bsicamente sobre las cuatro ideologas visibles de la modernidad, y una quinta, invisible: el colonialismo. En segundo lugar, en el proceso de constitucin de la modernidad/colonialidad (o lo que es lo mismo en otro registro, el proceso imperial/colonial cambiante que acompaa a la historia del capitalismo), necesit de la reconfiguracin de la diferencia colonial e imperial para redefinir la exterioridad necesaria para mantener la cambiante mismidad del sistema. Me refiero al sistema mundo/moderno colonial cuyo espritu (teorizado y narrado por Hegel) est configurado por las cuatro ideologas visibles y la una invisible y sus correspondientes y contemporneos neos. Y, en tercer lugar, se necesit tambin de la diferencia colonial y la diferencia imperial para establecer estructuras de poder en el interior mismo del sistema. Al dispositivo o fuerza motriz que constituy, transform y contina reproduciendo la diferencia colonial y la diferencia imperial le llamo, siguiendo la propuesta de Anbal Quijano, la colonialidad del poder. Un paradigma otro es la expresin que convoca diferentes proyectos de la modernidad/colonialidad unidos por un tipo de pensamiento que aqu describo como pensamiento fronterizo. En qu consiste? Utilizar el ejemplo paradigmtico del pensamiento Chicano/Latino/a del libro de Gloria Anzaldua, Broderland/La frontera. La conciencia de la nueva mestiza (1987), que se usa como conector para otros conceptos que surge de necesidades semejantes (doble conciencia, en Du Bois, un pensamiento otro en Khatibi, creolite en el pensamiento afro-caribeo en francs), etc. El pensamiento fronterizo se distingue de formas parecidas como mestizaje, en la medida en que mestizaje es una expresin inventada desde la perspectiva del poder. Por eso Anzaldua subraya la conciencia de la nueva mestiza. El pensamiento fronterizo, desde la perspectiva de la subal-
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ternidad colonial es un pensamiento que no puede ignorar el pensamiento de la modernidad pero que no puede tampoco subyugarse a l, aunque tal pensamiento moderno sea de izquierda o progresista. El pensamiento fronterizo es el pensamiento que afirma el espacio donde el pensamiento fue negado por el pensamiento de la modernidad, de izquierda o de derecha. Un paradigma otro es entonces la expresin que aglutina la crtica a la modernidad europea desde la periferia de la modernidad Europea misma, es decir, desde el Sur. Si la postmodernidad del Atlntico Norte y el anlisis wallersteiniano del sistema mundo-moderno introdujeron varias formas de crtica eurocntrica al eurocentrismo, dira que-en la geopoltica del conocimiento-con la crtica a la modernidad desde el Sur est emergiendo una crtica no-eurocntrica al eurocentrismo (el Gramsci de la cuestin surea, Cassano, Dainotto, de Sousa Santos) compatible y complementaria a la critica no-eurocntrica que emergi desde las antiguas colonias de los distintos imperios (Fanon, Cesaire, Lamming, Glissant, Quijano, Dussel, Guha, Chakrabarty, Khatibi, Al-Jabri, Shariati, Chuckwudi Eze, Lewis Gordon, Padget Henry; adems de la contribucin del pensamiento Latino/a en Estados Unidos, como el de Norma Alarcn, Chela Sandoval, Paula Moya, Jacqueline Martnez, Linda Martn Alcoff, etc.) Mi intencin en esta lista de nombres no es la de agotar o cerrar la lista de pertenencia, sino meramente sugerir el crecimiento de formas de pensamiento que se complementa con el pensamiento que surge de los movimientos indgenas en Ecuador, en los zapatitas, en Bolivia, en las voces del mundo en el proyecto Reiventing Social Emancipation dirigido por de Sousa Santos. Por cierto no estoy hablando de autenticidades de lugares de enunciacin sino de las meras historias locales de las colonias y las ex-colonias, de las nuevas formas de colonialidad global en la que los brbaros de ayer tienen, para los ejecutores diseos globales, distintos rostros pero el mismo bajo valor de sus propias vidas. No se trata pues de autenticidades sino de elecciones ticas y polticas, de toma de posicin historiogrfica y epistmica, al decidir qu conocimientos son necesarios frente a la hegemona del saber, cules son los silencios a des-cubrir, cules los principios a des-montar. Los lugares de enunciacin generan las geopolticas del conocimiento, en sus diversas y complejas relaciones con los diversos imperialismos occidentales, los cuales han sido diversos pero mancomunados en su pertenencia y contribucin a la historia del capitalismo (Wallerstein, Arrighi). Las condiciones para las decisiones ticas, polticas y epistmicas para la descolonizacin del saber y la contribucin a crear un mundo crtica-
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mente cosmopolita. Esto es, un cosmopolitanismo crtico que se piensa desde la experiencia de la colonialidad y no ya slo desde la experiencia de la modernidad. La colonialidad, por cierto, no es un punto de llegada como lo es todava la idea de modernidad. Todo lo contrario, es un punto de partida desde el que no se sabe a donde se llegar, porque se sabe que no se quiere seguir estando ah. No es tanto el punto de llegada el que alimenta el cosmpolitanismo crtico (como lo fue el cosmopolitanismo de Kant) sino el punto de partida. No es tanto lo que se quiere hacer que impulsa el pensamiento y la accin como lo que ya no se puede seguir haciendo, lo que ya no se quiere hacer. El cosmopolitanismo crtico sera un pensamiento que alimenta un proyecto para dejar de hacer en un mundo en que se est obligado a hacer lo que el neoliberalismo impulsa a que hagamos o crea las condiciones para que la violencia contine siendo. Necesitamos proyectos que creen las condiciones para que la violencia deje de ser y, con ello, que dejen de ser la explotacin y la dominacin. En resumen, la geopoltica del conocimiento nos ayuda a comprender que no toda crtica a la modernidad y al capitalismo est revuelta en el mismo saco, indistinto, y guiado por la marcha triunfante y celebratoria del postestructuralismo. La geopoltica del conocimiento contribuye a abrir los ojos, correr las cortinas y ver que un paradigma otro est surgiendo en y desde los mrgenes. En frica, tanto en el sur como en el norte; en la regin afro-caribea; en los movimientos indgenas; en sur de Asia, etc. Un paradigma otro que surge en las zonas tanto de subalternidad colonial (frica, sur de Asia, Amrica Latina) como de subalternidad imperial (el sur de Europa). El agotamiento de los ideales de la segunda modernidad (la ilustracin y el pensamiento dominante por tres siglos de Francia, Inglaterra, Alemania, Estados Unidos) entra en proceso de agotamiento, a la vez que se renueva del otro lado de la diferencia imperial y colonial, se renueva como un paradigma otro, ya irrecuperable en la historia lineal de la modernidad monotpica y, por necesidad sorda a su negacin, el potencial emancipatorio que est surgiendo crticamente en el Sur de Europa y en la re-organizacin de las ex-colonias (e.g., en Amrica Latina la importancia fundamental de los movimientos indgenas y afro, as como chicano/latino/ as en Estados Unidos que revelan los lmites del pensamiento criollo/mestizo empaquetado como pensamiento Latino Americano). El pensamiento criollo/mestizo, eurocntrico desde la independencia, comenz a liberarse de su propia tradicin con los trabajos de Juan Carlos Maritegui, que se continuaron, entre otros, en la filosofa de la liberacin y en el pen-
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samiento crtico elaborado en torno a la doble historia de la modernidad/ colonialidad. Un paradigma otro designa el espacio desordenado y potente en donde se completar el proyecto inconcluso de la modernidad pero no ya desde la modernidad sino desde la colonialidad, como proceso permanente de descolonizacin. Un paradigma otro nos lleva tambin a una otra ideologa, la del cosmopolitanismo crtico (Mignolo 2000) que se est construyendo, ya no en el interior del imperio o en el interior de las naciones, o en el interior de las religiones sino en los bordes en donde emerge el pensamiento fronterizo tanto desde la subalternidad como desde la hegemona atenta, consciente y abierta a la colonialidad. Una de las posibilidades que ofrece el pensamiento fronterizo para estos proyectos, es el de dejar de ser lo que los universales abstractos fueron y siguen siendo: el espacio que es necesario defender a costa de vidas humanas; el uso de la violencia para defender la libertad; el recurso a medios anti-democrticos para defender la democracia; ponerse fuera de la ley para defender la ley. Finalmente, recordmoslo, el pensamiento fronterizo no es un hbrido en el que se mezclan felizmente partes de distintos todos. El pensamiento fronterizo surge del diferencial colonial de poder y contra l se erige. El pensamiento fronterizo no es un objeto hbrido sino un pensamiento desde la subalternidad colonial (como en Anzaldua, Fanon o el zapatismo) o desde la incorporacin de la subalternidad colonial desde la perspectiva hegemnica (como en Las Casas o en Marx). El pensamiento fronterizo es uno de los caminos posibles al cosmopolitanismo crtico y a una utopstica que nos ayude a construir un mundo donde quepan muchos mundos.
NOTAS
Las personas que ms participaron en actividades convocadas alrededor de problemticas en torno a esta problemtica, son adems de Quijano y Dussel, Edgardo Lander (sociologa, Venezuela), Zulma Palermo (estudios literarios y culturales, Argentina), Catherine Walsh (estudios culturales, educacin bilinge, activismo poltico, Ecuador); Santiago Castro-Gmez (filsofo, Colombia), Oscar Guardiola Rivera (estudio del derecho y filosofa, Colombia), Fernando Coronil (historiador y antroplogo venezolano, USA); Javier Sanjins (teorista poltico y estudios culturales, boliviano, USA); Arturo Escobar (antroplogo colombiano,
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USA), Freya Schiwy (estudios y teoras culturales y de gnero, alemana, USA); Jos Saldvar (estudios culturales chicanos/as, USA), Ramn Grossfogel, socilogo, puertorriqueo, USA); Nelson Maldonado-Torres (filsofo, estudios de la religiones, puertorriqueo, USA); Walter D. Mignolo (semilogo, teora histricosocial, argentino, USA); La bibliografa a la que me refiero es amplia, y mucha de ella est citada a lo largo de mi argumento. Ser selectivo en las referencias que siguen puesto que sera demasiado largo intentar una lista ms completa de lo que se ha publicado recientemente y que muestra la emergencia de un paradigma otro. Permtaseme insistir: no hay dueo de este paradigma, muchos nos desconocemos entre nosotros, no hay influencias sino convergencias; no hay un maestro sino varios y ninguno. En fin, es un paradigma otro desde su mera concepcin. Entre las publicaciones recientes en las que me encuentro involucrado (y entre otros se encuentran Anibal Quijano, Enrique Dussel, Catherine Walsh, Zulma Palermo, Arturo Escobar, Javier Sanjins, Fernando Coronil, Santiago-Castro Gmez, Oscar Guardiola, Freya Schiwy, Edgardo Lander) se cuentan: Indisciplinar las ciencias sociales: Geopoltica del conocimiento y colonialidad del poder, editado por Catherine Walsh, Santiago Castro-Gmez y Freya Schiwy, Quito: Universidad Andina/Abya-Yala, 2002; La colonialidad del saber , editado por Edgardo Lander, Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2000; varios nmeros de Nepantla: views from South, contienen artculos de algunos de los arriba mencionados; Comentario Internacional, 2001, de la Universidad Andina, contiene un dossier sobre Geopolticas del conocimiento. En el rea de los movimientos indgenas, artculos y entrevistas con Luis Macas (Ecuador) y Felipe Quispe (Bolivia) se encuentran en internet. En el mbito del pensamiento afro-caribeo, los libros de Lewis Gordon, Existentia Africana, London: Routledge, 2000 y Padget Henry, Caliban's Reason, Rouletge, 2001 son fundamentales. Varias publicaciones de Emanuel Chuckwudi Eze contribuyen a poner de relieve el desafi de la filosofa africana a la filosofa continental. Ver, African Postcolonial Philosophy, London: Blackwell, 1997, editado por Eze.
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BIBLIOGRAFA
Al-Jabri, Mohamed Abed, Introduction a la critique de la raison arabe. Paris: Editions La decouverte, 1994. Arrighi, Giovanni and Silver, Beverly, Chaos and Governance. London: Verso,
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1999. Arrighi, Giovanni. The Long Twenty Century. London: Verso, 1994 Dainotto, Roberto. A South with a View: Europe and its Other, Nepantla: Views from South, I/2, 375-390. Dussel, Enrique. The Manuscripts of 1861-63 and the 'concept of dependency.' In Towards and Unkown Marx. A commentary on the Manuscript of 1861-63, edited by Fred Mosley. New York: Routledge, 2001. Hinkelammert, Franz. La negativa a los valores de la emancipacin humana y la recuperacin del bien comn. En El retorno del sujeto reprimido. Bogota: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Las Casas, Bartolome de. Apologetica Historia Sumaria Vidal Abril Castell, Ed. Madrid: Alianza, 1992. Mignolo, Walter D. The geopolitics of knowledge and the colonial difference South Atlantic Quarterly, Vicissitues of Theory, numero especial editado por Kenneth Surin, 101:1, 2002, 57-96. Mignolo, Walter D. editor, Capitalismo y geopoltica del conocimiento. El eurocentrismo y la filosofia de la liberacin en el debate intelectual contemporaneo. Buenos Aires: Ediciones del Signo/Duke University, 2001 Quijano, Anibal. Colonialidad del poder y clasificacion social. Journal of WorldSystems Research, VI/2, 342-386; 2000 Quijano, Anibal. Poder y derechos humanos, Poder y salud mental y derechos humanos. Carmen Pimentel, ed. Lima: CESOSAM, 9-25, 2000. Dussel, Enrique. El programa cientfico de investigaqcion de Karl Marx, en Hacia una filosofia politica critica. Sevilla: Desclee, 2001, 279-303. Sanjines, Javier. 'Mestizaje cabeza abajo': la pedagoga al revs de Felipe Quispe, 'El Mallku'. En Indisciplinar las ciencias sociales. Geopolticas del conocimiento y colonialidad del poder. Perspectiva desde lo Andino. Quito: Universidad Simn Bolivar/Abya Yala, 2002, 135-156. Sousa Santos, Boaventura de. El norte, el sur y la utopa, en De la mano de Alicia. Lo social y lo poltico en la postmodernidad. Bogota: Universidad de los Andes, 1998,369-454; Sousa Santos, Boaventura de. Toward a New Common Sense. Law, Science and Politics in the Paradigmatic Transition. London: Routledge, 1995. Stiglitz, Joseph E. Globalizaton and its discontents. New York: Norton, 2002. Wallerstein, Immanuel. Utopistics. Or, Historical Choices of the Twenty-first Century. New York: The New Press, 1998
THESES ON ANTAGONISM, HYBRIDITY, AND THE SUBALTERN IN LATIN AMERICA*

Bruno Bosteels Cornell University
1
atin American subaltern studies emerge out of two related but apparently heterogeneous sources. The first source, which is primarily of a historico-political nature, comes in response to the last successful revolutionary experience on the continent, with the rise to power and the subsequent electoral defeat of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. More generally, the strand of subaltern thinking that corresponds to this first source is forced to register the loss of referentiality of most, if not all, political projects that were directly or indirectly related to the rational core of Marxism.
* This paper was first presented at the 2001 Annual Meeting of the Modern Languages Association, which was held in New Orleans. I had hoped to expand each thesis so as to incorporate a much more painstaking reply to the texts that serve as the constant interlocutors for this debate: John Beverley, Subalternity and Representation: Arguments in Cultural Theory (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), Alberto Moreiras, The Exhaustion of Difference: The Politics of Latin American Cultural Studies (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), Gareth Williams, The Other Side of the Popular: Neoliberalism and Subalternity in Latin America (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), and the two editions prepared and introduced by Ileana Rodrguez, The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001) and Convergencia de tiempos: Estudios subalternos/contextos latinoamericanos estado, cultura, subalternidad (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001). May this first and only footnote be a token, however insufficient, of my tremendous indebtedness to this collective work, as well as an earnest for future repayment.
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As an intervening doctrine, which remains irreducible to its endlessly rewritten version as an academic body of knowledge, Marxism indeed gathered its historical force from an indissociable tie to three basic referents: first, the workers' movement starting in the latter half of the nineteenth century in Western Europe; second, the creation of communist and/or socialist nation-states, from the Soviet Union all the way to Cuba; and, finally, the anticolonial liberationist struggles, with their concomitant search for national-popular sovereignty, starting in the mid-twentieth century in the so-called Third World. In Latin America, the electoral defeat of the Sandinista ruling party in 1990 might well signal an event similar to the one that Solidarity in Poland represented for the European Left, namely, the joint collapse of all three of these referents which, while following a gradual and relatively autonomous path in Europe, had often been fused into a nonsynchronous synchronicity in the case of various revolutionary movements throughout Latin America. If this global and immanent crisis of the Marxist intervening doctrine embodies the first, historical and political, source of subaltern studies, then its second source, which is more of a theoretical and philosophical nature, comes in response to the so-called closure of metaphysics and the deconstruction of modern foundational thinking. This strand of subaltern studies attempts to think through the limits of culture and politics by expanding the radical critique not just of essentialism but also, or even more so, of the very kinds of particularism, liberal multiculturalism, and social constructivism that often take up the place vacated by essentialist thinking without really offering a different logic of the social, the political, or the cultural. For this second source of subaltern studies, the deconstruction of metaphysics-the active unworking and degrounding not only of the metaphysics of presence but also of the new metaphysics of difference as yet another presence, as the presence of the other-is precisely the strongest intellectual weapon against the persistent othering of the subaltern, including by intellectuals who otherwise would want to be loyal to the latter's very own cause.
2
These two sources are of unequal weight for the various groups and subgroups that give shape to the field of subaltern studies in and about Latin America. Thus, John Beverley and Ileana Rodrguez can easily be
THESES ON ANTAGONISM, HYBRIDITY,... 149
seen as having led the way for the first orientation, while Alberto Moreiras and Gareth Williams shoulder much of the burden of the second one. Aside from the circumstantial but perhaps not wholly indifferent issue of generational distinctions, however, what seems absolutely crucial to me is the question of how we ought to understand the encounter between these two strands of thought and, thus, how we should understand the peculiar articulation of the theoretico-philosophical and the historico-political in Latin American subaltern studies. That is something, of course, that in earlier days-who knows if they can still be called the good old daysmight have been compared to the fusion of theory and practice. From both sides, however, the possibility of such a fusion nowadays appears to be compromised, not in the least because the typical forms of political organization that were thought to bring about this fusion-above all, the party-form, but also the vanguard minority or the guerrilla group-seem to have completely exhausted their historical potential. Latin American subaltern studies thus bring together a deep sense of crisis, if not of outright defeat, in the wake of past revolutionary uprisings and an acute sense of failure, or at the very least the closure of a longstanding tradition of metaphysical thinking, still operative in the dialectic and in the accompanying philosophy of consciousness in general. Both of these developments merge at the precise point where the problematic of subaltern studies comes to coincide with the impasses of modern forms of political theory and practice. Indeed, as the name for a relatively new field of experience and thought, the subaltern emerges when the deconstruction of metaphysical thinking and the critique of the philosophy of the subject as consciousness clash with persistent habits of dialectical thinking, while at the same time having to come to terms with all the traditional presuppositions regarding history and subjectivity that still underpin even, or especially, the intervening doctrine of Marxism. In sum, even while continuing to be distinguishable both individually and generationally, the two strands that together provide the ground for Latin American subaltern studies are, on the one hand, Marxist and historico-political, and on the other, deconstructive and philosophico-theoretical. Thus, when Florencia Mallon, in a now famous reference, compared the major theorists who influenced the emergence of subaltern studies in Latin America to the four knights of the Apocalypse, she could have addedas was already implicit in her critique-that these imposing figures came riding in by pairs on two high horses, with Gramsci and Foucault sitting on
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one, and Derrida and Spivak on the other. However, I do not think that it is a matter of choosing, say, in favor of good historical work over and against too much evil deconstruction. Rather, the whole point of subaltern studies lies in the combination, no matter how uneven in its development, of both strands. In other words, and to return to the knightly metaphor: instead of checking with a hammer which horse's armor is better equipped against the onslaught of criticisms, including self-criticisms, the task is to put both under one and the same yoke. The proper articulation of these two sources of subaltern thought, then, allows the critic in new and unheard-of ways not only to theorize the demise of revolutionary politics, but also to politicize the theory of difference and the deconstruction of metaphysics. The most thorough-going passage through this double movement is in my eyes not only useful but absolutely indispensable for anyone who is critically engaged today with questions of literature, culture, and politics-in Latin America as much as elsewhere.
3
What I would call the subaltern predicament derives from the paradoxical tensions and incompatibilities that, despite their attempted fusion into a unique historical and theoretical conjuncture, beset the two sources of subaltern studies in Latin America. These two strands of subaltern thinking time and again split off and become discernible precisely at the point where one either puts forth the wager of a decision or remains faithful to the aporias of a deconstruction of all such wagers and decisions, by pushing them to the limit of their inherent impossibility in the name of what they necessarily have to exclude, or leave behind, as a stubborn remainder. Subjectively or affectively speaking, this forced choice makes itself heard in different ways, whether by a pessimistic or nostalgic judgment regarding the possibility and durability of new counter-hegemonic social agents, or by a more radical, even messianic expectation, outside of all established horizons, for an end to all traditional forms of agency and hegemony in general, including above all the promise of reconstituting a populist counter-hegemony.
4
Despite this predicament, in the realm of cultural practices with which they are most commonly associated, the two strands of subaltern thinking share a common opponent in the recent proposals for, and hopeful descriptions of, phenomena of cultural hybridity. Instead of interpreting the exchanges between high and low, between elite and mass culture, between the modern and the native or indigenous, whereby the latter always tend to be considered more primitive but also more genuine, proponents of hybrid cultures such as Nstor Garca Canclini privilege the inventive negotiations that take place, in both directions, between these binaries. From the standpoint of the subaltern, however, such precarious exchanges, no matter how flexible and creative they may well appear to be, nevertheless remain inscribed and contained in a longstanding and dominant reconciliatory tradition of dealing with social, economical, political, and cultural contradictions in Latin America. Hybridity, in other words, not only when seen as normative or programmatic but perhaps even from a purely, if disingenuously, descriptive or phenomenological point of view, remains suspiciously close to the much older modernizing ideological projects that were aimed at forging an allinclusive national or even continental identity, based on the overcoming of differences. In sharp contrast, the notion of the subaltern, following its historico-political inflection, is inseparable from the basic fact of antagonistic social relations and the unequal division of labor and power, while, following its more strictly deconstructive orientation, the subaltern is in fact precisely that which always already resists sublation in any process of hybridism, whether cultural or otherwise.
5
The polemic over hybridity and the subaltern is perhaps nothing more than an updated revision, in the context of rampant neoliberalism, of a major earlier debate, the one regarding the notions of transculturation and heterogeneity. Here, too, the former category pretended to account for the renewal of mostly dominant cultures by the incorporation of elements from the margins or from popular social strata. A canonical example, often discussed by ngel Rama and confirmed by Josefina Ludmer in her own analysis, would
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be the integration and, ultimately, the complete absorption of various oral traditions of gaucho songwriting into high so-called gauchesque literature for the purposes of nation-building and its cultural or ideological legitimation of a modern centralized state apparatus. Such processes of transculturation, as the example can barely begin to illustrate, were of course never far removed from state-sponsored projects to produce a similar unity, this time in terms of ethnic and racial identity-projects which in reality meant a systematic whitening of the population and the spreading of nation-wide policies of assimilation and miscegenation. The category of heterogeneity, in contrast to that of transculturation, is presented by way of acknowledging the insuperable plurality and diversity of social, cultural, ethnic, and racial components in the contradictory totality of all societies of Latin Americaeven if the principal site of emergence for such attempts at recognizing the fact of heterogeneity is found in the Andes, as in the work of Antonio Cornejo Polar, rather than, say, in Argentina or Mexico.
6
If we compare both debates, we can state that heterogeneity was to transculturation what the subaltern is to hybridity, that is to say, a radical proposal to resist the erasure and/or reinscription of antagonisms-whether on behalf of the state or (even) through the ideological support of civil society. In fact, in yet another turn of the screw, unlikely to be the last, Alberto Moreiras has poignantly redirected the notion of the subaltern against the very category of heterogeneity devised by older critical traditions. All hitherto existing forms or models of cultural politics, whether in terms of transculturation, hybridism, or heterogeneity, would thus in the final instance give up on the radical desire of somehow coming to terms with the recalcitrance of the subaltern in Latin America. Today, all proposals for the negotiation, or even the bare affirmation, of difference, in principle yet most often also in spite of themselves, remain uncannily close to, if not complicitous with, the otherwise uniform trend towards the globalization of capital. Difference, to be more precise, risks always already being nothing more than the intrinsic counterpart, or necessary underside, of the homogeneous tendency toward the ravaging identity of the world market and its attendant ideology of wall-to-wall consumerism. Difference is today perhaps only the barely disguised form of apparition of the law of generalized equivalence.
Latin American cultural studies would still have to learn to forego the humanist and profoundly liberal heritage-a heritage at work even in the revolutionary movements in Cuba and Nicaragua-which puts a conciliatory understanding of culture at the service of the modern state or civil society, all the while ignoring or continuing to exclude the subaltern-illiterate, indigenous, peasant, and urban poor-whether in the name of progress and development, or by way of pastiche and nomadic play. Thus, whereas transculturation, hybridism, and even the proposal of heterogeneity all risk to have become ideologies of failed modern nation-building, followed by the reign of postmodern transnational capital, only the sustained recognition of the subaltern and of the antagonistic structuring of any given social instance holds the promise of a radical-democratic society.
7
Behind the interplay of difference and identity, then, what is actually at stake turns out to revolve around an unspoken, or insufficiently theorized logic of contradiction-including the logic of how a given contradiction historically becomes antagonistic to begin with. Even more broadly speaking, the possible renewal of such a theory of antagonistic contradictions as an unfinished task is bound up with the still relatively obscure fate of dialectical reason after the crisis and historical demise of Marxism. Dialectical thinking, according to a first critical reformulation, no longer proceeds by way of the objective alienation and subsequent reappropriation of history by a unitary subject but by way of the internal scission, or division, of any subjective force by its structural determinations, as well as by the possible torsion of the former back upon the latter-a torsion or forced twisting that is symptomatic at the outset and destructive in the end. In a second and more openly deconstructive reformulation, all thinking ceases to be dialectical, or continues to be dialectical only in a negative sense, when it no longer proceeds by the final sublation of difference into a higher spiritual unity that is ultimately embodied in the figure of the nationstate or the sovereign, but by the interminable acknowledgement of what this very process of overcoming always necessarily leaves behind as a stubborn remnant or supplement-namely, that which by definition has no proper name but only a generic one, and which might as well be called the indivisible subaltern remainder.
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8
If the two strands of subaltern thinking mentioned earlier find a common target in the contemporary propositions of transculturation and hybridity, then I should add that they also share a common ally in the doctrine of overdetermination, or structural causality, which in one of the latest avatars of dialectical materialism-at the very point of its immanent collapse-was borrowed from the theory of the subject in psychoanalysis. According to this doctrine, any given social formation is overdetermined by a cause whose effects vanish completely into the very structure of which it is the absent cause. What gives coherence to a social order is thus a paradoxical term or class, in a fairly strict technical sense of the word as used in set theory, which has no properties whatsoever other than those that can be read off symptomatically out of the structure from which it is inherently excluded. Following the doctrine of absent or structural causality, which in my eyes still marks one of the most productive points of transition not only between structuralism and poststructuralism but also, and more importantly, between the deconstruction of metaphysics and the psychoanalytical critique of the humanist subject, the subaltern can then be defined as that which stands in a relation of internal exclusion to the hegemonic. In this sense, the fundamental outcome of the various projects of subaltern studies comes down to the recognition of precisely such inevitable antagonisms and relations of internal exclusion that define the social field from within. Even the Maoist line, so often quote by John Beverley, about contradictions in the midst of the people is aimed historically at the persistence of antagonism within the national-popular bloc-including, or especially, under socialist rule. Finally, the logic of internal exclusion can also be phrased in terms of a constitutive outside. The subaltern is then that which paradoxically lies both inside and outside the sphere of the hegemonic social regime-being the wild embodiment of all that has to be included out in order for there to be a social order and the possibility of a political decision to begin with.
9
Any attempt to articulate the subaltern as the constitutive outside of the hegemonic into a viable political or artistic project runs in my eyes the
risk of falling back into the melodrama of consciousness and the predicaments of the beautiful soul. Of course, in principle, there can be no such thing as subaltern consciousness, let alone a subaltern class consciousness, insofar as the dialectic of consciousness has since its very inception been wound up in its own inherent limit, and in the relation of internal exclusion between the cogito and the unconscious. In this sense, the subaltern is that which should radically break with all melodramatic temptations. However, there remains a tangible risk that the increasing self-reflexivity about the inevitable presence of a subaltern remainder would become in turn the irrefutable guarantee of radicalism in the purest sense. This would explain the trend to continue upping the ante in the debate regarding all hitherto existing forms of cultural politics in Latin America. Every social order is ultimately overdetermined by that which it simultaneously excludes and includes as its constitutive outside. Any project to bring this remainder into the political arena, though, runs the risk of always already being nothing more than a reaction formation that as such remains inscribed within the bounds of the existing state of affairs. What is more, insofar as all hegemonic regimes are inherently built upon the controlled production and reproduction of marginal counter-hegemonic projects, insofar as power and the moral law too are inherently built and fortified by their infraction and transgression, any straightforward affirmative project must accept the possibility of already being part of the cycle of what a social order needs for the sake of its sustained existence. What remains problematic about this otherwise acute insight is that any specific change will inevitably become liable to the criticism that it misrecognizes its own conditions of possibility, insofar as these are also at the same time conditions of impossibility. In many quarters, in fact, a radical philosophy has indeed already come into existence that derives its irrefutable strength from precisely such arguments. A heightened metacritical awareness of this liability, nevertheless, should neither serve as an alibi for radical quietism nor allow the critical thinker to hide behind the mask of the beautiful soul, free of all worldly guilt.
10
Faced with the relation of internal exclusion, with heterogeneity from within, or with the constitutive outside inherent in any given identity, what
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if anything can be the task of radical critical thinking and acting, aside from the so-called politics of recognition? Recognition, that is, of the structural impossibility of closure and therefore of the necessary failure of all articulatory practices, precisely because of the resistance of the subaltern? In their search for productive answers to these questions, the various strands of subaltern studies can also be seen as leading the way in the direction of two distinct alternatives. A first answer ultimately still involves the search for a viable populist counter-hegemony. Faced with the unlikely duration of any contestatory social movement today, however, this response often involves a turn inward, in a self-reflective move back upon the limits of academic disciplinary reason. Subaltern studies, from this point of view, signals the need to register the structural inadequacy of the discourses and practices of university knowledge, precisely by teaching and learning, as much as by unlearning, from the absence, or vanishing presence, of the subaltern in their midst. A second answer involves an even more radical problematization, not just of the viability of future counter-hegemonic projects, but of the whole horizon of hegemonic thinking as such. Subaltern studies, from this point of view, no longer projects the nostalgia for past dreams onto the future but rather raises the question whether an as yet undreamt-of politics of the posthegemonic, or infra-hegemonic, can be conceived at all. Is there, in other words, a retreat from the double bind of hegemony and the subaltern-a withdrawal that would not be an escape but rather an exodus, and thus the promise of a new beginning?
11
Latin American cultural studies, in their various subaltern orientations, still have to come to grips with an even deeper problem, namely, with the very relation between art and politics, and by extension, between literary criticism and political theory, which seems to underlie an ill-defined notion of culture as such. For much of the twentieth century, the most important trends of critical and dialectical reason have tended to suture art onto politics, and to delegate the capacities for thought to the twin operations of either aestheticizing politics or politicizing art and literature. Subaltern studies are perhaps no exception in this regard. In fact, the critical insistence on the
subaltern remainder has been instrumental in the unmasking of the ideological complicity between the formation of a vibrant national culture and the reproduction of the entire state apparatus in its properly modern guise. However, the fact that there are past sequences when art and politics were indeed sutured by statist forms of thinking should not make us forget that, in principle and without wanting to ring the formalist bell, art and politics work with different materials and according to a different sequencing of their thought procedures. Politics, for example, deals with the collective or multiple as its material and with the subtraction of inegalitarian statements as its process; but art and literature deal rather with the limits of representation as their end and with formalization as their means, and in this sense they tend to carry out a figurative undoing of the social bond. Thus, for subaltern studies to continue without an exclusively presentist agenda, the specificity and relative autonomy of the procedures of art and politics must be established historically or genealogically, rather than formally or transcendentally. Otherwise, in the search if not exactly for an illustration than at least for a proper enactment or exposure of the subaltern, art and literature risk to become the site for a purely aesthetic or even archaesthetic act, while political thinking as a process, if it does not fall for the temptation of an equally radical or arch-political act, becomes objectified into mere political philosophy, as the quest continues for a regime capable of assuming the fundamental negativity of the subaltern as the constitutive outside of each and every society. More generally, because of the predicament mentioned earlier, a tension has yet to be solved in subaltern thinking between, on the one hand, a logic that remains structural and transcendental to the point of its extreme limit and immanent exhaustion, and, on the other hand, forms of thought such as art and politics that are sequential and eventmental, and thus are to be thoroughly historicized without giving in an inch on the rigor of deconstructive negativity. Thus far, subaltern studies often seem to have avoided the traps of historicism and aestheticism only by having recourse to radical, arch-political or arch-aesthetic, acts. Art and politics, however, can and perhaps must be captured historically for what they have been, what they are, and what they still could be in the future: forms of thought with their own kernel of truth and of the repressed. Otherwise, the fact that all tends to be political for certain forms of subaltern thinking might lead one to conclude that, paradoxically, the thought that claims to criticize both aestheticism
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and historicism, ends up aestheticizing the political by failing to historicize politics. Concretely, then, let me suggest what I see as some of the tasks ahead of a larger tradition in the practice of critical theory that would have to be capable of traversing the problematic of the subaltern in Latin America: 1) unsuture art and politics, without simply falling back on their institutional autonomy which is itself of course a historical and not a structural condition; 2) reconfigure art and politics, as well as their possible suturing as singular thought procedures, according to their specific sequences, concepts, and theories; 3) revisit the problem of the presentation and transmission of these forms of thought, if not by remaining outside, which is of course impossible, then at the very least by adamantly going against the constraints of purely academic power. In the future, though, I cannot imagine the continuation of such a project without the possibility of its collective reappropriation.
SUBALTERNS AND THE NATION

Florencia E. Mallon University of Wisconsin-Madison
began my own personal research on and dialogue with the Indiabased school of Subaltern Studies in 1987, as a result of an interest in popular notions of nationalism that had emerged from my earlier dissertation research on central Peru. While initially an individual project, informed by my concern with Marxist and post-marxist theory, feminist perspectives on nationalism, and Gramscian theories of hegemony and the state, I explored the work of subalternists and postcolonial theorists in my teaching as well. This was, for me, the basis for the rethinking of nationalism, and of subaltern participation in the nation, that became the anchor for my book Peasant and Nation. At about the same time, when asked to participate in a forum in the American Historical Review on the impact of Subaltern Studies outside their original geographical field, I was able to systematize my understanding, from the perspective of a Latin Americanist historian, of the methodological and theoretical contributions and tensions of the schools founders. The resulting essay fostered a great deal of debate, both among some Latin Americanist historians and among the group of scholars who had formed the Latin American Subaltern Studies group, to which (contrary to the impressions of some of my historian colleagues) I never belonged. While Latin Americanists in my own discipline criticized me for my lack of attention to empirical detail and my overly developed theoretical bent, Latin American subalternists found in my critique of their statements the makings of an empiricist turf war. These debates were deepened by the appearance of Peasant and Nation.1 In this essay I take the opportunity to reflect on the influence Subaltern Studies has had on interdisciplinary discussion and debate within Latin
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American studies, using as a major theme a central point of tension in the subalternist perspective: the relationship between the subaltern as an identity or social presence, and the modernist narrative of the nationstate. This is one of the most important questions I raised in my AHR article, and it also became a crucial bone of contention in the debates emerging around my book, not only for interdisciplinary subalternists, but also for more discipline-driven historians. By addressing this topic in the context of the generational moment from which the debates emerged and in which they were reflected, I think it is possible to explore the extent to which discussions on the themes highlighted by Subaltern Studies, both between North and South and among disciplines, have been productive. Although limits of language and market made Peasant and Nation most easily available to North American scholars, one of the best and earliest debates around the book, prompted by a long review essay written by Tulio Halpern Donghi, appeared in the pages of Historia Mexicana.2 One of Halperns main points was that, historiographically speaking, my book worked better as an assessment or taking stock of the previous generation of intellectual production than it did as the beginning of a new analytical or theoretical stage. This was the case, Halpern argued, because I was unsuccessful at identifying a methodology that could withstand the weight of the critique I presented of my own generations theoretical production. Unlike later historians, Halpern did not think this failure was the result of a lack of empirical workquite to the contraryhe emphasized that I worked archival sources with an almost athletic intensity (504). Nor was the problem a result of my uncritical acceptance of a new theoretical model, whether it was postmodernism or postructuralism, for he saw in my analysis an intellectual honesty (515) that forced me to put maximum pressure on these analytical instruments, forcing them through the hardest possible test in order to judge their capacity to clarify the processes she is interested in studying (514). The problem was, instead, that the methodological loot I was able to bring back from my theoretical raidwhether through Gramsci, subaltern studies, or postmodernismwas exceedingly modest. Thus, while Halpern accepted that I had identified a problem and suggested the need to find a different solution, I had not yet been able to find a productive path toward it. John Tutino, the other participant in the debate, agreed with Halpern that I had not been able to resolve many of the most important problems I raised, but he emphasized that my work provided new empiri-
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cal and conceptual openings for future research. While the book was not a final answer, Tutino concluded, it was a powerful beginning (560). The main question to which both historians were referring was how best to explain the historical dynamic and political evolution of nationstates. I had been inspired analytically by my reading of the India-based school of Subaltern Studies to decenter the nation-state and focus on both local and global processes in order to argue that peasant and other subalterns had played a central role in the political struggles that made nationstates in Latin America. While the notion of subaltern agency in social and economic matters, especially through the medium of uprisings and social movements, was increasingly acceptable to many Latin Americanist historians, the notion that less powerful or marginal people could have made a major difference in the evolution of national political systems was much more controversial. While a series of different explanations could be given for what had remained an essentially dualistic or binary approach to politicsfrequently still organized around such dyads as modern/premodern, political/prepolitical, communal/national, resistance/participation, charismatic/rationalthe end result continued to be a firm conviction that peasants in particular, but subalterns more generally, remained caught within their smaller, more parochial and immediate concerns and thus could not participate in either building or imagining the nation.3 At the same time, however, the publication of Peasant and Nation marked the beginning of an extremely productive period in which numerous works began to explore popular notions of nationalism and citizenship in the process of nation-state formation. Historians working on Argentina, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, and Peru have utilized notions such as subalternity, nationalism, hegemony, and the decentralization of power to examine a variety of cases in which subalterns have participated in making and transforming national politics and political coalitions. From an early moment in which subaltern participation in national politics seemed counterintuitive, the question of subaltern political agency has become almost common sense in a historiography undergoing a dramatic expansion.4 At the same time, however, an important gap in my analysis pointed out by Halpernthat is, my inability to link convincingly the complexity of local cultural and political processes to an equally complex treatment of such processes at the center of the political systemhas remained open. The expanding literature on citizenship and popular nationalism has not effectively been connected to another emerging literature on citizenship,
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elections and the public sphereone that has tended to focus almost exclusively on the center of the system.5 From the standpoint of a historian, the two perspectives might indeed have certain topics in common, such as the examination of the electoral sphere as a constructed space of contention among political factions, or the shared finding that, in many Latin American countries, suffrage was more limited in the late nineteenth century than at the beginning.6 But the methodologies and goals of the two literatures are quite different. The researchers focusing on citizenship and the public sphere, because they emphasize the specific institutional practices through which a more general political culture was formed, tend to trace these exclusively at the centers of power, be they in state institutions or capital cities, leaving aside possibly related events or practices at the periphery of society. Scholars investigating rural, regional, or subaltern participation in nation formation work from the margins, exploring the often hidden effects of the excluded on the formation and transformation of political discourses and practicesin so doing, however, they tend to stop short of reconnecting their findings to a detailed analysis of central state institutions. Perhaps it is inevitable that a breach should exist between these two approaches. Historians focused on the public sphere and on the center of political systems tend to use more established or traditional empirical sources, such as newspapers and state documents. While researchers working at the margins of the nation-state also read available mainstream sources against the grain (a term made popular by India-based subalternists), the very nature of their work, which aims to uncover hidden or marginalized voices, to dig deeply to find forgotten connections and effects, necessitates the use of less traditional sources. For those who draw more narrow boundaries around what is considered appropriate data for historians, the end result of such marginal and unorthodox research does not constitute bona fide historical evidence. A particularly dramatic example of this rejection of less traditional sources and analyses can be found in economic historian Stephen Habers recent intervention in a debate on the so-called new cultural history of Mexico.7 Habers role in this debate turned out to be, in effect, that of a discipline-based border police. He demands from other authors and works that they maintain epistemological consistency according to his objectivist model of empirical falsification of proposed hypotheses. When he does not find what he is looking for, he dismisses the entire group of analysts whom he calls new cultural historians because they lack logical consis-
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tency and because, instead of arguing from empirical evidence, they do so through the citation of authoritative theoretical texts. A detailed summary of different authors responses to Haber is beyond the scope of this paper,8 but it is important to emphasize that, when Haber concludes from his critique of cultural history that the evidence and methods employed by new cultural historiansfail, however, to satisfy the epistemological standards set by established schools of history,9 he appoints himself the gatekeeper for the discipline as a whole and announces his intention to stop all unauthorized traffic with neighboring approaches. And what is perhaps most fascinating about his perspective is that it finds its counterpart in the reactions to my book precisely from that neighboring discipline to which, perhaps, Haber would have preferred I belong: literature.
Methodology and Interdisciplinary Travel

My encounter with the world of literary studies began with a debate engendered by my AHR essay on Subaltern Studiess importance for Latin American historiography.10 Responding to my comments about the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group, several of its members emphasized what they saw as my attempt to mark disciplinary territory by asserting the intellectual superiority of the archive. This is what Jos Rabasa and Javier Sanjins called my supposed privileged access to materiality.11 With this comment Rabasa and Sanjins flattened out an entire discussion about the contradictions and complexities that form a part of all methods and theories, leaving aside my suggestion that the archive, rather than giving us a privileged access to materiality (or truth), sometimes provides an opening toward a better understanding of the power relations in the society that produced it in the first place. If, for Haber, my lack of objectivist epistemological criteria bars me from participating in historical debate, for Rabasa and Sanjins my insistence on the critical use of different kinds of sources, including the archive, makes me into a positivist historian not all that different from Haber and his allies. Perhaps the most systematic critique of my work from a literary studies perspective can be found in the pages of John Beverleys complex and multifaceted analysis of the importance of a subaltern perspective for our understanding of Latin America.12 Beverley repeats Rabasa and Sanjinss suggestion that I have embarked on a disciplinary turf war, and asks him-
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self whether it is possible to represent the subaltern subject, as I attempt to do, from the perspective of the disciplinary historian, since by doing so one necessarily adopts the institutional position of the dominant culture.13 For Beverley, my insistence on the importance of the archive and of fieldwork inherently means that I see history in the light of an implicitly positivist model of scholarly objectivity that places [me] at the center of the act of knowing and representing.14 In fact, for Beverley, this means that there is no contradiction between my revindication of the archive and David Stolls insistence, in his critique of Rigoberta Menchs first testimonio, that the anthropologist must establish disciplinary and intellectual authority over all subaltern voices.15 Beverley hits his stride when he confronts what he considers to be the general project of Peasant and Nation. My book, he argues, is a biography of the nation-state, showing in that narrative the presence of forms of subaltern agency that other accountsthe states own official historymight have ignored. The problem with such a project, Beverley asserts, is that it leaves intact the frame of the nation, and thus also its inevitability, as well as the authority of history and of the historian. And he concludes:
In a sense, Peasant and Nation solves the problem of the disjunction between what Chakrabarty calls the radical heterogeneity of the subaltern and the monism of the historical narrative of the nation-state and modernity by demonstrating that peasants and rural people actually did have a role in the formation of the modern state in Peru and Mexico in the nineteenth century, that they were not just acted on passively or negatively by the state and its agents. But, to use a Lacanian metaphor, this sutures a social and conceptual gap that in some ways it might be better to leave open. Peasant and Nation thus partially occludes precisely what it wants to make visible: the dynamics of Negation in subaltern agency.16
This is the essential difference that separates me from Beverley. Beginning from the earliest works of Ranajit Guha, founding member of Indias Subaltern Studies group, Beverley prefers to think of subaltern politics, and especially the politics of peasants, as pre- or anti-national, since the nation as a legal abstraction (and more particularly, the colonial or postcolonial state) is experienced as a hostile and unrepresentative space by peasants. Indeed, according to Beverley,
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The historical insurgencies that Guha studies could not move from a position of subalternity to one of hegemony. They remained subaltern in the very act of contesting domination because they could not encompass (or create) the nation. That is because, as Gramsci understood, the nation is (or has been) the form of territoriality that corresponds to hegemony (and, vice versa, the nation is in a sense the effect of hegemony).17
In such a context, it is theoretically impossible that subalterns could play an important role in constructing the nation, whether they live in India or Mexico, Peru or Guatemala. And if it is theoretically impossible for subalterns to do more than negate state power (a position which, interestingly enough, allows the subaltern to retain a certain romantic purity, untouched by the corruption of state power, and thus possibly remain a source of future utopias), then the problem with my narrative must be in my methodology. According to Beverley, I do not let subalterns speak for themselves, but simply represent them in the way that is most functional to my project. For Beverley, therefore, I am still a positivist historian who insists on seeing history as a diachronic narrative that unfolds toward the future, and thus on occupying, almost always, the position of the omniscient narrator. He dismisses my insistence that subaltern history requires a dialogue among intellectuals, not because he doesnt agree, but because he doesnt accept that this is really part of my project. To represent historical representation itself as dialogue, Beverley insists, would have required a very different kind of narrative and narrative form, one in which the writing of the historian (Malln) was interrupted by other forms of oral or written narrative and other teleologies of intellectual practicethose of the local intellectuals.18 Similarly to Haber, but within a very different epistemological framework, Beverley evaluates how correct my method is from the perspective of his own discipline. When he finds a commitment to narrative across time, and not enough evidence of the interruption of my narrative form or teleology of intellectual practice, he finds in favor of positivism. It is interesting to note, in this context, that another historian influenced by cultural analysis reaches exactly the opposite conclusion about my work, especially concerning my relationship with schoolteacher and local intellectual Donna Rivera Moreno. By including other voices and knowledges in her text, William French writes,
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And in the strategies that she uses to present evidence, with extensive quotations from local petitions and sources, she can also be seen to be attempting the kind of dialogic reading advocated by Dominick LaCapra in a recent articleAs in some recent life historiesreaders are provided with enough voices to carry out a different reading than the one intended by the author and, thus, to draw their own conclusions.19
It is difficult not to conclude that interdisciplinary dialoguewhich is, in the end, at the core of this discussionbecomes all that much more difficult when we establish rigid rules about what is the correct way to present and legitimate arguments and evidence. Perhaps the disciplinary turf war is not only the province of historians. And perhaps we would benefit most if we were able to elaborate a more comparative and democratic perspective on how different disciplines have built distinct criteria, methods, and teleologies of intellectual practice as they gather, evaluate, and legitimate their various forms of evidence. Another literary scholar who confronts my work, although he limits himself to my AHR article on Subaltern Studies, is Walter Mignolo. When he adds my work to his argument about the geopolitics of knowledge, Mignolo places it in the category of U.S.-based area studies and thus within his frameworksquarely within colonial knowledge. He uses as his source the polemic that appeared, concerning the Spanish translation of my article, in Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui and Rossana Barragns introduction to the Spanish translation of key texts from the India-based Subaltern Studies school, where they insisted that I ignore Latin American traditions concerning postcolonialism in order to concentrate on the academic debate in the North. In response to this, Mignolo asks:
(1) Why does Mallon remain silent about the dialogue between North American scholars for whom Latin America is a field of study, and South American scholars and intellectuals for whom Latin America is not just a field of study but a place of historical and political struggle? (2) Is Mallon assuming that Latin America is only a place to be studied and not a location for theoretical thinking and, by so doing, recasting the ideology of area studies in the vocabulary of subaltern studies?20
Given that his goal is to map the geopolitical distribution of intellectual power, Mignolo wants to emphasize that, in Latin America, the post-
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modern and the postcolonial must of necessity be two sides of the same coin since we must pay as much attention to the inequalities between North and South as we do to the hierarchies internal to any given Latin American society. Thus, if we do not recognize the theoretical contributions of Latin American intellectuals, those of us who use the subaltern model will reproduce a system of colonial power which, according to him, was present in the field of U.S.-based Latin American Studies since its inception. But here as well it would be helpful to reflect from an interdisciplinary perspective. On one side, Mignolo, and especially Rivera and Barragn, are correct when they note the distance that exists between the intellectual preocuppations of the U.S. academy, largely separate from political action and more intensely concerned with internal controversies among disciplines, and the intellectual worlds that exist in Latin America, where, despite the political crises of recent decades, the connections among academic disciplines, and between academic knowledge and politico-intellectual commitment, are much stronger. To a certain extent, these differences were also reproduced in the discomfort some North American academics expressed about Peasant and Nation, a text they saw as neither a historical monograph nor a strictly postmodern literary analysis. On the other side of the North-South divide, we see among politically committed intellectuals like Rivera and Barragn a need to criticize the irreflexive adoption of Northern intellectual fads, which seems to have resulted, according to these authors, in an attitude among some Latin American academics to simply wipe out (borrn y cuenta nueva) our own intellectual traditionsand Marxism is one of these[an attitude] that impoverishes Latin American debates and gives them a particularly fragmented quality.21 While I dont agree with Rivera and Barragn that my essay on Subaltern Studies exemplifies this tendency to ignore the diversity of Latin American intellectual traditions, I would like to take an example from their essay to show how Latin Americanists who inhabit the U.S. academy can also be impoverished by our distance from Latin American intellectual worlds. Among the Latin American intellectual traditions that Rivera and Barragn suggest can help us think about colonialism is Pablo Gonzles Casanovas use of the concept of internal colonialism. When I first read this section of their essay I rejected this concept immediately because, in my mind, it was still associated with its emergence as a rather rigid, structural, and problematic attempt to apply dependency theory to an analysis of
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social relations. But afterwards I realized that, in the context of newly militant indigenous movements in the 1980s and 1990s, the concept of internal colonialism had taken on new and more dynamic meanings which gave new relevance to Gonzless pioneering work. Seen in this light, the concept can also be productively connected to notions of orientalism and western constructions of the Other, not only in the Andes, but in other parts of Latin America. Those of us who do not form a constant part of Latin American political and intellectual discussions can lose track of these important cross-fertilizations.22 At the same time, however, debates and differences between North and South not only have geopolitics, but also a very complex geohistory that is not fully recognized by Rivera or Barragn. This geohistory is crucial if we are to understand Latin American studies as a fieldnot only in todays globalized context, but also at the moment when many of us were actually formed as intellectuals, before the fall of actually existing socialism, when a rather different set of struggles and solidarities seemed possible. As Rivera and Barragn suggest, Marxism emerged as a truly Latin American tradition in the debates and discussions of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s when the Cuban and Nicaraguan revolutions revitalized leftist activism and international solidarity across the entire western hemisphere. This international solidarity, and the intellectual collaboration that accompanied it, was grounded in three central principles. First, an agreement about the political importance of intellectual activity that managed, at least for a time, to penetrate U.S. universities as well. Second, a preference for those topics of research and academic debates directly relevant to the social struggles of the time, and in a strong commitment to the theoretical and methodological transformation of intellectual activity from within the ivory tower. And third, a deep intellectual and political exchange, not only between North Americans and Latin Americans, but also among different parts of Latin America itself. This latter exchange was based not only in mutual support of the social mobilizations of the 1960s and 1970s, but also of the exiles of the 1970s and 1980s that created multinational diasporas of Latin Americans from Toronto to Havana, from New York to Mexico City. In this mutual intermingling we were almost able to create, for a short period of time, a truly postcolonial space of collaboration around a common project for social transformation. Although shaped during that generational moment, Peasant and Nation was nevertheless written, and later read, in an intellectual world recently re-segregated by the defeat of socialism and the
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victory of the market and of globalization. The contradictions and challenges of intellectual debate in this newly ruptured world are many, but we cannot truly confront them if we lose track of what preceded them.
American Diasporas: Generational Politics and the Contextualization of Difference

The problem of location, both geographic and national, of Peasant and Nation was already present in the debate with Tulio Halpern, who clearly disagreed with Rivera and Barragn that Marxism was truly a Latin American traditionat least after the 1960s. Indeed, for Halpern, the fact that I was still preoccupied with criticizing the rigidities of orthodox Marxismespecially with regard to the nature of the state, the class content of politics, the lack of attention to gender and racial/ethnic hierarchies, or the exclusion of peasants and indigenous peoples from politicsmarked my work as belonging to the less theoretically sophisticated U.S. academy. In my response I emphasized the importance of the Cuban revolution for young people and the new left throughout the Western hemisphere, and suggested that it had helped create an alternative Marxism that was truly American, in Jos Marts definition of this last term. My attempt to open up space in the theoretical traditions associated with Marxism does not come from the innocent U.S. tradition, I emphasized,
But rather from an encounter with these Latin American diasporas and with the U.S. movement in solidarity with the peoples of the Americas. Both have a longer history than we realized in the Latin American southern cone, when I was growing up in Chile and Argentina. And I got to know both traditions quite intimately as a college student, for I began my studies in the United States during the Vietnam war and did graduate work in my native land after Augusto Pinochets military coup.23
I cite myself extensively here, something that, to be perfectly honest, bothers me a great deal when someone else does it, to make a simple point. In my original text, the last phrase in the quotation was different. It said, did graduate work after Augusto Pinochets military coup in my native land. I can only imagine what happened in between. Perhaps a dedicated editor, while correcting the text, thought that even though my Spanish was
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pretty good, I must have made a mistake there in the order of the phrasing, since I had transformed myself into a Chilean. This grammatical correction, however, had the effect of changing the real location of my birth, thus changing as well the geographical location I had always given myself within evolving American diasporas, recreating the gringa identity Halpern had attributed to me and against which I had been arguing against in the first place. There are a number of things at play in this example. Beyond the cultural assumptions or stereotypes that underlie all processes of cultural exchange, it is also true that, in many cases, when wishing to deny legitimacy or authority to a controversial argument or action, it is enough to say that it is foreign; or in Latin America, to say that it comes from the U.S. In postrevolutionary Mexico, the parallel accusation was malinchismo, a reference to Hernn Cortss female translator and lover, Malinche or Malintzn, something that recent Chicana literary criticism has demonstrated is problematic as well.24 Given the diasporic experience of an entire American generation, the ground upon which these identities are established can quickly be transformed into quicksand. Where would we locate, for example, an exiled Chilean writer who, rather than return to her native land under insecure or politically frustrating conditions, decides to write about Chile from Europe? Or a Peruvian who finds in the New York intellectual world a freedom to think and write that had eluded him in Fujimoris Peru and contributes to his decision to stay? Their compatriots who remained in Chile or Peru might look upon these individuals with some suspicion or unease; but this does not make the exiles simply Swedish, French, or gringo. What is also at play here is the present tendency to reconstruct more rigid geopolitical and cultural identities, which contrast dramatically with the more flexible forms of belonging that were permitted in an earlier political climate, when people from different parts of the hemisphere could potentially share a commitment to the liberation of the oppressed. In order to enter that now extinct international community all you needed was a passport that documented your anti-imperalist credentials, with a dose of Marxism preferred but not required. It was in such a space that, perhaps in a previous life, Silvia Rivera and I shared in the extremely rich intellectual and political debates underway in Lima in the 1970s, and were both inspired to write our own books about the historical importance of Andean forms of popular resistance.25
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When and why did things change? It is important not to romanticize the unity of this earlier period, which was only partial and often skin-deep, with hierarchies of class, race, gender, and economic dependence strongly present. But we must also avoid the temptation to dismiss as simply colonial or imperialist the attempt to form an international community of solidarity around the idea of Latin American studies, an internationalism which was based at that point on the Cuban revolutions vision of a revolutionary continental unity. While it was still possible to nurture the hope of a radical project of inclusion and democracy, it was also possible to rationalize a decision to silence or bury other differences that, in such an optimistic moment, might have seemed less important. It was the failure of the national-popular model, in conjunction with the collapse of the socialist model, that convinced Latin American activists and intellectuals that the conditions for citizenship historically offered by these projects for inclusion, whether socialist or liberal-populist, demanded too great a sacrifice. They thus began to pay greater attention to those identities that could not easily be folded into a class-first model. Politicizing and making more visible gender, national, race, and indigenous identities transformed the very way in which politics was understood. At the same time, however, the power of the rupture sometimes kept younger activists and intellectuals in new social movements from fully understanding, in all its dimensions, the previous political experiment. Peasant and Nation belongs to this moment of deep rupture and rapid transition. Conceived when we still dreamed of the participation of all the oppressed in an inclusive national-democratic project, the book represents the desire to excavate and understand the historical discourses and practices of the subaltern in order to imagine more clearly how subaltern peoples might, after conquering the space to do so, create their own alternative polities.26 If the book had been conceived entirely after the rupture, it is entirely possible that the excavation would itself have seemed a great deal less relevant. At the same time, however, it is possible to see in its pages the marks of the new conjuncture. I was writing about nineteenth-century peasant struggles while the Berlin Wall was coming down; about the construction and revindication of communitarian forms of liberalism while the whole world confronted the victory of the neoliberal market. Thus there is also an intense search for new conceputal directions, especially as they relate to political action and strategy. This search is centered on a deconstruction of all political transparency, whether within communities or
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within the State.27 The most important goal of the search was, and continues to be, to de-romanticize subaltern politics by analyzing its internal fissures and hierarchies, as well as its historical complicity with state power. Inhabiting the border between an old populist and deeply modernist commitment to mass politics on the one hand, and a new and profound questioning of all political forms constructed by modernity on the other, Peasant and Nation rejects not only positivist and elitist assumptions about popular politics, but also the preferences of some radical analysts. I agree with radical theorists who emphasize that the rural masses were neither victims of, nor passive witnesses to, the great changes brought on by modernity. But by exploring the complexities of subaltern participation and complicity in the construction of the nation, I part company with many analysts of subalternity (among others) who emphasize the notion of subaltern politics as Negation, because they want to believe that subalterns have not yet sat down at the table of the nation-state. This is, in my mind, a central point of disagreement between myself and John Beverley, which results in a series of ambivalences in Beverleys text concerning my work. On the one hand he sometimes uses my work as data, even though he has gone to great pains to dismiss its more general theoretical or methodological project. Thus, for example, when discussing texts concerning the Tpac Amaru civil war, he writes that the idea of the nation does not belong exclusively to the creole elite that formed the Peruvian nation-state. It can also be, as Mallon has shown in Peasant and Nation, a production of subaltern knowledge and desire.28 And yet, only a few pages before, he dismisses my projectthe very one that allows him to argue for the potential subaltern imagining of the nationas simply a biography of the nation-state that leaves its frame intact. On the other side he also makes reference, when it fits into his argument, to my re-vindication of empirical data. Thus, when addressing the distinction social theorist Richard Rorty makes, in his analysis of the construction of knowledge, between the desire for solidarity and the desire for objectivity, he asserts that my project is driven by the desire for objectivity, reserving the more desirable desire for solidarity for what he defines as the project of Subaltern Studies. But immediately afterward, on the same page, he admits that solidarity cannot begin with the romanticization or idealization of the subaltern, but rather (citing liberation theologist Gustavo Gutirrez) from a concrete friendship with the poor. He then concludes that, in that
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sense, Mallon may have a point about the limits of textuality and the virtues of fieldwork.29 It seems that Beverley is prompted to dismiss my project theoretically and methodologically because it is different from his, only to then use elements of it to fit into his argument. Part of this may be the problem of interdisciplinarity discussed earlier. But I also wish to suggest that part of the reason for this combination of rejection and reincorporation is that Beverley also wants to highlight the novelty of his argument that to construct the people/power bloc antagonism today, under the conditions of globalization and in the face of the neoliberal critique and privatization of state functions, requires, by contrast, a relegitimization of the state. This argument rests, in my opinion, on two faulty assumptions. The first is a vision of the state which still seems to share a great deal with the original Marxist idea that it was simply the arm or committee of the dominant class. As several critical theorists have argued, even if we agree that the main purpose of a state was and is class rule, in order to be effective it cannot simply act in the narrow interests of the dominant class, which in many cases will be against the systems long-term ability to reproduce itself. But once we open up the possibility that a state must represent more than the narrow short-term interests of the dominant class, we also open up the possibility that other classes, including subaltern groups, may find an occasional foothold in state policy or institutions, and even use one sector of the state against another. It is in this sense that Nicos Poulantzas concluded that the struggles of the oppressed were woven throughout the fabric of the state, and could not be separated from it.30 Seen from this perspective, the dynamic of subaltern politics in relation to the state was never one of Negation. And that brings me to the second faulty assumption, which is that earlier attempts to construct the people/power bloc antagonism were all that different from the strategy Beverley recommends for today. An excellent example of how todays attempts to build something new by defending the state turn out to have messy and contradictory roots in the old can be found in Chiapas. A stubborn and heroic guerrilla movement has negotiated with the government, accepted watered-down agreements (which were, of course, subsequently not honored), and even sent masked indigenous leaders to address the Mexican Congress. While the EZLNs revindication of indigenous demands for autonomy has been an important and dramatic political move, which has helped to fortify the
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indigenous movement in other parts of Mexico as well in the southeast, its overall project revindicates the popular strands of the 1910 revolution and the negotiations of popular movements with the emerging postrevolutionary state. What does Beverleys recommendation that we need to create a new kind of state mean in such a context? It is much easier to become enthusiastic about the potential success of such a project if subalterns had not already defended earlier state forms, for only in such a context could a more convincing utopian case be made for todays subaltern engagements with the state. The problem with such an approach is that it expunges earlier, messier, more complicitous and partial attempts at engagement and, by not playing with a full historical deck, surely dooms us once again to failure. This is not to say, of course, that simply understanding history will keep us from repeating itIm postmodern enough to avoid such an old positivistic chestnut. But I am also still modernist enough (as is Beverley) to continue yearning for a project that successfully unifies the people, following Laclaus definition of populism.31 This contradiction between a modernist yearning for political inclusion, and an equally strong postmodern and postcolonial critique of its limits, is at the very core of the Subaltern Studies project. As the India-based schools founders understood from the outset, such a project ignores history at its own peril, yet is equally doomed if it takes history at face value.
NOTES
Florencia E. Mallon, Peasant and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), and The Promise and Dilemma of Subaltern Studies: Perspectives from Latin American History, American Historical Review, Vol. 99, No 5 (December 1994), pp. 1491-1515. The same essay has appeared twice in Spanish translation, once in the Boletn del Instituto de Historia Argentina y Americana Dr. Emilio Ravignani, No 12, 2nd Semester 1995, pp. 87-116; and Ileana Rodrguez (ed.), Convergencia de tiempos: Estudios subalternos/contextos latinoamericanos. Estado, cultura, subalternidad (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001), pp. 117-54.
2 1
Vol. XLVI, No. 3, Jan.-Mar. 1997, pp. 503-580. All translations from
SUBALTERNS AND THE NATION Spanish to English in this essay are mine, unless otherwise noted.
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See, for example, the debate among Heraclio Bonilla, Nelson Manrique, and myself, best summarized in Peasant and Nation, pp. 1-4, 326-27; Steve J. Stern (ed.), Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), pp. 213-79. A recent example of such a reconstructed binary is Eric Van Young, The Other Rebellion: Popular Violence, Ideology and the Mexican Struggle for Independence, 1810-1821 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001). See, in order of publication: Peter F. Guardino, Peasants, Politics, and the Formation of Mexicos National State: Guerrero, 1800-1857 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996); Mark Thurner, From Two Republics to One Divided: Contradictions of Postcolonial Nationmaking in Andean Peru (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997); Mary Kay Vaughan, Cultural Politics in Revolution: Teachers, Peasants, and Schools in Mexico, 1930-1940 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997); Ada Ferrer, Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868-1898 (Chapel Hill y Londres: University of North Carolina Press, 1999) Charles Walker, Smoldering Ashes: Cuzco and the Creation of Republican Peru, 1780-1840 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999); Greg Grandin, The Blood of Guatemala: A History of Race and Nation (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000); Ariel de la Fuente, Children of Facundo: Caudilllo and Gaucho Insurgency During the Argentine State-Formation Process (La Rioja, 1835-1870) (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000); and Lynn Stephen, Zapata Lives! Histories and Cultural Politics in Southern Mexico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). Interesting treatments of the same theme appeared in Spanish in Leticia Reina (ed.), La reindianizacin de Amrica, Siglo XIX (Mxico D.F.: Siglo XXI and CIESAS, 1997). Thurner, Ferrer, and de la Fuente also treat war as a moment when nationstate formation, especially from below, can be especially intense. For a different perspective on this theme, see Miguel Angel Centeno, The Centre Did Not Hold: War and the Monopolisation of Violence in Latin America, in James Dunkerley (ed.), Studies in the Formation of the Nation-State in Latin America (Londres: Institute of Latin American Studies, 2002), pp. 54-76. Examples of this other literature would include: Antonio Annino, Soberanas en lucha, in Antonio Annino, Luis Castro Leiva y Franois-Xavier Guerra, De los Imperios a las Naciones: Iberoamrica (Zaragoza: IberCaja, 1994), pp. 225-253; Vincent C. Peloso y Barbara A. Tenenbaum, Liberals, Politics, and Power: State Formation in Nineteenth-Century Latin America (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996), and Hilda Sbato, The Many and the Few: Political Participation in Republican Buenos Aires (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001).
5 4
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6
A point I make in Peasant and Nation, and which Sbato also makes in The Many and the Few.
7
Hispanic American Historical Review, Special Number entitled Mex-
icos New Cultural History: Una lucha libre?, Vol. 79 No 3 (May 1999). See especially, among the essays in the special number of the Hispanic American Historical Review cited above, Florencia E. Mallon, Time on the Wheel: Cycles of Revisionism and the New Cultural History and Claudio Lomnitz, Barbarians at the Gate? A Few Remarks on the Politics of the New Cultural History of Mexico,, pp. 331-51 and 367-83, respectively. A deeper reflection on the generational context for this debate can be found in Steve J. Stern, Between Tragedy and Promise: The Politics of Writing Latin American History in the Late Twentieth Century, in Gilbert M. Joseph (ed.), Reclaiming the Political in Latin American History: Essays from the North (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), pp. 32-77, especially 43-53. Stephen Haber, Anything Goes: Mexicos New Cultural History, in Hispanic American Historical Review, op. cit., pp. 309-30, direct quotation on p. 329.
10 11 9 8
Mallon, The Promise and Dilemma of Subaltern Studies, op. cit. Jos Rabasa and Javier Sanjins, Introduction: The Politics of Subal-
tern Studies, Dispositio/n, Vol. 19, No 46 (1994), pp. vi-vii. John Beverley, Subalternity and Representation: Arguments in Cultural Theory (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999). Beverley, p. 20. In all fairness, Beverley expresses the same doubt about the possibility of representing the subaltern from the perspective of the literary critic, since his objection here is more generally an objection to representation from a disciplinary perspective. At the same time, however, and as will become clear below, Beverleys critique of my approach is itself limited by the boundaries of a literary perspective.
14 15 13 12
Beverley, p. 37.
Beverley, p. 79. Perhaps it is important to point out here the rather extreme implication that any insistence on empirical verification thus leads us toward the kind of neoconservative and counterinsurgency political messages contained in Stolls work.
16 17
Beverley, p. 36 for all three previous quotations. Beverley, pp. 134 and 135, respectively, for the previous two quota-
tions.

18 19
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Beverley, p. 36. William E. French, Imagining and the Cultural History of Nineteenth-
Century Mexico, Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 79 No 3 (May 1999), pp. 249-67, direct quotation on pp. 255-56. Walter D. Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. 184-87, direct quotation on p. 187. The previous quotations can be found in Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui and Rossana Barragn, Presentacin, Debates Post Coloniales: Una Introduccin a los Estudios de la Subalternidad, Rivera and Barragn, eds. (La Paz: Editorial historias, SEPHIS, Ayuwiyiri, 1997), p. 14.
21 22 20
Rivera and Barragn, Presentacin, p. 19.
Seemin Qayum, for example, who spent many years living in the Bolivian intellectual community, uses the concept of internal colonialism very productively, connecting it to Saids orientalism, in her essay Nationalism, Internal Colonialism and the Spatial Imagination: The Geographic Society of La Paz in Turn-of-the-Century Bolivia, en Dunkerley (ed.), Studies in the Formation of the Nation-State, pp. 275-98.
23
Florencia E. Mallon, En busca de una nueva historiografa latinoamer-
icana: Un dilogo con Tutino y Halpern, Historia Mexicana, Vol. XLVI, No 3, January-March 1997, p. 577. See, for example, Norma Alarcn, Chicanas Feminist Literature: A Re-vision through Malintzin/ or Malintzin: Putting Flesh Back on the Object, in Cherre Moraga and Gloria Anzalda (eds.), This Bridge Called My Back (New York: Kitchen Table Press, 1983), pp. 182-90; and Rachel Phillips, Marina/ Malinche: Masks and Shadows, in Beth Miller (ed.), Women in Hispanic Literature: Icons and Fallen Idols (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), pp. 97-114. Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Oprimidos pero no vencidos: Luchas del campesinado aymara y qhechwa de Bolivia, 1900-1980 (La Paz: HISBOL/ CSUTCB, 1984), and Florencia E. Mallon, The Defense of Community in Perus Central Highlands: Peasant Struggle and Capitalist Transition, 1860-1940 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983).
26 27 25 24
Mallon, Peasant and Nation, p. 19. Mallon, En busca de una nueva historiografa latinoamericana, p. Beverley, p. 55.
578.
28
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29 30
Beverley, p. 39.
Nicos Poulantzas, State, Power, Socialism (London: New Left Books, 1978), and also Political Power and Social Classes (London: New Left Books, 1973). See also Ernesto Laclau, Hacia una teora del populismo, in Poltica e ideologa en la teora marxista: Capitalismo, fascismo, populismo, 2nd Spanish edition (Mexico: Siglo XXI Editores, 1980), pp. 165-233.
31
Laclau, Hacia una teora del populismo.
RE-MAPPING LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES: POSTCOLONIALISM, SUBALTERN STUDIES, POSTOCCIDENTALISM AND GLOBALIZATION THEORY
Eduardo Mendieta Philosophy Department SUNY at Stony Brook
Introduction
hen we think about Latin America from the perspective of the United States we cannot help it but to think of a series of pivotal dates; 1848 and the Mexican American War, 1898 and the Spanish American War, 1916 and the Mexican Revolution, 1945 and the end of World War II, 1959 and the Cuban Revolution, 1973 Pinochet and the assassination of Allende, 1979 and the Nicaraguan revolution, 1989 and the end of the Sandinista Government, 1994 NAFTA going into effect and the Zapatista uprising in the South of Mexico in the Lacandonian jungle. These are very recent historical events, but they have in very decided ways shaped the way the United States and Latin America have related. I want to suggest that these events have determined four axes around which four types of Latinamericanisms have emerged. Furthermore, I want to suggest that these events in Latin American history are related to general ruptures in the fabric of knowledge as it has been woven over the last 200 years or so. Simultaneously, when we think about Latin America, we must realize that we think from a particular locus, as I do now, for instance, on the Eastern coast of the United States, from within the New York University system. Thinking in time requires we think the space of our timing, the becoming space of time. Latin America, no less than any other geo-political signifier,
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is always the detritus of temporalizing and spatializing regimes that write the maps of world history. The tables of chronology are always accompanied by the maps of empires and nations (Mendieta). I will first discuss the four types of Latinamericanisms that have emerged since the late 19th century, then I will turn to the crises of knowledge, and how they have been addressed. The point is to discern upon what grounds, upon what chronotope, we can begin to develop a new form of Latinamericanism, one which perhaps seeks to bridge postcolonialism and postoccidentalism.
Latinamericanisms
The first type of Latinamericanism to emerge did so in part as a response to both 1848 and 1898. This Latinamericanism juxtaposed the United States with Latin America in terms of their distinctive and opposite cultural and spiritual outlooks. One is crass, materialistic, utilitarian, soulless, and without cultural roots, while the other is the true inheritor of the European spirit of culture, civilization, and idealistic principles grounded in love and tradition. These distinctions are made in the work of someone like Rod, but we also find them in the work of Jose Marti. This opposition was influential for generations of thinkers in Latin America, even when these did not share the original set of terms or animus. In the work of some Mexican thinkers like Jos Vasconcelos and even Leopoldo Zea, we find these kinds of differentiations. Another source of this type of Latinamericanism was the Latin American affirmation of its identity vis--vis Europe for similar reasons that Latin America sought to differentiate itself from the United Statesnamely imperialism, war, and its putative patrician cultures of disdain for the colonized and the racially mixed. Yet, not all intellectuals rejected unequivocally Latin Americans relationship to Europe. For some, in fact, the problem was that Latin America was not enough like Europe. This is a view that we find expressed in the work of Domingo Sarmiento who basically established a whole school of thought based on the opposition civilization and barbarism. This first type of Latinamericanism was one that descended from the era of the colonial and imperialistic expansion of the United States and Latin Americans affirmation of its distinctive cultural traditions. This Latinamericanism was based on a geopolitics of culture, and one may therefore correctly characterize it as a Kulturkampf Latinamericanism, one which juxtaposed the spirit of an imperialistic
RE-MAPPING LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES:...
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modernity with the promise of a humanistic and pluralistic form of modernization that in the words of Pedro Henriquez Urea was embodied in the idea of America as the fatherland of justice. The second type of Latinamericanism is the one that emerged after the cold war in the United States, as part of the area studies programs developed in North America. This area studies Latinamericanism had as its goal to gather and disseminate knowledge about third world countries. This Latinamericanism treated Latin America like any other foreign land, although there was from the inception an ambiguity about treating Latin America the way that Asia and Africa were treated. There were some fascinating debates, the Eugene Bolton debates for instance, that argued that Latin America should be studied in the same way that the United States and Canada should be studied. Nonetheless, cold war knowledge interests dictated the research model. This type of Latin Americanism was a way to think or represent Latin America from the standpoint of the North American academy. But, to be fair, one should note that what we are here calling Area Studies Latinamericanism could be said to have two foci: one a Latinamericanism of Latin America as the land of underdevelopment, (with all that this term entails, i.e. lack of proper stages of modernization, weak public spheres, lack of technological innovations, etc.) and the other a Latinamericanism of third worldism, or a form of first world romanticization and exocitization of the Latin American. Yet this form of viewing Latin America is but the negative image of the Latinamericanism of Latin America as underdevelopment. It is this second form of Latin Americanism that romanticizes Latin America and explains the fetishization of the Latin American novel. And it is the interaction between these two types of Latinamericanisms that gives rise to the collapse of the epistemological and aesthetic with respect to Latin America that Romn de la Campa points out in his book Latinamericanism. After 1959, the Cuban Revolution, and 1969, the Medelln Bishops Meeting that essentially made official the Ecclesial Christian Base Communities and Liberation Theology, a third type of Latinamericanism emerged that I would like to call critical Latinamericanism. This is the Latinamericanism that sets Latin America in opposition to the US, but now in terms of an anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist stand that is accompanied by a thorough critique of the epistemological regimes that have permitted all prior theorization of Latin America. This is the Latinamericanism that we find in the works of Fals Borda, Ribeiro, Zea, Bondy, Gutierrez, and Dussel. This
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is a Latin American developed in Latin America to explain the Latin American situation to Latin Americans and to the United States. In many ways, this Latin Americanism also emerged to counter the ideological effects of the Latinamericanism developed by the epistemological apparatus of the cold war establishment of the United States during the fifties, sixties and seventies. Finally, there is a fourth type of Latinamericanism that has begun to develop over the last two decades and that is linked to the aftermath of the Latino Diaspora in the United States, and the emergence of a critical consciousness in the Latino populations in the United States as they came to be expressed in the Chicano, and Puerto Rican movements of the sixties. This is a trans-national, diasporic, and post-cultural type of Latinamericanisms that brings together the critical Latin Americanism produced in Latin America since the sixties, and the homegrown epistemological and social critique that identity movements develop simultaneously but separately. Thus, this Latino Latinamericanism has two foci and loci of enunciation and enactment and operates at various levels of criticism: it is critical of the West, but also of the way Occidentalism was deployed in order to normalize and regiment the very internal sociality of the West in the Americas. The thinkers that give expression to this type of thought are trans-American intellectuals like Juan Flores, Retamar, Romn de la Campa, Subcomandantes Marcos, Lewis Gordon, Jos Saldivar, Walter Mignolo, and Santiago Castro-Gmez.
On the Relationship Between Geopolitics and Knowledge Production.

I would like now to take a brief detour through an important theorization of the crisis of theory. In a 1981 essay entitled The Three Worlds, of the Division of Social Scientific Labor, circa 1950-1975 Carl E. Pletsch looked at the emergence of the three-fold division of the world into first, second and third world. He looked at the ideological context of the emergence of these now suspect distinctions, but, most importantly, he looked into their conceptual matrix in order to discern some fundamental epistemological categories that belong to the most elemental aspects of Western thought, or what today we call logocentrism. The distinctions among first, second and third world allowed Western social scientists to develop a disci-
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plinary division of labor that nonetheless permitted them to assume a privileged place in the order of things. Talk of three worlds was based on a pair of abstract and always re-inscribable binary oppositions that in turn were underwritten by an ontology of history, or teleology of history. The two pairs of binary opposites were, on the one hand, the binary of modern and traditionalthat is the world was divided into those societies that were either modern or those that were traditional, i.e. unmodern, or pre-modern, or on the way to becoming modern. The second pair, moved ahead in the implicit temporal continuum, referred to the opposition between communist (or socialist) and free (or democratic). While communist stood for authoritarian, the free stood for liberal, constitutional, and rule of law. Thus, while the former was seen as a distortion, the latter was seen as the natural and logical outcome of societies that have overcome and superseded an earlier stage of unenlightened and even enlightened despotism. In this way the social semantics of the three worlds cashes out into a cultural semantics that assigns the following invidious distinctions to each world: The third world is the world of tradition, culture, religion, irrationality, underdevelopment, overpopulation, political chaos, and so on. The second world is modern, technologically sophisticated, rational to a degree, but authoritarian (or totalitarian) and repressive, and ultimately inefficient and impoverished by contamination with ideological preconceptions and burdened with ideologically socialist elite. The first world is purely modern, a haven of science and utilitarian decision making, technological, efficient, democratic, freein short, a natural society unfettered by religion or ideology. (574) The cultural semantics here, namely the way in which the words carry a conceptual badge that allows only certain things to be seen while putting others under erasure, operates on a prior commitment to modernization theory, but this in turn is but an expression of a deeper seated belief in a telos of history, or what I called earlier an ontology of history. In this way the cultural semantics of first, second, and third worlds allowed social scientists to make the following distinctions: between degrees of economic and technological development on the one hand, and between kinds of mentalities on the other. Evidently these distinctions are deployed from the standpoint of the blind spot of those who think they are granted by the logic of history to look upon those that are heading to where they now stand. On the basis of this cultural semantics, then, a division of labor emerged that assigned to the third world and second worlds the ideographic sciences, and to the first world the nomothetic sciences. While the
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third world was studied by anthropology and ethnography, the second was studied as a case study for the emergent spheres of economic, social, and political theory that nomothetic sciences study in the first world.
The Space of Theory

I briefly looked at a very insightful and critical approach to the crisis of the social sciences. Yet, I find it inadequate not just because it is bereft of any constructive suggestions, but also because it fails to give an account of its own theoretical position that does not presuppose what it is ultimately criticizing, namely the epistemological primacy of an ontology of history, or what we generally call a triumphalist teleology of the West. Pletsch presupposes the historical soil of theory when he criticizes the conceptual matrix of 20th century social science, that is, he is able to criticize what stands before his eyes because he stands at the most forward moment in the historical continuum he seeks to criticize. But, in what way can I engage in a criticism of a conceptual apparatus without at some level presupposing the very elements that constitute the normativity of that very apparatus? I want to suggest that in order to be aware of our own blind spot, or, in other words, in order to be able to justify our criticism without occluding the place from which we enunciate that criticism, we have to engage in a doubling operation. We observe ourselves in the act of observing. If we cannot see the place from which we observe, we could at least observe what it is that we observe and how it is that we observe it. The language is that of systems analysis, or complex systems, but the intent is different, as we will see. The goal is to make sense of the plethora of theories that are available now in the marketplace of ideas. I am interested in making sense of this theoretical cacophony, not because I think that theoretical diversity is a sign of the decay or obsolescence of theory. The opposite is more true: the plurality of theoretical wares in the marketplace of ideas reflects the very level of theory commodification that is necessary for the health of the exchange of ideas as the exchange of a cultural semantics that imposes a certain type of social semantics. I am interested in how theories operate in the circulation of cultural wealth, and how they grease the wheels of a global market in which what is traded is a product whose use value is as important as its exchange value, where cultural and theoretical capital stand on the same level as commercial and technological capital. But, at the same time, I am
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interested in how, in this uncircumventable situation of extreme commodification and reification of the theoretical, of its coagulation into theory, we might nonetheless discover a place of criticism. I will begin be laying out a criteria for the development of a typology of theories. Thus, in contrast to Pletsch, who wanted the conceptual matrix of social theory writ large, I am interested in the ways in which, in a saturated theoretical market, we might begin to differentiate between theories and their effects. First criteria: we have to determine what is the epistemograph or ontograph that is inscribed by a group of theories or theory. This is the language of Spivak (1999), but it is a terminology that one can claim descends also from Henri Lefebvre and David Harvey. But by ontograph or epistemograph I mean the following: every theory, whether consciously or unconsciously, is determined by spatial imaginary. This spatial imaginary operates at both macro and micro-levels. The classic example is Hegel and his idea that Europe is the privileged center for the substantialization of reason. Another example would be how in Kant, as Spivak and LeDouff have shown, the categories of cognition are inscribed within a particular geography of the imagination. In Dussels language, every philosophy participates in a geo-political locus, not only in the sense that philosophy is determined by its place of enunciation, but also in the sense that philosophy also projects a certain image of the planet, the ecumene, and the polis as the space of what is civilized, or the place of civilization, which may or may not be besieged by the barbarians. Philosophy enacts an act of spatialization at the very same time that it is spatialized by its locus of enunciation. Every philosophy, again, inscribes an ontos or epistemograph. Second criteria: we have to make explicit the locus of the instantiation of the social. Every theory offers one or a group of structures and social processes that are the privileged locus for the substantialization of reason or logos. In other words, reason materializes in certain social structures in a form, and some might claim, in a normative way. It is for this reason, for instance, that Hegel could undertake a phenomenology of the spirit as an analysis of sociality, or society. Clearly, this relation between reason and social structure is what allows someone like Habermas to speak of modernity as the process of the rationalization of systems and the life world. A theory of rationality in turn becomes a theory of social differentiation, which in turn becomes a theory about the modernity (read rationality) of certain forms of society that results in a differential hierarchy in which some societies are primitive, and others pre-modern, and still others mod-
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ern. Conversely, in this view there are social spheres that have not been rationalized, or have been insufficiently rationalized. For this criterion the central question is: what is the institutional focus of a group of theories or theory? Third criteria: this one refers to what is taken to be the normative criteria or criteria or evaluation that allows one to adjudicate whether a society has achieved what is putatively taken to be the actualization of reason in the social world. In other words: what is normative for each group of theories or theory? Let me illustrate by stating that in some theories of modernity the criteria for determining whether societies are modern or not is dependent on whether a society has obtained a high level or bureaucratization, formalization, institutionalization of abstract universality, self-reflexivity, or even contextual un-coupling (as one can say that both Giddens and Habermas argue). Another example: what is the operating evaluative norm when one says that societies are globalized or have been globalized, or that they should be globalized? Is it that a society has accepted the austere policies of the World Bank, and that national economies have been liberalized and are open to the onslaught of trans-nationals? Fourth criteria: what are the political consequences of an epistemological project, or to put it differently, in what ways does a certain ontograph or epistemograph turn into an actual political project? Put differently, every theory has a political impact, or rather, contributes towards sanctioning, legitimating, and normalizing certain forms of social violence. Or, conversely, a theory or group of theories contribute to the de-mystification of the supposed naturalness of certain social processes, and, in this way, can call into question the impact of certain forms of social violence that are tolerated and neglected because they had been naturalized. The question that is important with respect to this criterion is: which political projects are sanctioned when certain processes, loci of materialization of reason, epistemograph or ontographs are theoretically defended and articulated? The Fifth and final criteria is that this whole form of articulating criteria could be stylized and formalized by asking: who is the subject who thinks what object, and, more acutely still, where is this subject and how does it project and localize its object of knowledge? A different way of saying this would be: who speaks for whom and who speaks over or about whom? This is a way of asking questions about the production of theory, and the position of theoretical agents, the agents that produce theory. It is a form of looking at the production of theory that makes explicit how there
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are subjects who are authorized to make theoretical pronouncements while there are other subjects that are merely spectators and who are relegated to being mere objects of knowledge. Some subjects are credible epistemic and theoretical witnesses, while others are from the outset suspect and illegitimate subjects of credible theoretical reflection. This all concerns the practices of partitioning, parceling, or, as one may say in Mexico, of fraccionamientos, and what we in the US might call theoretical gerrymandering or gentrification. Who speaks, or who is authorized to speak about, and for others, occupies a privileged epistemological place. This place, in turn, is made available by the theories and epistemological practices that are used by theorists. There is what Walter Mignolo calls a locus of enunciation and a practice of enactment (Mignolo 1994, 2000). Theorizing, or philosophizing is a habitus that is always accompanied, or framed by a configuration of both social and imaginary space (all space is imaginary and social, and the social is always conditioned by a certain imaginary). To think our locus of epistemological privilege, or to think the place of our epistemological scorn and segregation, this is what Raymond Pannikar has called a plurotopic hermeneutics. One final note of clarification. The goal of this type of analysis that I am profiling with the help of Spivak, Pannikar, Dussel and Mignolo, and which I am formalizing in terms of a set of criteria of discernment, is to supersede, to go beyond the cybernetic and systems theoretical proposal of thinkers, such as Niklas Luhmann, who juxtapose the mere observer to the solely observed, on one side, and the observer who is observed, on the other. In other words, Luhmann juxtaposes what merely observes objects to the observing observer, or subjects that look at other subjects. The second type of observation is what Luhmann calls second order observation. Analogously, it is necessary to go beyond the distinction that Habermas makes, supporting himself on Luhmann but translating him into the language of hermeneutics and the philosophy of language, between the first and third person perspectives. The first, the position of the first person, is the position of the participant in a community of communication that is at the same time a community of interpretation, and who for this reason is thoroughly soaked by a hermeneutical immersion. The second position is that of the one who observes, but in an objectivating manner. This position is allegedly of someone who can objectify because he or she is not a participant of the life-world which she observes. In fact, the grammar of the observer and the observed, the participant and the non-participant is much
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more complicated than these two types of distinctions allow. We are always already, immer schon, as Heidegger would say, and simultaneously, both observer and observed. We are observed observers, and observers who observe themselves. The gaze is not monological, but always mediated by a third. In the language of semiology we could say that observation is always a triadic relation: there is always a gazing of an observer who is in turn observed in its very act of gazing. The one observed can always return the gaze: the observed can gaze back, can look back. Using Mignolos language, I would put it now in the following way: we always speak about something, or someone, from a given perspective, and when we do so, we are enacting, performing, deploying certain forms of knowledge-power. Now, what this type of analysis allows us is to make explicit the power dimensions, or the dimensions of coercion and epistemological violence that every knowledge pronouncement entails. At the same time, this type of analysis also allows us to unmask the form in which allegedly universal propositions and formulations, pronouncements that are putatively not contaminated and damaged by the subjective or local, are in fact made possible by an epistemological machine that has specific goals and functions. Behind every theory there is what we could call an apparatus of knowledgepowerechoing Foucaultand what he called a dispositif: an apparatus of coercion and control. With these criteria in hand, we can now turn to a comparative analysis of the theories on display and up for sale in the global market place of ideas. Theories of modernity, looked at from afar are forms of theorizing that think from the ontograph of Europe. These are theories that are primordially about how Europe is the locus classicus for the actualization of reason. Europe is their subject of preoccupation, and furthermore, the world must mimic Europe. In this way the object of study is not the world, but an entirely ideological construct. The institutional locus of analysis for theories of modernity is understood as the unfolding of a social and state logic on one side and scientific logic on the other. Thus, the institutional locus is socio-political bureaucracy, such as the rule of law state, or the economy supposedly rationalized through abstract economic exchange mediated by money. That on one hand, but on the other we have the idea that technology is institutionalized as a socio-state project. This is science at the service of the state and society. The normative criteria of evaluation are formalization, the imposition of self-reflexivity (through science), and most importantly, whether political, economic, and scientific institutions are sufficiently for-
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malized in order to be spatially translated. This is what Giddens calls the un-coupling of institutions. This means that these institutions can be translated into different contexts. It fits remarking here how strange it is that one of the criteria of evaluation is that the most modern structures and institutions are those that are most simply and rapidly exportable and translatable. The political consequences have already been observed. The goal of these theories is to legitimate certain historical violences. Once processes of conquest, of the institutionalization of certain forms of science, are naturalized, then culpability, responsibility, and the possibility to call to account cultures for genocide are neutralized and disallowed. These theories, viewed from an epistemological angle, imposed an epistemological blindness and an ethical silence. Finally, these theories are about a subject purified of all alterity, a subject that speaks for and about others. This subject is in a place that is different than that of its object of knowledge. In this type of theories we have the classic case of what Spivak diagnosed as speaking for the subaltern, and in this way silencing him or her. Postmodern theories do not digress or divert too much from this epistemograph. The ontograph continues to be Europe, and the locus of reason or rationalization continues to be the Euro-modern institutions, but now as those that have been exhausted, or which have arrived at their logical extremes. The normative focus is the critique to the onto-teleology of the homogenizing and suicidal logos of modernity. As a critique of the rational project of modernity, and its violent univocity, postmodern theories become the celebration of and reverence for alterity, which includes what is most singular, all of that which belies the triumph of Webers iron cage of modernity. However, this other that is supposedly placed on a pedestal is merely the other face of the self-sameness of modernitys I conquer that Dussel has studied and unmasked so eloquently. Politically, the consequences are that all projects of emancipation are pronounced exhausted at best or totalitarian at worst. Every project of social transformation that would be designed and projected from outside of the matrix of modernity is deemed to have failed and to have been genocidal. Here we have the same phenomenon of the impossibility for the other to speak for himself or herself. The future is closed. Since the west has arrived at its own exhaustion then it is impossible to conceive of the future in any different form. In this way, and once again, criticism is neutralized and silenced. Responsibility for the Other is recognized, but this is unfulfillable because the great narratives of modernity that supported the possibility of being responsible for the Other
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have been extinguished. Clearly we have here a subject that abrogates for itself the authority of speaking for others, and furthermore, it says that not even they are able to speak since the languages of liberation and responsibility have become anachronisms. The locus of enunciation is then the very same institutions, academic as well as of quotidian life, of the modern countries, which also announce that no other path is acceptable. For subjects located in this locus enunciationis the end of modernity has become the end of history tout court. Until now I have been discussing chronologically a series of theories, and have been offering a diagnosis, or an analysis that looks at how these theories have power-knowledge effects. Following this chronological line the next series of theories would be globalization theories. But at the same time a whole host of theories that compete with globalization have emerged. Such competition can be expressed in the following way: Where are the discourses about globalization localized with respect to the discourses of modernity and posmodernity, on the one hand, and where are they with respect to the discourses of postcolonialism and post-occidentalism? A note of clarification about the nomenclature is in order. I want to suggest that the distinction between one group of theories or discourses is not just chronological, but is fundamentally related to the place from which and about they theorize. In so far as the discourses of globalization seem to have become the discourses of a pax Americana, that is, in so far as they are discourses about the celebration of the triumph of so-called democracy, and the defeat of the Soviet project, and therefore, of the triumph of neoliberalism, and, in so far as the discourses of globalization are understood primarily from the standpoint of an economic, technological and even political perspective (that is, in so far as globalization is understood as the planetarization of an economic, technological, and political system), then we have to see these discourses as principally about who the West globalizes, that is modernizes, the world. Again, if we accept the discourses of White House and Pentagon apologists, la Huntington and Fukayama, then the discourses on globalization are the renewal of the triumphant discourses of modernity. Globalization thus becomes a modernized modernity, an actualized and updated modernity, and a second modernity to use Ulrich Becks term. Globalization is the new name for modernity, but now seen from the United States, which have become the inheritors of the Western project. If Europe modernized, now the United States globalizes. The goal, the means, and the justification are the same. For this reason a radiography of global-
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ization will make evident how this is a theorization that continues to trace and map the same epistemograph or ontograph that modernity traced. Europe and the United States are the vortices of globalization. Evidently, positions like those of Canclini and Robertson have shown how globalization is as much the projection of the local as it is also the acculturation of the global, and for this reason it is more appropriate to talk of glocalization. Canclini, furthermore, has shown how the supposedly pre-modern or socalled traditional is an investure, or a form of fitting and appropriating trans-national, modernizing, and globalizing projects. Using the language of Hobsbawn, the pre-modern and the traditional are inventions of the modernthe modern cannot be defined without inventing that which is its opposite (see also Eric Wolf, The People without History). And as Canclini shows, it is for this reason that hybridity is an already globalized strategy entering modernity, or a modern strategy to access globality. Yet, both Canclini and Roberston illustrate exactly what it is that I am circling around, namely the need to shift the epistemological locus of enunciation. For in order to accept Canclinis and Robertsons corrections requires that we see globalization as a global process in which there is not one agent, one society that globalizes, or one catalyst that inaugurates or accelerates an allegedly inevitable process, but a plurality of agents, both cultural and social, that transform in unexpected ways the directions and telos of globalization. The difference between globalization and modernity is that the first seems to have abandoned all strong universalistic claims and pretensions, as was fundamental to modernity. While modernity operated on the logic of an onto-teleology, globalization transfers its alibi to a naturalized history of social development. History is the realm of contingency and chaos, but it also abides by the rules of selection and elimination that control the organic world. What survives is selected out. If it has survived, it is because it has been selected by nature. In fact, globalization presents itself as a second nature, as something that is inevitable. Globalization will happen, regardless of whether we want it or not. The formulation is that we are already globalized, or rather; that whomever does not want to be globalized will be despite his or her own desires. Globalization, then, is a new philosophy of history that does not tell us that the telos that guides everything is in the future, but instead tells us that the future is already here. There is no future, because we are already in the future. Here it would be fitting to appropriate Habermas expression and say that globalization constitutes a closure of the horizon of the future. There are no other futures, since we already live in it.
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And this is precisely what Microsoft suggests when it asks in its commercials: where do you want to go today? Everything is at our disposal and within our reach. Postmodern cynicism is synthesized with the plenipotentiary and absolutist logic of modernity, and thus we have the discourses of globalization. Turning to our criteria, we could say then that the institutional locus is Euro-North American politics, economics and technology. It is obvious that neither Indian, African, Nicaraguan, nor even French technology can globalize. Politically, the effect once again is of the neutralization of all critique. Who would want to stand in the way of the inevitable and logical path of social development? Of course, there are resistances, but these are caricaturized as Luddites and counter-moderns, a type of antimodern romanticisms. There is one difference with respect to both modernity and postmodernity: the discourses of globalization pretend to situate themselves beyond the borders of Europe and the United States. Here one could say that they share certain preoccupations and methodologies with the postcolonial and postoccidentalist theories. Globalization theories pretend to think the world from the perspective of the Other. However, all that they can see or think is themselves. Put differently, they go to the Other in order to see only themselves. In this form the locus of enunciation is the world, as a horizon of knowledge and concern, but what it enacts is a negation of this very locus of enunciationfor the world is not the world of cultural, social, and technological heterogeneity, but of a mere tabula rasa for the actualization of one global design. Postcolonial theories began as a methodological critique of Marxism, and they were first elaborated in regions and countries that have been European colonies. Seen through this optic, postcolonial theories originate in a general discontent and disenchantment with a Western culture that discredited itself so thoroughly and irreversibly with the massacres of the First and Second World Wars, the genocides of the concentration camps and the communist gulags. Postcolonial theories attempt to rescue certain Marxist inspired methods of analysis for postcolonial societies. For this reason the Indian Subaltern group was launched initially as an internal critique to Marxism, which because of its focus on European industrial capitalism cannot understand or appreciate the logic and originality of revolutionary movements that have nothing to do with the revolutionary logic of late capitalism as was diagnosed by Marx, Engels, and Lenin. Eventually, this methodological critique became an epistemological revolution, even a paradigm revolution. The goal is no longer of transforming historical material-
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ism and the cultural studies inaugurated by Raymond Williams and E.P. Thompson, in order to acculturate and adapt them to the historical reality of the Indian world. On the contrary, now the goal was of abandoning these methods, for their epistemological as well as onto-historical presuppositions are what hinder the possibility of understanding Indian reality in its own terms. Here we must ask what the relationship is between postcolonial theory and subaltern studies. Is one a subset of the other, or are both faces of one same coin, to use that quotidian expression? I will suggest that one way in which we can understand the relationship between postcolonial theory and subaltern studies is to think of the former as the theorization of the horizon of historical praxis seen from the standpoint of social agents and the institutions that frame their modes of actions, while the latter is the questioning of the modalities of subjectivity and agency seen from the standpoint of lived experience and the psychic life of power to use Judith Butlers wonderful book title. Postcolonial theory is to subaltern studies what historical materialism is to psychoanalytic, or, Freudian Marxism, or what Hegels Lectures on the Philosophy of World History are to the Phenomenology of Spirit, or what Marxs Grundrisse is to his 1844 Manuscripts; but perhaps more aptly, postcolonial theory is to subaltern studies what Edward Saids Orientalism is to Homi Bhabhas The Location of Culture. What is at stake on one side is to think from the larger canvas of history, not assuming the givenness of this canvas, but precisely to question the existence and nature of that canvas as the very condition of possibility of painting something like the scene of history, i.e. not just how history happens, but why is history required in order to think the very possibility of agency at a macro-level, as the agency of social ensembles. On the other side, what is at stake is to think the space of subjectivity as one that is already occupied by the socio-historical; how the subjectivity of the master and the slave are co-determined and co-determining. In this way, then, we may think of subaltern studies as an ensemble of investigations into modes of subjection, an analytics not of dasein but of subjected and revolted agency, and analytics in which one is not only and always the subaltern of another, but in which this one is also an insurrected and resisting Other. Subaltern studies thus always imply a theory of insurrected agencies, agencies that inaugurate and disclose new modalities and horizons of praxis, or social action.
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From the above we can surmise that while postcolonial theories are an epistemological and onto-historical revolution that put in question all the science that is made, written and exported by the Euro-North American pedagogical and ideological machine, subaltern studies are a socio-psychological deconstruction of the allowed theories of agency and subjectivity. For this reason, then, postcolonial theories and subaltern studies change the epistemograph and the ontograph. The world requires many chronotopographsdifferent historical and geographical maps (Spivak and Chakrabarty). In addition, there are different ways of being historical and contemporary with the modern projectthere are different ways of being modern. There are many ways in which agency and subjectivity have been and will continue to be lived beyond the shadow of the masters sovereignty. Here we can refer to a distinction that Dussel makes between modernity understood as a project that is supposedly accomplished only by Europe, and modernity as a global or planetary project, one which is the horizon of possibility for both Descartes and Kant (Dussel, 1996 and 1998). The normative criterion is enunciated in the negative: theories that negate reject and occlude the contribution, real or potential, of all cultures to an emergent planetary human culture, are unacceptable. Modernity is the product of the globality or mundialidad of humanity, and it would be hubristic to negate most or any contributions to such a project. The political consequences of this form of theories are evident. They are a critique of all forms of Eurocentrism, Americanism and Ethnocentrism. The subject is at the same time an object of study, and its locus of enunciation is the locus of enactment and actualization. Here the other speaks about itself from its own place: from its quotidianity. The question can the subaltern speak? is provisionally answered with: no, so long as the same onto-epistemological-historical categories of the Euro-North American project of modernity and globalization continue to be used (Derrida has written: theo-onto-epistemology and I accept this neologism if we also accept how theo-ontology masks and harbors an entire philosophy of history). I am using the word post-occidentalism to refer to those theories that emerged in Latin America during the sixties (Mignolo 2000, Lander 2001). This is a paradigm of Latin American thinking that gathers and synthesizes many theoretical currents: theories of dependence, the sociology of liberation, the philosophy of liberation, Freires pedagogy of the oppressed, including the works on history by Darcy Ribeiro, Samuel Ramos, Edmundo OGorman, and Octavio Paz. Methodologically, post-occidentalism
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emerges from a confrontation not only with historical materialism, but also from a synergistic synthesis and transformation of the existential ontology of Heidegger, the historicism of Gaos and Ortega y Gasset, and a symbolics, or cultural semantics and hermeneutics in the tradition of Ricoeur. I mention all of these precedents because I want to underscore how there is also an epistemological revolution in Latin American thought that is similar but anterior to that which took place within Indian thought, and Marxist thought in England in the late sixties and early seventies. To look at Latin American thought from the perspective of postcolonial theory allows us to appreciate the innovation and originality of Latin American thought. One, and only one, of the many critical foci of what here I will call post-occidentalism is a critique to eurocentrism and European ethnocentrism, a critique that is carried from within. The central tenet of post-occidentalism is that Europe constitutes itself through a political economy of alterization of its Others (a process that was so masterfully discussed by Edward Said). The logic of alterization creates Others, but only in order to define that which must remain unsoiled, pristine, the same: the identical. The grammar of abjection that determines the entire text of modernity in its relation to its others is not criticized from outside, but from within. What is a threat, what is vile and a possible contaminant, is within. Thus, the post-occidentalist critique begins by discovering the abject alterity within, inside. The figure is not the despised and feared Moor, or the despotic Byzantium. The figure is now of Caliban cursing Prospero. The civilizing project, justified and imposed by a sanctified teleology but disguised behind the mantle of a historical reason, shipwrecks on the shoals of indigenous and mestizo culture, the Amerindian and the American slave. From its inception, the occidentalist project begins its failure, but it is nonetheless continued and perpetuated, as management of those others that it produces but that must be at the same time quarantine. Formulaically put, the Amerindians, the slaves of the new world, the mestizos and mulattos born with the modern project knew, in their flesh and sequestered and quarantined sociality what the postcolonial thinkers began to discover after the sixties and seventies in light of a process of decolonization begun in the aftermath of World War II. It is evident, then, that there has been a change in the locus of enunciation. Now, it is no longer admissible to permit a subject to speak for others, to epistemologize about them, without allowing them in turn to speak or to make claims to knowledge. Nor is it acceptable to suppose that there is another who is silent and merely known. Postoccidentalist thought is that in
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which the other answers and responds back in his or her polluted and vulgar tongues. This speaking subaltern confronts the master with his voice and answers back: I do not recognize myself in your caricatures of me. The goal here is to acknowledge that we are always objects of a fantasy of control, and that this control materializes if we accept to live under the fictions of the master and his discourse. In short, postoccidentalism is what Niklas Luhmann would call a second order observation, an observation of observations (Luhmann 1995). In this way, postoccidentalism contributes to a critique of the modernist disciplines that occlude their political dimensions behind the curtains of scientization. Thus postoccidentalism, in an analogous manner to postcolonial theories, is a critique of the political economy of knowledge. There are fundamental differences between postoccidentalism and postorientalism, however. Postoccidentalism is a tradition that is socio-theoretical critique as much as it is philosophical critique, which has behind it five hundred years of experience and accumulated work. Yet, we would have to note that postcolonialism elaborates a critique of European colonialism in the epoch of its last stage. It is a critique that for that reason is focused on the more recent and visible consequences of the colonialmodern project (as Mignolo thinks we should write it), in its second stage (where the first stage was when the colonial-modern project is inaugurated with the discovery of the New World, and the Spanish hegemony that is established in synchrony with the expulsion of the Jews and the Moors from the Iberian peninsula). In contrast, the postoccidentalist critique is articulated synchronically and diachronically. Postoccidentalism is a look that gazes back from the inauguration of the Western or Occidental project, which is prior to the orientalist project and that, inevitably, due to geopolitical and historical-cultural reasons, analyze from within a third and most recent stage of the colonial-modern project. This latest stage has to be understood as the continuation of the civilizing project by the United States, under the flag of the war against all wars that is benignly called the crusade for human rights and its condition of possibility, globalization. This convergence among the transfer of flags, exacerbation of the violence of the civilizing project masked by the fiscal and banking policies imposed by the G-7, backed up by the Nato armies, and the crisis itself of this rationalized irrationality that is given voice in the thinkers of the center (echoing the expressions of economic philosopher Franz Hinkelammert), requires that we opt for a long term view that postcolonialism that is so young can nei-
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ther admit nor provide. Alternatively, the postcolonial critique is only able to criticize the effects of colonialism once this mutated into the projects of nation building. It is for this reason that postcolonialism seems fastidiously obsessed with the question of nationalism, and its alter ego, the nation, whether this be thought in terms of its fragments, its shadow, its agony, its absence, its failure, or its non-convergence with the space of a peoples culture. While postcolonialism continues to focused on the nation, even in its absence, it also continues to be over-determined by questions of class and the last instance of social relations as being epiphenomenal to a mode of production. And in this way, it narcotizes, to use Mignolos expression, against the geo-politics of location and the localizing, mapping, of the world-historical. But in the age of the symbolic reproduction of the system of production, what is needed is a political-economic critique of sign, or the production of the symbolic that conditions what is desirable as commodity, i.e. how the local of the nation is a metonym of the global and how the global is produced from and through the local. At a more elemental level, when we try to decipher the categories that allow postcolonial criticism, we are faced with an ambiguity or indeterminacy that seems to plague and render suspect the proposals of postcolonial criticism. Postcolonial theory advocates in favor of the subaltern, but who is the subaltern? How is the social, political, economic locus of the subaltern determined? How can one determine conceptually the theoretical locus of the subaltern? The subaltern some times appears to be part of the social system, at other times it seems to be beyond the system. As Spivak herself writes: Subalternity is the name that I grant to the space that is outside any serious contact with the logic of capitalism and socialism (Spivak cited in Moore-Gilbert 1997, 101). In other words, the category of the subaltern is outside any historical determination. But this indeterminacy becomes an empty space and an inaccessible and intransigent opacity, at the very moment that it turns into the cancellation of the ethical response. To clarify: faced with the challenge of the subaltern, who dominates, the hegemonic I of the ruling system, only has two options: either respect absolutely and without reservations the alterity of the other, and in this way must leave the status quo totally intact; or, on the other side, the hegemonic I must open up, respond to the other without trying to assimilate him (Moore-Gilbert 1997, 102). This type of paradox is confronted directly in the philosophical corpus that animates the postoccidentalist critique. And to put it more concretely, the challenge of the encounter with the other, and of
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having to formulate an answer that is neither adulatory nor sacralizing, neither assimilating nor devastating, is the central theme of the work of the ethics of liberation that is at the center of so much postoccidentalist work. A philosophy of alterity (the regimes of the production of otherness, would be more apt) is fundamental to the critiques of Occidentalism and Orientalism. What may be interpreted perhaps ungenerously as the philosophical poverty of postcolonialism is nonetheless justifiable: it is an epistemological critique that is inaugurated by a methodological crisis; it is critique in the aftermath of running up against that limit in which historical narrative is turned into logic, to paraphrase Spivak.1 The critique of the political economy of knowledge that is developed by the postoccidentalist critique proceeds further by stepping back farther since it seeks to begin from the crisis of reason itself at the moment of its inception, before the thrust to turn narrative into onto-logical ineluctability is even launched. It does this by moving from representation to enactment, from text to action, from the enunciated to the enunciation, from the belief that space and territories are places where interaction is enacted, to the belief that it is interaction as enactment that creates the idea of places, territories and regions. (Mignolo 1994, iii-iv) In the postoccidentalist critique, in short, we discern a postphilosophical strategy that seeks to think the spacing of time, and the timing of space, which are generative of reason; that is, the mapping of world historical time, and the temporalizing of geo-localities, which become the chronotope against which, or onto which, then narratives may be thought as logos, and logos as space, i.e. the time of the modern and the space of civilization.2 The universal logos of western philosophy is the trace, the cipher, of time-space, one which is always a particular time-space that projects itself as universal. In this way, postoccidentalism is a critique of western rationality, which unmasks it as a hubristic and blind chronotope, in favor of a reason that announces a universality yet to be, one that is enunciated from and out of the heterochronotopology of a world that is many, that is only one in its plurality. It is a critique of reason from within its own hybridity and insufficiency.
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NOTES
After Gayatri Spivaks A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present (1999), no one can accuse postcolonial theory of philosophical weakness. Yet, Spivak and Bhabha are the main theorists of subaltern studies and postcolonial theory that have devoted extended studies of what I have hear called the analytics of subjection and insurrection. In the postoccidentalist cannon, this has been a persistent question, since Retamar, Dussel and Ribeiro, to Mignolo, Castro-Gmez, and Stephan Gonzlez This phrasing echoes Jacques Derridas words when he offers one definition of diffrance as: Diffrer in this sense is to temporize, to take recourse, consciously or unconsciously, in the temporal and temporizing mediation of a detour that suspends the accomplishment or fulfillment of desire or will, and equally effects this suspension in a mode that annuls or tempers its own effect.this temporization is also temporalization and spacing, the becoming-time of space and the becoming-space of time, the originary constitution of time and space, as metaphysics of transcendental phenomenology would say, to use the language that here is criticized and displaced. (Derrida 1982, 8)
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WORKS CITED
Acosta-Beln, Edna. 2001. Reimagining Borders: A Hemispheric Approach to Latin American and U.S. Latino and Latina Studies 240-264; in Butler, Johnella A. ed. 2001. Color-Line to Borderlands: The Matrix of American Ethnic Studies. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press. Bonilla, Frank, Edwin Melndez, Rebecca Morales, and Mara de los Angeles Torres, eds. 2001. Borderless Borders: U.S. Latinos, Latin Ameircans, and the Paradox of Independence. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Butler, Judith. 1997. The Psychic Life of Power. Theories in Subjection. Stanford. Stanford University Press. De la Campa, Romn. 1999. Latinamericanism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Derrida, Jacques. 1995. El Lenguaje y las instituciones filosoficas. (Barceolona: Ediciones Paidos.
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, 1982. Margins of Philosophy. Chicago. The University of Chicago Press.

Duque, Felix and German Gutierrez, comp., 2001. Itinerarios de la Razn Crtica: Homenaje a Franz Hinkelammert en sus 70 aos. San Jos: Editorial Departamento Ecumnico de Investigaciones. Dussel, Enrique 2001. Hacia una Filosofa Poltica Crtica. Bilbao, Spain: Editorial Descle de Drouwer. , 1998. Etica de la Liberacin en la edad de la Globalizacin y la de la Exclusin. Madrid. Editorial Trotta. Flores, Juan. 1992. Divided Borders: Essays on Puerto Rican Identity. Texas: Arte Pblico Press. Gilbert, Alan. 1997. La Ciduad Latinoamericana. Mexico. Siglo XXI editores. Guha, Ranajit. 2002. History at the Limit of World-History. New York. Columbia University Press. , ed. 1997. A Subaltern Studies Reader: 1986-1995. Guha, Rita and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. 1988. Selected Subaltern Studies. New York. Oxford University Press. Hayden, Tom. 2001. The Zapatista Reader. New York: Thunders Mouth Press/ Nation Books. Herrera Flores, Joaquin, ed., 2000. El Vuelo de Anteo: Derechos Humanos y Crtica de la Razn Liberal. Bilbao, Espaa. Editorial Descle de Brouwer. Hinkelammert, Franz, comp. 1999. El Huracn de la Globalizacin. San Jos: DEI. , 2000. El Proceso Actual de Globalizacin y los Derechos Humanos in Herrera Flores, 2000. 117-128. , 2000. La inversin de los derechos humanos: el caso de John Locke in Herrera Flores, 2000., 79-114. Ianni, Octavio. 1998. La Sociedad Global. Mexico. Siglo XXI editores. . 2000. Enigmas de la modernidad-mundo. Siglo XXI editores. Lander, Edgardo. 2001. Eurocentrism and colonialism in Latin American social thought in Nepantla: Views from South Vol 1. No. 3: 519-532. Lao-Montes, Agustin & Arlene Dvila, eds. 2001. Mambo Montage: The Latinization of New York. New York: Columbia University Press. , 2001. Latin American Areas Studies and Latino Ethnic Studies: From Civilizing Mission to the Barbarians Revenge in APA Newsletter on Hispani/Latino Issues in Philosophy, Vol 00, No 2 (Spring 2001): 112-122. Levinas, Emmanuel. 1998. La Huella del Otro. Mexico: Taurus. Lezama, Jos Luis. 1993. Teora Social, Espacio y Ciudad. Mexico: Colegio de
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Mexico. Luhmann, Niklas. 1995. Sozial Systems. Stanford. Stanford University Press. Mendieta, Eduardo, ed. 2002. Latin American Philosophy: Currents, Issues, Debates. Bloomington, Indiana. Indiana University Press. , 2001. Chronotopology: Critique of Spatio-Temporal Regimens in Paris, Jeffrey and William Wilkerson, eds. 2001. New Critical Theory: Essays on Liberation. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 175-197. , 2001. The City and the Philosopher: On the Urbanism of Phenomenology in Philosophy and Geography, Vol. 4. No. 2. Mignolo, Walter. 2001 Latin American Social Thought and Latino/as American Studies in APA Newsletter on Hispani/Latino Issues in Philosophy, Vol 00, No 2 (Spring 2001): 105-112. , 2000. Global Designs, Local Histories. Princeton. Princeton University Press. , 1994 [1996]. Foreword to Dispotitio/n in Rabasa, Jos, Javier Sanjnes C., and Robert Carr. 1994 [1996], iii-iv. , 1994 [1996]. Are Subaltern Studies Postmodern or Postcolonial? The Politics and Sensibilities of Geo-Cultural Locations in Rabasa, Jos, Javier Sanjnes C., and Robert Carr. 1994 [1996], 45-71. Mires, Fernando. 1990. El Discurso de la Naturaleza. Ecologia y Politica en Amrica Latina. San Jos: DEI. Moore-Gilbert, Bart. 1997. Postcolonial Theory: Contexts, Practices, Politics. London: Verso. Quijano, Anibal. 2001. Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin Ameirca in Nepantla: Views from South Vol 1. No. 3: 533-580. Rabasa, Jos, Javier Sanjnes C., and Robert Carr. 1994 [1996]. Subaltern Studies in the Americas. Special Issue of Dispositio/n Vol XIX, No. 46. Rod, Jos Enrique. 1988. Ariel. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press. Rodrguez, Ileana, ed. 2001. The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader. Durham. Duke University. Romero, Jos Luis. 2001. Latinoamrica. Las ciudades y Las ideas. Mxico. Siglo XXI editores. Sarmiento, Doming. 1868. Life in the Argentine Republic in the Days of the Tyrants: or Civilization and Barbarism. New York: The Hafner Library Classics. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1999. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
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Schwarz, Henry and Sangeeta Ray. 2000. A Companion to Postcolonial Studies. Malden: Massachusetts. Blackwell Publishers. Torres Tovar, Carlos Alberto, Fernando Viviescas Monsalve, and Edmundo Prez Hernndez, eds. 2000. La ciudad: hbitat de diversidad y complejidad. Bogot. Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Trigo, Benigno, ed. 2001. Foucault and Latin America: Appropriations and Deployments of Discoursive Analysis. New York and London: Routledge. United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat). 2001. Cities in a Globalizing World. Global Report on Human Settlements 2001. London and Sterling. Earthscan Publications, Ltd. Venn, Couze. 2000. Occidentalism: Modernity and Subjectivity. London. Sage Publications.
THE PREDICAMENT OF CULTURAL STUDIES: SUBALTERNITY AND THE DIALECTICS OF THE IMAGE
Horacio Legrs
The Problem
ultural studies entered the contemporary practices of knowledge as the promise of a politically meaningful engagement with issues of culture, value and signification. Perhaps for that reason, Latinamericanists welcomed its emergence as the chance to revive the once vigorous tradition of the public intellectual.1 In this context, cultural studies appeared to represent a major displacement in our understanding of the relationship between cultural production and socio-political life. Forms that had hitherto been thought of as secondary, or even inessential, to the life of society or the nation were now discovered to be on equal footing with long revered cultural expressions such as literature, poetry or the cultural expressions of the elites. Yet the same displacement that made cultural studies possible is now threatening to swallow the whole critical project through the establishment of a culture that stubbornly seeks to equate its system of representations with the whole extension of existence. Such is the predicament of cultural studies. As heir to the emancipatory ethos of modernity, cultural studies needs the figure of the engaged academic or intellectual. These intellectuals, however, find it increasingly difficult to obtain a public voice in a world where a new readability of cultural productions makes any mediation (along with any public sphere in which that mediation may take place) superfluous. The first hypothesis that I want to propose regarding this decrease in the mediative power of intellectual discourse is that it is a phenomenon rooted in a change of our idea of culture as a set of objects,
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Photo by Horacio Legrs.
values and practices. A new transparencywhose most obvious symptom is the proliferation of representations of peoples and cultures at all levels of cultural productioninhabits our world. One might assume that cultural studies would be committed to studying this mutation in order to weigh its own chances of being critical of the emerging configuration. Yet, there is today a celebratory and even conformist tone coming from some of those involved in the project of cultural studies. This tone originates in the certainty that the new availability of images seems to bring to the field. In contrast to the antinomies that have plagued the deployment of critical discourse for the last twenty years, the image seems to offer direct access to questions ranging from alternative ways of worlding to the labyrinths of popular culture and popular expression. Consequently, the image appears no longer as a field of forces, but rather as the site of epiphanic transparency or sheer illusion. Far from being new the whole problematic belongs to the rather classic sphere of representation in its two senses: as an aesthetic event and as an institutional process. All throughout modernity one sense of representation has been rooted in the other. It is the second that mostly claims our attention today. The obsolete figure of the traditional intellectual, one of whose most recent defeats has been the evolution of Latin-American testimonio as a cancellation of the intellectual's dream of speaking for the people, amounts
THE PREDICAMENT OF CULTURAL STUDIES:...
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to a dismissal of his or her representative function anytime that we no longer believe in this kind of prerogative. An unfortunate development of this criticism, however, is that discrediting the project of speaking for the people has slipped somewhat into the impossibility of speaking to the people. Yet, historical fatality does not nullify the project of representation, which is inseparable from the emancipatory project that has defined the place and the role of intellectuals for centuries.2 Representation then, in its double meaning, as both symbolic production and social mediation, is the concept that the pages to follow will interrogate. However, as our latest experiences in the area of cultural analysis attest, anytime the question of cultural and political representation is posed, the question of subalternity cannot be far off.
The Rise of Cultural Studies and Peripheral Practices of Knowledge

The fact that a discussion of Latin American cultural studies cannot be couched in the language of cultural borrowings (from the English school to the popularization of the culturalist paradigm in Latin America) is something already too obvious to need elucidation. Certain questions about the origins of cultural studies should, however, be posed, not because such exercises in historicism are particularly enjoyable, but rather because Latin American cultural studies thinks of itself as a break and we should know, or want to know, what universe it is breaking off from and why the break was necessary at all. If the theory of cultural influence cannot really illuminate the emergence of cultural studies, the many disciplinary explanations advanced so far do not fare much better. As a rule, they appear as attempts to more or less arbitrarily stake out a territory of uncertain and contested boundaries. Among these territorializations we find the idea that cultural studies may be defined either by its object (popular culture and not elite culture), method (there is a movement away from text and interpretation and towards autoethnography) or as a new discipline: there is a series of critical practices of socio-historical background that are reshaped under the name cultural studies. A weak variant of this latter version sees cultural studies as defined by the equivocal heading of interdisciplinary.
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There has also been an attempt to grasp the meaning of the emergence of cultural studies through a genealogical interrogation of the historical development of academic research on Latin America. This genealogy locates the emergence of the field in a still uncertain relationship to the weakening of the prestige and representative power of literature and literary studies. There is an irrefutable truth to this equation. After all, cultural studies emerges in most cases out of the debris of traditional literary departments. The problem with this view is that for many of its supporters cultural studies appears in a coarse and, as it were, lived opposition to literary studies. In this view, cultural studies stands not only against the transcendental pleasure dispensed by an elite practice like literature but also against the theoretical tools that took a reflection on the literary as their starting point. In this version, cultural studies means a return to political and contextual matters after the long interregnum of text centered analysis prompted by Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, Lacanianism and, finally, Deconstruction. Such a developmentthe same people argue- disproves that surprising formula there is nothing outside the text. However, on close observation it becomes obvious that cultural studies cannot reinstate the naive dichotomy between text and context. It is only through a deep textualization of reality that academic discourse arrives at cultural studies (incidentally, as Spivak notices, a certain textualization of the world is also a precondition for the emergence of subaltern studies).3 In what way, then, is it correct to affirm that cultural studies represents a sublation of literary studies in the Latin American tradition and perhaps in other traditions as well? To say it briefly, cultural studies claims to inhabit a critical vantage point from which to carry out the emancipatory project that was once the very identity of the literary in Latin America. Unlike literary studiesthe argument goes what a perspective informed by cultural studies renders readily apparent is the long involvement of the literary canon with the ends of Western forms of governmentality. In the case of Latin America, it would not be difficult to demonstrate that the regional instantiation of literature acquired a historical form that set up the literary institution alongside the representative project of the modern nation-state. An entire representational culture was mounted in the form of a pyramid at whose peak literature reigned undisputed. No doubt, such a placement of the literary in the Latin American political market-value of cultural forms has much to do with the fact that Latin American countries came into being at a time in which the dominant direction of the literary
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form in the Westernized world was one of aiding the representative project of the nation state, through what Benedict Anderson calls print capitalism.4 The consistency of this universe in which literature could claim to be the true representative of the aspirations of the people and the nation shattered sometime between 1970 and 1980. From then on, considerations about national culture and literature began to be replaced by discussions of the meaning of a postmodern order in societies that have never been modern. Insofar as previously eccentric modalities of culture began to take a central role in any analysis of culture, the once undisputable centrality of the literary came into question. Cultural studies appears at this junction as the embodiment of an epochal shift in the production of knowledge.5 Global or trans-national determinations do not constitute a novelty in the cultural life of Latin America. The difference now is that this determination takes place in a historical context in which the enlightened values of a teleological and increasingly unified development increasingly lose force. A cultural consequence of this movement of world synchronicity is that participation in world history can no longer be thought of as postcolonial, in the sense that the center no longer appears to embody a time one must catch up with (that this is a democratic step is far from obvious). In this regard, an abyss opens up between the experience of culture for literary studies and the experience of culture for cultural studies. It is no minor detail that it was precisely through literature that Latin America seemed to be catching up with the center for much of the twentieth century. The peak of this movement was of course the literary Boom of the 60s and 70s. Now that the modernizing utopia incarnated in literature seems to recede in the horizon of Latin American societies, what kind of politics of knowledge should an engaged cultural studies strives for?
Angel Ramas Foundational Intervention

In Postmodernism and Testimonio, George Ydice welcomes postmodernism insofar as it implies a rejection of modernity's master narratives. In the realm of literature, the rejection of master narratives put into crisis the quasi-structural identification of the literary persona with the Lukcsian world-historical individual (43). In opposition to this historical individual who came to embody hegemonic common sense, Ydice sets up the emergence of new subjects and discourses that find a form of enfran-
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chisement in the practice of testimonio. Now, the most absolute embodiment (Hegelian pun intended) of this world-historical individual is the literary form itself.6 If this chain of reasoning holds, one can see the wisdom of all those who saw in Angel Ramas The Lettered City the most serious forerunner of a Latin American cultural studies. The Lettered City (1984) was deemed a turning point in Rama's production. Until this book Angel Rama had been the advocate of the ideology of transculturation, a kind of melting pot that furnished the development of the national and popular state in Latin America with a super-structural justification. This ideology relied heavily on literature as a faithful representation of both the nation and its people and took for granted the strategic alliance of leftist intellectuals (especially writers) and the popular in the context of a developing nation-state. It came as a great surprise, then, when the readers of The Lettered City found themselves before a devastating critique of literature as a practice that had systematically sided with the elites rather than with the views and needs of the people. Rama revealed how the historical project of Latin American literature was to supplement the state. Literature proceeded to an identification between the nation and the people. In Latin America, however, the equation between nation and people proved false or incomplete. The Zapatista revolt in Mexico, the long oblivion of the Andean Indians in the south, the always postponed rights of women everywhere are witness to this fallacy. Lost in the mirage of representing the nation, literature betrayed the people. Thus, John Beverley writes a few years after Rama, cultural studies emerges against literaturemeaning both that it emerges against the historical project that tied literature to the development of the nation-state and it emerges too with literature as its background.7 Beverly acknowledges that cultural studies appears as the promise of a new positioning for the progressive intellectual. This progressive intellectual will find it difficult, however, if not impossible, to elude the trap generated by the weakness of the figure of the public intellectual in a kind of American post-modern culture that today appears to impose itself upon the whole globe. Such is the root, I believe, of John Beverlys pessimistic assessment of the future of cultural studies in Against Literature: Even as the struggle to institutionalize cultural studies is still going on in many places, the likelihood is that it will be naturalizedand begin to approximate something like an epistemological (and elite) Faculty Club, rather than a way of carrying into the academy issues of class struggle, decoloni-
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zation, antiracism, womens liberation, and the like (20). John Beverley was simultaneously one of the first and most powerful advocates of cultural studies and one of the first intellectuals to foresee the many ways in which the project could betray or be deflected from its aim. The problem is by no means restricted to the academic institutionalization of cultural studies. The old critical gesture that vulgarized the inescapable solidarity between the logic of the avant garde and the logic of the museum remains no more than a gesture if we content ourselves with simply registering the alternation between automatization and de-automatization in the history of cultural forms. Like the state, which does not exist in the abstract but only as incarnated in a historical and peculiar state form, institutionalization is not an accomplished fact of the life of cultural forms. A specific cultural phenomenon should be dealt with within the historical horizon of its inception. Beverleys passionate disenchantment with cultural studies offers, in my opinion, the most graphic road into the problem that institutionalization is causing for the emancipatory project of cultural studies. For Beverley this institutionalization has taken a turn that perpetually risks the transformation of cultural studies into what he calls a kind of costumbrismo posmoderno. It is worth lingering a while on this expression that Beverly brings to the scene. The Spanish word costumbrismo is difficult to translate. A standard dictionary of literary terms would refer to the English expression local color as a fitting description for this mostly decorative form of narration.8 Novel of mores also comes close to translating the expression costumbrismo, except for the fact that the novel of mores is at least a novel and does not have all the derogatory overtones that the Spanish word costumbrismo bore for more than a century. In Latin America the word costumbrismo was used in the early nineteenth century to refer to short pieces written by travelers while exploring the continent, published later in European almanacs and, sometimes, in local newspapers. The objects of the costumbrista writer are local characters deemed idiosyncratic in a particular society. The term appears in explicit opposition to any claim of universal validity. Moreover, it is only the consumption by a metropolitan or educated reader that warrants it any universal interest. To call a literary work costumbrista is not only embarrassing; it is also to say that is not literary at all. Costumbrismo compounds, then, the negative values of Orientalism, imperialism and fetishism, while it neglects the only element that could have salvaged it: the aesthetic dimension, which is precisely the dimension capable of disrupting our standardized perception of
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the world. The definition of a certain kind of cultural studies as costumbrismo postmoderno brings together a complex set of geo-political issues while simultaneously connecting the predicament of cultural studies to the well-established issue of the negative force of the aesthetic. It grounds the problem of cultural studies, again, in a certain relationship to the literary. As if, in a certain kind of cultural studies, the worst of literature would come again to life.9 If the characterization of a certain dangerous (and not merely fruitless) manifestation of cultural studies as costumbrista understands our present cultural context in a certain continuity with the colonial/postcolonial development of Latin American culture, the second part of the definition, which refers to this costumbrismo as postmodern adds to the picture the absolute synchronicity of our global, and perhaps imperial, age. In Negative Globality and Critical Regionalism, Alberto Moreiras refers to consumerism as the primary, contemporary form of worlding (52). For Moreiras consumerism exceeds the limits of the market to reach knowledge and the function of the university. As knowledge becomes a commodity, university discourse becomes the discourse of the market. The theoretical key point at stake for Moreiras is that the commodification of knowledge receives a powerful endorsement from the very paradigm proposed until very recently as an example of a critical and emancipatory strategy: identity/difference. Difference, Moreiras writes, is no longer an other than itself, but it has been made into more of the same through the expanding power of cultural commodification that defines our regime of capital accumulation (53). One may propose the postcolonial narrative of costumbrismo as a good companion to this dissolution of difference, to the extent that the consumption of the cultural products of the periphery are, as we can witness today, necessarily deprived of any temporal or symbolic alterity. Moreiras description is kin to a brief essay written by Gilles Deleuze shortly before his death, Postscript on the Societies of Control. In this essay, Deleuze describes an epochal shift in the modern forms of domination. If liberal society was previously characterized by the anxiety to discipline the recently created sovereign subject, our times are witness to the creation of societies no longer invested in discipline but in control. The change pertains to the logic of capitalism itself. In Deleuzes words: This is no longer a capitalism for production but for the product, which is to say, for being sold or marketed. Thus, it is essentially dispersive, and the factory
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has given way to the corporation (4). It is not difficult to see how this problem translates into our present experience of culture and the articulation of a critical strategy for cultural studies. Culture made for consumption and cultural studies as a mere register of this process are both a eulogy of a product without production. It would be in the best tradition of academic knowledge to critically describe and actively resist this process of ideological reification. And yet, there is today in many academic milieu a representational ideology of cultural studies that insists on the sheer demonstration of a cultural difference for the consumption and pleasure of a center that seems to have become, finally, able to read it all. The risks involved in such a strategy are compounded when the cultural products brought to the light of an unproblematic representation are the cultural productions of peripheral or subordinate people. I want to be clear at this juncture that the incorporation of the cultural productions, intellectual representatives and critical discourses of peripheral and subaltern people into a coherent (academic or not) political and intellectual strategy is one of the highest priorities of our time. My point is just that if this incorporation is not going to be a laughable second night of the world in which all cows are gray, they should be granted the status of a critical discourse and not of a mere representation of an hallucinated difference. At this point, everything becomes a question of strategy. Cultural studies strives for the incorporation of as yet unattended areas (mostly popular areas) of cultural production into the authoritative and authorizing discourse of the university. However, Moreiras obvious question remains for what purpose? (56). Can we say that in the dawn of the dominance of cultural consumption as the basic form of cultural understanding, the incorporation of subaltern knowledge into the indifferent discourse of the university serves, as Beverly desires, the purpose of carrying into the academy issues of class struggle, decolonization, antiracism, womens liberation, and the like? If the incorporation of peripheral, residual and popular knowledges into academic discourse functions merely as a sample of an all-encompassing and translatable human cultural field if, in other words, the incorporation of these productions has the effect of producing only a more ample and readable representation, cultural studies ends up fulfilling the most abject of destinies. On the one hand, it would reenact through its merely representative practice the much-feared version of cultural studies as postmodern costumbrismo. On the other hand, far from being liberatory, this costumbrismo, lacking any aesthetic or intellec-
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tual power of negation, will simply incorporate the life and struggles of popular sectors into the transparent and engulfing imperial logic of late capitalism. Cultural studies may well be, to paraphrase Gilles Deleuzes exceptional essay, just an easier form of delivering the university to the corporation in the historical horizon of the transformation of disciplinary societies into societies of control.10
The Image in the Economy of Neo-Imperial Representations

In this essay I am concerned with the status of both text and image in the field of cultural studies. I already advanced the proposition that a certain textualization of the world (this textualization is welcomed since it increases our analytical capabilities) is accompanied by a certain reduction of the world to image that I found much more problematic. Of course, there is nothing in the image itself that makes it either libratory or troublesome. In every instance what really matters is the articulation of these cultural elements to the power formations of our times. It is then only in order to counterbalance a naive and dangerous belief in the emancipatory power of unmediated representation that I will embark in a brief description of the aporetics of the image in contemporary culture. In an essay provocatively titled Where have all the natives gone? Rey Chow quotes Jameson in order to draw attention to the closure, rather than openness, that the kingdom of the image may bring into cultural analysis: The visual is essentially pornographic . . . Pornographic films are . . . only the potentiation of films in general, which ask us to stare at the world as though it were a naked body (29). For Chow, Jameson's criticism sums up many of the problems we encounter in cultural criticism today (29). The fact that our time is precisely one in which everything seems to turn into image is largely announced from traditions as different as Heidegger's ontological existentialism to Guy Debords critical Marxism.11 Chow's argument, meanwhile, moves toward a region of special concern to us, the region of postcoloniality and peripheral subjectivities. In this region the image may well work as the site of emergence of as yet unattended ideologies and sensibilities, but it is simultaneously the site of the relentless capture of difference and its transformation, via identitarian consumption, at best an exciting curiosity and an indifferent information at worst. The
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slightest of distancesChow writesseparates the act of identifying with the native (her general word for the oppressed, the marginalized, the wronged) and the process of identifying him or her.12 Chow's designation of the oppressed, the wronged as native seems to speak, unambiguously, to a politics of location. Location, of course, is what our thinking and critical discourse lack, insofar as our voice appears already immersed in the trans-national discourse of the university, an institution whose language we strive to differentiate, as Moreiras put it, from the discourse of the market. In this structure confronting a peripheral location to a central/global apparatus of capture, the native becomes a figure of exteriority (neither central nor global) to the flux of capital and commodities. It is only as image (as in costumbrismo) that the nativeas peripheral and displaced subjectivitymay become synchronous with the meaning-giving framework of flux identities. His or her entrance into the flux of the world as capital is paid by the exorbitant price of becoming identical and, in the end, reducible to his or her image. The urgent question for cultural analysis becomes then: is it at all possible to avoid the reduction/ abstraction of the native as image? (29) The reduction of alterity to the native and then of the native to image has become a recurrent feature in contemporary debates on culture in the field of Latin Americanism. A case in point is the recent polemic confronting Julio Ramos and Raul Antelo around their divergent interpretations of the work of the Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado. Salgado's photographic testimony of poverty and exclusion around the globe brought worldwide recognition to his work. In 2002 The New York Times established a permanent display of Salgado's work on a web page devoted to the Brazilian photographer.13 The Ramos-Antelo polemic can be reduced at the end to a simple question: is Salgado's photography a radical denunciation of exclusion or is it rather a sheer aesthetization of poverty. While Ral Antelo charged Salgado with commodifying poverty, Julio Ramos saw his work as an effort to portray an abandoned humanity in the face of neo-liberal and trans-national politics of exclusion. The polemic, which took place at a round table organized by the Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires (Malba), is not only impossible to resolve, but much more interestingly, is revelatory of the fact that we lack the intellectual and theoretical resources to properly address the problem. Looking at Salgado's photographs on the The New York Times web page will not ease the interpretational standstill that our judging faculty runs into when confronted with the
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image in its nakedness (as Jameson would put it). But more importantly, the aporetics of the image, particularly of popular images, is different from any previous aporetics in an important sense. It involves the uncanny feeling of being deceived by evidence itself.
Cultural Studies as Subaltern Studies

The commodification of culture is a figure of reversal, a true pachacuti for the naively optimistic culture of post-enlightenment. Culture has been for centuries the place where a story was told, where a complex transparency was achieved, even in the dawn of the total opacity of the relations of production proper of our modern, reified world. How can the practice of cultural studies avoid being an operative part of the increasing commodification of a scandalously unjust global order? The answer for a significant portion of Latin Americanists is: only if cultural studies is a form of subaltern studies. If cultural studies as postmodern costumbrismo relies on an unproblematic use of representations, the recourse to subaltern studies allows a critique of representation not only insofar as any representation is predicated, as Homi Bhabha would have it, on a fetishistic use of knowledge (73-5), but also in the sense that, as Gayatri Spivak put it, an uncritical use of representation renders the metropolitan intellectual transparent to itself (275).14 Latin American subalternism comes into its own with the production of a brief formula more forcefully enunciated in the work of Alberto Moreiras (a formula that in the field of Asian subalternism only Gayatry Spivak I believe- would share in complete good conscience). The formula is, of course, that the subaltern is what lies outside the hegemonic articulation.15 This highly synthetic formula deserves to be unpacked, not only in what it says about the subaltern, but also in what it suggests about the hegemonic articulation. To proceed with such an analysis - whose general direction I limit here to a footnote- would take us in a different direction. In this space I am content with pointing out that the expression the subaltern is what lies outside the hegemonic articulation provides us with enough ground to articulate the problematic of cultural studies and subaltern studies in a relevant way.16 Despite equating the subaltern with the Lacanian Real in some early writings, John Beverley has remained ambivalent regarding the char-
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acterization of the subaltern as lying outside hegemony. Beverley writes if cultural studies adequately represented the dynamics of the people, there would be no need for subaltern studies, or no need for it as an intellectualpolitical formation distinct from, and in some ways antagonistic to, cultural studies (113).17 From subalternism, cultural studies may take a critical position towards its own representational impulse. If Moreiras can cipher the whole project of subalternism in a relentless criticism of representation in its various forms, let us not forget, on the other hand, that since the very beginning, in the writings of Ranajit Guha, the subaltern is produced through a logic of subtraction and not through a positive and verifiable identity.18 Surely, the issue of representation and, more explicitly, of the subaltern presentation/representation is perhaps the most disputed in the field of subalternism and constitutes, no doubt, the fault line along which any alliance of subalternists is most prone to break down. And yet, the subalternist intervention marks a before and after in cultural analysis that is equally difficult to renounce. To be meaningful, any general theory of culture cannot dispense with the ideological operations that subaltern studies opened to our consideration. Subalternity furnished us with an outside to our all-encompassing (Romantic and expressivist) idea of culture and, to an important extent, it implies its ruin. Of course, it is in the essence of culture to negate any exteriority. All culture Slavoj Zizek writes in The Sublime Object of Ideology, is . . . an attempt to limit . . . [a] radical antagonism (5). But the radical antagonism presupposed in subaltern studies can be only metaphorically (or strategically) equated to the Lacanian Real as suggested in Zizeks quote. For my part, I like the idea of an outside of culture insofar as it furnishes us with a major break with the long established discourse of political humanism. It is in this sense of culture as a closure, but now as a closure of subalternity, that I read Alberto Moreiras assertion that a cultural critic informed by subalternist concerns sees the subaltern moment as touching on the very limits of representation and is, in fact, also an absolute refusal of representation (122). The wage for a practice of cultural studies informed by subalternist themes and preoccupations may run the risk of being considered a kind of anachronism. This perception is due in part to the misleading assumption (to which the definition of subalternity as an outside of the hegemonic relation offers a corrective) that locates the question of subalternity as a question exclusively pertaining to the past, in close connection to the colonial/ postcolonial pair under whose shadow the theoretical question was first
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raised. But subalternity is not a concept dependent on colonial rule. There has been among many Latin American subalternists an understandable effort to think the implications of subalternity in the present context of Latin American societies.19 As a matter of fact, in light of the most recent political developments in Latin America, it is not an exaggeration to say that neo-liberal policies makes subalternity not the past but one of the most probable futures of Latin American populations. Subalternity may be indeed the most necessary of concepts for the near future, if this is truly a time in whichto add the last element determining the impossibility of a critical discourse able to speak to the peoplethe people itself have disappeared or are in the process of disappearing.20
A Subalternist Criticism of Literature

A subalternist emphasis on cultural analysis makes evident something that we have known for a while: Angel Ramas criticism of literature was insufficient by and large. It offered a general layout of the cultural problem of the domination of the letter in Latin America but it did not explore its mechanism in detail. This objection represents, no doubt, an exorbitant demand of a programmatic book, written moreover with some haste. Nevertheless, one may question how far the many followers and admirers of Ramas work took the criticism of the entanglement between culture and power. One may very well ask if cultural studies is not inheriting in a rather uncritical way methodological and critical assumptions that played a constitutive role in the establishment of lettered practices hegemonic in Latin America in the past. In the context of this essay I want to mention the survival of a cultural trait that, born from the long sedimentation of literary forms, also works as the condition of possibility for the quasi-costumbrista character that representation has taken in cultural analysis: the collusion between representation and expression that makes every cultural product a site of emergence of a voice. A voice, moreover, that only appears under the condition of being immediately captured by a hermeneutical apparatus that demands intention, interpretation, representativity, accountability and, in the end, responsibility. In the coarsest version of this strategya version not altogether foreign to the hermeneutics of representational cultural studies in the academiaany representation can
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be accounted for in terms of a subject expressing his/her views through this representation. Expression is no doubt a necessary component of any emancipatory project. My quarrel is not with expression as such, but with the fact that expression has come more and more to be identified as a particular moment in the self-unfolding of a righteous, liberal reason. Elsewhere, I have tried to unpack this problem by referring to the historical constitution of the subject of literature (as a subject of enunciation and as a reader, but also as the subject of literature: the plot and its imbedded notion of temporality and space) as isomorphic to the constitution of the juridical liberal subject of rights and politics. It was the constitution of the literary field as homologous to the field of modern, bourgeois subjectivity that allowed literature to play the interpellative function in societies linked by a hegemonic articulation.21 In its historical collaboration with the integrative project of culture, literature even lost sight of the possibility of a non-expressive stage and ended up thinking that the vocabulary that it so laboriously stole from the Idealist arsenal (enthusiasm, imagination, intuition, expression, intention, spontaneity and the like) had been always there, defining since the beginning and forever the face of the properly human.22 This subject became our cross. The power that lets this voice resound also demands that this voice be the expression of a lawfully conformed subjectivity. Judith Butler admirably summarized the paradox that this process supposes: one inhabits the figure of autonomy only by becoming subjected to a power (83).23 Butler opens in this way a space that she does not explore: the space of subalternity. Because, is there not an autonomy beyond subjection? A merely representational practice of cultural studies knows nothing of this possibility. It demands a message of every product. Not any message. The message must be translatable. It must be ready to be enchained into a signifying network And when we listen to this message a reassuring feeling of absolute coevalness (postmodern synchronicity) will run through the veins of culture. Such a pretense would appear as a form of terrorism to Roland Barthes. In his Mythologies, so many times referred to as a forerunner of the best cultural studies, Barthes spoke of a terror which threatens us all. In this essay, significantly titled Dominici, or the triumph of literature he explains that this threat is that of being judged by a power which wants to hear only the language it lends us (48). Are there any other languages?
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Paraguay
Paraguay is an officially bilingual, Guaran-Spanish speaking country. Experience, however, shows that in the countryside Spanish is understood but not spoken. The linguistic divide does not match or reflect an ethnic division. Although Guaran is an indigenous language, the Guaranspeaking peasantry would not identify themselves as Indian, but simply as Paraguayans. Such a heavy linguistic preference for Guaran in areas related to family, home and affections exerted a great toll on the possibility for the development of a national literature. Augusto Roa Bastos, the most prominent of Paraguayan writers, tells a revealing story about the publication of his novel Son of Man in 1964. This utterly subalternist novel was received with harsh criticism in Paraguay and many readers claimed that Roa Bastoss reference to a popular revolt in 1911 was false and denounced the novel for lack of historical accuracy. A bemused Roa Bastos read this criticism as the sign of a triumph: Paraguayans are at lasthe saidbeginning to understand the concept of fiction. In 1987, upon his return to Paraguay after almost forty years of exile, Augusto Roa Bastosa leading intellectual figure in the countryinitiated another polemic in Paraguayan cultural life by his tactless and explosive declaration: there is no Paraguayan literature. The ensuing polemic managed to obscure the whole discussion. After receiving a dozen or so letters from offended writers and an equally limited numbers of novels and collections of short stories, Roa Bastos retreated and took his words back. The polemicthat indeed never happenedleft, however, some instructive conclusions. When Roa Bastos said that there was no Paraguayan literature, he did not mean that there were no novels or writers in Paraguay, but only that these novels and writers, for complex reasons, had not managed to become the intermediaries between a modernizing state and a disenfranchised population. And in this, a posture that he did not pursue, he may have been right. The scarce importance of literature in the country contrasts with the importance granted to other cultural forms. In Asuncin there is only one important bookstoreComuneros and no less than six or seven good art galleries. The weekly guide to cultural activities published by the city council shows that art exhibitions and other artistic performances comfortably outnumber book presentations and literary activities. It is not surpris-
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ing that some of the most powerful voices of the Paraguayan intelligentsia are linked to the study and promotion of plastic arts, indigenous productions, crafts and to a whole host of activities that we would not hesitate to identify as a primary focus of attention for cultural studies, especially in a country, like Paraguay, where the lettered project seems to have failed. The political and cultural agenda of these productions are by no means unrelated to the cultural dilemmas Roa Bastos himself had called attention to for almost half a century. As a matter of fact much of the most celebrated pictorial production in Paraguay takes up again the problematic and failed project of literary representation and does so by explicitly invoking the legacy of Augusto Roa Bastos. A case in point is the plastic artist Osvaldo Salerno. I will take here as my guide the volume The Scar, a book edited by Ticio Escobar, which reproduces the curatorship of an exhibition of Salernos work by the same Escobar. This curatorship is part of a project Ticio Escobar presented in different metropolitan museums of South America, Europe and the United States under the title The Shapes of Power.. Ticio Escobars essay forewording Salernos production is titled The Absent Writing in reference not only to a repressed expression but to the work of Augusto Roa Bastos as well. For Roa Bastos the absent writing (la escritura ausente) is paradoxically the only one that a Paraguayan writer can produce when faced with the evidence of an absent voicethe Guaran voicein the repertoire of literary and symbolic hegemonic production. The introduction of Roa Bastos in the text is far from being Escobars fancy. As Ticio Escobar explains, from 1994 on, Osvaldo Salerno collaborates withRoa Bastos, in this search for the boundaries between text and image (97). One of these collaborative works entitled The re-presentation, dramatizes the intervention (the description of the work is intervened book) of a worldly hand (or rather fist) into the lettered domain of the book. There is a whole series of these interventions that insist on the encroachment of the hand into the book or even on the uncomfortable subsumption of fingers into the now disturbed structure of the book. The hands here are the molded hands of either the artist or Augusto Roa Bastos. The series seek to question the relationship between text and image (writing and showing, literature and painting). These oppositions do not proceed through a crude conflict between Lebenswelt and representation. The image is no less of a representation than the written text. It is possible for the spectator to read a few words of the intervened book. However, one may risk the
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opinion that the intervention of the book has nothing to do with the content of the book. Re-presentation is necessary as a new engagement (half complementary, half oppositional) with the assumed transparency of lettered rationality. The artists re-presentation becomes an embodiment of a critical gesture. At its base is the non-sufficiency of any representation, the radical incompleteness of any presence. The Basin (1997) also aims at questioning the self-sufficiency of representation. In this intervention a white canvas was immersed in a long container filled with water. Ticio Escobar explains that the piece was embroidered with Roa Bastoss aphorism: I walked out of the confinement with the smell of the open (Sal del encierro oliendo a intemperie), words taken from the novel El Fiscal. As Escobar points out, the sentence is full of political connotations. As important as the connotations is the destiny that the artist imposes upon these words. First, because embroidered time and again as Ticio Escobar explains the very sentence becomesan embossed ornament; a trivial reference (98). But, moreover, the fact that these words are submerged in the container of water makes them almost unreadable. Finally, the submerged message is dissolved by the water with the passing of time. Not even Roa Bastoss authorship can secure an essential, second and eternal existence for these words. The strategy of re-presentation, so pervasive in Salerno's work, appears as a necessary involvement with meaning after the long dictatorship of General Alfredo Stroessner and its devastating consequences on culture and society. Notoriously, however, although engaged in an effort to counteract previous representations, neither Salerno nor Roa Bastos provides a positive representation, an image to identify with. Images in a public sphere without a public It is in light of these problems that I want to close this essay with a consideration of a set of popular and anonymous productions. I saw anonymous but, as a matter of fact, the characterization of anonymous suits them badly because they were never meant to have an author. These street installations (see figure 1) located in downtown Asuncin are at the same time original and deeply rooted in popular traditions. Their presentation requires some historical contextualization. Salernos work, along with these pictures, belongs to the context of post-dictatorship Paraguay. The newly reestablished democracy faced a severe test when in 1999 the Vice President of the Republic was assassinated. Public demonstrations were organized. The government responded with a wide and uncontrolled repression
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that left several people wounded or dead. In the places where protesters fell, the anonymous installations reproduced below were set up, as a commemoration. These works lack signatures and no political faction ever claimed their authorship. Their political aim however is attested by the fact that they commemorate places of repression adjacent to public buildings. The reason the government did not remove them is unknown to me. Moreover, in Asuncin nobody seemed to know who the authors were. Very likely, they started off as the solitary demonstration of a person or family at the most. Others joined later, most probably without any relationship to the initial builders of the installation. Any attempt at reading these works makes it clear that no integrated discourse is uttered here. The few written messages (assassins, heroes of the Paraguayan March) do not manage to override the overwhelming indeterminacy created by the bricoleur style of the composition. Their different elements simply enter into happy conjunction. Despite the scarcity of words, some elements seem to have a communicative intention: a flower, a crucifix. Others, however, only make a wager of expression and trust the effects of solidarity to the laws of metonymy: a phone book, a clipping of an ad selling a car, an old photograph. When I said that Asuncin's anonymous installations were no doubt related to popular forms of cultural production in Paraguay, I was thinking of the retablos that even today populate the Paraguayan countryside. Even in the most modest families, it has been a tradition to own a wood carved retablo. These are small boxes with backdrop paintings and one or two detachable carved saints. Nowadays, private collectors and museum officials from other countries tramp across the countryside buying retablos from impoverished peasants. Significantly, the retablo plays an important role in Roa Bastoss fiction, as the Grunewalds retablo in El Fiscal attests. Often Roa Bastos' literature insisted on the importance of religious imagery for the articulation of a politics of the people in Paraguay. A wood carved Christ occupies the symbolic center of his novel Son of Man. In the novel, the inhabitants of the countryside expect a message to be delivered from that Christ and their political revolt is not altogether independent of their relationship to this image. The retablo points then to the importance of popular appropriations of Christianity in the development and preservation of a subaltern heritage in Paraguay. But the power of the subaltern does not lie in expression but rather in its absence and resilience. The carved Christ that Roa Bastos placed at the center of Son of Man remained a silent and enigmatic figure. Likewise, a message is absent from these altars. There is no
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particular logic, no clear syntax. In the deserted streets of Asuncins downtown, few look at them. Nobody seems particularly interested in their presence. The creation and reception of these popular altars cannot be approached, much less exhausted, by the constitutive categories of the literary and the aesthetic. They do not offer a final station in the search for an expansion of the mutual engagement of cultural forms and critical thinking, neither can they furnish us with a flight from the supposedly paralyzing effects of the criticism of representation into an ethical haven opened up by the immediacy afforded by the image. In the unterritorializable expressions of these altars (and for that reason the word expression is a misnomer) Latin Americanism can only produce itselfto continue with words taken from Roa Bastosas fidelity to another voice, to an absent voice and an absent writing. Its critical discourse emerges, precisely, in the ex-centric and peripheral site of the oppression and suffering of people that no discourse can represent and which, for that reason demands the questioning of discourse and representation.
NOTES
In his well-known appraisal of Cultural Studies, Fredric Jameson already noticed that Cultural Studies is best approached . . . as the project to constitute a historic bloc rather than theoretically as the floor plan for a new discipline. (17) Bill Readings makes a similar point in The University in Ruins. For him the Current developments in the humanities in the West seem to be centered on two major phenomena. On the one hand, there is the decline in the power of the University over the public sphere, with the concomitant elimination of the intellectual as a public figure. On the other hand, there is a recent rise ...of Cultural Studies...which promises (to restore) ...the social mission of the University. (91) On the relationship between representation and intellectual, see Gayatri Spivaks insightful comments in Can the Subaltern Speak? As John Frow and Meaghan Morris notice, There is a precise sense in which cultural studies uses the concept of text as its fundamental model . . . Rather than designating a place where meanings are constructed in a single level of inscription (writing, speech, film, dress. . .), it works as an interleaving of levels. (359) Fredric Jameson also defines cultural studies as an attempt to grapple ana3 2 1
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lytically with the world's new textuality. (19) Spivak understands subalternism as a reading practice in Deconstructing Historiography, 18*. Anderson, Imagined Communities, chapters 3 and 5. Bill Readings make this argument in chapter 6 (Literary Culture) of The University in Ruins. See also, David Lloyd and Paul Thomas Culture and State. The meaning of this movement along with the anchorage of cultural studies in the relocation of the axis of culture and economy in the globalized neoliberal world has been explored at great lengths by Alberto Moreiras in A Storm Blowing from Paradise. Negative Globality and Latin American Cultural Studies in Siglo XX/Twentieth Century, 1996: 59-84 We can see here why all criticism leveled against testimonio in terms of the necessary presence of a rhetorical structure always misses the point. Literature is not defined only by a rhetorical disposition, but also by its categorical structure.
7 8 6 5 4
John Beverly, Against Literature, 7.
J. A. Cuddon. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. Fourth Edition, 476. Some readers may contend that I am presenting here a caricatured version of costumbrismo, one that completely misses the parodic and critical edge that costumbrismo acquired in some writers like Jos de Larra. My point is that the costumbrismo that Beverly has in mind is not this kind of critical exercise but a historically recognizable form of exoticism. The delivery of the university to the corporation is one of the most sensitive issues of the intersection between politics and academics today. To this order of problems belongs the proposed implementation of a supervising board of education in Florida, most of whose members are not educators but lawyers and businessmen. See the report by Peter Schmidt, Revamping of Education Governance in Florida Reveals a New Political Order, The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 17, 2002 A 32.
11 12 10 9
Debord, The Society of the Spectacle; Heidegger, The World Image.
Chow's description comes pretty close to exemplifying the analysis of racism in Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks. For Fanons analysis of racism see also the initial chapters in Homi Bhabhas The Location of Culture.
13 14
at: www.nytimes.com/specials/salgado/home.
Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 73-75. Spivak, Can the Subaltern Speak? 275.
15
Alberto Moreiras, who forcefully articulated the opposition subaltern/
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hegemony, offers a more nuanced phrasing in The Exhaustion of Difference. There subalternity is defined as cultural and experiential formations that are excluded from any given hegemonic relation at any particular moment of its own history. (280) The proposition the subaltern lies outside hegemonic articulation is far from being simple. What is the character of this hegemonic articulation? Is it formal -as in Laclau's description of the field of politics as a signifying chain dominated by the production of empty signifiers? Or is its formality determined by some specific historicity? And on the side of the subaltern: what does the word outside mean here? Is it equivalent to what Jacques Rancire calls the part of no part as the scandalous necessary presupposition for the world of (hegemonic) politics to arise? (See Disagreement, 1-21) Can conditions of possibility be translated into actual political power? For Beverlys discussion of the relationship between subalternity and hegemony see Representation and Subalternity, 76. Ranajit Guha, Dominance without Hegemony. History and Power in Colonial India, 1-95. I want to single out in this space Gareth William's recent book The Other Side of the Popular: Subalternity and Neoliberalism in Latin America, where, as the title indicates, Williams takes up the issue of the relationship between subalternity and neo-liberalism. Jos Rabasa has discussed issues of subalternnism in the context of the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas. The disappearance of the people has to be understood in direct relationship with the weakening and exhaustion of its historical condition of possibility: the nation-state. The solidarity of literature and the hegemonic formation of the nationstate appears -but in the guise of a merely external relationship- in the first chapter of Terry Eagleton's An Introduction to Literary Theory, The Rise of English. Further, more detailed studies in the same phenomena includes Joseph Chytry's The Aesthetic State and David Lloyd and Paul Thoma's Culture and State. In all of these texts, however, the link between hegemony and literature, socialization and subjectivation remains a matter of pedagogy that always already presupposes the phenomena that it should explain: the identification between subject and the social ethos promoted by literature and the state. Not without irony, Bill Readings notices that in an emblematic text for cultural studies, like Culture is Ordinary a founding figure of the movement like Raymond Williams betrays a sensibility deeply marked by the literary tradition of
22 21 20 19 18 17 16
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English Romanticism. In any criticism of literature this point is essential: our sensibility (a literary word through and through) is still literary.
23
Butler, The Pyschic Life of Power, 83.
WORKS CITED
Antelo, Ral. Apenas ideologa. Clarn [Buenos Aires] 25 May 2002. Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. London, Jonathan Cape, 1972. Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture, London: Routledge, 1994. Beverly, John. Against Literature. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. , Subalternity and Representation. Arguments in Cultural Theory. Durham: Duke University Press, 1999. Butler, Judith. The Pyschic Life of Power. Theories on Subjection. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996. Chow, Ray. Where Have All the Natives Gone? in Writing Diaspora: Tactis of Intervention in Contemporary Cultural Studies. Bloomington: Indiana Univesity Press, 1993 (27-54). Cuddon, J. A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin Books, 1999. Deleuze, Gilles. Postscript on Societies of Control. October, 59 (3-7) 1992. Escobar, Ticio. Obra de Osvaldo Salerno. La Cicatriz. Madrid: Casa de Amrica, 1999. Frow John and Meaghan Morris. Australian Cultural Studies, in John Storey, ed. What Is Cultural Studies? A Reader. London: Arnold, 1997. Guha, Ranajit. , Dominance Without Hegemony. History and Power in Colonial India. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997. Hegel, George Wilhelm Friedrich. Phenomenology of Spirit, transl. By A. V. Miller, New York: Oxford UP, 1977. Lloyd, David y Paul Thomas. Culture and the State. New York: Routledge, 1998. Moreiras, Alberto. The Exhaustion of Difference. The Politics of Latin American Cultural Studies. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001. Rama, Angel. The Lettered City. New Haven: Ediciones del Norte, 1984. Ramos, Julio. Interview. Retratos de la vida desnuda. Clarn [Buenos Aires] 25 May. 2002.
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Readings, Bill. The University in Ruins. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994. Roa Bastos, Augusto. Son of Man. Trans. Rachel Caffyn. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1988. Spivak, Gayatri. Can the Subaltern Speak? in Marxism and the Interpretation of culture. Ed. Nelson Cary and Lawrence Grossberg. London: Mac Millan, 1988. Williams, Gareth. The Other Side of the Popular. Neoliberalism and Subalternity in Latin America. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002. Ydice, George. Puede hablarse de Postmodernidad en Amrica Latina? Revista de Crtica Literaria Latinoamericana. XV, 29, (105-128) 1989. Testimonio and Postmodernism, in Georg Gugelberger, The Real Thing. Testimonial Discourse and Latin America. Durham: Duke University Press, 1996 (42-57).
ON BEARDED MEN, DEVILS AND SOLDIERS (POST) COLONIAL DRAMAS IN PERU AND BOLIVIA
Ximena Sorucco University of Michigan
Iskribiyta sumaqta yacharqa condor plumawan iskribisqa He knew how to write well, with a condors pen he had written. (Beyersforff 41)
n this paper I am interested in discussing the relevance of transculturation for subaltern studies. Is transculturation a category that allows us to understand Latin American complexity from a postcolonial point of view? Is it possible, using this term, to analyze the tensions and complicities between the hegemonic project and subaltern agency? Answering these questions requires a response to another: Are transculturation and mestizaje similar categories in terms of the conciliatory project of the modern nation? Martnez-Echazbal (1998), John Beverley (1999) and, to some degree, Walter Mignolo (1995), coincide in giving a positive answer. Transculturation and mestizaje are categories that conceal and entail a class and racial fear for the first two authors. For Mignolo, both concepts, although produced in different historical contexts, may lead to the mistaken assumption that a happy mingling of different bloodlines and ways of life underlies Americas unique identity, instead of understanding mestizaje and transculturation as conditions under which such a discourse of identification has been produced and reproduced (179). Of these three authors I would like to focus on John Beverley because, despite his critique of the notion of transculturation, he uses it as a valid category for postcolonial studies. In this article I will analyze his
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essay Transculturation and Subalternity: The Lettered City and the Tpac Amaru Rebellion against the background of Fernando Ortizs and Angel Ramas works on transculturation. John Beverley begins his approach to transculturation from the perspective of the subject of speech; the transculturated narrator, his fears, hidden agendas, and the social role he establishes for himself in the nationstate project. To the question of who produces the discourse of transculturation and to whom it is addressed, the answer is: to elites writing for themselves. This is the main reason that makes Beverley talk about a hidden agenda of class and racial fear (45) in Fernando Ortizs and Angel Ramas projects of transculturation. This political agenda would be projected toward a lettered national discourse as a reconciliatory illusion that claims: instead of excluding the indigenous and Afro-Caribbean populations, let us include them as a part of the literature and the imaginary of national identity. This would be the best way to obtain the much-desired modernization of Latin America. Ortizs and Ramas texts, in spite of originating in the distinct disciplines of anthropology and literary criticism such as anthropology and literary criticism, converge on three main points: 1) the sphere of economic production whose goal is modernization, 2) the subjects called to fulfill it, the lettered vanguard, considered skillful producers, and 3) the letter as instrument, the means of production toward modernization. If we follow the discourse of these authors carefullyOrtizs discussion of raw materials, tobacco and sugar, and Ramas reference to the writer as lettered peasantwe find that they include an economic metaphor along their writing of transculturation. An economic metaphor whose center is agrarian productionthe handmade, raw material linked to nature and soil in Cuba and Latin America. This is the urgent challenge that united Latin American intellectuality at the beginning of the twentieth century: the quest for modernization through the exportation of internal production. The intimate relationship with nature: soil and the native tobacco and sugarraw materials that the national vanguard (bourgeoisie displacing oligarchic power) should incorporate into the global chain of capitalist production is an interesting aspect of this discourse. But this incorporation could not be violent because that kind of procedure had failed historically, thereby necessitating a peaceful and reconciliatory incorporation. In this sense transculturated narrators are called upon to convince bourgeois pro-
ON BEARDED MEN, DEVILS AND SOLDIERS...
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ducers to accept in their imaginary the subaltern, now mediated by the letter. It is Angel Rama who gives lettered men a providential role in LatinAmerican destiny. As the genius weavers of the great Latin American factory, they are called to transculturate, to reconcile raw material and the bourgeois producer, tradition and modernity. And, as Beverley says, appropriating raw materialorality to Ramameans emphasizing the finished product: the book. Raw material is worthy not in itself but in its process of elaboration, and it should be produced by the modernizing machinelike tobacco and sugarin order to gain its value. Thus, in Ramas discourse, orality must be embodied in the letterin the book. As Beverley states correctly, the problem with this political agenda is that:
The use of the book does not overcome the class contradiction between peasant and landlord. Transculturation does not overcome subaltern positionality; rather, subaltern positionality operates and reproduces itself in and through transculturation. Thus, there is no teleological movement toward a national culture in which literacy and orality, dominant and subaltern languages or codes, are reconciled (61)
I agree completely with Beverleys critique of transculturation in that it does not overcome the subaltern positionality. Nevertheless, the point where I part ways with him is when he introduces a dichotomist view of transculturation, a view that ends up essentializing subalternity. Overcoming subaltern positionality, according to Beverleys project, means approaching transculturation as a space not of reconciliation, but of reproduction of the power relationship between those above and those below. To Ramas La transculturacin narrativa, Beverley provides a counterpoint with the indigenous texts of Amarus brothers and the Quechua drama Ollantay, where:
it is important to see that this is a transculturation from below, based not on the ways an emerging creole lettered city becomes progressively more adequate to the task of representing the interest of the indigenous population, but rather on how that population appropriated aspects of European and creole literary and philosophical culture to serve its interests (54).
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This transculturation from below implies subjects with political agendas and distinct national projects who should appropriate the other register (the letter) to fulfill their interests, as transculturation from above does with orality. If we observe it carefully, the only difference between both types of transculturation is the subjects position of powerhe or she is from below or from above. However, I think that the fixed positionality of the subaltern or the hegemonic does not guarantee that either transculturated products or their processes follow pre-established paths. Where is the line between above and below, between orality and writing, between both transculturations? One of the examples used by Beverley to argue his position is the Quechua drama Ollantay. This play, because of its language, indigenous narrative and aesthetic, represents, for him, a transculturation from below. However, by studying the same work I intend to show how problematic the solution proposed by Beverley is. The argument I am trying to establish here permits me to question not only the dichotomies in his discoursebelow and above, orality and writing,but also the essentialism of classifying cultural objects (literatures) as uniquely hegemonic or subaltern, without accounting for the historical and social contexts in which the objects are appropriated. Producing a discoursewho authors it (elite or subalterns), the language (indigenous or Spanish) used, and its medium (oral or written)never guarantees a constant line of circulation or appropriation of the text. In this sense transculturated products are not frozen in one front or another. Instead, they are endlessly disciplined by the elite and distorted by the subalternthe varying degrees to which this tension develops through time depends, ultimately, on historical circumstances. In this manner, I think that transculturation will help us to recognize the complexity of Latin-American societies as a result of colonial trauma. The context of the production of this discourse also allows us to observe the economic metaphor of an elite that targets Latin American modernization. Nevertheless, saying that we are transculturated, mestizos, heterogeneous or hybrid does not overcome (post)colonial violence, as Beverley acknowledges. On the other hand, splitting transculturated texts into categories such as from above and from belowdoes not contribute to an understanding of the ways in which colonialism reproduces itself, because both sides of the power relationship will try to take over and alter the discourses in dispute. Thus, talking about transculturation as from below and from
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above may acknowledge the discourses origins but it may fail to register the power struggles that lie behind it. Moreover, I suspect that the obsession for opposites runs the risk of incorporating some sort of nostalgia for the category of the people to Latin American subaltern studies. I feel that the emphasis on dichotomies is related to a conceptualization that sees the subaltern as a compact, even organic, unitin direct confrontation with a hegemonic unit. This contradicts the notion that hegemony as well as subalternity are relational positions, not preexisting entities. Finally, the emphasis on dichotomies could lead us to reproduce precisely what we pretend to deconstruct: hegemony.1 In this section I am interested in exploring the possible uses of theories of internal colonialism from the Andes. Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui (1992) in Bolivia, Marisol de la Cadena (1997), and Cecilia Mndez (1995) in Peru, have a fluid and more incisive view of (post)colonial situations in contemporary Andean societies. These researchers understand (post)colonial reality as a chain where Indian is an insult that goes from the highest link to the lowest one. Colonial violence, then, is not produced between two separated and autonomous entitiesthose from below and those from abovebut crosses, and permeates the entire society. Hegemony and subalternity incessantly refer to the lowest link in the chain, the indigenous subject. However, among them, the indigenous women, the younger individuals, and those less acculturated are more susceptible to discrimination by the masculine or older members of the group. In this sense, Marisol de la Cadenas study about the situation of indigenous daughters-in-law in communities near Cuzco, Peru, is remarkable, because it avoids idealized glimpses of gender in the Andes by proving that colonial violence is lived daily and in every social stratum. Inside those of below there are always those of above, as happens with the elite. On the other hand, Silvia Rivera, when defining her proposal of internal colonialism, says:
Lejos de representar una visin dicotmica que opondra a dos esencias ahistricasla indgena y la europea,mi intencin ha sido la de comprender cmo la interaccin colonial deviene un hecho marcante y constitutivo de las identidades culturales de todos los sectores socio-culturales del pas, tanto en el pasado como en el presente (29)
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Her attempt is to deconstruct dichotomies between those ahistorical essences and analyze colonialism as a phenomenon that defines its participants identities. Being Indian is not an ahistorical essence. Instead, it is an insult: somebody isor is notIndian in relation to the highest or lowest link in the colonial chain. Although republican histories deeply modified the colonial substratum of Latin America, the solution to Latin American social problems has not yet arrivedas mestizaje or transculturation could make us think. Instead, colonialism has been reproduced differently in each country. For postcolonial critique it is necessary to go beyond colonial structures to their refunctionalization in national narratives, because although we cannot understand Latin America without taking into account its colonial wound, it is equally impossible to understand Bolivia, Peru or Mexico without the traces of their respectively republican histories. In this sense, although Beverley maintains a colonial perspective, he loses sight of the national one (that includes elite struggles for naming and renaming the indigenous drama Ollantay). Rivera (1992) proposes this double articulation between a colonial horizon of long duration and national horizons:
La hiptesis central que orienta el conjunto del trabajo, es que en la contemporaneidad boliviana opera, en forma subyacente, un modo de dominacin sustentado en un horizonte colonial de larga duracin, al cual se han articuladopero sin superarlo ni modificarlo completamentelos ciclos ms recientes del liberalismo y el populismo. Estos horizontes recientes han conseguido tan slo refuncionalizar las estructuras coloniales de larga duracin, convirtindolas en modalidades de colonialismo interno (30)
Which are the modalities of internal colonialism in Bolivia and Peru, countries so similarfor their colonial historyand so different in the ways that their elites have imagined the nation? The next part of this essay will analyze the Quechua drama Ollantay, mentioned by Beverley. However, this paper is limited to the discussion of the social and historical context of Ollantays reception at the beginning of the twentieth centurythe time of liberal and national narrative formationand its impact today. The third section of this paper presents another Quechua drama from the same period, claimed by the Bolivian elite: Trage-
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dia y Muerte de Atahuallpa. The question in both cases is not about the content or circulation of these plays as examples of a colonial genre, but about their appropriation by national imaginaries. Differences in reception, canonization and exclusion of both dramas allow me to analyze modalities of internal colonialism in Peru and Bolivia, articulating long duration memory (colonial) and a liberal horizon. In the last section of this esssay I will resume the importance of the discussion of transculturation for postcolonial criticism.
Ollantay and the Subalternity of the Peruvian Elite

Ollantay is a love story between Pachakutiq Inkas daughter, Kusi Quyllur, and Ullanta, a general of the Inca army, who is not part of the Incas family and, therefore, cannot marry the princess. However, the couple decides to marry secretly and Pachakutiq finds out and orders the persecution of his daughters lover. Ullanta is able to escape and Kusi Quyllur is locked in Akllawasi (the house of the Incas women) where her daughter is born. Years pass, and the next Inca, Tupak Yupanki, takes control of the empire, and, upon learning of the events, he forgives the couple and reestablishes their status in society. This anonymous Inca drama is written in Quechua. Although the date of its production is uncertain, those who have studied it maintain that its origin can be placed between 1680 and the end of the eighteenth century (Calvo Prez 17). What is known for sure is that this drama was represented during Tpac Amarus insurrection. It is precisely in this context that Beverley presents Ollantay as an example of transculturation from below. However, according to Beverley, it is not the context of its representation, Amarus revolt, that makes Ollantay subaltern, but its Quechua writing and aesthetics:
Ollantay was composed and performed in Quechua, and therefore for all practical purposes was inaccessible to creolemestizo audiences (1) ... the plays model of aesthetic, linguistic, cultural and political authority are ultimately Andean (54).
The consideration of Ollantay as a play of Andean purity is already problematic, evidenced by an inexhaustible discussion between those who promote it as pre-colonial and those who see it as a colonial result. How-
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ever, to give Ollantay status as an instance of transculturation from below only because of its language suggests Beverleys lack of knowledge of Peruvian history, its creole-mestizo audiences, and the struggles for power behind this Quechua play. If Ollantay was an important symbol for Tpac Amarus movement that interpellated Inca royalty (it narrates the story of the Inca elite), it was also a symbol of Peruvianness constructed by Cuzco Creoles. Besides, it has presently gained the status of pedagogical material in the framework of the nation-state, since it is part of the official, national Peruvian grade school program. The question is, then: does Ollantay transculturate from below or from above? The period between 1900 and 1930 is, undoubtedly, the one in which Ollantay and Inca theaters boom (Itier 2000) played a very convenient role for the Cuzco elite because it allowed them to legitimize themselves with the Lima elite. On the other hand, Ollantay fits very well into the project of national integration produced during Manuel Pardos presidency (18721876). In this government for example, Dionisio Anchorena publishes his Gramtica quechua o lengua del Imperio Inca (1874), where he points out that:
El conocimiento de la lengua quechua extirpar en los blancos ese desprecio y en los indgenas ese odio Entonces se dar al indgena la situacin que merece, y ste, no recibiendo el trato duro y cruel de que viene siendo vctima desde la conquista, pospondr su odio al blanco y no ver ya un opresor sino un conciudadano a quien debe amar (cited by Itier 19)
Cuzco elites, in contrast to Beverleys argument, cultivate Quechua in their homes and estates, and the indigenista movement, very influential in the capital city, proposed it as a national language. Finally, Quechua is used, as Anchorenas text shows, as a conciliatory symbol.
Ollantay, then, is not only a Peruvian patrimony but also an important proof of the Incas literary achievement and, therefore, their level of civilization at the time of Spanish conquest. Ollantay is written in Quechua, and this characteristic made it from 1870 on (...) a potential and inspiring model of a future national literature rooted in pre-Columbian tradition.2
I think that Beverley, without knowing it, reproduces Ramas argument when writing of Ollantay as an example of transculturation. Again, it
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is literature and its transculturated process (from below or above)this time in Quechuathat crowns society, because Ollantay is not related to subalternity during the analyzed period and, moreover, contributes decisively to the formation of Cuzco as a lettered city:
El Ollantay es un drama incaico, para orgullo de la cultura antigua del Per, alguien dijo: que en sus canciones haba reminiscencias del cantar de los Cantares de Salomn, y que era una pieza teatral digna del genio de un Corneille. Mientras las viejas civilizaciones indostnicas y griegas, muestran al mundo la rara y misteriosa luz de su pensamiento antiguo, contenido en las pginas inmortales del Mahabharata y el Ramayana, la Iliada y la Odisea, desde el Per de los Incas, nos alumbra el fulgor del arte de esa civilizacin en el drama Ollantay. Deber de la actual generacin es rectificar el drama colonial, y reedificarlo en lo posible de acuerdo con la tradicin y la historia (Ypez, 170).
Cuzco and South Andean bourgeoisies, after Perus defeat in the war of the Pacific against Chile from 1879 to 1881, and the consequent crisis of the oligarchic national project, take the flag of decentralization (Itier 45). Provincial intellectuals from Cuzco intend to participate in national modernization because they claim to be the legitimate heirs of the Peruvian spirit. Ollantay is the Peruvian Iliad, the proof of a lettered patrimony that grant them the right to articulate their economic demands within the bourgeoisie project, as this comment published after the dramas premiere in 1915 shows:
Esta representacin, lejos de hacer desmerecer la cultura de nuestro pueblo, la levanta y dignifica, porque es la exhibicin de un monumento grandioso, que glorifica el genio de la Raza que supo producir obra excelsa y nica como excelsa y nica es la obra maestra que ha surgido en cada raza, cual una creacin extraterrena, en el momento de su suprema potencialidad intelectual (El Sol, Cuzco 27-07-1915, cited by Itier)
I think that we cannot talk of Ollantay as a text of transculturation from below or from above. This Quechua drama, as any discourse, it is not subaltern or hegemonic in itself. To state so is tantamount to freezing and simplifying the richness of its appropriations and reappropriations. On the other hand, to state that Ollantay, like any kind of textoral or written,
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Quechua or Spanish-can be made sacred by national discourse or resignified in spaces of resistance, does not deny power relationships nor overcome them, but it could add historical density to the obstinate colonial violence and its ways of reproduction and displacement that are surely more complex than the above-below dichotomy. Ollantay, in its long and intricate history, goes from being an indigenous movement symbol to a Creole nations sacred object, and then becomes a jubilant space of popular use. This bitter critique published in a Peruvian newspaper in 1924 is eloquent:
El espectculo es de lo ms grotesco posible de imaginar: el abigarrado pblico presencia () un movimiento de indios, confuso y vago, como el de las larvas No hay derecho para hacer, en pos de un lucro mal entendido, semejante chacota de lo ms sagrado y respetable que poseemos en nuestro acervo histrico. Las grandiosas escenas de la vida del Imperio, si no se representan y caracterizan con todo el lujo posible de la escena, en un anfiteatro, como el Coln en Buenos Aires, mejor es dejarlas quietas y veneradas en su santuario semi velada y ocultas a las miradas de las muchedumbres irreverentes (El Sol, Cuzco, 01-121924, p. 63)
Cecilia Mndez, talking about Peruvian Creole nationalism, indicates that the Indian is accepted in so far as [he or she is conceived as] landscape and remote glory. He (sic) is wise if he (sic) means the past and the abstract, like Manco Capac; he (sic) is brutish or unusual, impure and vandalic, if he is our contemporary This is a healing of Incas memory achieved through the contempt and segregation of present-day Indians. The roots of the more conservative Creoles indigenista rhetoric, whose echoes are perceptible today, should be looked for here (19). Is there any better text than Ollantay for achieving the excluding inclusion Incas s, indios no (Mndez, 1995)? Ullanta and Sumaq belong to the nobility, cutting any link between Ollantays dramatic heroes and the brutish Indians walking around today in Cuzco. It is obvious that there is no relation between the splendor of the Inca Empire and the decadence of nowadays present day Indians. This representation of the Incas as dead and inoffensive patrimonial heritage contributes to the construction of a Peruvianness discourse today. The Inca Empires greatness is safe only in the national temple, far away from the
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irreverent and profane reach of real life, present-day Indians. But the market does not understand the confusing movement of Indians recovering and recreating their memory for raising their own utopias.
Tragedia y muerte de Atawallpa

In contrast to Ollantayused by Cuzco elites in its hegemonic struggle against the elite of the capitalthe Bolivian State did not incorporate indigenous literature in its imaginary. There is not a Quechua or Aymara literary canon and, despite the existence of some indigenous literary anthologies, these are still considered folklorea field of study reserved more for the anthropologist than for the literary critic. In this section I am interested in analyzing the drama Atau Wallpaj puchukakuyninpa or Tragedia del fin de Atawallpa, that could be considered the Bolivian counterpart of Ollantay. This drama represents an indigenous omen of Pizarros arrival, his encounter with Atahuallpa in Cajamarca and the Incas death. Consequently, this is not an epic fiction like Ollantay, but a tragedycalled wanka (a pre-Columbian historical genre) by Jess Larawhich recreates a historical and very symbolic event: the first encounter between the Andean world and its principal leader, Atawallpa Inca, and the Spaniards. Antonio Cornejo Polar begins his analysis of Latin American heterogeneous literatures precisely with the Cajamarca encounter. He justifies his choice in this way:
Con el destino histrico de dos conciencias que desde su primer encuentro se repelen por la materia lingstica en que se formalizan, lo que presagia la extensin de un campo de enfrentamientos mucho ms profundos y dramticos, pero tambin la complejidad de densos y confusos procesos de imbricacin transcultural (28)
First, Cornejo Polar studies testimonies of Spaniards present there and the chronicles that narrate this event. Later, he compares these official sources to indigenous versions, one of which is the Quechua drama I am discussing. However, my focus is not to go back to the heterogeneous literatures initial moment as Cornejo Polar does:
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Ahora me interesa examinar lo que bien podra denominarse el grado cero de esa interaccin; o si se quiere, el punto en el cual la oralidad y la escritura no solamente marcan sus diferencias extremas sino que hacen evidente su mutua ajenidad y su recproca y agresiva repulsin. Este punto de friccin total est en la historia y hastaen la andinatiene una fecha, unas circunstancias y unos personajes muy concretos. Aludo al dilogo entre el Inca Atahuallpa y el padre Vicente Valderde, en Cajamarca, la tarde del sbado 16 de noviembre de 1532 (26)
Dating the origin of heterogeneity entails various risks, one of which is to embrace an ahistorical and therefore homogenous vision of Tahuantinsuyoa situation far from the reality of a, by that time, recently consolidated Inca empire including many of the ethnic groups inhabiting the region. The other risk of Cornejo Polars zero degree of heterogeneity is to lose sight of the republican horizon that deeply marks the readings and appropriationshegemonic and subalternof the past (the time of the conquest in Tragedia de Atawallpas case and of the Inca period in Ollantays). Cornejo Polars locus of enunciation is Peru, whereas I would like to try to propose a reading of this drama from Bolivia, a reading that will analyze the subtle differences that the republican histories of both countries imprinted on both Ollantay and Tragedia. Why did the Peruvian phenomena of Quechua colonial drama canonization at the beginning of the twentieth century not happen in Bolivia? What is the role of local intellectuals and their national narrative in the history of these dramas? Why did Ollantay became a closed text (one written, univocal and official version, despite being anonymous), represented only during patriotic celebrations, while Tragedia remained alive in the popular imaginary, plurivocal, rewritten constantly, and represented in Carnival? These questions lead me to the main topic of how transculturation is constructed. How to approach a cultural phenomenon that took place in two regionsthe Alto and Bajo Peruwith a more or less shared (post?) colonial past, but that became, also, deeply divided by their separate republican histories and their unique ways of resolving the question of the nation? I agree with Walter Mignolo (2000) when he describes the complexity and tension between local histories and global designs, one of which is the category of transculturation. How do Andean scholars explain and face the recent interest for transculturation in this region, considering that it is new and, to some degree, foreign to our local histories? And if it is useful
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for us to do so (if exchanging transculturation for mestizaje opens new perspectives), how do we approach it from a postcolonial point of view? I do not have definitive answers for these questions, but I will try to present some hypotheses at the end of the essay. Returning to the analysis of Tragedia y muerte de Atawallpas, I would like to talk about its reception by the Bolivian elite. It is interesting to observe that this drama does not appear in any scholarly publication nor in any of the massive editions addressed to the middle class reading public. The only available edition is that of Jesus Lara, published in 1989, which is now out of print. Although there were published colonial dramas with the same topicAtawallpa (Jos Pol, Cochabamba, 1879), Atahuallpa (Nicols Granada, Buenos Aires, 1879), La muerte de Atawallpa (compile by Teodoro Meneses in Peru, s.f.)it is not until 1955 that Jesus Lara located an anonymous Quechua manuscript dated Chayanta, March 25th of 1871. According to Lara, this could be the oldest and less contaminated version of the drama. He founds his assessment on the texts written Quechua, in which there are almost no traces of Spanish (22-23). I would like to remark that Jess Lara discovered the existence of this drama through a Bolivian costumbrista novel, Valle, by Mario Unzueta (Lara 18). The novel mentions a performance of Atawallpa in a traditional religious celebration in Toco, Cochabamba. The existence of this Quechua dramas versions since 1871, and testimonies about its performance at the beginning of twentieth century (Unzueta, cited by Lara) and presently (Beyersdorff: 2000), suggest that this play is an old, popular tradition. However, the drama had to wait for its entrance in the context of the novels lettered realm to be discovered in Bolivia. I consider that this manuscripts late apparition (1955) is more related to the Bolivian elites lack of interest in indigenous literature than to chance. La Paz, in contrast to Cuzco, won the Federal War in 1899, a civil war that decided which city would be the capital of Bolivia. While Cuzco was struggling for hegemony with Lima (the attempt at Ollantays canonization was one of the means used to achieve that goal), La Paz was already consolidated as the center of national discourse. For the Paceo elite that coexists face to face with an indigenous populations majority it could be dangerous to include indigenousnot indigenistaliterature as part of its cultural project. If the Peruvian elite saw suitable the slogan Incas s, indios no (Mndez; 1995), Bolivias could not even profit from Inca greatness. Cuzco, the capital of the Inca
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Empire, belongs to Peru, not Bolivia; the Aymaras, who compose the majority of the population in La Paz, were ethnic groups conquered by the Incas, and then by the Spaniards, thereby doubly defeated, according to the national narrative. It is interesting to observe that one of the most prominent intellectuals at the beginning of the twentieth century, Alcides Arguedas, proposes the famous and still used notion of Bolivia as a sick society (Pueblo Enfermo 1909), adopting Garcilaso de la Vegas teleological view of history, which proposes an evolution from the chaotic pre-Inca times to the imperial order:
Antes, cuando las grandes conquistas de los Incas no se haban extendido todava a estas zonas altas e inmisericordes, los naturales no adorabanal decir del inca Garcilaso de la Veganingn dios; y vivan como bestias, guarecidos en cuevas, sin orden ni polica. Se mataban entre ellos sin motivo... Fueron los incas quienes les inculcaron nociones de dividida (Arguedas, 35)
Consequently, national narratives kept a fatalist pessimism and had to choose between the following options: the incurable illness of mixed blood (Arguedas) or mestizaje as the only door of salvation (Franz Tamayo): El mestizaje sera la etapa buscada y deseada a todo trance, en la evolucin nacional, la ltima condicin histrica de toda la poltica, de toda la enseanza, de toda supremaca; la visin clara de la nacin futura (Franz Tamayo 1910:110). I have already said that Peruvianness was constructed using the Inca empire as national patrimony. In Bolivia, the colonialist modality of nationalism was different: they did not recover a glorious indigenous past3, but emphasized mestizajes requirement to erase anyracial and culturalindigenous trace. In this sense, it would be important to question the difference in the discourse of mestizaje in both countries, a topic that calls for yet another comparative study. For the moment, it is enough to say that the Bolivian elites lack of interest in recovering an indigenous patrimony offeredand still doesan enormous space of action for the Bolivian popular movement. I propose that this is the reason why Tragedia del fin de Atawallpa, in contrast to Ollantay, permitted a recreation of collective memories of subaltern groups, as I will argue in the following section.
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Rewriting History
Tragedia del fin de Atawallpa continues to be performed in Bolivian rural communities during Carnival and religious celebrations (Beyersdorff; 2000). How does collective memory keep the 1533 encounter in Cajamarca alive? If Ollantay has been reduced to one version, that of the book, Tragedia de Atawallpa circulates in the countryside in diverse versions that are constantly remade by the people. It is fascinating to see how some ayllus (indigenous communities) from Oruro, Bolivia, own manuscripts inherited from previous generations. During her field research Margot Beyersdorff found at least four different manuscripts: Relato de San Pedro de Challacollo (1989), Relato de Yarvicoya, Caracollo (1996, 1906), Relato de San Pedro de Buenavista (1952) and Relato de Santa Luca, 1937.4 Besides these acknowledged versions, there are copies of the copies; the keeper of one communitys Relatousually a lettered indigenous or a mestizo subject- is also the performances director, so he modifies the script for the annual premiere (Beyersdorff, 43). Why are there so many manuscripts, different from the original or oldest, like in the case of the one found by Jess Lara (Chayanta manuscript, 1871)? And, what is the role of these copyists? Beyersdorff indicates that:
La plurivocalidad del texto escrito del guin, se produce en cada puesta en escena anual a medida que los representantes acuden desde distintas localidades al espacio ceremonial (marka) del pueblo. A raz del desempeo del papelpliegos trados de afuera- una locucin introducida en la actuacin puede incorporarse luego al guin escrito. Desde luego, el escribidor, al revisar el guin, integrara el novedoso aporte a los papeles del guin maestro (Beyersdorff, 50)
As we can see, Tragedia del fin de Atawallpa is genuinely a plurivocal text: not only do its copyists or keepers leave their traces, but its actors can modify a dialogue with enough success to make the director change the script for the following years opening. This plurivocality not only speaks to variations in the written text (manuscript), but also about its intimate link to orality. The Dramas keepers, as well as its actors and audience, are able to change its narrative and to rewrite it yearly. However, despite the existence of this space of free writing (or narrating), why is there is not a sub-
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stantial difference between them and Beyersdorffs analyzed Relatos? How is it possible to keep a more or less stable version of this drama? Antonio Cornejo Polars compilation about Peruvian performances could shed some light on the matter:
Los ancianos corrigen los errores que cometen los actores sin recurrir a ningn apoyo escrito y el pblico, sobre todo la gente mayor, protesta airadamente cuando la representacin se desva del modelo consagrado, al punto que toda la escenificacin tiene que suspenderse (e inclusive volver atrs) hasta que se retome la forma original que exige la implacable memoria de los viejos (66).
How are orality and writing related in this Quechua drama? Collective memory allows Atawallpas deaths narrative to remain alive despite and through the written script. That is to say, orality, writing, and performance are complementary. Indigenous communities, through the drama, remember and (re)create the conquest and the subsequent colonization. Orality and writing interchange roles in the performance:
En el presente un par de escribidores-directores de actos experimentados en la puesta en escena del Ciclo de Oruro son capaces de representar todos los papeles del guin. Uno de estos maestros, Ricardo Rodrguez, quien ha representado anualmente el papel del inca Atahuallpa, a pesar de carecer del guin completo, acude a la memoria para reproducir los parlamentos del drama (...) Por aferrarse a este proceso de renovar el guin y desempear seguidamente el papel del inca principal, los directores de actos sostienen que ellos en persona continan el linaje de Atahuallpa: somos los continuadores de su estirpe, pues (Beyersdorff, 50-51)
The indigenous community repeats yearly a dramatic historical event that turns their world upside-down (Pachakutiq or Inkarr); they rewrite their tragedy, becauseas Cornejo Polar saysTragedia y muerte de Atawallpa is their history. But this memory also consolidates community ties through knowing themselves under the light of colonial stigma: to be Indians, and, in this sense, heirs of Atawallpas lineage (not only by blood, but also, and more importantly, by culture).
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By recovering and representing their history, collective memory organizes chaotic and violent events, and makes historical sense of them in a history without dates or finished events, but as current as the colonization that they are still subjected to. In this sense, Tragedia y muerte de Atawallpa is an event interwoven with othersconsisting of fragments of memory apparently unconnectedthat recreates, reorganizes, and resignifies their history. I want to focus on two parts of the play. The first one is the articulation of Atawallpas death within another colonial representation: the discovery of the Americas and The Captive in Relato de Santa Luca, Oruro:
La representacin principial con el acto del Descubrimiento de Amrica que se desliza sin pausa al acto de la tentacin del inca por el diablo (...) En este guin los pasos en que los personajes de Coln, el Cautivo y el inca Atahuallpa desempean sus papeles se confunden en un solo acto, sin que haya una resolucin de la contienda donde el diablo figura como uno de los enemigos del inca que los espaoles han trado a su tierra (Beyersdorff, 52) Hay en este punto una intrusin castellana del Diablo, que insta al Inca a sometrsele a cambio de palacios de marfil, felicidad y larga vida (Lara, 27)
In this manuscriptwhere there is a chorus of ustas (Inca priestesses dedicated to deities) singing a hymn to the Virgin Mary (Lara, 27)-, Catholic religion is another stratum added to collective memory. For example, Catholic mythology of the temptation of Christ becomes superimposed upon the figure of Inca Atawallpas figure, who becomes the Andean Christ.5 Moreover, Atawallpa is tempted by a devil who speaks Spanish, while the gods tongue is Quechua. Could we link the Catholic resurrection narrativein this scriptwith the Andean mythical body waiting under the soil to come back made millions (of people)? I am talking about Bolivian myth Pachakuti, known in Peru as Inkarr. The second fragment I want to emphasize serves as a point of departure for a reflection on how this colonial history articulates national experience. This is part of a dialogue introduced by some copyist, during Atawallpas death:
Soldados, a formar en lnea; al hombro (armas), paso regular. Soldados presenten armas (Meneses, cited in Cornejo Polar, 60)
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Atawallpas real death is far from this modern, military language of soldiers and shooting, and Tpac Amaru and Tupac Katari are separated by two centuries from the last Inca. However, empirical facts do not matter for construction of this history, because performing Atawallpas death means also to mix the long duration memory (colonial) to the republican, equally sorrowful one. Atawallpas enemies are not only bearded men (the Spaniards), but also the devil and the soldiers (representatives of the repressive state apparatus).
Nevertheless, subalterns are not the only ones to recreate their memories through this drama. A notable case is the one collected by Wilfredo Kapsoli in Pomobamba, Peru where mistis (mestizos) control the performance. Landowners have the conquerors roles, wearing their best clothes, and Indians integrate Atawallpas army. This text is remarkably similar to the others, but at the same time it differs in its insistent praising of the Spaniards courage and generosity (for baptizing the Inca and saving him from going to hell) (Cornejo Polar, 65, my translation). The inexhaustible complexity of this drama in its diverse written versions and yearly performances in the Andes disarm any dichotomy. To ask if Tragedia y muerte de Atawallpa is oral or written, a transculturation from above or below, does not make any sense. The rigidity of these categories is broken by the dramas excess of performance. And the richness of Tragedia y muerte de Atawallpa allows me to conclude that the disciplining anxiety of intellectuals, full of good intentions, freezes processes that are very alive, all in the name of subalternity.
In relation to this dramas abundance, contradiction, and diversity, Jess Lara, who discovered the oldest known version (Chayantas), and who is an important Bolivian ethnographer and indigenista writer, insists that:
(Chayanta) debe ser considerado como el autntico de la obra, toda vez que en el manuscrito de Chayanta no se encuentran deformaciones ni aditamentos que menoscaben la unidad y pureza (y no aadiduras de copistas aficionados) (Lara, 40, my emphasis)
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El texto de San Pedro es el que ms intervenciones ha sufrido. El quechua se halla aqu lamentablemente deformado, contaminado de formas gramaticales espaolas y an vocablos ajenos al idioma (24)
How to interpret these reactions? Lara has looked for and found theuntil now- purest and least contaminated from amateur copyists interventions. He has published it as a book to inform an audience that could not access this material by other mediums. However, the loneliness of his workdue to the Bolivian states and the intellectuals lack of interest- keeps the amateur copyists from doing their job, performing their history with lamentable deformations that lessen the dramas purity and authenticity. But I think we are not dealing with a fidelity to a written text, but with the urgency of symbolizing collective conflicts that acknowledge that Atawallpas death means a long history... and not only an event that happened a long time ago. This history is their history... it summarizes Andean global experience (Cornejo Polar, 71, my translation) Jess Laras attempt to find a pure and authentic Quechua drama, a genuinely indigenous, subaltern expression, forgets the histories and agendas interwoven in those less serious versions. I wonder if subaltern studies are, in a similar fashion, trying to recover a pure subaltern, one who comes authentically from below, losing sight that it is in the harrowing transculturationthousands of deaths and returns of mythical, historical figures and persons made of flesh and blood- that subalterns constitute themselves? Now, as an answer to this essays initial question, I would say that yes, transculturation is a valid component of postcolonial critique if it performs the task of moving us away from the trap of dichotomieswhich are always disciplining devices. Transculturation is valid not as a conciliatory project, but as an agenda that undermines purities and essences so typical of modernity. In this sense, Tragedia del fin de Atawallpa is a transculturated text in the best sense of the word: straddled between orality and writing and between bearded devils and soldiers, it appears as a visceral performance of colonial violence, and the utopias that curse it, as Atawallpa cursed Pizarro:
Enemigo de barba, wiraqocha (...) en este memorable da me arrebatas la vida; ms vivir en tu pensamiento; llevars la mancilla de mi sangre eternamente. Jams podrn mis sbditos posar en ti los ojos (...) Y caminars sin reposo, y adversarios
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feroces te destrozarn con sus manos, y has de tener que maldecir la condicin inconmovible de mi poder, eternamente.
NOTES
Testimonys discussion is an eloquent example; from being an alternative and subaltern literature it becomes canonical in the American academy. Larsen calls this process decanonization canonized, in Larsen, Reading North by South. 2 Ollantay was not only consolidated in Peruvian literary canon, by 1870 it was translated to German, and published in Madrid (1886) and Buenos Aires (1897), translated to English (1871), French (1878), Italian (1891), Czech (1917), Latin (1937), Russian (1877). Julio Calvo Prez, Ollantay. Edicin crtica de la obra annima quechua, CBC, Cuzco, Per, 1998, p. 29-30. 3 At this point it would be interesting to analyze the official discourse about Tiahuanacu. However, I suspect that it was not used as national patrimony either, or at least not as successfully as the Peruvians use of the Incas. 4 These manuscripts are named according to the place of belonging. Relato also implies a family of manuscripts, different manuscripts with an identical origin. 5 The metonymy of Christ for Atawallpa is repeated in other manuscripts with other more contemporary Andean figures, Tpac Amaru and Tpac Katari (eighteenth century).
1
WORKS CITED
Arguedas, Alcides. Pueblo Enfermo. Puerta del Sol: La Paz, 1979. Beverley, John. Subalternity and Representation. Arguments in cultural theory. Duke University Press, 1999. Beyersdorff, Margot. Etnografa de la escritura y actuacin del Relato de espaoles e incas en el departamento de Oruro, en El tonto del pueblo, revista de artes escnicas. La Paz, No.3/4, Julio 1999. Historia y drama ritual en Los Andes bolivianos (siglos XVI-XX). Plural,
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La Paz, 2000. Calvo Prez, Julio. Ollantay. Edicin crtica de la obra annima quechua, CBC, Cuzco, Per, 1998. Cornejo Polar, Antonio. Escribir en el aire. Ensayo sobre la heterogeneidad sociocultural en las literaturas andinas. Lima: Editorial Horizonte, 1994 De la Cadena, Marisol. La decencia y el respeto. Raza y etnicidad entre los intelectuales y las mestizas cuzqueas, Documento de Trabajo No. 86, Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, Lima, 1997. De la Vega, Garcilaso. Comentarios reales. Ed. Porra, Buenos Aires, 1998. Itier, Cesar. El teatro quechua en el Cuzco. Tomo II. Indigenismo, lengua y literatura en el Per moderno. Centro Bartolom de las Casas, Cuzco, 2000. Martnez-Echazbal, Lourdes. Mestizaje and the Discourse of National/Cultural Identity in Latin America, 1845-1959, en Latin American Perspectives, Issue 100, Vol. 25, No. 3, May 1998. Mndez, Cecilia. Incas s, indios no: Apuntes para el estudio del nacionalismo criollo en el Per. Documento de Trabajo No. 56, Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, Lima, 1995. Mignolo, Walter. Afterword: Human Understanding an (Latin) American InterestsThe Politics and Sensibilities of Geocultural Locations, en Poetics Today. The Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics. No. 16: Spring 1995. Ortiz, Fernando. Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azcar. Madrid, 1999. Rama, ngel. Transculturacin narrativa en Amrica Latina. s.f. Rivera, Silvia. La raz, colonizadores y colonizados, en Rivera y Barrios (coords.) Violencias encubiertas en Bolivia. La Paz, Cipca, 1992. Sanjins, Javier. Subalternity within Mestizaje Ideal: Negotiating the lettered project with the visual arts, 200 (in press). Tamayo, Franz. Creacin de la pedagoa nacional. La Paz: Biblioteca del Sesquicentenario de la Repblica, 1975. Tragedia del fin de Atawallpa. Atau Wallpaj puchukakuyninpa wankan. La Paz: Los amigos del libro, 1989. Yepez Miranda, Alfredo. La Incanidad del Ollantay, en Revista del Instituto Americano del Arte, Cuzco, No. 7, s.f.
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AT THE MARGINS OF HISTORY, THE NATION-STATE AND LITERATURE: THE DISCOURSE OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE AND LATIN AMERICAN SUBALTERN STUDIES*
Abraham Acosta Program in Comparative Literature University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
ince its consolidation asa field of study in turn-of-the-century Western Europe, and even more so since its mass institutionalization as a discipline in the U.S. academy from 1891 to the years following WWII, Comparative Literature has regarded itself as inhabiting a privileged position for the pursuit of humanistic inquiry. Premised on an assumed theoretical rupture from scholarship being produced at that time in national literature departments; that is, discursively formulated via an insistence on a new internationalism intent on superceding
* This contribution to the present volume of Dispositio/n is the product of several conversations between Gustavo Verdesio and myself; wherefrom arose his request to reflect upon my locus of enunciation as a graduate student in comparative literature whose work is invested with the stakes of Latin American Subaltern Studies. The following represents such an attempt: to negotiate the theoretical assumptions and practices of the latter vis--vis the formers geo-historical, disciplinary parameters. To this, I wish to thank Gustavo for encouraging student participation in theoretical conversations.
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isolated, and or competing national literary traditions, the discipline was conceived as being capable of bridging them under a larger category that only Comparative Literature can provide, namely Literature. Hereafter, scholarship could not be produced which did not presuppose both the existence of literatures and Literature. One could look back to Goethe, Comparative Literatures ideological benefactor, and his notion of weltliteratur, and argue that it could not have been conceived without his awareness that literature was being written in differing, though legitimate, territorial and linguistic spaces such as the U.S., England, France, Prussia, Spain, and Russia. Should it therefore be surprising that Comparative Literature would soon come to methodologically dominate much of literary study in the latter half of the twentieth century? It might not, for, as we are all aware, the advent of comparative literature inaugurated more than just another discipline for literary study, but a re-configuration of already dominant discursive practices in Western Europe; this was accomplished via the Dialectic and the anthropological neophyte: homo literatus (my term). Consider, for example, Franois Josts authoritative declaration of the discipline. I quote at length:
Comparative Literature represents a philosophy of letters, a new humanism. Its fundamental principle consists of the belief in the wholeness of the literary phenomenon, in the negation of national autarkies in cultural economics, and, as a consequence, in the necessity of a new axiology. National Literature cannot constitute an intelligible field of study because of its arbitrarily limited perspective: international contextualism in literary history and criticism has become law. Comparative literature represents more than an academic discipline. It is an overall view of literature, of the world of letters, a humanistic ecology, a literary Weltanschauung, a vision of the cultural universe, inclusive and comprehensive. Since antiquity, the ideal education has been a studium generale; the appropriate school founded in the Middle Ages, was called Universitas. The university of the twentieth century has been transformed into Diversitas. Comparatism is destined to restore and renew, in the realm of letters, the ancient spirit, and to reconvert diversities into universities. Indeed, it is much more than a reconversion, because comparatism means the abolition of any barbaricum, ancient or modern. [] The entire globe shares identical literary interests and pursues similar literary goals. The cultural history of mankind presents the classical
AT THE MARGINS OF HISTORY,...
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image of concentric circles. The first ones are those of the family and the tribe; that of the nation[s] follows, and that of humanity necessarily has to include all others. Comparative literature is the ineluctable result of general historical development (Introduction to Comparative Literature 29-30).
Formulated as such, the disciplines theoretical assumptions are numerous. From the anthropomorphization of literary production to the historical determinateness of the discipline, Jost makes perfectly clear that Comparative Literature represents more than just literary study, it is capable of making manifest the fundamentally inter-national, hence, universal nature of cultural (for him, this means literary) production. At stake for me in disciplinary discourses such as Josts are the implicit assumptions that a universal concept of Literature exists, that the entire national world participates in its interests and goals, that this imperative for comparative study both emanates from, and participates in, the imaginary of occidental historical development, and that this literary telos will be narrated, exclusively, in English, French and German. To consider passages such as Josts is, I believe, to render strikingly apparent the ideological implications of the discipline: its inherited Hegelianism, its modern/colonial imaginary, and its inevitably Eurocentric locus of enunciation. It is to illuminate that despite the disciplines mobilization of dominant historical, national, and literary discursive formulations, the discipline nevertheless failed to constitute the desired rupture with the type of scholarship that preceded it, but rather, extended dialectically from it; merely inaugurating a territorial re-configuration of the same literary world now rendered consistent within the imaginary of the modern/colonial world system of the late 19th and early 20th century. In other words, while the global imaginary of the modern/colonial world system shifted its weight, Europes ideological, literary, and linguistic center of gravity remained intact. What, during the Enlightenment, had been called World Literature, Jost now articulates as the Confederation of Occidental Literature (10); and it is upon this new literary/territorial configuration that the cultural history of mankind rests. This new humanism is, by admission, built upon transcendental notions of History and Literature within a European-centered, nation-based global imaginary. In juxtaposition with the overarching discourses operating from Goethe to the present, the nation-state, it seems, might best be understood as one of the disciplines conditions of possibility. For example, one could
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argue that the discipline actually consolidated national literatures even as it attempted to internationalize them as constituents of Comparative Literature. It could also be argued, as is evident in Aijaz Ahmads debate critique of Frederic Jamesons theory of Third World Literature, that national literature is better served through comparatist methods: that the discipline ultimately reinforced and concretized that which it attempted to supercede. Consider Ahmads evaluation of the stakes of an Indian Literature:
In the routine manifestations of this latter version, the unity of the object called Indian Literature appears to be an effect of geography and the nation-state. At its best, though, this version does make a great deal of sense, in so far as only by assembling the documents and literary histories of the different languages and literatures of India would it be possible to examine and historicize their overlaps, if we are to see at all whether or not they do add up to a unified history, however diverse in its constituent units. In other words, it is only by passing through the comparatist method that a knowledge of the unity can be obtained (In Theory 262).
In contrast to Jamesons conceptualization of a world literature built around a comparatism of first and third world cultural production, here Ahmad envisions a unity of Indian Literature built upon the same comparatism. It is not accidental that Jameson and Ahmads formulations are mutually comprehensible: the comparative logics are identical. The point here is that far from representing an attempt to think beyond national literatures, Comparative Literatures idealism is nevertheless bound, inextricably, within the conceptual limitations of cultural nationalism, national literatures, official languages, and territorial borders. To further elaborate this idea, consider the following passage from Ren Welleks essay, The Crisis of Comparative Literature:
Comparative literature arose as a reaction against the narrow nationalism of much nineteenth-century scholarship, as a protest against the isolationism of many historians of French, German, Italian, English, etc., literature. [] But this genuine desire to serve as a mediator and conciliator between nations was often overlaid and distorted by the fervent nationalism of the time and situation. [] This basically patriotic motivation of many comparative literature studies in France, Germany, Italy, and so on, has led to a strange system of cultural bookkeeping, a desire to
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accumulate credits for ones nation by proving as many influences as possible on other nations(287,289)
Implicit in Welleks passage is the counter-intuitive possibility that the comparatist imperative did more to reify the political stakes of national literature than in did for the universalization of Literature. The problem is that even within a comparatist perspective, literatures are still inextricably linked to the current global-national imaginary. In short, the role of national literature survives within the literary dialectic. Again, because Comparative Literature was designed only to bridge national literatures, it still presupposes them in its various formulations and does not represent any attempt to theoretically supercede them. From a Latin American subalternist perspective1, what I find of crucial significance here is the comparative imposition of literary, national, and historical configurations onto all cultural production, particularly onto non-Occidental, ex/post/neo-colonial cultures whose language, and temporal-spatial frameworks are still incompatible with Western presuppositions of universal literariness, national literary production, and historical development. In other words, my point of negotiation lies in Comparative Literatures structural incapacity to critically address the complicity of literature with coloniality. As a matter of course, the comparatist ideology has traditionally taken three paths with regard to historically subalternized cultures and languages: mythologize/historicize them as remnants of our pre-literate and/or pre-modern ancestry (deny their coevalness); methodologically render textual their non-alphabetic, non-written, and non-literary cultural production; or ignore them altogether by conceptually relocating them to a space exterior to official cultural/literary production. In each instance, Comparative Literatures ideological components (History, Literature, inter-Nationality) inhibit the disciplines capacity to recognize its epistemic violence with regard to its constitutive negations. In short, informed by the various colonial histories and legacies inherent in the current global imaginary, the national and historical formulations of universal literariness maintained by comparatists like Jost cannot be sustained. An alternative theoretical formulation is needed to account for the colonial difference within comparative literary discourse. However, in light of new theoretical and political imperatives, recent reevaluations of the discipline have attempted to account for its historically
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Eurocentric practices. In 1993, the ACLA (American Comparative Literature Association) issued its report of standards and guidelines for Comparative Literature programs and departments throughout the country. Entitled The Bernheimer Report: Comparative Literature at the Turn of the Century, the report argues that new and innovative theoretical formulations in literary study are rendering older models of comparative study obsolete, whereby even the concept of Literature is now placed into doubt. The report states:
The space of comparison today involves comparisons between artistic productions usually studied by different disciplines; between various cultural constructions of those disciplines; between Western cultural traditions, both high and popular, and those of non-Western cultures; between the pre- and post-contact cultural productions of colonized peoples; between gender constructions defined as feminine and those defined as masculine, or between sexual orientations defined as straight and those defined as gay; between racial and ethnic modes of signifying; between hermeneutic articulations of meaning and materialist analysis of its modes of production and circulation; and much more. These ways of contextualizing literature in the expanded fields of discourse, culture, ideology, race and gender are so different from the old models of literary study according to authors, nations, periods, and genres that the term literature may no longer adequately describe our object of study (Comparative 42).
From this passage, it is clear that the discipline is at least making an attempt to account for its traditionally narrow theoretical and geo-cultural assumptions. It points towards new fields of inquiry, such as cultural studies, colonial/postcolonial discourse, gender studies and the like. And, as indicated, literature might no longer be the best formulation for the disciplines object of study. However, though this may be perceived as a step in the right direction, it still neglects to scrutinize the two other dominant discourses which constitute the discipline: History and nation-based territorial configurations. As I have attempted to illustrate, one can neither ignore the national nor the historical when taking up the discipline of comparative literature without risk of de-territorializing and de-historicizing a literary world constituted precisely by its overdetermined geo-historical locus of enunciation. It is at ones peril to neglect that these are equally constitutive
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elements in comparatist ideology. For even behind the Bernheimer reports threat of Literatures de-legitimation, History and the national remain hidden through their tacitly operative dominance. It is imperative to recognize that in failing to account for all of the disciplines constituting ideological discourses, the Report leaves the entire ideological structure intact. To see this more clearly, let us turn to Frederic Jamesons essay, Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism. At stake here are the various, though related, divisions of the comparative global imaginary. Ill cite the most well known passage:
In our more immediate context, then, any conception of world literature necessarily demands some specific engagement with the question of third-world literaturelet me now try to say what all third-world cultural productions seem to have in common and what distinguishes them radically from analogous cultural forms in the first world. All third-world texts are necessarily, I want to argue, allegorical, and in a very specific way: they are to be read as what I will call national allegories, even when, or perhaps I should say, particularly when their forms develop out of predominantly western machineries of representation, such as the novel (68).
Note also the historical implications such a global imaginary implies:

The third-world novel will not suffer the satisfactions of Proust or Joyce; what is more damaging than that, perhaps, is its tendency to remind us of outmoded stages in our own first-world cultural development and to cause us to conclude that they are still writing novels like Dreiser or Sherwood Anderson (65).
These passages most neatly articulate the stakes of comparatist ideology in the past twenty years. For what is Jamesons thesis if not a theory emanating, explicitly, from all three of Comparative Literatures constituting discourses? Jamesons termsworld literature, first world literature, third world literature, national allegoryare indicative of comparative literatures ideological and geo-cultural resilience with regard to re-configurations in the global literary imaginary; the obvious addition being the superimposition of the post-war global/historical imaginary of the three worlds. And try as Ahmad did to undo the historical and territorial implications of the three worlds theory inherent in Jamesons comparatism,
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Jamesons is not a First World text; mine is a Third World text. We are not each others civilizational Others; Ahmad could not recognize that their interpretive logics are identical (In Theory 122). Though it is evident that the global imaginary has changed, the logic underwriting comparatist ideology has not. Ahmads debate with Jameson did nothing but reify the comparatism he was critiquing. The preceding discussion attempted to lay out the discursive formulations upon which Comparative Literature was established. This should not, however, imply that this has not been done before; Edward Saids critique of the discipline represents a particularly noteworthy instance (Culture and Imperialism 43-61). Thus far, my argument has been that the discipline, conceived as a consolidation of historical, literary, nation-based territorial discourses, precludes the possibility of any critical accounting of colonialitys complicity with literary discourse (its production and interpretation). Thusly, any attempt to critically address the disciplines inevitable Eurocentrism needs to account for them all. As we saw in both the Bernheimer Report and Ahmads critique of Jamesons comparatist ideology, any failure to simultaneously account for all of these discourses will leave the entire ideological structure intact. I will now advance the argument that just as Comparative Literature is constituted through a simultaneous, inter-disciplinary incorporation of historical, national, and literary assumptions, the theoretical practice of Latin American Subaltern Studies assumes a simultaneous, non-disciplinary critique of them. The rest of this essay will be dedicated to outlining the manners in which the theoretical practices of Latin American Subaltern Studies can be both employed to critically address the disciplines constituting discourses, and perhaps point towards a more inclusive, and less epistemically violent, theoretical practice. The fact that a large part of what is now known as Latin America participated in the first wave of anti-imperial nationalist movements in the nineteenth century represents not only a unique characteristic in Latin American history, but also comes to represent a unique characteristic informing the theoretical practice of the group. It is worthy of note that more than a century separates this wave of independence-nationalist movements from the mid-twentieth century wave of decolonization efforts that sustain most of the interest in, as well as in the continuing production of, postcolonial scholarship. Understood as such, it could be argued that the initial discursive formulations that would soon come to constitute the narrative of Modernityfrom colony to nation-statewere not only informed
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by the events in the U.S. and in France, but from those in Latin America as well. While it is has become an imperative to recognize that, in the twentieth century, national independence from imperial powers rarely constituted the radical form of decolonization desired by its populations, it is important to note that in the case of Latin America, independence from Spain was never conceived as a decolonization effort at all, but, rather, conceived by the criollo elite as the logical continuation of capitalist developmentthe modern nation-state. The fundamental differences separating the first from the second waves of independence movements lie not only in their geo-historical locus, but in their political assumptions as well: decolonization, as a critical concept, was not available to the Creole elite in the nineteenth century as it was to the national independence movements in the twentieth. However, the problem inherent in both historical cases has been made amply clear: the failure of the nation-state to effect a radical decolonized space is endemic to legacies of coloniality itself. And with few exceptions, initial examples of the historic failure of the nation to come to its own began first to arise in nineteenth century Latin America. The problematization of the nation-state as a conceptual space is the very premise that enabled the Latin American Subaltern Studies groups theoretical point of departure. The groups founding statement, originally published the same year as the Bernheimer Report, consisted of a heavily sustained critique of the nation-state in Latin America and the need to account for its continued complicity with colonial practices:
Indeed, the force behind the problem of the subaltern in Latin America could be said to arise directly out of the need to reconceptualize the relation of nation, state and people [] As is well known, although most of Latin America gained formal independence in the nineteenth century, the resulting postcolonial nation-states were ruled predominately by white criollos who developed internal colonial regimes with respect to Indians, the slaves of African descent, the mestizo or mulatto peasantry, and the nascent proletariats (Founding Statement 3)
And the statement goes on to argue:

The concept of the nation, itself tied to the protagonism of Creole elites concerned to dominate and/or manage other social groups or
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classes in their own societies, has obscured, from the start, the presence and reality of subaltern social subjects in Latin American history (italics in original 8).
As indicated in the preceding passages, the fundamental premise established by the group is that not only did the post-independent nationstate perpetuate colonialist practices, but so too did subsequent national formations in the twentieth century, such as those built around the ideology of mestizaje. Neither formation, because they were premised as projects of national/capitalist modernization, have been able to adequately account for the regions colonial histories: the conditions that created and sustained subalternity in the first place. As the group argues, the initial conceptualization of the Latin American nation-state itself has loomed as a shadow over every subsequent national formation. However, as further illustrated in this groups work, the concept of the nation as conceived in the nineteenth century is still insufficient as an object of critique. The effects of current globalizational practices on the Latin American nation-state need to be accounted for as well.
The de-territorialization of the nation-state under the impact of the new permeability of frontiers to capital-labor flows merely replicates, in effect, the genetic process of implantation of a colonial economy in Latin America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Founding Statement 8).
As the group argues, not only was the concept of the modern nationstate inadequate to the colonial histories of Latin American countries, but even now, under globalized capital, the nation-state is further obliged to perpetuate its colonialist practices. Understood as such, Latin American subalternists have been keenly aware that for close to two hundred years now, the post-colonial nation-state has operated as the logical continuation of colonial discursive practices; what Anibal Quijano has diagnosed as coloniality of power (Colonialidad del Poder 114-117). Moreover, for many Latin American intellectuals throughout the twentieth century, including, but not limited to Jos Carlos Maritegui, Angel Rama, Roberto Fernandez-Retamar, Enrique Dussel, including even the discursive formulations of the EZLN, the nation-state has been recognized as a problem of coloniality since its adoption as a politico-economic alternative a century earlier.2
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At stake here in my overarching discussion of Comparative Literature is that since the nation-state is a determining element in the disciplines discursive formulation, it is likewise susceptible to the postcolonial nationstates structural, historic and current inadequacies. Let us not neglect to recognize that the concept of the modern nation-state had already become problematized in Latin America at the time the field of Comparative Literature was emerging. Moreover, the question remains whether the discipline of Comparative Literature can sustain its ideological structure within the discursive formulation of the new, deterritorialized, nation-state under globalization: where capital and labor flow in one direction, while immigrants flow to the other. It would thus be necessary to argue that the discourse of Comparative Literature begins to break down when engaging with coloniality, for, as I have been trying to suggest, the discipline assumes a nation-based global imaginary. Similarly, it would also be necessary to argue that the discourse of Comparative Literature begins to break down when engaging with the postcolonial nation-state under the impact of globalization: for the same territorial and linguistic assumptions apply. However, a more difficult and interesting question arises when one asks whether the nineteenth century post-colonial nation-state served as the native informant in the emergent discursive formation of the discipline. This would imply that the disciplines conditions of possibility are also the conditions of its interpretational impossibility. Let me not also fail to recognize the groups reconsideration of the role of Literature in the constitution of the Latin American nation-state. Keeping in mind that in the periphery of the modern/colonial world system, to bring up the idea of literature not only invokes European expansion, but the later adoption of identical logics and strategies in national modernizing projects. For many, the notion of Literature was one of many cultural imports brought about by imperial expansion, and post-independence nation building. Examples of such theoretical re-considerations include John Beverlys analysis of the limits of transculturation, elite culture, and the literary canon in Latin America; and Walter Mignolos recent discussion addressing the structural limitations of comparative literary studies within the conception and deployment of Literature as part of Modernitys civilizing process (Subalternity 41-64; Local Histories/Global Designs 218-249). These reconsiderations contribute extensively to explain why, for example, the parallel drawn between literary development and the nationstate is so common in nineteenth century nationalist discourse in Latin
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America. Consider, for example the following statement from the preface to Bartolom Mitres Soledad:
La forma narrativa viene slo en la segunda edad. [...] cuando la sociedad se completa, la civilizacin se desarrolla, la esfera intelectual se ensancha entonces, y se hace indispensable una nueva forma que concrete los diversos elementos que forman la vida del pueblo llegado a ese estado de madurez. Primero viene el drama, y ms tarde la novela. El primero es la vida en accin; la segunda es tambin vida en accin pero explicada y analizada, es decir, la vida sujeta a lgica. [...] Por esto quisiramos que la novela echase profundas races en el suelo virgen de la Amrica. El pueblo ignora su historia, sus costumbres apenas formadas no han sido filosficamente estudiadas, y las ideas y sentimientos modificados por el modo de ser poltico y social no han sido presentados bajo formas vivas y animadas copias de la sociedad en que vivimos. La novela popularizar nuestra historia echando mano de los sucesos de la conquista, de la poca colonial, y de los recuerdos de la guerra de la independencia. ...y hara conocer nuestras sociedades tan profundamente agitadas por la desgracia, con tantos vicios y tan grandes virtudes, representndolas en el momento su transformacin, cuando la crislida se transforme en brillante mariposa. Todo esto hara la novela, y es la nica forma bajo la cual puedan presentarse estos diversos cuadros tan llenos de ricos colores y movimientos (Soledad 8,10).
Of particular interest for Mitre here is the historical coordination of novelistic production and the rise of the nation-state, both understood as the latest and highest manifestations in the discourse of historical development. For, according to Mitre, the nation does not exist without its corresponding novelistica; and moreover, the former can only be narrated by the latter. What is of particular interest for me here is that this is precisely the type of national literature discourse that Comparative Literature attempts to supercede. And as I have been trying to suggest, Comparative Literature can very easily absorb such singular (national) articulations because the inherent discursive logics of History, the nation-state, and literature are identical in both cases. Both discourses presume a privileging of the nation, Occidental literary genres, and imperial languages. What Subaltern Studies in Latin America has been attempting to understand, by way of these reconsiderations, is not only why the nation-state and Literature have been imbricated
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in the coloniality of power, and not only how the mechanics of this relationship work, but how to go beyond this seemingly inescapable logic. In contrast to both national literature and comparative literary discourses, Mignolo proposes an alternative perspective:
The very concept of literature presupposes the official language of a nation/empire and the transmission of the cultural literacy built into them. Therefore, it is not sufficient to recognize the links between the emergence of comparative literature as a field of study and literatures complicity with imperial expansion and nation building, with all the complexities entailed in the process (Local Histories 227).
What Mignolo seems to imply by not sufficient is that language and literatures, the bread and butter for comparatists, need to be redefined to account for the complicity between empires, nations and coloniality. Again, Comparative literature is not capable of addressing the political stakes of official languages, the political stakes of national literature, and the neo-humanistic stakes of a universal category such as Literature, because it both presupposes and reinforces them. Instead, Mignolo suggests a new theoretical practice that can account for not only cultural production in traditionally subalternized languages, such as Quechua, Aymara, Nahuatl, Catalan, Santhali, and Mundari, languages rarely dealt with in comparative literature and with little or no representative scope within the national, but furthermore, cultural production that is not literary, as traditionally conceived. Mignolo continues:
transimperial, transcolonial, and transnational cultural studies (and by trans I mean beyond national languages and literatures as well as beyond comparative studies that presuppose national languages and literatures) could serve as a new inter- and transdisciplinary space of reflection, in which issues emerging from Western expansion and global interconnections since the end of the fifteenth century might be discussed and linguistic and literary studies redefined (221).
The point here, for Subaltern Studies in Latin America, is not to completely abandon literature, nor abandon literary study. At stake here is the recognition of literature and comparative literary studys complex relationship with coloniality, its conceptual limitations, the need to acknowledge
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other forms of cultural production not limited to occidental languages, forms and genres, and to work towards the development of theoretical practices that can account for them. And the objects of critique may not solely lie with literature and the nation, but with literary studies as well traditionally limited by the aesthetic, rhetorical and formal properties inherent in the languages of literary studyas a currently inadequate hermeneutic in the interpretation of non-Occidental cultural production. Or, as Albert Moreiras has recently argued: literary studies have lost their hegemonic function for the ideological production of social value. [] the tools needed for literary reflection must be redesigned in view of the emerging configurations of knowledge (Exhaustion of Difference 12-13). One must keep in mind that there is a vast epistemological difference between claiming that literature itself is so much more than simply literary, which is what the Bernheimer Report implies, and claiming that there are other forms of cultural production that merit our attention than just the literary. Perhaps the Bernheimer report is only partially in tune with the stakes of Latin American Subaltern Studies when it stated that literature may no longer adequately represent the disciplines object of study; but perhaps an even more comprehensive account would have suggested that literary study should no longer represent Comparative Literatures sole method of inquiry. In summary fashion, I wish to emphasize the extent to which Latin American Subaltern Studies can provide theoretical alternatives with regard to the dominant discourses continually informing our disciplines and, in my case, Comparative Literature. As previously articulated, my argument has been that just as Comparative Literature is constituted through a simultaneous incorporation of historical, national, and literary assumptions, the theoretical practice of Latin American Subaltern Studies assumes a simultaneous critique of them. Yet this should by no means signify that Subaltern Studies in Latin America has rejected comparatism, far from it. Rather, as Ileana Rodriquez argues, though the political imperative for some sort of comparatism persists, the terms under which such a dialogue is established and maintained must be reconceptualized to account not only for the nation, History and Literature, but for coloniality and subalternity as well: Subaltern Studies positions itself as a radical critique predicated on cross-, trans-, and multi-disciplinarity, as well as on a commitment to comparative studies between different post- (neo) colonial situations (Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader 9). It is through such discursive re-considerations of
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History, the nation and Literature, as those undertaken by Latin American Subaltern Studies, that Comparative Literatures discursive formulations may be reconfigured to account not only for the disciplines continuing participation in the historical, theoretical, and institutional perpetuation of subalternity, but to develop new ways of addressing the epistemic violence inherent in such a traditionally narrow, comparative foci.
NOTES
My theoretical position within Latin American Subaltern Studies should be understood here as a political-theoretical practice sensitive to the geo-cultural enunciative loci of traditionally exploited and marginalized communities living under the continuing impact of coloniality, the nation-state, modernity and globalization. Or as Ileana Rodriguez puts it: a radical critique of elite cultures, of liberal, bourgeois, and modern epistemologies and projects, and of their different propositions regarding representation of the subaltern (Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader 9). See Jos Carlos Mariategui, Siete ensayos de interpretacin de la realidad peruana (1928) (Mxico City: Ediciones Era, 1979), Angel Rama, The Lettered City (Durham: Duke UP, 1996), Roberto Fernndez Retamar, Nuestra Amrica y Occidente, Casa de las Americas XVI. 98 (1976): 36-58, Enrique Dussel, Europe, Modernity and Eurocentrism, Nepantla: views from the south 1.3 (2000): 465-478, and EZLN: Documentos y comunicados, 1 de enero/8 de agosto de 1994, prologue by Antonio Garca de Lon and chronicles by Carlos Monsivis and Elena Poniatowska (Mexico City: Editorial Era, 1994).
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Works Cited
Ahmad, Aijaz. In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures. New York; London: Verso, 1992. Beverly, John. Subalternity and Representation: Arguments in Cultural Theory. Durham: Duke UP, 1999.
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Comparative Literature in the Age of Multiculturalism, edited by Charles Bernheimer. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1995. Jameson, Frederic. Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism. Social Text, 15, 1986. Jost, Franois. Introduction to Comparative Literature, New York: Pegasus, 1974. Latin American Subaltern Studies Group. Founding Statement. Dispositio/n 19.46 (1994): 1-11. Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader. Ileana Rodriguez editor. Durham: Duke UP, 2001. Mignolo, Walter. Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2000. Mitre, Bartlom. Prologo a Soledad. Buenos Aires: Editorial Tor, Lecturas selectas, 1928. Moreiras, Alberto. The Exhaustion of Difference: the Politics of Latin American Cultural Studies. Durham: Duke UP, 2001. Quijano, Anibal. Colonialidad del Poder, Cultura y Conocimiento en Amrica Latina. Anuario Mariateguiano 9.9 (1997): 113-21. Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Press, 1994. Wellek, Ren. The Crisis of Comparative Literature (1958), in Concepts of Criticism, ed. Stephen Nichols. New Haven: Yale UP, 1963.
IN SEARCH OF THE POLITICAL WITHIN AND WITHOUT THE POLITICS OF THEORY

Daniel Mosquera
Me pregunto si no tenan razn, intelectuales de mierdadijo Fantomasdas y das de accin internacional y no parece que las cosas cambien demasiado. Julio Cortzar, Fantomas contra los vampiros multinacionales
cademics in general who sympathize with projects inspired by leftist politics and/or filtered through feminist, colonial, postcolonial, subaltern and/or a certain type of cultural studies continue to push forward with more extensive mapping of Eurocentric modernity and its subalternizing strategies.1 It is by now a truism that many of these strategies continue to inform the social and political shape of the world today, as are modernitys reflexive tactics used to grasp the measure and diversity of its main legacies: the nation-state and systematic capitalist production on the one hand, transnational and globalized corollaries on the other.2 Among the goals of revisionist missions we may count continuous critical dismantling of concepts that for long determined the nature of scientific inquiry and fostered a normative and hierarchic understanding of human relations and cultural differences. Other, no less important goals, include the radical alteration of a historiographic and philosophical tradition whose biased cartography of subjectivity, especially colonial subjectivity, remains fully unexposed and the search for more adequate conceptual frameworks that can account for cultural heterogeneity in motion, past and present.3 At first sight, this scenario conveys a progressive aspiration, perhaps even the moment when Eurocentrism stops being the site where all other knowledges converge (as objects of study).4 But this multidisciplinary project of
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contestation is today caught between the recognition that western systems of thought cannot be avoided, and that they are inadequate to understand and re-cognize other cultures. As with its predecessors, the Latin American Subaltern Studies initiative (LASS) is also caught in this dilemma, augmented by internal critiques and a strong offensive from Latin America that has brought its authority to task.5 Here I would like to focus on just two aspects of this predicament, concentrating on the general rather than the particular movement. The first one deals with what seems to be a sub-genre of current theories interested in the recovery of agencies and in processes of globalization, namely the articulation of a new political front whereby the figure of the public intellectual is, at least in theory, regenerated. The second addresses the problem of location in the production of these knowledges of both practitioners and theories, and the domestication of contestatory theories through what I call cultivated heterodoxies. I end by offering some thoughts on theory and its limitations. As Seshadri-Crooks explains, the field of postcolonial studies is today plagued by a melancholia created in part by its successes and institutional authority and by other factors that may stifle its contestatory powers. A similar diagnosis could apply to subaltern studies:
this melancholic condition derives not only from postcolonial scholars apprehension that institutionalizing the critique of imperialism may render it conciliatory, but from other significant factors such as their own (First World) place of speaking (which implicates them in the problematic of neocolonialism), their criteria for political self-legitimation (i.e., the impossibility of representing the Third World as an anti-imperialist constituency, especially in the face of the retreat of socialism), and their peculiar immobility as an effective oppositional force for curricular change within the (American and British) academies (Seshadri-Crooks 2000: 3.
Although internal critiques also shape this melancholy, self-questioning and openness to outside criticism have admittedly been these frameworks most resilient traits, which in turn have resulted in further revisionism.6 Yet during the past few years re-evaluations of what postcolonial and subaltern studies have achieved have prompted, among other responses,
IN SEARCH OF THE POLITICAL WITHIN...
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frank expressions of discontent from insiders and outsiders. As with other current proponents of alternative epistemologies, one of the tenors that prevails is a longing for a more vital symbiosis between intellectual practices and discourses and civil societies, whatever their historical, political and social blend may be.7 What started as revisionist critiques of colonialisms and their lettered apparatuses, and as attempts to recover agencies obliterated or obfuscated by the latter, has acquired what to many critics is a thwarting institutional identity. In addition, the inability to establish concrete agendas and consensual programs of work may have impaired partially the decolonizing authority that propelled those very critiques and that stirred during the 1980s (and until today) established grounds of knowledge production and dissemination. Behind the various responses to the crises now visiting subaltern and postcolonial missions, including LASS, also lies a compelling aggravation with the absence of a tangible politics where disenfranchised social agents and social and cultural critics and theorists can converge. In spite of the fact that theoretical considerations have detailed a clear emphasis on representation and ideology, continuous desires are manifest to set in motion a political praxis with social transformative consequences. Even though Beverly has arguedfollowing in Spivaks footstepsthat what subaltern studies should represent is the difficulty of representing the subaltern as such in our disciplinary discourse and practice within the academy and not its concrete socio-historical equivalent, his vision still leaves space for a political praxis with a socialist vision: The problem is how to generate first the idea and then the institutional form of a new kind of state, one that would be driven by the democratic, egalitarian, multinational, multiethnic, and multicultural character of the people: that is a people-state. (1999: 151). He then concludes by restating that subaltern studies ought to revisit class inequality and exploitation, given that class is the main producer of subalternity: In political terms, it is not only a matter of theorizing or legitimizing a politics of difference; it is also a matter of connecting a politics of difference to a new vision of socialism or communism. (1999: 166). This new institutional form and connecting ... to a new vision reveal possibilities beyond theorizing just issues of representation. But the intent here is not simply to spot ambiguities in Beverlys text. Rather, I would like to point out how this desire for a translatable political concreteness within a theoretical framework that cancels itself out as soon as it approaches its object of study refuses to acquiesce to the demands of theo-
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retical protocol, so to speak, in this case the impossibility of representation.8 Robert Carr understands the circularity of the problem perhaps too literally when he confuses theoretical with social praxis, yet his sense of frustration finds a legitimate echo in many of the pronouncements cited earlier, all of which seek a science of proximity and heterogeneity.9 In this institutional context LASS, an initiative some perceive to be already defunct,10 has found itself caught precisely at this crossroads: between proposing from a euro-centered Anglo-U.S. based academy a complementary approach to latinoamericanismo and the left, and responding to internal and external critiques of its foundational drives. Rather than write on the limitations and accomplishments of LASS, topics that more suited critics have already addressed,11 I have chosen to direct attention to the larger problem of the political in current postcolonial theoretical practices, especially in the U.S. Historians and cultural theorists generally associated with globalization studies are also touting an interest on a renewed type of [the] public intellectual. When Arjun Appadurai invites us to create a new architecture for producing and sharing knowledge he envisions what we may call a democratizing pedagogy. Inspired by the new forms of dialogue and collaborative teaching and learning that this pedagogy would attract, he argues for the participation of academics, public intellectuals, activists, and policy makers in different societies.12 This challenge to create innovative networks of national and transnational advocacy among different social actors and to generate a more adequate systematic grasp of the complexities of globalization13 is salientalthough not always politically effectivein contemporary theoretical debates. Not surprisingly many of those responses dominate academia today, given the more or less accepted breakdown or atrophy of metanarratives, a search for an invigorated political aim and the speed at which concepts enter academias consumptive world. Appealing to philosophical, culturalist, historicist and/or sociological models of thought, much of this work invites and does provide critiques and evaluation of new concepts and approximations, even if the rate of circulation exceeds by far that of their assimilation. Sometimes national and international fora and publications address, as do Appadurai and others works, the limitations of this practice and point out impasses and possible avenues of change.14 There is, however, a feeling among academias practitioners that even the search for groundbreaking notions and for collaborative ventures often culminate in self-reflexive exercises that do not constitute any
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substantial change of the practices they so desperately seek to transform and of the institutions that foster them. What informs a new impetus toward a different or renewed type of the political may well be related to the apparent demise of socialist movements and programs in the international political arena, or the crisis of the left.15 This inclination could represent a series of strategies that sincerely and insincerely search for ways in which to overcome the political stagnancy of academic practices, in a society increasingly dependent on synoptic pedagogies. But this is nothing new. It may simply be what Pierre Bourdieu has called derisively theoretical theory, which he identifies with U.S. academic trends for having, in his opinion, distanced too much from empirical research.16 If we pair his opinion with recent ones coming from other fronts, Bourdieu is not alone in his critique. The time is ripe, we may argue, to go beyond the aporias created in part by repeated mapping and questioning of theoretical and foundational constructs whose interlocution remains concentric and self-referential. But is there a beyond where we can go? How do we get there? Who should participate? And how do we deal resourcefully with the hampering sway the U.S. imperial project within which the university as an institution plays a significant rolehas on national and international cultural and political plurality? These questions are not part of a rhetorical drill suggesting a stop to further analyses of modernity and its legacies; nor do they wish to create facile relations between intellectual practices and current politics. They are crucial instead to dealing with and reorienting what I call cultivated heterodoxies, not just in the U.S. but in other parts as well. By cultivated heterodoxies I mean the sanctioned production and re-production of analytical practices and discourses of all qualities, shapes, and sizes bearing verifiable pedigrees, and in which a diversity of social actors and the representation of their histories become domesticated through theorizable and institutionalized tactics. In an attempt to seize heterogeneity, to understand it, and to promote it some of those tactics appear benign and pluralistic, even enlightened and progressive, but ultimately contribute to the exertion of an authority that contains and thingifies, often bypassing empirical means of elucidation and foci on material culture.17 In other words, those tactics strengthen indirectly the hegemonic grasp dominant epistemologies have had on an envisioned simultaneity of non-Western knowledges.18 Paradoxically, subaltern and postcolonial studies have become indispensable as supplementary approaches for anyone trying to address the
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problem of getting beyond Eurocentric histories.19 And LASS should be no exception. Like other theoretical applications to the study of historically verifiable religious, social and/or political subordinacies and agencies, the LASS initiative has met with mixed review. Here I do not detail the initiatives devolutionary course and only try to understand its relevance and relation to past and future approaches to cultural and postcolonial studies, both in the U.S. and in Latin America. Looking at LASS in disconnection from larger issues of legitimacy and applicability in and outside of academia, especially as it unfolds in the U.S., may not yield the same results as would considering simultaneously Latin American initiatives and their conflicted relationship with hegemonic centers of knowledge production and re-production in Europe and the U.S.20 I will refrain here from revisiting at length the genealogy of the group. Suffice it to say, LASS was inspired by the South Asian Subaltern Group initiative (and subsequent related work) and first publicized its intent in a founding statement in 1993 in boundary 2, reprinted in this journal and in another venue and in a subsequent Spanish translation published in 1998.21 Since the appearance of this manifesto, various members of the group have provided assessments and self-critique, distanced themselves from it, published new work or declared it dead.22 If theories come into existence, among other reasons, in order to provide evidence of their partiality, then there is no reason to renounce them and more reason to modify them. Rather than offering retreat as an alternative to a new way of posing the project of the left, as Beverly proposed, we may consider persisting in a more modest yet still radical adaptation of subalternismo, one that keeps a constant watch on its genealogy, its methodologies and affiliations, its intents. By now a subaltern studies that empowers subaltern people has become a platitude of sorts, yet fervent interest in the protagonism of culture and processes related to the creation of locality remain central to our understanding of social and political agency, both relevant to what George Ydice calls creacin de mundo.23 Understood in this sense, subaltern studies may still have an important role to play, perhaps with some substantial modifications on the part of practitioners and sympathizers. Surely, the bonanza is far from over and the cashing in on its exchange value still occurs,24 but a transformative and selfevaluative relevance to the understanding of subaltern agencies remains promising. In a more unsympathetic light, what Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui and Rossana Barragn propose is in fact a dismissal of the mediation LASS
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exerted through its adoption of the South Asian initiative, recovering what to them would be a more balanced south-south dialogue that would enrich rather than impoverish Latin American debates.25 To them this relocation of subaltern studies entails the possibility of connecting Latin American critical thought from the 70s and 80s to the South Asian initiative, thereby providing an unmediated stage for new proposals.26 From the late 70s to the late 80s the study of literature in Latin America was restructured with the design to accommodate what to many critics was the search for the social functions and processes of literary production and consumption. We must recall essays published in the second volume of Revista de Crtica Literaria in 1986, in which Carlos Rincn and Alejandro Losada, among others, proposed scenarios of change where we could think up other forms of history, which in turn could account for cultures of resistance and result in a historicized concept of history.27 If literature was perceived as a social fact (hecho social), then it followed that intellectuals, artists, readers, higher education institutions, specialized journals, critical and hegemonic discourses and dominant esthetic doctrines [could] not constitute society or [represent] literature.28 Aware of the discontinuities in a social totality informed by contradictory and conflicted articulations, what Losada envisioned was a sociology of literature and literary studies that would attend also to sub-regional cultures where social and literary processes could be empirically verifiable:
Brasil, Mexico, Gran Caribe (Antillas espaolas, francesas e inglesas y Centroamericanas), ro de la Plata y las sociedades andinas. No se trata de elaborar la totalidad de los procesos sociales y literarios de esas subregiones, sino de apoyarse en algunas evidencias que permiten entender aquellas contradicciones generales que definen el espacio social latinoamericano a partir de procesos concretos.29
Critiques such as R. Cusicanqui and Barragns may be perceived as expressive of a turf war, and their emphasis on the recovery of a political dimension originating in Latin American thought may lend credence to this belief. Their preoccupation with what they feel is an unsystematic and thoughtless adoption of intellectual fashions from the north is, however, shared by many even in the north, not to mention the tremendous disparity between knowledge production in English and Spanish and their circula-
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tion.30 Even then, the methodological imparities between south and north aired in the field of latinoamericanismo have exacerbated this problematic. Not long ago, Peter Smith declared Latin American and Area Studies in a crisis whose conciliation depended on any of three options: retreat (back to pedagogical cubicles), attack (continuing denunciations and critiques) or advance (to demonstrate the continued relevance of Area Studies and to persevere in our interdisciplinary methodologies).31 I find the use of a military metaphor to address the problem of what I think is a more general social crisis affecting the humanities and social sciences inadequate, considering that the mechanisms and strategies of power we analyze and expose reside in, and feed off, the civilizing spaces where we practice the trade. We are not facing an easily recognizable and external enemy but, largely, an enemy within. Yet Smith has not been the only one to offer submission as a possible solution. Ileana Rodrguez suggested capitulation as well in the face of globalization; perhaps even at the risk of losing the contesting abilities socialist thought has afforded us over time.32 Still, in part thanks to these critical processes, artists, researchers and academics from various disciplines and with a variety of backgrounds have imagined and produced ways to pay closer attention to many of the voices and agencies that were, and continue to be, obscured by colonial or neocolonial orders. It is true that our moment witnesses trends of interpretation come, go, and return sometimes at an agonizing speed without generating much constructive reflection or allowing sufficient time for reflection to set in and for informed debates to evolve into other patterns of thought. Within U. S. academic settings, although not exclusively, this modus operandi can be excruciating as technologies of knowing (tecnologas del saber) and classifications of knowledges build up and promote institutional strategies of domestication that obfuscate questions of politics and agency, with and without the cognizance or direct complicity of research centers, graduate and undergraduate programs. Such institutional strategies combine old and novel methods, paradoxically bolstering and undermining known epistemological hegemonies while dwelling comfortably in globalizations chambers. Frequently, these strategies respond to corporate pressures such as rankings, grant sponsorship (often by the State or its subsidiaries), publishing, prestige, tenurability, transnational mobility, etc.all of which may be in various fashions inimical to the radicalization of critical theory. If we take a close look at some of the debates regarding the legitimacy and temporal buoyancy of Latin American subaltern studies, several
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facets stand out that are reminiscent of older debates surrounding problems of authority. What if the realities our theories pretend to understand, and often to diagnose and prescribe, resist cataloging? What if subaltern cultural practices, past and present and of conscious resistance or not, relate to hegemonic projects such as modernity and globalization inevitably in peripheral ways, since even though subalterns may want hegemony and autonomy they may not seek to invest in these projects?33 Shall we continue to find an historical place within modernity for women, excluded indigenous communities and the poor and disenfranchised where they can actually represent themselves, through metropolitan concentricity and lettered symposia? The impetus with which many approached poststructuralist and postcolonial theories, especially those trends that offered radical rereadings of established texts and interpretations, situated them in a place difficult to arbitrate. One question that informed this impetus could be as follows: how to engage, and engage in, the technologies of knowledge, of their production and reproduction, located in taxonomic corporate spaces and practices, while at the same time live out, and live by, a dynamic critique of their power tools, of their false and apathetic humanism, of their continuous political co-option via the media, market and education industries? The problems we face return us to the question of the political we covet, in order to advance what is politically insufficient or ineffective in the knowledges our practices produce. As James Clifford argued, in a Gramscian spirit, effective political strategy begins where people are, rather than where one wishes they were (369). It seems that academic knowledge production and re-production has spent more time doing the latter, has begun to realize it and cannot find a way out. If Clifford is right, we must attend to material cultural production in conjunction with this desire for a more effective political approach to intellectual efforts. One of the many quandaries now facing intellectuals around the globe is the connection between modernity and globalization and the explanation of what globalization is and does to identities, and vice versa. No longer do social scientists and cultural theorists appear to resist the belief that our centripetal and centrifugal times require a different conceptual architecture. And it would seem that, while theorizing by now more or less familiar concepts such as deterritorialization, coloniality, subalternity, multitude, and diasporas we must find a way to fasten an elusive object of study; and in doing so, we discover more of the same, yet intensified and
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often unspeakable. As we leave behind and reference 9/11, there is a sense that we must account for yet other ruptures, or rather subdivisions of this complex state of things, and witness a return to a barbaric global sameness, strengthened by a variety of fundamentalisms. Maybe we will need new categories to account for the absolute absence of rights, for the imposition of anonymity and statelessness as opportune identitarian traits, for new forces of colonialism. Maybe Kafkas K is the entity of the future, as Breyten Breytenbach fears, and individuals appear no longer just deterritorialized but also extraterritorialized.34 More important and worrisome for intellectual practices and academic spaces, perhaps, is the extent to which all of this becomes and already is theorizable. To the extent that theories are partial, presumptive and provisional hypotheses in constant need of critiques and alteration, they are neither false nor true. When confronted with the realities they imagine embodying and the diverse points of view of those realities they often, and eventually, fall short and coil around themselves. As Gayatri Spivak reminds us, even deconstruction is ... among other things, a repeated staging of attention on the construction of foundations presupposed as self-evident.35 Theories are more or less useful when they do not constitute points of departure or of arrival, and remain largely open and flexible grounds of mediation between experiences of reality and reflections of those experiences. If this claim is valid, then we may conclude that theory deals exclusively with problems of representation, but that it reaches its critical point when confronting, as Santiago Castro-Gmez has insisted, the political economy of its object(s) of study.36 Although there is opposition to the belief that cultural theory should not remain a theoretical endeavor whereby theories speak to each other and do not try to constitute a reality, we cannot ignore that there is an intimate and debatable relationship between theory and social praxis, one with a long and rich history in Latin America. Today, the cross-fertilization of disciplinary practices has opened up avenues of interpretation that allow for greater historical understanding of radical changes in the political composition and re-composition of social bodies. Yet equally important is the fact that these very practices and changes have made theories and theorizing more transparent and therefore more suspect in and through the critical study of relations and contestations of power. It is not so much that the aporias we now face dictate the theoretical thrust of academic practices, but that unless there is a radical change in the way those practices are constituted as academic, particularly in their U.S.
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corporate fashion, little change may be obtained. A reorientation of academia and of its diagnostic and normative tendencies toward material culture and its production, its histories and regionalisms can help to break up its centralizing and metropolitan fetishisms. This could also help to broaden our approach to complex cultural practices and their genealogies. The fact that researchers and educators can no longer go about their ways, inhabiting their own institutional cubicles as if their object of study could still be called a masterpiece speaks to the need to rely on multidisciplinary approaches to the understanding of cultural production, centered on its political and social dimension and evidenced by empirical research. But even then, this mission remains perilously theoretical, its genealogies dangerously lettered and at times it even promotes as an alternative experiencing a certain type of numinous solidarity.37 Is it also possible that we are dealing with disenchanted struggles characterized by a sense of inevitability that both hampers them and allows them to carry on? In the first case, disillusioned debates tend to result in direct or subtle capitulations that prevent critical confrontations and give the (often-false) impression of amalgamation and concurrence. We may call this practicing intellectual political correctness. In the second case, resulting discourses ponder in circular ways how to alleviate the hampering, usually without jeopardizing access to institutional and metropolitan subsidies. It would seem then that for intellectuals to carry on is to survive, although not necessarily to break away from or probe radically the spirit of the cycle. A terrible thing happens when an object of study becomes familiar and domesticated, when instead of inviting us to taste of its ambiguities and to contemplate its evolutions we witness its defeat at the hands of scholars. We need to concentrate not on changing reality but on changing how we let reality relate to us, on altering the hierarchies that constitute institutional identity to democratize its access, its offerings and typologies. In some ways, we have decided to approach the local with the enthusiasm with which the Romantics approached folklore and peasant life, outfitted by a self-consciousness we presume they lacked and a revisionist and manyeyed theoretical apparatus we consider activist. In short, we are still atop the interpretive mound looking down at the village with the lofty eye of a benign lord. I may not exaggerate when I say that the academic and intellectuals location and knowledge production are now more troubled and troubling than ever.
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NOTES
It is becoming increasingly more difficult to tease out these frameworks and their nomenclatures as theories, approaches, studies, practices, etc., since all borrow from several critical traditions and texts. I will not address the problem of framework and methodology that complicates defining their limits and aspirations, especially in the U.S., nor offer here any genealogies. Although postcolonial critical trends respond to different constituencies, they often borrow from one another and share to various degrees a poststructuralist, postmodernist and/or deconstructive lineage. 2 Anthony Giddens notes that the influence of European modernity is not as clear when it comes to globalization, since globalization shows an emergent planetary consciousness and new forms of world interdependence, in which ... there are no others (175). To the extent that this planetary consciousness derives its conceptual identity also from a variety of non-Western perspectives, there is a semblance of diversity of response, yet still a diversity subjected to modernitys globalizing forces: the unsettling consequences of this phenomenon combine with the circularity of [modernitys] reflexive character to form a universe of events in which risk and hazard take on a novel character (177). Giddens view may sound overtly optimistic, if we take into consideration the precariousness of a planetary consciousness mediated and constituted by transnational and mobile cultural products (e.g., through music, television) and other media, and by displaced cultural traditions. Here we should bear in mind Dipesh Chakrabartys acknowledgement of both the indispensability of European political thought to representations of non-European political modernity, such as Indias before and after partition, and its inadequacy in accounting for a plural history of power (2000: 11-22). 3 This latter goal is central to postcolonial and subaltern studies. Notions such as transculturation, hybridity mestizaje have in different ways addressed this epistemological problem. At this moment other notions circulate inviting alternative yet by no means settled propositions that build on former theoretical work. Enrique Dussel insists on Trans-Modernity as a mechanism that affirms from without the essential components of modernitys own excluded cultures in order to develop a new civilization for the twenty-first century. This process implies a return by [excluded] cultures to their status as actors in the history of the world-system (2002: 224). Walter Mignolos search for an other logic provides the concept of border thinking exemplified in the self-created discourse of Gloria Anzalduas Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza
1
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(1987), but also present in the interstitial knowledges (categories of thought) in Amerindian and afro-Caribbean cultures. One of his main goals in trying to change the term and the content of the conversation over otros saberes is to displace the abstract universalism of modern epistemology and world history, while leaning toward an alternative to totality conceived as a network of local histories and multiple local hegemonies (2000 ; 22, 84-85). Like Dussels vision, however, Mignolos is not easily extractable from its theoretical and utopian base. Verdesio proposes the study of materialidad[es] de la vida (materialities of living), resulting in the practice of an archeology of living that, in conjunction with archaeologies of knowledge, would focus not just on the materiality of signic objects [such as European books and Mesoamerican Amoxtli] but on all cultural objects produced by [all] indigenous peoples and not only those that were verifiably part of prehispanic empires (Inca and Mexica) (2000: 637, 648). In the U.S. academy producing more monographs centered on empirical analysis represents a challenge, since first there would have to be a self-evaluation and subsequent transformation of research programs and practices where theoretical theory is now dominant, in the humanities and social sciences. Although Verdesios proposal resonates with other appeals for empirically based research, it also represents a challenge for a multidisciplinarity that corporatized universities and discrete departments are not ready to embrace; also, to produce a good archeology of any type there must be adequate training, and a good archeology is informed also by a good anthropologytwo social sciences that are profoundly implicated in the construction of Eurocentric modernity and that have been traditionally distant from literature, area and cultural studies departments. 4 The term Knowledges may not translate adequately what is meant here. In Spanish saberes (knowledges) refers both to insight and to the ways in which perception is organized and given historical, cultural and social (collective) value. Otros saberes signal systems of apprehending and organizing life in all of its historical complexities. 5 Although Latin American Subaltern Studies was initially conceived as a group with identifiable members and sympathizers working from U.S. universities, I prefer here to deemphasize this aspect and to highlight its more general appeal as a theoretical practice with a new ethics in which the intellectual should grow parallel to the emergent social actors and their interventions in everyday life (Rabasa & Sanjins 1996: viii). 6 Although a sometime member of the South Asian Subaltern Studies group, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak has been its most assiduous critic, starting with the, by now canonical, article Can the Subaltern Speak? published for the first
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time in Marxism and the Interpretation of culture in 1988. 7 Among the most recent, and candid, is Dipesh Chakrabartys Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern Studies, where he distinguishes between identity and proximity as different modes of relating to difference, proximity being a relation to difference in which (historical and contingent) difference is neither reified nor erased but negotiated (2002: 140). Chakrabartys concluding words are equally compelling, as he brings the ethical into play: Purely political and sociological histories often lose themselves in the impulse of causal analysis and, thus, in the designs of utopian social engineering. The new historians of the Partition [Pakistan and Indias in 1947] remind us of the banality of evil. Their focus is on the normal and the everyday.The explorations of history show that only a capacity for a humanist critique can create the ethical moment in our narratives and offer, not a guarantee against the prejudice that kills, but an antidote with which to fight it (148). 8 The subaltern cannot be represented adequately, as Beverly reaffirms echoing Spivak, by academic knowledges (1999: 2) where speaking for and about subalterns imply a position of authority that itself produces otherness. 9 LASA Forum (Summer 2002). 10 In the U. S., the better-known reference of this declaration that LASS should renounce its goals is John Beverlys, at the LASA meeting in Washington D. C. (2001). Hints of this alternative, however, were manifest in his book Subalternity and Representation: Arguments in Cultural Theory (1999), when Beverly wrote that what is required is a new way of posing the project of the left that would be adequate to the characteristics of this period (or a renunciation of that project) (3, my emphasis). Robert Carrs Elitism and the Death of Subaltern Studies published in LASA Forum (Summer 2002) is another example of this declaration. 11 From within, John Beverlys 1999 analysis and subsequent work remain to date the most comprehensive and self-critical on this matter. Critical perspectives have emerged from Latin America, examining the emergence of U. S. based theoretical trends. See Florencia Mallons well known critique of LASS promesa y dilemma de los estudios subalternos: perspectivas a partir de la historia latinoamericana ( Peasant and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru (1995)). Both find a critical review in Beverlys book. For more recent and provocative contributions to this debate see Revista de Crtica Cultural (24, 2002), Santiago Castro-Gmez and Eduardo Mendietas Teoras sin disciplina (latinoamericanismo, poscolonialidad y globalizacin en debate) (1998) and Santiago Castro Gmezs La reestructuracin de las ciencias sociales en Amrica Lat-
IN SEARCH OF THE POLITICAL WITHIN... ina (2000).
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Grassroots Globalization and the Research Imagination (2001: 20). Item. 14 See Appadurais edited volume entitled Globalization (Duke U P, 2001) and Vinayak Chautervedis Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial (Verso 2000). In connection to Latin America and Latinamericanismo see, among others, recent exchanges published in LASAs 2002 issues of Forum; Santiago CastroGmezs edited volumes La reestructuracin de las ciencias sociales en Amrica Latina (Coleccin Pensar 2000) and Teoras sin disciplina (latinoamericanismo, poscolonialidad y globalizacin en debate) co-edited with Eduardo Mendieta (Porra 1998); the recent issue of Revista de Crtica Cultural subtitled Lo popular: pueblo, masa, gente, multitud (24, June 2002); Antonio Cornejo Polars Mestizaje e hibridez: los riesgos de las metforas. Apuntes (Perfil y entraa de Antonio Cornejo Polar 1998); Revista Iberoamericana (Amrica Latina: agendas culturales para el nuevo siglo 193, 2000); Gustavo Verdesios Todo lo que es slido se disuelve en la academia: sobre los estudios coloniales, la teora poscolonial, los estudios subalternos y la cultura material (REH Oct. 2001); La colonialidad del saber: eurocentrismo y ciencias sociales: perspectivas latinoamericanas ed. by Edgardo Lander (FACES-UCV & IESALC 2000); Poltica cultural & cultura poltica: una nueva mirada sobre los movimientos sociales latinoamericanos, ed. by Arturo Escobar, Sonia Alvarez, and Evelina Dagnino (Taurus 2001); and the special issue of Nepantla entitled Critical Conjunctions: Foundations of Colony and Formations of Modernity (3, 2 2002). 15 Before imagining the complete trounce of the left, as some have chosen to do, we should bear in mind events in Latin America that invite contradictory and unexpected assessments, such as the political salience of Evo Morales in Bolivia, the recent elections of Luiz Incio Lula da Silva in Brazil and of Lucio Gutirrez in Ecuador, and Hugo Chavezs populist (and at times messianic) Bolivarianism in Venezuela. 16 Esta teora terica, discurso proftico o programtico cuya finalidad se agota en s mismo, y que resiste y vive de la confrontacin con otras (tericas) teoras (como en su variante neo-marxista a la francesa, que lo reduce a un puro ejercicio de lectura de textos cannicos) forma naturalmente pareja epistemolgica, segn la expresin de Bachelard, con lo que en la ciencia social estadounidense se llama la metodologa (65). 17 Remarking on the inability of theory/law to address the victims narrative of suffering, Chakrabarty admits to the inadequacy of theory [understood here as the abstract language of rights and laws] to provide us with forms of inter13
12
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vention in our affective lives in ways that speak directly to the affects concerned (2002: 111). 18 Or, as Spivak would have it: The theory of pluralized subject effects gives an illusion of undermining subjective sovereignty while often providing a cover for this subject of knowledge (1994: 66). 19 Chakravarty notes that even though there are as many loci of Europe as colonialisms associated with it in the works of those looking at Southeast Asian, East Asian, African, Latin American histories, and so forth, they all share the same problem across geographical boundaries (2000: 17). Close attention is still in order when applying postcolonial historical analyses from one region to another without considering particularities. 20 Critiques from Latin America have been continuous and varied, and some times border on a cultural nationalism that protects its critical intellectual legacies and/or declares to be a more suitable mouthpiece for Latin America. The problem of representability is not easy to address and was present as early as 1947, when Luis Alberto Snchez expressed concern about a re-discovery and [re]invencin of Latin America, at the hands of U.S. academics (5, 1 1947, republished in vol. 68, 2 2002: 563-65). Antonio Cornejo Polar presented in 1997 an incisive critique of theoretical terms that have acquired much currency, such as hybridity and mestizaje, in Latin American literary and cultural studies in the U.S. and Latin America. Aside from his distrust for the cross-fertilization of disciplinary traditions (e.g., biology and literary studies), his critique that such terms offer ultimately imgenes armnicas de lo que obviamente es desgajado y beligerante, proponiendo figuraciones que en el fondo solo son pertinentes a quienes conviene imaginar nuestras sociedades como tersos y nada conflictivos espacios de convivencia (1997: 188). Nelly Richard wrote a biting critique advocating for greater depth and density in a reflection that was not tied to U.S. academic industries (2000: 841-42). Similarly, Mabel Moraa wondered about the possibility of restituting la historificacin y la poltica a anlisis que al relocalizarse en torno a la centralidad de la cultura parecen resolverse, con frecuencia, en el solaz del pensamiento dbil, las aventuras del pastiche ideolgico o las trampas de la amnesia colectiva? (2000: 10). More recently, Grinor Rojo provided an acidic critique of poscolonial and subaltern studies in the U.S., assuming a protective stance and offering little conciliation: Desde aqu entonces, desde estas nuevas posiciones, lo que los crticos postcoloniales pretenden es producir una lectura descolonizada de unos cuantos textos que tienen su origen de ordinario entre los grupos marginales y/o subalternos, tanto los de afuera como los de adentro del espacio geogrfico ocupado por el establishment hegemonico (2001: 134).

21
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Boundary 2 20:3; Dispositio/n 19 46: 1-11; The Posmodernism Debate in Latin America (eds: J. Beverley, J. Oviedo, M. Aronna, Duke University Press 1995); and in Teoras sin disciplina (latinoamericanismo, poscolonialidad y globalizacin en debate) (1998). 22 Among possible sources that provide first person accounts of its history, see John Beverly (1999), Ileana Rodrguezs introduction to The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader (2001), and recent contributions appearing in LASA Forum (Summer 2002) and Revista de Crtica Cultural (June 2002). The latter two publications include interventions by critics and members or ex-members of this movement, such as Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui (Revista) George Ydice, Daniel Mato and Robert Carr (LASA Forum). 23 Ydice criticizes the appraisal of the value of art that Nelly Richard and Beatriz Sarlo present, observing that one of its esthetic aspects is creacin de mundo [in a Foucauldian sense], que no se limita a las artes propiamente dicho y que ms bien se constata en todas las esferas de la prctica humana (2002: 11). 24 This recalls Ileana Rodrguezs recent admission of the cachet subaltern studies and its sophisticated games of knowledge represented initially for the original group (2002b: 14). 25 Debates Post Coloniales: una Introduccin a los Estudios de la Subalternidad. Revista de Crtica Cultural 24, 2002: 68. 26 replantear algunas de las cuestiones olvidadas, irresueltas o truncas, que quedaron en el camino de la reflexin historiogrfica y sociolgica en Amrica Latina, o que continan debatindose hoy en trminos renovados, pero quizs tambin ms fragmentados (Debates Post Coloniales... 68). 27 Rincn 1986: 18. 28 Losada 1986: 21. This and subsequent translations into English are mine, unless otherwise noted. 29 1986: 23. My emphasis. This mention of Rincn and Losada here is but a mere allusion to a process that has by far a more diverse and rich representation, and that echoes a practice of Marxism with a long and complex analytical trajectory in Latin America. As Alvaro Kaempfer warns, hay mas agua bajo el puente y a veces es bueno precisar que la puerta que [se] ubica tiene numero y no se trata de una barriada entera (e-mail to the author, 12 December, 2002). 30 Translation remains critical to finding any points of mediation between latinoamericanistas working intercontinentally. This is part of the criticism that Rivera Cusicanqui presents in connection to having direct access to the original subaltern studies project, as conceived and later revised by the South Asian initiative (2002: 68). Much of this work is still untranslated into Spanish. Let us remem-
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ber that Ramas La ciudad letrada was not translated into English until 1996, having seen its Portuguese version only a year after its publication in 1984. 31 LASA Forum, Winter 2002 (8). 32 any cultural statement today must begin by acknowledging the victory of capitalism over socialism which has discapacitated structural opposition, and tightened up the space in which the production of culture as systemic criticism was viable (cited in Beverly, 1999: 3). 33 According to Chakrabarty, Florencia Mallons notion of a communal hegemony may prove useful in understanding the construction of locality in social and political terms. This attempt remains connected, as Beverly has pointed out, to the description of the nation-sate or, as he calls it, its biography (1999: 36). 34 The Nation Sep. 23, 2002: 32. The reference is to the unnamed prisoners held in Guantnamo, inhabilitated by any connection to domestic or international laws. 35 Foundations and Cultural Studies, 153. 36 Castro-Gmez reconsiders Horkheimers mapping of theory as traditional and critical, observing that only through critical theory the category of totality is not ontological but political and that, in speaking of totality, la teora crtica no busca producir verdades, sino nicamente efectos de verdad que sirvan para agenciar la accin poltica, (Teora tradicional y teora crtica de la cultura 98-9). His concluding warning about contemporary cultural studies is worth quoting at length: la teora crtica de la sociedad se enfrenta al reto de recuperar el horizonte de la totalidad, que la crtica cultural contempornea pareciera haber perdido en nombre de la embestida postmoderna contra los metarelatos, corriendo el peligro de convertirse en una nueva teora tradicional. No basta un anlisis cultural que se limite a tematizar las exclusiones de sexo, raza, etnia o conocimiento, es decir, la homogenizacin de las diferencias, sino que es necesario pensar qu es aquello que ha estructurado a los sujetos sociales y por qu razn este proyecto de control social (la modernidad) ha llegado a su fin, abriendo paso a nuevas formas de (re)estructuracin global (my emphasis, 105). 37 Even Spivak is not immune to this latter inclination, offering a doubleedged pas, in reference to a small group of subalterns (a kind of subaltern) that she has gotten to know during the past twelve years and with whom she found instead a different [formula from an apologetic one for Subaltern Studies] emerging from [her] own subaltern study: learning to learn from below (2000: 333, 335).
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WORKS CITED
Appadurai, Arjun. 2001. Grassroots Globalization and the Research Imagination. In Globalization, ed. by Arjun Appadurai. Durham: Duke UP. Beverly, John. 1999. Subalternity and Representation: Arguments in Cultural Theory. Durham: Duke University P. Bourdieu, Pierre. 2000. Poder, derecho y clases sociales. Bilbao: Editorial Descle de Brouwer. Carr, Robert. 2002. Elitism and the Death of Subaltern Studies. LASA Forum 33, 2 (Summer 2002): 12-13. Castro-Gmez, Santiago. 2000. Teora tradicional y teora crtica de la cultura. In La restructuracin de las ciencias sociales en Amrica Latina, ed. Santiago Castro-Gmez. Bogot: Coleccin Pensar. 93-107. , and Eduardo Mendieta. 1998. Teoras sin disciplina (latinoamericanismo, poscolonialidad y globalizacin en debate). Mxico: Miguel ngel Porra. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2002. Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern Studies. Chicago: The University of Chicago P. , 2000. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton UP. Clifford, James. 1998. Mixed Feelings. In Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling the Nation, ed. by Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. 362-70. Dussel, Enrique. 2002. World-System and Trans-Modernity. Nepantla 3, 2 (2002): 221-44. Giddens, Anthony. 1990. The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford: Stanford UP. Losada, Alejandro. 1986. La historia social de la literatura latinoamericana. Revista de Crtica Literaria Latinoamericana 2, 24 (1986): 21-29. Mignolo, Walter. 2000. Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Princeton: Princeton UP. Rabasa, Jos and Javier Sanjins. 1996. Introduction. Dispositio/n 19, 46: v-xi. Richard, Nelly. 2000. Un debate latinoamericano sobre prctica intelectual y discurso crtico. Revista Iberoamericana 66, 193:841-50. Rincn, Carlos. 1986. Historia de la historiografa y de la crtica literarias latinoamericanas: historia de la conciencia histrica. Revista de Crtica Literaria Latinoamericana 2, 24 (1986): 7-19. Rivera Cusicanqui, Silvia and Rossana Barragn. 2002. Debates post colonials: una introduccin a los estudios de la subalternidad. Revista de Crtica
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Cultural 24 (June 2002): 66-71. Rodrguez, Ileana. 2002a. A New Debate on Subaltern Studies? LASA Forum 33, 2 (Summer 2002): 14-15. , 2002b. El Grupo Latinoamericano de estudios Subalternos: una entrevista con Ileana Rodrguez. Revista de Crtica Cultural 24 (JUne 2002): 72-77. Rojo, Grinor. 2001. Diez tesis sobre la crtica. Santiago de Chile: LOM Ediciones. Seshadri-Crooks, Kalpana. 2000. At the Margins of Postcolonial Studies: Part I. In The Pre-Occupation with Postcolonial Studies, ed. by Fawzia AfzalKhan and Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks. Durham: Duke UP. 3-23. Spivak, Gayatri. 2000. The New Subaltern: A Silent Interview. In Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial, ed. by Vinayac Chatuverdi. London, New York: Verso. 324-40. , 1994. Can the Subaltern Speak? In The Post-colonial Studies Reader, ed. by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. London and New York: Routledge. 24-8. , 1993. Foundations and Cultural Studies. In Questioning Foundations: Truth/Subjectivity/Culture, ed. by Hugh J. Silverman. 156-75. Verdesio, Gustavo. 2000. En busca de la materialidad perdida: un aporte crtico a los proyectos de recuperacin de las tradiciones aborgenes propuestas por Kusch, Dussel y Mignolo Revista Iberoamericana 192 (2000): 625638. , 2001. Todo lo que es slido se disuelve en la academia: sobre los estudios coloniales, la teora poscolonial, los estudios subalternos y la cultura material. Revista de Estudios Hispnicos 35, 3: 633-60. Ydice, George. 2002. Los estudios culturales pueden tener una visin afirmativa de la cultura? LASA Forum 33, 2 (Summer 2002): 10-11.
INTELECTUALES, COMUNIDADES INDGENAS Y LA ACADEMIA NORTEAMERICANA1

lvaro Flix Bolaos University of Florida
Solidarity with the indigenous nationalities movement whose quincentenial cry was 500 years of resistance should not obscure the critical understanding that the colonial and postcolonial histories of those five hundred years are not all about, or perhaps even primarily about, resistance. As Chakrabarty argues, subaltern histories are not so much histories of resistance as histories of negotiation within the cracks of capitalism, coloniality, nationality, and modernity (Thurner 53).
sta es una reflexin desde la experiencia como profesor de la University of Florida sobre el contacto de los latinoamericanistas con las comunidades indgenas en esta poca de revitalizacin poltica y cultural de stas y de su creciente influencia en el contexto poltico de muchos de estados nacionales respectivos. El objetivo es pensar sobre la posibilidad de una relacin productiva entre el intelectual, y el acadmico en general, con los subalternos.
Indgenas en el campus.
En una conversacin con un colega del Departamento de Historia se habl de organizar un simposio con la participacin directa de miembros de comunidades indgenas colombianas. Esta idea tena dos propsitos: (1) en vista de nuestro inters en las vicisitudes actuales de la cultura latinoameri-
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cana, se quera establecer un debate entre profesores de esta universidad, los indgenas visitantes y la comunidad universitaria en general sobre el estado de la lucha de los pueblos indgenas por su autonoma y reivindicacin;2 y (2) en mi calidad de instructor de la juventud norteamericana en la lengua y la cultura hispanoamericanas, quera que mis estudiantes participaran en una discusin real sobre temas que por lo general ellos slo vislumbran en los confines de los textos en un espacio acadmico. Por los das de mi conversacin con mi colega estaba fresca la movilizacin poltica de los indgenas del Ecuador y de los del sur-occidente colombiano.3 En el espacio institucional en que mi colega y yo nos movemos (el Departamento de Historia, el Departamento de Lenguas y Literaturas Romances, el Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos, etc.), se estimula y se financia (con frecuencia generosamente) la organizacin de debates a travs de conferencias, simposios, publicaciones, etc., como parte de la estrategia de acumulacin de conocimiento sobre todas las reas de posible inters para el desarrollo de la sociedad norteamericana, en nuestro caso concreto, sobre las poblaciones latinoamericanas y sus herencias culturales.4 A pesar de las facilidades institucionales para este evento y la afinidad temtica y espiritual entre estos temas y nuestras respectivas especializaciones, la respuesta de mi colega latinoamericanista no fue positivalo cual no me sorprendi, aunque s las razones que adujo. Un evento como el que yo proponaopin mi colegaconvertira a los invitados en un espectculo para la curiosidad de una comunidad acadmica en su mayora blanca, de clase media y media alta, que ningn beneficio les traera a los intereses concretos de aquellos indgenas ni a las comunidades que representaban. Corolario de lo anterior indudablemente era la inexistencia de cualquier solidaridad real con la lucha de los pueblos indgenas en el seno de la academia norteamericana. Aunque su desapacible renuencia y su inflexible caracterizacin del evento propuesto optaba por la comodidad de la inaccin (todo lo contrario a mi intencin), la verdad fue que tal reaccin puso de manifiesto una vez ms el dilema de mi misma prctica intelectual como profesor de una de las mejores universidades estatales del sureste de los EE.UU. y como estudioso interesado en la historia cultural y literaria del perodo colonial hispanoamericano (precisamente la especialidad para la cual esta institucin me contrat). Siendo esta especialidad acadmicaliteratura colonial hispanoamericanaun espacio de estudio que ofrece un sinnmero de ocasiones para discutir con mis estudiantes textos sobre violentas colisiones entre la
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cultura de origen europeo, las de origen americano y sus respectivos legados, as como las implicaciones y la vigencia de esas colisiones coloniales en Latinoamrica hoy, la idea de traer a la universidad un grupo de indgenas activos cultural y polticamente de esta regin me pareca (y me parece aun) una consecuencia propia de mis especulaciones crticas sobre asuntos coloniales en esta institucin. Me parece tambin una forma de expresar mi solidaridad con los herederos ms directos de las culturas nativas asaltadas a partir de la llegada de los europeos a Amrica, es decir, con aquellos que Brisk ha calificado como the poorest, sickest, most abused and most defenseless members of their societies (citado en Warren y Jackson, 33), y Patricia Seed como the worlds most subalterns (2001a, 129). El conflicto dentro de mi prctica intelectual, exacerbado por la reaccin de mi colega de historia, corresponda a la evidente contradiccin entre el sistema universitario en que trabajamos y la idea de auxiliar a los indgenas en su lucha desde y dentro de este mismo sistema. Al fin y al cabo la universidad existe para reproducir un status quo estadounidense que agrava el estado de postracin social de los indgenas en las Amricas con sus agresivas polticas del neo-liberalismo econmico global y la peligrosa unilateralidad econmica, poltica y militar ejercida en el mundo hoy.5 El propsito del evento que se pensaba organizar era ofrecerles a los indgenas un estrado para la denuncia y un espacio para el dilogo en el seno de una universidad norteamericana que les ayudarade alguna manera, a corto o largo plazoen su lucha con sus estados nacionales respectivos. En otras palabras, a pesar de mi certeza de que la funcin de la universidad como extractora y procesadora de informacin sobre los Otros era la de la reproduccin de la misma condicin social que deploraban los indgenas, era posible no reducirnos a utilizar esa informacin (en este caso sobre culturas marginadas) nicamente a favor de los desconsiderados y egostas fines de la acumulacin capitalista. John Beverley, quien ya se plante esta contradiccin y la posibilidad de accin poltica de los intelectuales en favor de los pobres desde dentro de esta academia norteamericana, ha explicado bien que el estudio detallado de las culturas alternas a las hegemnicas occidentales no es un simple lujo de la curiosidad metropolitana sino una necesidad de la estabilidad del capitalismo moderno y del cual es lder EE.UU. Segn Beverley, el fracaso de los EE.UU. en Vietnam, por ejemplo, fue ligado a su incapacidad de representacin adecuada del campesino vietnamita; tal incapacidad, por su parte, fue una de las primeras seales of the traumatic problems caused
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for public policy by the incomprehension or misunderstanding of subaltern classes (Beverley 1999, 31). La no prevista resistencia de los musulmanes sunis y shiitas a la ocupacin norteamericana de Irak exhibe una vez ms la vigencia de la necesidad de estudiar culturas alternas como funcin de la universidad norteamericana. Todo lo cual significa que los recursos institucionales para la investigacin en las universidades norteamericanas siempre estarn disponibles. Por qu no tratar, entonces, de usar esos recursos y esa acumulada informacinme preguntaba en mi prurito solidariono al servicio exclusivo del status quo que sostiene la agresin econmica neoliberal sino tambin al servicio de las comunidades indgenas agredidas por ella? La lgica de mi pregunta reside, como es notorio, en mi creencia en la posibilidad de trabajar crticamente como intelectuales por dentro de este sistema educativo, es decir, de la posibilidad de pensar (y ojal actuar) solidariamente como profesor de literatura latinoamericana con los subalternos. Conviene aclarar a esta altura que soy muy consciente de las susceptibilidades que puede generar el trmino subalterno entre latinoamericanistas.6 La hostilidad que a veces provoca el trmino puede residir en que exige la toma de posiciones activaso al menos, inequvocastanto ante las implicaciones polticas de nuestra prctica como catedrticos en uno de los sistemas acadmicos ms grandes, complejos y pudientes del mundo (el de los EE.UU.) como ante los retos (a veces fustigantes e imperiosos) del galopante desarrollo de la teora cultural en esta poca postmoderna. En el caso del rechazo de este trmino de parte de intelectuales metropolitanos comprometidos polticamente con las comunidades indgenas, las razones residen en otra parte, la principal de las cuales puede ser el deseo de diferenciarse de intelectuales indigenistas dedicados a la simple representacin acadmica de indgenas.7 Veo tambin en el uso del concepto subalterno el poder de interrumpir la paz acadmica, algo que muchos catedrticos deploran. Sin embargo, los presupuestos tericos de los Subaltern Studies, tienen al mismo tiempo un positivo potencial crtico y de resistencia contra la comodidad del status quo que bien puede aqu propiciar actitudes ypor qu no?acciones, que favorezcan a los marginados. Ese poder de acicate sera equiparable a la irresponsabilidad con el status quo que Theodore Adorno le asigna a los textos ideales y desafiantes que conocemos con el nombre de ensayos y de los cuales supuestamente depende el desarrollo de nuestras carreras acadmicas.8
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El concepto subalterno es reivindicable tambin en razn de su versatilidad y carcter de interpelacin terica y poltica. Es un trmino verstil porque permite referirse no solamente a sujetos sin privilegios en la sociedad capitalista como el campesinado o el proletariado, (los mismos trminos marxistas que Antonio Gramsci quera evitar en sus Quaderni del carcere para eludir la censura de sus carceleros), sino tambin otros sectores de desposedos y marginados no considerados por el marxismo: indgenas, mujeres, homosexuales, los afligidos de enfermedades demonizadas por la sociedad hegemnica (como el Sida), los desheredados en general, etc.9 John Beverley define bien al subalterno como aquel sujeto, casi invisible para nuestros paradigmas tericos, que se tiende a perder en tradicionales macro-conceptos como el de ciudadano o modernos como sociedad civil.10 Es tambin un trmino de interpelacin ya que en su adopcin de parte del South Asia Subaltern Studies Collective a partir de los aos 80 (para el escrutinio de la historia de las rebeliones campesinas asiticas desfiguradas por la historia colonial) y el uso de parte del Subaltern Studies Group of the Americas en los aos 90 (para reexaminar una historia de Latinoamrica confeccionada por criollos a partir de la Independencia), ofrece una forma de optar por representar las subjetividades de los desposedos y desheredados y solidarizase, bajo la gida de una suerte de New Humanism, con sus luchas en una poca como la nuestra en que esas actitudes son ya poco favorecidas.11 Volviendo a la idea del simposio con los subalternos colombianos de cultura no europealos indgenascon esto se trataba de la posibilidad de pensar haciendo uso de nuestras capacidades adquiridas dentro de la academia metropolitana (incitando a mis estudiantes a leer crticamente los textos de la historia cultural latinoamericana, reflexionando sobre ellos en nuestras publicaciones para un pblico ms amplio), es decir, sin necesariamente desfigurar nuestra misma condicin vital.12 Dipesh Chakrabarty ha explicado que es imposible pensar hoy las vicisitudes contemporneas de la modernidad en el mundo por fuera de conceptos y categoras culturales propios de la modernidad europea; correlativamente, y en mi propio caso, es posible pensar productivamente sobre los efectos de esa modernidad en las vicisitudes de los indgenas americanos desde el seno de una institucin de educacin superior de los EE.UU.13 El optimismo subyacente en mi anterior aserto reside simplemente en la confianza que intento mantener como educador de una juventud norteamericanaen su mayora blanca y de clase media o media altaen mi poder de persuadirla a que acte en el futuro de
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formas que no reproduzcan la desconsideracin del sistema social en que vivimos con sujetos desfavorecidos por l.14 Edward Said, quien nos recuerda que a diario en nuestra poca se siguen cometiendo toda clase de injusticias por lites poderosas en todos los sectores de la sociedad, le adjudica al intelectual la tarea de denunciarlas por medio de su funcin central, es decir, la representacin, la ejemplificacin, la articulacin de mensajes, puntos de vista, actitudes, filosofas u opiniones para un pblico a su disposicin. Su tarea es la de raise embarrassing questions, to confront orthodoxy and dogma (rather than to produce them) (...) and whose raison dtre is to represent all those people and issues that are routinely forgotten or swept under the rug (11). Es una funcin que promueve una actitud crtica constante y en la que el intelectual belongs on the same side of the weak and unrepresented (Said 1994, 22). Sin embargo, si esta definicin del trabajo intelectual que hace Said reafirma mi postura como profesor y como crtico y nutre mi optimismo en la pertinencia de mi propio trabajo, no resuelve el problema del contacto directo con el subalterno mencionado al principio. Si la presencia de indgenas latinoamericanos en un evento organizado y financiado por una universidad pudiente los convierte en una suerte de piezas de museo o en un espectculo y, por consiguiente, a nosotros los intelectuales en una suerte de espectadoreso peor aun, coregrafos de la diferenciade qu depende tal denigrante espectacularidad? De la absoluta e histrica condicin de subalterno que esta institucin produce al estudiar indios y su tendencia a fijarlos esencialmente en una insuperable condicin inferior? De nuestra arraigada perspectiva de su natural incapacidad para la discusin al nivel de los catedrticos metropolitanos que los rodearan? O de nuestra inherente separacin social de nuestros objetos de estudio que propicia nuestra privilegiada posicin de investigadores de una institucin educativa relativamente estable? La razn de la negativa de mi colega de historia pareca residir en su preocupacin por lapara linevitable exotizacin de los indgenas que se pensaba invitar lo cual podra ser una corroboracin de que el subalterno en su condicin de tal no puede hablar. 15 Spivak, por supuesto, no quiere decir en su famoso ensayo que los subalternosaquellos que no tienen poder ante la sociedad hegemnica sean mudos sino que en su condicin de tales, su voz no se escucha, y que lo que escuchamos, en cambio, es su representacin confeccionada por los intelectuales. Cualquiera que haya sido la razn de mi colega, la verdad es que el montaje de un encuentro
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directo de intelectuales norteamericanos e indgenas latinoamericanos en nuestro campus no dejaba de plantear serios problemas ticos, el primero de los cuales era la incompetente representacin del sujeto indgena que con mucha frecuencia realizamos en la misma institucin educativa que los invitara. Al fin y al cabo, como nos recuerda Spivak, la identidad del subalterno es su misma diferencia (Spivak 80). Esa misma diferencia (a la que no pertenecemos porque somos intelectuales metropolitanos, no indgenas latinoamericanos), es un obstculo que segn Beverley dificulta la representacin que estamos acostumbrados a realizar en la universidad: the subaltern is subaltern in part because it cannot be represented adequately by academic knowledge (and theory), es decir, por la sencilla razn de que nuestra prctica acadmica produce activamente la subalternidad que el Otro sufre: How can one claim to represent the subaltern from the standpoint of academic knowledge, then, when that knowledge is itself involved in the othering of the subaltern? (Beverley 1999, 2). Los indgenas vendran, entonces, a una institucin cuyos agentes hemos estado ocupados por siglos en la representacin falseada de su propia identidad. Desde el punto de vista de la antropologa, por ejemplo, siempre ha existido la tendencia a ver al indgena a travs de los clichs de vctima pasiva de la violencia estatal y sobreviviente de una poca ida cuya influencia social y poltica en sus respectivos pases es superflua.16 Tal clich sin embargo ha sido insostenible ltimamente a la luz, por ejemplo, de la fortaleza exhibida por los indgenas del Ecuador (a travs de la Confederacin de Naciones Indgenas del Ecuador, CONAIE)) y los de Bolivia (estos ltimos organizados en torno a nuevos lderes indgenas como Evo Morales y Felipe Quispe, y en torno a organizaciones como Pachakuti, MIP, y el Movimiento al Socialismo, MASIA). Ambos movimientos han reaccionado contra las polticas neoliberales impuestas en sus pases, han puesto en crisis sus gobiernos locales y se han convertido en fuerzas polticas ineludibles en cualquier debate o negociacin sobre los destinos de sus respectivas naciones. Desde el punto de vista de nuestra enseaza de la literatura esa representacin problemtica ha seguido reproduciendo clichs como el del canbal de Cristbal Coln o Amrico Vespucio, el buen salvaje de Fray Bartolom de Las Casas, el bruto de admirable fuerza de Alonso de Ercilla o Juan de Castellanos, las artificiales alegoras barrocas de los indgenas en el teatro de Sor Juana Ins de la Cruz, los salvajes desechables del
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proyecto de nacin de Domingo Faustino Sarmiento o Alcides Arguedas, los pusilnimes seres en busca de proteccin de criollos benevolentes de una Clorinda Matto de Turner, la indolencia bestial de los indgenas de Jorge Icaza, etc. En su reflexin sobre la relacin de los antroplogos con la prctica de su disciplina, Pierre Bourdieu seala que en su aventajada posicin de intelectuales institucionalizados ellos pierden de vista las condiciones sociales que rodean tanto a su prctica cientfica como su objeto de estudio, lo cual los convierte en observadores atrapados en distorsiones tericas. En su calidad de observador, el antroplogo est excluido del juego real de la actividad social por el simple hecho de que l o ella no tiene cabida en el sistema observado (i.e. la realidad social de los indgenas) ni tiene necesidad de hacerse parte de l excepto en el caso excepcional en que l o ella decida hacerlo momentnea y artificialmente (en nuestro caso, por ejemplo, con una licencia pagada de la universidad). Esta ligera relacin con su objeto de estudio lleva al antroplogo, en palabras de Bourdieu, to an hermeneutic representation of practices, leading him to reduce all social relations to communicative relations, more precisely, to decoding operations (1977, 1). Esta misma ligereza de contacto intelectual con subjetividades indgenas afecta quizs ms incisivamente mi misma prctica como hispanista dedicado a textos de la colonia. En nuestra calidad de observadores privilegiados de textos sobre culturas indgenas hay siempre el peligro de reducirnos a la exhibicin frvola de culturas peregrinas. John Beverley ha dejado en claro que el estudio de la subalternidad tiene que ver tanto con la ausencia del poder de quien la padece (los pobres, los marginados, etc.), como con el poder acumulado de quienes se benefician de ella (los ricos, las lites polticas e intelectuales, etc.): Subaltern studies is about power, who has it and who doesnt, who is gaining it and who is losing it (1999, 1); igualmente ha aclarado la enorme importancia que tiene el tipo de representacin que hacemos de esos subalternos y su condicin de subalternidad ya que en el ejercicio de esa representacinpara la cual nos han contratado como acadmicosen nuestras universidades, se puede reproducir, o no, esa condicin de subalternidad en los Otros. Power is related to representation: which representation have cognitive authority or can secure hegemony, which do not have authority or are not hegemonic (Beverley 1999, 1). La mayora de las representaciones que tendemos a hacer a travs del hispanismo en literatura no solamente no tienen autoridad cognoscitiva
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(reflejan ms nuestros gustos y perspectivas que las del representado) sino que mediante su frecuente falsificacin de la imagen del indgena (como salvaje, brbaro, pagano, grosero, ingenuo, y desechable) se coadyuva la reproduccin de la subalternidad de las numerossimas y diversas comunidades indgenas que todava existen. Para los efectos de la subalternizacin (es decir, la reafirmacin ideolgica y poltica de su condicin de inferior y desposedo) que sufren los indgenas en centros metropolitanos de estudio como la University of Florida, la funcin social tanto de la universidad como de nosotros como sus bien intencionados funcionarios, pueden ser prcticamente uniformes.17 Desde ese punto de vista la idea de no molestarnos con eventos como el propuesto y continuar con nuestro estudio de los sujetos indgenas distanciados por los textos parecera la opcin ms decorosa y respetuosa con su subjetividad social y poltica. Sin embargo, esos decoro y respeto tienen dos grandes problemas: primero, el estmulo de una cmoda inaccino, peorde la evasin del molesto contacto con the worlds most subalterns; y segundo, la anulacin de toda posibilidad de solidaridad como posicin poltica de intelectuales acadmicos como nosotros. Sara Castro Klarn, reflexionando sobre esta clase de solidaridad en relacin con el estudio de textos del pasado, en particular los coloniales, se pregunta: What does it mean to employ textual strategies for reading the artifacts of the past as if the conditions of textual production imbedded in or side-stepped by the texts themselves were over and done with and thus the text free-floats in time and space until they reach desks for literary interpretation? (262). Lo que significa es precisamente el ejercicio veleidoso del privilegio de la negacin de las reales condiciones de existencia que rodean, segn nos recuerda Bourdieu, la prctica de la investigacin:
The practical privilege in which all scientific activity arises never more subtly governs that activity (insofar as science presupposes not only an epistemological break but also a social separation) than when, unrecognised as privilege, it leads to an implicit theory of practice which is the corollary of neglect of the social conditions in which science is possible (1977, 1).
Como ya indiqu, la premisa central de la nocin de la exotizacin espectacular a que se sometera un grupo de indgenas en la universidad norteamericana es la creencia de parte del acadmico metropolitano en que
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su condicin de subalterno supone siempre la imposibilidad de comunicacin con l o ella. Segn Beverley la subalternidad es una condicin que obstaculiza el contacto directo del subalterno con nosotros: If the subaltern could speakthat is, speak in a way that mattered to usthen it wouldnt be a subaltern(1999, 1). La alternativa que Spivak plantea ante este obstculo no es (a diferencia de mi colega de historia) la indiferencia, sino la insistencia en nuestro contacto con l o ella: the intellectuals solution is not to abstain from representation. The problem is that the subjects itinerary has not been traced so as to offer an object of seduction to the representing intellectual (Spivak 80). La cuestin a resolver es, hasta dnde estamos dispuestos a que nos lleve esa seduccin? Lo ms consecuente, a mi modo de ver, con la produccin de conocimiento sobre sujetos latinoamericanos diversos es permitir estimular ese contacto. La subalternidad que sufre el desheredado por la sociedad hegemnica no es una condicin cuya realizacin se d solamente en el cuerpo y la identidad de una sola subjetividad (como sugiere Beverley), sino, tambin y principalmente, una condicin que padecen comunidades enteras. Dentro de esas comunidades existen con frecuencia distintas relaciones de sus sujetos con esa subalternidad colectiva. Algunos subalternos han logrado superar su condicin individual de subalternidad, lo cual ha sido bastante notorio a partir de la segunda mitad del siglo XX cuando crecientes sectores de marginados comenzaron a alcanzar una educacin superior y, tambin y con frecuencia, una acumulacin de poder econmico, social y de habilidades intelectuales hegemnicas (caso de los negros norteamericanos a partir del movimiento de los derechos civiles, y algunos sectores indgenas latinoamericanos). Entre estos sujetos, a su vez, hay un sector que no le ha dado la espalda a sus comunidades de origen. En estas circunstancias el espacio de la subalternidad puede ser muy complejo. Aunque estos sujetos exitosos y activistas no pueden ser considerados subalternos por su acumulacin de poder individual, la verdad es que s pueden ser considerados como tales por su deliberada identificacin con la subalternidad que todava caracteriza a sus comunidades de origen. La subalternidad para ellos no es ya una condicin que exija la absoluta y lamentable postracin de quien carece de voz y poder, sino una compleja identidad cultural y poltica que combina los recursos e idoneidad que ofrece la sociedad hegemnica con las reivindicaciones del grupo de que este subalterno procede. Es este el caso de los intelectuales indgenas convertidos en lderes, voceros y representantes de las comunidades locales
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en sus luchas ante sus respectivos estados nacionales. Volver sobre este asunto ms adelante. De otra parte, la subalternidad no es una condicin lejana a nuestra cotidianidad inmediata ni una que depende siempre de la total diferencia en identidad; tal condicin depende tambin de variables como, por ejemplo, la disparidad en la capacidad de acumulacin econmica (caso de los indigentes), o la distincin marcada por el ostracismo (caso de los homosexuales y los apestados). En otras palabras, los individuos susceptibles de la subalternizacin no son simplemente aquellos demarcados por barreras histricas, lingsticas, culturales o raciales (como los indgenas del pasado o los lejanos de hoy, los negros esclavos del siglo XIX o los de los ghettos de nuestras ciudades) sino tambin todos aquellos marginados por su interferencia con la reproduccin del status quo. Despus de todo en la rampante ideologa del neoliberalismo y el conservadurismo de hoy, la insuficiencia econmica (y sus correlativos desempleo y dependencia de programas de asistencia social) y los retos al mito de la familia nuclear, uniracial y patriarcal (madresolterismo, libertad de reproduccin, matrimonios y adopciones de nios entre parejas homosexuales, etc.), son dos condiciones vigentes para la feroz construccin de Otredades en los EE.UU. (ferocidad antes reservada solamente a diferencias raciales y culturales).18 Sin embargo, el hecho es que nosotros estamos siempre rodeados de Otros (subalternizados por una razn u otra) cuya familiaridad los hace a veces parecer invisibles.19 Algunos de esos subalternos pueden ser: la madre blanca, afro-americana o hispana pobre que limpia nuestras oficinas y los pisos y baos de nuestros edificios; ese mismo tipo de mujer, ahora embarazada, que aterrorizada entra furtivamente a una clnica en medio de un intruso, vociferante y amenazante grupo de activistas contra el derecho de la mujer al aborto (en su mayora varones blancos reaccionarios de clase media o media alta); la familia pobre blanca, negra o hispana que en un hospital se queda sin opciones de seguro mdico para la operacin o el tratamiento urgente que recomienda el mdico porque las polticas neoliberales han cancelado programas estatales o federales de asistencia mdica; la esposa, novia, hija o hermana atrapada entre el incesante abuso fsico o sexual de parte de su varn y el deficiente programa de proteccin familiar que tiene poca prioridad entre polticos que equiparan la asistencia social con la indolencia; la madre soltera pobre sin asistencia mdica prenatal; los enfermos de SIDA; la mano de obra barata y sin educacin
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atrada desde Latinoamrica por la industria agrcola local para trabajar en condiciones de trabajo tpicas de la colonia o el siglo XIX (muchos de los cuales, y especialmente en Florida, son indgenas); o los hijos de esos mismos trabajadores que intilmente buscan educacin primaria o asistencia mdica; etc. La subalternidad y la Otredad son, entonces, condiciones de debilidad y vulnerabilidad frente a las exigencias de la reproduccin del status quo o de la sociedad civil misma, que con frecuencia escapa de la mira de muchas de nuestras aproximaciones tericas y de nuestras representaciones acadmicas independientemente de sus buenas intenciones. Stuart Hall, en su reflexin sobre la pertinencia de lo que hacemos como intelectuales ms all de los lmites impuestos por el sistema acadmico (organizado en torno a la difusin de la cultura hegemnica de la sociedad capitalista) nos habla de la relacin de los estudios culturales y la condicin msera de sujetos menos favorecidos y marginados, como los enfermos de SIDA. Esa relacin con frecuencia se define ms por la proteccin de nuestro privilegiado aislamiento dentro de los debates tericos, o la contemplacin esttica, que por la consideracin con los Otros:
What is the point of the study of representations, if there is no response to the question of what you say to someone who wants to know if they should take a drug and if that means theyll die two days or a few months earlier? At that point, I think anybody who is into cultural studies seriously as an intellectual practice, must feel, on their pulse, its ephimerality, its insubstantiality, how little it registers, how little weve been able to change anything or get anybody to do anything. If you dont feel that as one tension in the work that you are doing, theory has let you off the hook (Hall 1993, 106-07).
De otra parte, la diferencia central de nosotros con la condicin subalterna la provee no solamente su carencia de suficiencia material, poltica y social para ser un ciudadano, sino tambin su falta de habilidades intelectuales compatibles con las nuestras. Desde el punto de vista del scholar el subalterno es tal por su ineptitud para hacer escucharnos su voz o establecer un dilogo a la altura de los requisitos formales de la universidad (con su boato de acumulacin admirable de erudicin, conocimiento terico y cientfico y la respectiva habilidad retrica para transmitirlos oralmente o por escrito ante un pblico sofisticado). Nuestra
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percepcin de una intelectualidad deficiente o nula es otra forma de subalternizacin hecha desde la universidad. Este tipo de subalternizacin nos permite darnos el lujo, en nuestra calidad de latinoamericanistas en EE.UU. ocupados en la representacin del Otro indgena, de eludir el problema de la relacin (o ausencia de ella) con estos subalternos. Segn Malcolm Read, en su crtica a la institucin de los estudios hispnicos en Inglaterra y a venerables hispanistas como Allison Peersla produccin acadmica universitaria supone un cmodo alejamiento de la srdida realidad de las comunidades de subalternos ajenos a la sofisticacin intelectual: Literature and libraries, Peers always implied, were to be isolated from such communities [la gente de barrios pobres de Londres o Liverpool], whose role in life was simply to produce the wealth that allowed him the time and space to indulge in his mystic and cultural pursuits (Read 5-6). La observacin de Read es fcilmente aplicable a disciplinas distintas a los estudios literarios. A esta altura es vlida la siguiente pregunta: Por qu los acadmicos tendemos a evitar el contacto con el subalterno? Por una sencilla razn: cuando se le permite o invita a hablar, lo que el subalterno dice por lo general no es grato sino inquietante. Lo hace para denunciar su condicin de desheredado, impugnar a quienes considera causantes de su condicin; y, lo peor tal vez para la paz del catedrtico de la universidad que escucha, se siente autorizado en la tribuna que se le presta a conminar (sutil o directamente) a su auditorio o sus interlocutores a que se comprometan de alguna manera a ayudarles a superar su condicin de subalternidad. El subalterno en tal situacin convoca al catedrtico a la solidaridad o la accin poltica, convocatoria que tiene el potencial de interferir con el tiempo que un profesor universitario tiene para sus investigaciones y produccin crtica. Algunos profesores integran ambas actividades muy bien, pero la gran mayora evita(mos) en lo posible transigir en torno a la paz acadmica que nos provee el campus.20 A pesar de las reservas mencionadas antes en relacin con la posible invitacin de representantes de comunidades indgenas al campus la verdad era que un gran nmero de estos mismos subalternos ya haba visitado la University of Florida. Nada de esto sabamos mi colega de historia y yo durante la conversacin mencionada antes. Entre el 17 y el 22 de febrero de 1975, el Center for Latin American Studies de esta universidad organiz el XXV Congreso Anual Latinoamericano, esta vez titulado Los autctonos americanos opinan. El congreso reuni a lderes e intelectuales de comu-
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nidades indgenas de muchos pases latinoamericanos y a algunos de EE.UU. 21 Siendo el propsito central del congreso permitirles hablar directamente y sin mediacin, varios discursos se dieron en lenguas nativas.22 El formato del congreso permiti que los indgenas se reunieran primero entre ellos para deliberar sobre los problemas que afectaban a sus respectivas comunidades y redactar conclusiones y recomendaciones que se leyeron despus en castellano ante el pblico para su discusin y comentarios.23 Hasta la fecha es este el nico evento de esta naturaleza en la University of Florida. Segn Martha Hardman, los indgenas tuvieron total control de sus deliberaciones, conclusiones y del espritu del congreso en general.24 La seleccin de los participantes indgenas se hizo aprovechando los contactos que el Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos tena en Latinoamrica.25 La gran mayora de los participantes fueron lderes y activistas polticos o culturales de sus respectivas comunidades entre los que haba dos caciques y un alcalde.26 Todos ellos eran bilinges o multilinges quienes aprendieron el castellano (entre los 5 y los 12 aos de edad) cuando comenzaron a asistir a las escuelas rurales disponibles. Cada uno tena una educacin primaria o secundaria y algunos universitaria en Latinoamrica o en EE.UU.27 Cada uno tena amplia experiencia en programas de mejoramiento de sus comunidades de origen en su calidad de maestros rurales (con frecuencia de educacin bilinge), lingistas, activistas cvicos o agrcolas, fundadores de centros culturales, museos, peridicos, emisoras radiales; algunos realizaban estudios de historia, antropologa y folclor locales. Otros haban llegado a ser profesores universitarios, polticos o asesores en asuntos indgenas en sus respectivos pases.28 Cada uno asuma enaltecidamente su posicin de vocero y representante de las luchas de sus comunidades contra los diversos poderes que los oprimieron, desde la conquista espaola hasta sus respectivos estados nacionales, y establecieron una clara distincin entre su identidad autctona y la fornea occidental (en la cual la intelectualidad metropolitana era en s misma su Otredad).29 Lo que dijeron estos subalternos y activistas est resumido en sus Conclusiones y recomendaciones las cuales conformaron, en tono combativo, una directa convocatoria a su auditorio (administradores, profesores, estudiantes de la universidad y los observadores de otros pases) a que se solidarizaran efectivamente con la lucha de los indgenas de las Amricas; es decir, exhortaron a la comunidad del campus a pasar de la disquisicin a la accin:
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Con el ms profundo espritu indgena que llevamos impregnado y sintindonos ms unidos que nunca, estamos dispuestos a luchar por el bienestar de nuestros pueblos indmitos que han sabido enfrentarse valerosamente a las difciles situaciones. Pedimos a todos que nuestras posiciones sean estudiadas, analizadas, atendidas y realizadas en cuanto sea posible (Conclusiones y recomendaciones, Hardman i).
En la expresin en cuanto sea posible en esta convocacin a la realizacin de sus proyectos de reivindicacin propuestos se divulga la conciencia de los indgenas de la dificultad que tiene el intelectual hegemnico de pasar de la palabra al hecho. Sin embargo, y aunque fue ese mismo intelectual hegemnico el que propici el Congreso en cuestin, no debi escaprsele a ningn indgena presente que las Recomendaciones propuestas (para la transformacin de la condicin de subalternidad de sus comunidades) no podan ser directamente realizadas por catedrticos, administradores y estudiantes sino principalmente por su propia agencia poltica y cultural y, tal vez, con la ayuda de los respectivos estados nacionales, las ONGs, las corporaciones transnacionales pertinentes, etc. La expectativa de los indgenas era que esos mismos intelectuales, inscritos en una institucin con tal capacidad de organizacin de eventos, poda unirse a la lucha por las reivindicaciones indgenas. O como lo expres claramente el lder guaran, Severo Flores: Tenemos la esperanza de que con esta organizacin mejorara ms la situacin de nuestros hermanos indgenas (Hardman 48). Algunos ejemplos de esas reivindicaciones expresadas en sus catorce recomendaciones divulgan un plan de reforma social que sobrepasa los lmites de las comunidades indgenas y compromete cambios sociales continentales: No. 3: incrementar el nmero de becas y escuelas para estudiantes indgenas...; No. 6: restituir las tierras usurpadas a las comunidades indgenas y dotar paralelamente de implementos de trabajo, crditos necesarios y asistencia tcnica; No. 10: exigir a los gobiernos nacionales e instituciones internacionales una poltica de previsin y bienestar social para el indgena y campesino en general...; No. 11: participacin activa de los grupos indgenas en la realidad poltica nacional...; No. 13 [superar el] estado de dependencia y dominacin en que los pases subdesarrollados se encuentran, [luchar] por la transformacin estructural poltica de nuestros pases...; y No. 14: que los organismos pertinentes prevean la preser-
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vacin de los valores culturales autctonos frente a las actividades de las instituciones extranjeras (Hardman i-iv). La reaccin del pblico y los observadores, en concordancia con el formato del congreso y sus limitaciones de accin, consisti en escuchar, pedir aclaraciones, sugerir cambios de expresin, etc., es decir, se concentr en el mejoramiento del mensaje indgena.30 Este aporte de correccin de parte de los observadores dejaba en claro que stos consideraban que los destinatarios de semejantes exigencias del subalterno no eran ellos ni se encontraban en la University of Florida. A pesar de ser conscientes de esta limitacin del poder de accin de los intelectuales de la universidad los indgenas insistieron en instarlos a que pasaran de la simple representacin de los indgenas a la solidaridad activa con ellos. Pedro Curihuinca (mapuche, Chile) lo expresa en su intervencin de despedida:
Hemos llegado aqu por invitacin de esta universidad. Como Mapuche doy gracias a Dios y doy gracias a este pueblo que por sus autoridades han logrado reunir en esta universidad a los Mapuches (...). Pedimos a todos que tomen conciencia del pueblo Mapuche; pedimos a todos Uds. que tomen conciencia de lo que son los pueblos de Amrica, del indgena americano, que ya no sean tomados como verdaderos laboratorios humanos, pedimos que ya no sean tomados para hacer verdadera gimnasia oral. El indgena tiene problemas y nos hemos reunido aqu para tratar en parte de llegar a una solucin y un mejor bienestar para nuestros pueblos. Gracias (Hardman 94).
El problema no es, entonces, que el subalterno no pueda hablar, sino que su interlocutor tenga no solamente la voluntad de escucharlo sino de acceder a su inevitable convocatoria. Segn Beverley y Spivak, lo que diga el subalterno tiene que tener sentido antes para que nosotros lo escuchemos. Sin embargo, lo que percibamos como ininteligible en la voz del subalterno puede simplemente ser aquello que no queramos or. Al fin y al cabo el escuchar tribulaciones de otros con la premisa de que algo tenemos que hacer para aliviarlas y a expensas de nuestra tranquilidad acadmica es algo que no tiene sentido para muchos profesores de las universidades norteamericanas. El subalterno habla desde su obvia diferencia y sus palabras son una impugnacin certera de nuestra misma identidad de ciudadanos cabales en una sociedad hegemnica: Yo vengo desde la tierra grande El Cercadodice Carmen Chuqun Amaguaa de Ponce (Quechua del Ecua-
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dor)del pueblo triste y pobre, para conversar nuestras marginaciones aqu a toda la gente, todas nuestras tristezas (Hardman 21). No sugiero, por supuesto, que los indgenas quieran permanecer inactivos mientras esperan que los intelectuales convocados les arreglen los problemas mencionados. En palabras de Diego Adrin Guarchaj Ajtzalam (quiche, Guatemala): No vamos a esperar que nos vengan del cielo las ayudas, sino que nosotros mismos tenemos que resolver nuestros problemas para poder llegar a los fines que queremos (Hardman 91). Lo que los indgenas esperan de los intelectuales es que se conviertan en sus aliados, como bien lo expresa Sabina Subuyuj Rompich (cachiquel de Guatemala) quien quiere que se nos apoye en las actividades que nosotros queramos hacer, siempre de acuerdo a las necesidades de cada pueblo (Hardman 90). Por su parte, Pedro Verona Cmez (cachiquel, Guatemala) insiste en la necesidad de su auto representacin: Yo deseo que hubiera alguien de nuestra gente, estuviera en los puestos internacionales. Yo quisiera que hubiera un representante en cada una de estas organizaciones, de la OEA, de la ONU, que ellos contaran las necesidades que afrontamos entre nosotros (Hardman 97). Este deseo del subalterno prefigura en 1975 la aparicin en la palestra poltica y cultural del creciente nmero de influyentes lderes e intelectuales indgenas que vemos hoy (desde Rigoberta Mench y Vctor Montejo en Guatemala hasta Jess Enrique Piacu y Armando Valbuena Woariyuu en Colombia, entre muchos). Este nuevo tipo de subalterno intelectual complica no solamente su representacin acadmica sino su contacto con catedrticos universitarios en el campus. Qu pasa, entonces, cuando el indgena no existe ya en los textos, en la representacin consuetudinaria, o en su breve visita al campus como en 1975, sino que, habiendo aprendido a hablar, aparece en el terreno de nuestra misma existencia social y profesional? Buscaremos otras maneras de que nuestra labor de representacin nos evite lidiar con su presencia e interpelacin? Me estoy refiriendo a una nueva generacin de intelectuales indgenas que a partir de la revitalizacin del movimiento indgena latinoamericano han comenzado a abogar por la suerte de sus comunidades en sus respectivos pases (como asesores en asuntos indgenas, educadores o polticos), ante organismos internacionales (la Organizacin Internacional del Trabajo, OIT, la Organizacin de las Naciones Unidas, ONU, etc.), y ante gobiernos de otros pases forzando a los intelectuales metropolitanos (en particular a los antroplogos) a establecer un dilogo con ellos en los mismos trminos de dignidad profesional. These observersdicen Warren
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y Jacksonprovide sophisticated analyses of the foreign presence and the effects of economic development in Latin America, concerns they actively voice to wider audiences (...). They are activists as well as scholars (3).31 Ellos son activistas y catedrticos pero a la vez indgenas, y los intelectuales hegemnicos con frecuencia no sabemos cmo lidiar con ellos porque la complejidad de su subjetividad tnica, poltica, y cultural neutraliza los clichs y la fcil representacin. Ellos son un problema, o lo que Joanne Rappaport llama (recurriendo a Trinh T. Minh-ha) inapropriate Others, whose simultaneous exercise of insiderness and outsiderness defies the attribution of neat, discrete, and polarize identity (318). Rappaport se refiere al caso de los intelectuales y lderes Nasa del sur occidente colombiano, a los cuales caracteriza de la siguiente manera:
Exemplifying the inappropriate Other is the indigenous intellectual who works in the office of the indigenous organization, traveling to New York, Paris, or Mexico City to attend international conferences and returning to observe community assemblies in Tiribo or Guamba; who is fluent in Nasa Yuwe (the Nasa language) or Guambiano, but writes in Spanish; and who is responsible for directing a process of cultural revitalization by creating educational policy for rurals groups, but lives in the city. While all Others are in a sense inappropriate, ethnic activists consciously deploy their inappropriateness in the political arena (Rappaport 318).
Algunos de estos intelectuales indgenas han adquirido una educacin superior en los EE.UU. y se han incorporado a nuestras universidades como profesores, caso de Vctor Montejo, un miembro de una comunidad maya (de Jacaltenango en las montaas del noroeste de Guatemala) quien era maestro de escuela rural antes de venir como refugiado a los EE.UU., donde estudi antropologa. Montejo es actualmente profesor titular del Department of Native American Studies en la University of California, Davis, y uno de los ms slidos, visibles y prolficos escritores mayas en los EE.UU. Su variada produccin intelectual (antropolgica, testimonial, literaria) gira en torno a las vicisitudes reales e inmediatas de las comunidades indgenas mayas, en particular, la revitalizacin cultural maya, el impacto de la guerra civil de Guatemala en esas comunidades y la suerte de la dispora maya transnacional como consecuencia de la guerra. Montejo considera que su experiencia como indgena perseguido, exiliado
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de la violencia estatal, estudiante, escritor y luego profesor de antropologa lo dota de una responsabilidad moral para el activismo cultural y poltico a favor de su pueblo maya. Me detengo en Montejo porque no solamente es un caso ejemplar del subalterno que escapa de la subalternidad sin abandonarla como objeto de sus disertaciones intelectuales y acciones polticas (el mismo caso de los Nasa descritos por Rappaport) sino tambin porque fue un indgena que nos visit recientemente en el campus.32 La visita de Montejo a nuestra universidad coincide con el aumento de la poblacin indgena en el estado de Florida en las ltima dcadas.33 Parte de ese incremento tiene que ver con la inmigracin a travs de la constante necesidad de la agricultura local de mano de obra barata no cualificada (procedente principalmente de Mxico y Centro Amrica), adems de las oleadas de refugiados de la violencia poltica de Guatemala, la cual dej ms de un milln de desplazados durante tres dcadas de guerra civil. Todo esto ha contribuido enormemente al crecimiento de la poblacin indgena inmigrante.34 Gran parte de esta poblacin maya exiliada se ha establecido en Florida en una comunidad agrcola llamada Indian Town, en donde los mayas han logrado preservar su identidad cultural y adaptarla a su nuevo entorno.35 La visita de Montejo, aunque inscrita dentro del formato institucional del intercambio entre intelectuales y una exploracin de su posible insercin como profesor de esta universidad, no era, entonces, un evento histricamente fortuito. Sin embargo, su presencia en esta institucin puso de manifiesto la frecuente incomodidad del intelectual y del administrador acadmico metropolitanos (nosotros) frente a sujetos cuya compleja identidad cultural y poltica desafa su fcil ubicacin en la conformidad acadmica norteamericana o la tnica inmigrante (ellos). El reto de la presencia de Montejo, como inappropriate Other, pudo ser para muchos una molesta disyuntiva. De una parte, es un indgena porque luce y se cri como tal, habl Jacalteco antes que castellano, practic y practica su cultura nativa, y sufri la terrible violencia del estado guatemalteco; de otra, es tambin un intelectual con una erudicin y una aptitud profesional superiores adquiridas en Occidente que le han valido su insercin exitosa en el sistema acadmico norteamericano. A pesar de eso, su contacto con profesores y administradores de la University of Florida tuvo, en el mejor de los casos, resultados contradictorios. Su conferencia fue deliberadamente una entusiasta intervencin ante un pblico de profesores y estudiantes sobre la complejidad de la identidad
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indgena maya en la poca de la globalizacin que combin su biografa con un panorama etnogrfico del acelerado y negativo cambio de las comunidades mayas ante la violencia y la modernizacin neoliberal de Guatemala. La decisin de Montejo de dar este tipo de conferencia expositiva (privilegiando los avatares de su cultura y de su trayectoria personal dentro y fuera de Guatemala) en vez de una ms densa y circunspecta (llena de abstracciones eruditas para impresionar) tuvo seguramente que ver con su confianza en la reputacin que l sabe que tiene como prolfico autor de obras en el campo de la antropologa, la crtica cultural, el testimonio y la literatura.36 En la cultura de evaluacin acadmica para aspirantes a profesores en universidades norteamericanas, el xito magistral en las intervenciones orales es un factor decisivo en ese ritual de admisin que por lo general se le aplica a los aspirantes novicios, es decir, a los assistant professors (el ms bajo rango entre los profesores). Aunque la conferencia de Montejo caus excelente impresin entre muchos (hubo, por ejemplo, un amplio debate despus en mi clase sobre la subjetividad indgena en el contexto acadmico norteamericano), varios profesores menospreciaron su conferencia con el argumento de su falta de sofisticacin y su escaso nivel terico. A algunos no les satisfizo la intervencin de este inappropriate Other porque no estuvo a la altura de las exigencias establecidas por la academia metropolitana; eso significa que no hizo gala de una sofisticada erudicin (o gimnasia oral, como dira el mapuche Pedro Curihuinca [Hardman 18]) en la que se demuestra un dominio vasto y detallado del desarrollo de la disciplina en cuestin en el mundo occidental como contexto para la tesis que se desarrolle en la conferencia. Esta actitud, a mi modo de ver, supona una sutil operacin argumental que intentaba devolverle a este inappropriate other su condicin de subalternidad: de una parte se descartaba el impresionante nmero de publicaciones y la importancia de su produccin acadmica y narrativa, y de otra se le daba el tratamiento de profesor asistente que deba probar la solidez de sus credenciales partiendo de cero, tratamiento que desconoca, a su vez, el hecho de que Montejo tena ya el ttulo de Full Professor (el rango ms alto alcanzable en esta profesin).37 Sin embargo, hasta qu punto ese rechazo tuvo que ver con nuestro recelo ante una subalternidad que nos interpelaba? Se trataba, al fin de cuentas, de una subalternidad que, de una parte, exhiba una estratgica y perentoria diferencia (la del indgena que reconstruye o fabrica su identidad
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ante la agresin del estado nacional) pero que, de otra, aspiraba a una identidad acadmica metropolitana compatible con la nuestra.38 Hasta qu punto su aparente humildad, su decisin de eludir la sofisticada disquisicin en su discurso, su resuelta insistencia en su identidad indgena agredida por Occidente privilegiando la narracin para conversar sus marginaciones (como dira Carmen Chuqun Amaguaa [Hardman 47]), as como su conspicuo activismo poltico a favor de subalternos, fueron rasgos de una alteridad inquietante e incmoda para el auditorio lleno de acadmicos metropolitanos? Sea lo que haya sido, este fue el caso de un indgena que desafiaba la fcil ubicacin de su subjetividad en una Otredad primitiva, remanente, marginal y sobre todo distante. A la hora de decidir si se comparta tal espacio con l, la respuesta fue perentoriamente negativa. El tratamiento Montejo recibi en esta universidad expona el hecho de que nosotros mismos (y nuestra cultura hegemnica occidental) compartimos con los estados nacionales una actitud ambigua ante los indgenas, es decir, una en la que frecuentemente se intercambian la idealizacin y la afrenta. El indgena del pasado es fascinante y motivo de orgullo (los esplendorosos mayas, aztecas, incas o muiscas prehispnicos, de la historia oficial, los museos y las estatuas), mientras que los indgenas que viven con nosotros en un mismo espacio social, geogrfico o laboral son suspicaces, repugnantes, menesterosos, peligrosos o torpes. En cada caso la actitud tiene el mismo resultado: negarles a los indgenas y a sus comunidades su condicin de actores civiles, culturales y polticos conmensurables con nosotros. A nosotros no nos gustaporque nos desconcierta el que el indgena rompa el paradigma de la humildad en su representacin habitual; tampoco el hecho de que la humilde Carmen Chuqun Amaguaa de 1975 se haya convertido en el autosuficiente Vctor Montejo del ao 2002. Rigoberta Mench ilustra muy bien esta ambigedad en su experiencia de lder e intelectual indgena (lejos est ya hoy su condicin de informante necesitada de la mediacin de una Elizabeth Burgos) que sufre las consecuencias de una identidad incongruente para la sociedad hegemnica, es decir, aquella identidad conformada (o complicada) por la celebridad internacional que le otorga su status de premio Nobel de la Paz y su condicin y apariencia de indgena que aun viaja con su atuendo maya:
Primero, yo cruzo las fronteras como cualquier ciudadana del mundo, chaparra, morena como siempre. Y la cara de pobre nunca
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me la van a quitar. Y tampoco la cara de maya, la cara de indgena nunca nadie me la quitar. As que soy premio Nobel de la Paz en los protocolos, cuando me recibe un rey, un jefe de estado, una persona o un artista, o cuando hay un golpe de Estado o cuando hay un conflicto en el que uno tiene que necesariamente hacerse presente. Ah soy premio Nobel de la Paz. Pero cuando yo cruzo las fronteras, ninguna autoridad de aduanas tiene paciencia conmigo. Por lo que me sacan una por una hasta todas las ropas ntimas. En muchos momentos son muy groseros, muy racistas (Mench 1998, 58-59).
Un indgena que escape de un paradigma de sumisin es un indgena espurio, sospechoso, o uno que deja de ser indgena. Esa incapacidad de reconocimiento de su identidad inestable y compleja es frecuente en nuestra funcin acadmica de representacin de indgenas en la que rgidamente equiparamos la legitimidad cultural nativa con la postracin social y poltica de los indgenas. Un ejemplo de esta actitud nos lo da Gianni Min en su relato de la hostilidad recibida por Rigoberta Mench de parte de funcionarios internacionales, caso de un delegado de Costa Rica ante la ONU que le replic a Mench despus de su intervencin de denuncia: Muy bien, seora Rigoberta, los indgenas deben tener todo lo que nosotros tenemos, pero en este caso dejan de ser indgenas (Min 1998, 17 nfasis mo).39 Warren y Jackson, de otra parte, traen a cuento el caso de los indgenas que se unen exitosamente a la economa del mercado (construyendo un casino con grandes hoteles, por ejemplo) y quienes por eso son de inmediato vistos as illegitimately discarding their indigenousness and hence are no longer entitled to occupy the savage slot that the nonindigenous mainstream has created for them (20-21). Tal expulsin de la condicin de indgena fuera menos problemtica si los estados nacionales no la usaran constantemente para la agresin directa a las comunidades indgenas.40
Estaremos ante la misma actitud al tratarse de un indgena que no solamente ha superado su subalternidad y se ha formado como intelectual pro-indgena en la academia norteamericana, sino que adems quiere incorporarse como profesor en una universidad donde la gran mayora de los estudiantes, profesores y principalmente la administracin son blancos de cultura occidental?41 Es difcil saber con certeza que pas durante la visita de Montejo, pero la dificultosa impresin que recibieron algunos profesores y administradores claves vino a ser al menos
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una corroboracin del peligro tanto de la exotizacin espectacular que tema mi colega de historia ante la idea de traer el grupo de indgenas colombianos como de la subalternizacin del inappropriate Other indgena. No obstante, si el caso de Montejo es el de un indgena que viene al campus, qu pasa cuando somos nosotros los que vamos al campo donde se encuentra el indgena?
Intelectuales hegemnicos en el campo.

Subalternidad indgena y violencia estatal son indisolubles en el caso latinoamericano, lo cual significa que la tarea de la representacin del indgena de parte de los intelectuales metropolitanos es imposible con los paradigmas tradicionales que dependen de la construccin indulgente de su alteridad o de la simple perspectiva acadmica de su condicin indgena. Joan Rappaport ha enfrentado este reto desde su disciplina (la antropologa) y en relacin con el caso colombiano: It is no longer possible (although it really never was) for an anthropologist to study indigenous cultures in Colombia without paying heed to the multiple articulations between local communities and the regional, national and international institutions (Rappaport 2003, 311). Esto quiere decir que el intelectual debe tener en cuenta en lugares como Colombia factores de estudio como los genocidios de la poblacin local, la destruccin continuada del medio ambiente por medio de las fumigaciones areas, y el desplazamiento de millones de campesinos e indgenas.42
Existe la posibilidad de una relacin til que los indgenas pueden establecer con los intelectuales hegemnicos y estas instituciones internacionales, a pesar del frecuente paternalismo de estas ltimas y la mencionada actitud ambigua de los primeros? Tal vez, siempre y cuando esa relacin haga parte de una estrategia general de lucha que de una parte recoja pragmticamente aportes de diverso origen, y de otra, se base en la iniciativa local propia. En esa relacin son fundamentales los intelectuales metropolitanos o indgenas.43 La relacin con estas instituciones no es siempre cmoda, ni natural ni positiva. Pero la ausencia total de ella es una prdida de recursos ya que una comunidad indgena con aliados de otros sectores nacionales o internacionales es menos vulnerable que una comunidad aislada.
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Esta es una leccin de supervivencia fsica y poltica que Rigoberta Mench ilustr en su afamado testimonio dados los efectivos contactos que su comunidad estableci no slo con otros sectores como obreros y campesinos locales, sino tambin con organizaciones internacionales, lo cual desemboc en el premio Nbel de la Paz.44
Esta misma leccin, y a partir de su propia experiencia, la ha articulado claramente Jess Enrique Piacu (Presidente del Consejo Regional Indgena del Cauca, CRIC) cuando, refirindose en 1987 a un grupo de expresiones de solidaridad de parlamentos regionales espaoles con la causa de los indgenas del Cauca, se refera a los intelectuales hegemnicos como estas gentes de sensibilidad (363). Dice Piacu sobre la bsqueda de apoyo internacional: Por ello uno de los nfasis de la actual directiva [del CRIC] fue el de rescatar y mantener buenos niveles de coordinacin con los amigos del Movimiento Indgena en el exterior, y a mediados del 96 se form una comisin cuya tarea fue buscar (...) un apoyo importante desde las iniciativas del exterior (Piacu 363-64). Ahora bien, quines son estas gentes de sensibilidad? Reflexionando sobre el caso colombiano, Gonzalo Snchez Gmezpara quien los intelectuales occidentales de la modernidad han sido los depositarios de un capital cultural puesto al servicio de causas socialesencuentra en la actividad de stos en los siglos XIX y XX tres elementos esenciales: la interpelacin a la opinin pblica, el distanciamiento o ruptura frente al poder estatal, y el recurso de la accin colectiva. Tales elementos, a su vez, tienen el propsito de restablecer la justicia quebrantada, por encima de cualquier otra consideracin (Snchez Gmez 134). A pesar de esta esencializacin de la bondad del intelectual hegemnico, Snchez Gmez puede destacar, para el caso concreto de la Colombia inmersa en la violencia de hoy, un nuevo tipo de intelectuales que l llama intelectuales para la democracia. stos funcionan en un nuevo espacio de relacin con el Estado o con la Universidad que ha facilitado un reencuentro entre la academia y la poltica. Desde all les es posible pensar que la actividad de diagnstico de un programa gubernamental, e incluso la vinculacin a una funcin pblica, no presupone necesariamente la renuncia a una posicin contestataria (Snchez Gmez 143). La funcin de este intelectual es, entonces, de doble naturaleza: de una parte le toca ensanchar la sociedad civil, esa misma que poco a poco y ltimamente se ha hecho ms visible a travs de pronunciamientos, protestas, marchas, incluidas las multitudi-
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narias contra el secuestro; por otra parte, su funcin es la negociacin, superacin de la crisis y terminacin de la guerra (145). Es esa una tarea, como bien reconoce Snchez Gmez, de alta peligrosidad en la Colombia de hoy.45 Qu hay, sin embargo, en esta tarea del intelectual para la democracia, de su relacin posible con las comunidades indgenas, las mismas que no siempre caben dentro de la sociedad civil que imagina Snchez Gmez? Hay muchos intelectuales de este tipo en la actual Colombia dedicados a colaborar con los indgenas en sus negociaciones o sus luchas con el Estado para la defensa de sus reivindicaciones. Sin embargo su relacin con los indgenas no es siempre fcil. Rigoberta Mench ha articulado esta dificultad con incontrovertible claridad:
Hace un tiempo, todo el mundo consideraba que un dirigente tena que ser una persona que deba saber leer, escribir y elaborar documentos (...). Y llega un momento en que muchos de nuestros dirigentes venan de la capital y llegaban a vernos en una finca y decan: Es que Uds. los campesinos son tontos, no leen, no estudian. Entonces los campesinos les dijeron: Te puedes ir con tus libros a la mierda. Entonces, hemos encontrado que la revolucin no se hace con libros, se hace con lucha (Burgos 24748).
La incompatibilidad del conocimiento de los intelectuales con la lucha de los indgenas es aqu una real manifestacin de la desconfianza que pueden inspirar sujetos hegemnicos entre los marginados en pocas de crisis, y un sntoma de la frecuente incapacidad de ese marginado para establecer alianzas efectivas de lucha con sectores sociales no indgenas. En otras palabras, adems de ser evidencia de debilidad poltica es tambin, y principalmente, una reaccin ante la percibida humillacin.46 La relacin est en crisis en este momento particular, pero es una crisis superable. La gran simpata con que Elizabeth Burgos se puso a disposicin de Rigoberta por una semana entera para que en la tranquilidad de su casa en Pars la maya-quich le dictara su largo testimonio, as como la voluntad subsiguiente de esta antroploga venezolana para despus transcribir, editar y publicar el libro resultante, son buena muestra de la factibilidad de esta relacin entre los subalternos en crisis y el intelectual hegemnico identificado con ellos.47 Como bien explica Burgos, sin embargo, tal identificacin no es slo altrusmo sino tambin, y principalmente, la articulacin de la lucha de
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los indgenas en el contexto amplio de la lucha del intelectual mismo por el cambio social: La lucha de los pobladores autctonos de nuestro continente, contra el colonialismo interno y el externo, ser la que librar definitivamente de los males que nos acosan y de los obstculos que se oponen a nuestro desarrollo y por ello debemos sumarnos a ella (Burgos Introduccin, 8). No obstante este feliz ejemplo de la relacin de la intelectual Burgos con la entonces subalterna Mench, la verdad es que tal contacto, en la mayora de los casos, es difcil de establecer a pesar de la buena voluntad del intelectual, y especialmente si ste es un acadmico que vive y trabaja lejos de las comunidades indgenas a las que quiere ayudar. Estoy pensando en los latinoamericanistas del sistema universitario de los EE.UU. Algunos de ellos, y entre las excepciones, hay individuos como Joan Rappaport, cuyo persistente trabajo sobre los Nasa ya he mencionado. La gran mayora de nosotroscuyo enfoque investigativo compromete con frecuencia la subjetividad de los sujetos indgenas latinoamericanosno contamos con este tipo de contacto y en su defecto nos esforzamos por crearlos directa o indirectamente. En el contexto institucional en que estamos empleados, una de las estrategias disponibles para lograr ese contacto es la visita con becas o licencias de investigacin a los territorios donde se encuentran estas comunidades indgenas. Tal contacto, sin embargo, est constreido por las funciones del sistema universitario de un pas desarrollado, es decir, el de la reproduccin del sistema educativo del status quo. Uno de los mejores ejemplosa mi modo de verdel conflicto del intelectual de la universidad norteamericana preocupado por la subjetividad indgena lo ofrece Jos Rabasa, un latinoamericanista muy consciente de las implicaciones polticas de su prctica acadmica. Su reciente examen de la evolucin del concepto de subalterno en la Italia de Gramsci, el Asia de Ranajit Guha y en las Amricas del grupo de estudios subalternos, tuvo su gnesis en Tepoztln, Mxico, mientras disfrutaba de una licencia de la Universidad de Berkeley. Su escritura fue interrumpida, y tambin profundamente afectada, por una rebelin de indgenas el 24 de agosto de 1995.48 Es este el caso de un intelectual metropolitano polticamente comprometido que se encuentra de repente y para su gran sorpresa en medio de un campo de batalla. En l se dedica a observar el movimiento de cerca (con su esposa y sus hijos que lo acompaaban en este viaje, les daba caf a los insurgentes que hacan de vigas por la noche en la plaza de Tepoztln), y a cotejar el desarrollo de los eventos de que es testigo con los informes de la
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prensa del Internet sobre la rebelin, cotejo que arroja grandes incongruencias: las noticias de fuera de Tepoztln sobre la rebelin are not mirrors of the identity of the people of Tepoztln, sino mirrors of the outside world (Rabasa 194). Su conexin electrnica, en medio de la rebelin, le permite mantenerse listo para denunciar la represin policial y del ejrcito que est a punto de desencadenarse. En esta sbita urgencia adquirida por su espacio de investigacin, Rabasa cuestiona los conceptos mismos con los que reflexiona: My immersion in the local, however, has made manifest to me that the local, like the subaltern, is an elusive concept that becomes meaningful only as a relational term (194). La representacin por escrito de tales eventos es imposible adems porque, segn dice Rabasa, los distintos conceptos de subalternidad que tienen los intelectuales a travs de la historia are inssuficient metropolitan based theoretical formulations que tienen que ser reformuladas from the point of view of the Tepoztln and Chiapas (195). Consecuentemente con los lmites de sus capacidades de accin, Rabasa se da cuenta que la tarea del intelectual, en particular aquellos que como l fueron miembros del Subaltern Studies Group of the Americas, no es la de hablar por el subalterno ni dedicarse a su representacin desde la exterioridad acadmica, sino la conceptualizacin de multiple possibilities of creative political action rather than defining a more mature political formation (197). Esa leccin de humildad sobre los lmites del espacio del intelectual lo llevan a concluir:
Subaltern studies, therefore, would not pretend to have a privileged access to subalterns, but rather, would define intellectual work as one more intervention in insurgent movements. In developing practices, the intellectual would grow parallel to the emergent social actors and their interventions in everyday life. Protagonism would then be subjected to infinite deconstructions (Rabasa 197).
Este reconocimiento de Rabasa de los lmites de la intervencin y la buena voluntad del intelectual ante la magnitud de los acontecimientos que puede desarrollar el subalterno debe ser una pertinente leccin para muchos de nosotros insertos en la academia norteamericana. Sin embargo, si el intelectual metropolitano polticamente consciente busca integrarse (a veces precariamente, como en el caso de Rabasa) a la lucha de los indgenas, tambin los indgenas pueden buscar y facilitar esa
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integracin. A pesar de la muy explicable cautela que Jess Enrique Piacu, Presidente del Consejo Regional Indgena del Cauca (CRIC), tiene con los intelectuales hegemnicos colombianos del siglo XIX y XX, este lder indgena les hace un llamado explcito tanto a ellos como a sus instituciones educativas. Piacu pide la colaboracin de:
... las universidades, los colegios, los pensadores, los que se han abstrado de los simples ciudadanos vegetantes, a que hagan uso de la reflexin, del anlisis, del estudio ponderado y profundo de estos temas, pero no necesariamente desde el punto de vista legible en los textos y en los libros, sino en la libertad de interpretar unas culturas como las nuestras que no son sino orales (...). Aqu hay una riqueza enorme (Piacu 363, nfasis mo).
Ese llamado, sin embargo, se hace en un contexto complejo y exigente para el intelectual hegemnico: el de un conflicto armado que compromete hoy la integridad fsica y cultural de las comunidades indgenas en Colombia. No se trata de una invitacin a la simple interpretacin acadmica de su cultura indgena (pero no necesariamente desde el punto de vista legible en los textos y en los libros), sino a una intervencin directa que promueva sus reivindicaciones ante el Estado colombiano, al igual que la reflexin sobre el lugar que estas culturas ocupan en la utopa social que mueve a los intelectuales a los que se apela. En otras palabras, lo que Piacu hace es una convocatoria con todas las implicaciones polticas que ese trmino conlleva en una situacin de guerra civil. La naturaleza del CRIC, como organizacin local indgena de larga, difcil y a la vez exitosa trayectoria, es prueba de la seriedad y la gravedad del llamado de Piacu. En recientes palabras de los mismos indgenas, el CRIC es una organizacin que:
... naci en 1971 por iniciativa de 7 cabildos y comunidades indgenas del Departamento del Cauca, recogiendo de la memoria de los pueblos indios de Amrica la filosofa de la autonoma con participacin comunitaria para autogobernarnos y el dilogo como forma para resolver los conflictos, todo ello bajo los principios de Unidad, Tierra y Cultura, y con un programa que resuma nuestras reivindicaciones de la poca, referidas a tierra, territorio, autoridades propias, historia, defensa de los derechos culturales y ambientales, que se denomin Plataforma de Lucha (CRIC, 64).
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La larga trayectoria del CRIC tuvo entre varios resultados la recuperacin de tierras ancestrales en el departamento del Cauca (a pesar de la resistencia de los poderosos terratenientes de la regin) que desemboc en el primer tratado entre la organizacin indgena y los ganaderos, conocido como acuerdo de Fedegan-CRIC, realizado a mediados de 1984 (CRIC Los indgenas y la paz, 64). Tambin, en junio de 1999dos aos despus del llamado de Piacu a los intelectualesel CRIC estuvo al frente de la rebelin indgena que bloque la carretera panamericana en un resguardo llamado La Mara, Piendam, que forz al Gobierno nacional a la negociacin con los indgenas. Segn Rappaport, la justificacin ante el Estado de la rebelin y el bloqueo de esta importante arteria vial se hizo por medio de una estratgica reafirmacin tanto de su identidad indgena como de su contacto excepcional con la tierra. Fueron tres los argumentos utilizados en este sentido: (1) su derecho al territorio ancestral, ya que los indgenas vivan en l desde antes de la conquista espaola y it was not their fault that the Panamericana highway had been built there; (2) la vigencia y vitalidad de la cultura indgena en ese territorio expresada en el dominante poder de los sacerdotes indgenas: the firts ministerial delegations visit was greeted by a thunderstorm that the shamans were said to have created; y (3) el inalienable derecho de las comunidades indgenas a aceptar o no tanto a los delegados del Gobierno como los trminos de la negociacin:
The director of the Divisin of Indigenous Affairshimself an Ingano whose government position has been achieved as a result of pressure from the indigenous movementswas censured for his choice of identifying as a member of the government and not as a native person. As the days wore on, the movilizations leadership rejected a number of drafts of agreement, forcing the government to accept its principal demands and to open extended negotiations with indigenous representatives (Rappaport 2003, 311).
Segn los consejeros (autores de esta carta abierta) del CRIC, esta rebelin fue solamente una entre las muchas que han sidoy sernnecesarias para que el Estado cumpla sus promesas. La lucha de La Mara, Piendam, fue un momento culminante en donde el gobierno nacional reconoce como compromiso de Estado, la deuda histrica que tiene la nacin con los pueblos indgenas y el cumplimiento de los diferentes acuer-
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dos firmados (Los indgenas y la paz 65). En estas circunstancias, el llamado de Piacu a los intelectuales no es una propuesta que fcilmente quepa dentro de los lmites de las instituciones acadmicas en las cuales muchos estamos instalados, como dej en claro la breve experiencia de Rabasa en el campo. Es este un contexto de lucha permanente de los indgenas en un pas en donde el Estado ha preferido recurrir a la violencia para la solucin de los problemas del pas por medio del Plan Colombia, con su fortalecimiento ilimitado de las fuerzas armadas y del paramilitarismo y su prurito de lograr la paz y la prosperidad del pas por medio del exterminio o la neutralizacin de la guerrilla;49 es igualmente un contexto de recientes iniciativas gubernamentales de militarizacin de la sociedad civil;50 y es, finalmente, el mismo contexto de guerra que encuentra muy frecuentemente su escenario en los territorios de los indgenas, es decir, en el el campo donde los intelectuales pondran en prctica la actividad de solidaridad a que los convoca Piacu, una solidaridad que supone unirse a la resistencia indgena contra el Estado. La condicin de permanente resistencia a la agresin estatal, de otra parte, no supone la postracin social o poltica de unas comunidades indgenas que por quinientos aos se las han arreglado para sobrevivir. Dicen los mismos indgenas en una ponencia titulada precisamente La resistencia indgena: autonoma territorial por dignidad y justicia para todos los colombianos y pronunciada en Popayn, marzo de 2002, en el contexto de la agresin militar que sufren sus comunidades:
Lo que estamos viviendo en materia de Resistencia (sic) indgena a la guerra (Guardias Cvicas, movilizaciones masivas, Comisiones de Bsqueda, Territorios de Refugio, Territorios de convivencia, etc.), es el resultado del fortalecimiento del proyecto de autonoma territorial que hemos venido defendiendo desde hace siglos, y que tiene su ltima etapa de ascenso en los ltimos cuarenta aos (Los indgenas y la paz 54).51
A pesar de los ingentes obstculos que hay para lograr una relacin productiva entre intelectuales hegemnicos e indgenas, lo que queda claro con los casos de Burgos-Mench, Rabasa-Tepoztln y Piacu-intelectuales universitarios es la certeza de lo imprescindible del contacto entre las comunidades indgenas y los intelectuales en virtud del avance de la lucha por la justicia social, incluidas las reivindicaciones de los indgenas. A diferencia de los casos de una Burgos, un Rabasa o incluso nosotros como
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latinoamericanistas, el intelectual convocado por Piacu es aquel cuya cercana fsica e ideolgica promete una cooperacin efectiva, mediata e inmediata, con los intereses de las comunidades indgenas. Se trata, por consiguiente, de gente cuya intervencin pueda alterar la situacin social y poltica de los indgenas, no se trata de amateurs. El CRIC tiene pautas muy concretas para orientar esa intervencin, como lo dejan explcito en la reiteracin de su carta abierta citada antes: la conservacin y fortalecimiento de nuestra autonoma territorial; el rechazo al modelo neoliberal de desarrollo implementado por el gobierno nacional; el fortalecimiento de la unidad entre indgenas y otros sectores sociales; la exigencia tanto al gobierno nacional como a la subversin de un cese al fuego y de las hostilidades sobre la sociedad civil, as como la exigencia a los diferentes actores de poder, tanto armado y poltico como econmico, de respetar nuestra decisin de no participar del conflicto armado (68). Como autoridades indgenas autnomas concluyen los lderes del CRIC, manifestamos (...) que continuaremos nuestra campaa nacional e internacional en defensa de la vida y por la autonoma de los pueblos indgenas (Los indgenas y la paz 68). Veamos ahora el caso de un intelectual colombianoentre muchos que acepta la convocatoria de los indgenas. Hernn Daro Correa ha sido activista poltico y crtico cultural durante la mayor parte de su vida y trabaj por mucho tiempo como asesor de los indgenas de la comunidad Wayu de Manaure (la Guajira, al noreste colombiano). Fue asesor en la Direccin General de Asuntos Indgenas del Ministerio del Interior durante la administracin de Ernesto Samper, y consultor de la oficina Parque Nacionales de Colombia del mismo Ministerio durante la administracin de Andrs Pastrana. Sus reflexiones sobre la cultura colombiana de hoy lo obliga a reconocer que la violencia, la misma que sufren los indgenas en el campo, es un espacio ineludible para el trabajo de los intelectuales de la ciudad. Este reconocimiento tiene lugar en el fragor de una incesante guerra en la que son actores centrales el Estado, la guerrilla, los paramilitares y los narcotraficantes a fines del siglo XX y en la que los perdedores son las organizaciones populares, la sociedad civil y los subalternos en general; es un reconocimiento que no fue gradual sino el producto de la perturbacin en torno a una identidad nacional fraguada por la misma violencia. La labor del intelectual en Colombia hoy, segn Correa, debe partir, entonces, de admitir que la violencia no pertenece solamente a un ayer de all sino
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tambin a un hoy de aqu. Sobrepasando el espacio del Otro e instalndose permanentemente en el espacio del nosotros, la violencia confronta al intelectual de su generacin con una maduracin abrupta: ... quienes de algn modo tenenos acceso a la palabra, no podemos repetir la actitud del adolescente para quien la violencia era asunto de leyenda o, cuando ms un lejano espectculo mediado por las noticias cotidianas y mecido en la impotente reafirmacin de verdades abstractas (Correa 2002, 84). En Marzo de 1987 Correa particip en el Primer Seminario Nacional sobre Jurisdiccin Especial Indgena y Autonoma Territorial realizado en Popayn (Colombia).52 Es el mismo seminario en el que Piacu emiti las palabras antes citadas. En una de sus varias intervenciones, Correa se refiere a la desconfianza que el indgena le tiene al intelectual no indgena. La capacidad crtica del intelectual y cuya activacin puede alterar el status quo, es mirada por algunos indgenas con el mismo recelo con que han mirado la cultura alfabtica y la ley del colonizador desde el siglo XVI, pero Correa trata de desactivar esa desconfianza de dos formas: (1) recordndoles a los indgenas que intelectuales como l han dedicado su vida al intento de transformacin de un sistema social injusto, refirindose a los caminos de lucha de los indgenas de la siguiente manera: [nosotros] no creemos en la lgica dominante y si estamos en un lugar o en otro es porque estamos convencidos de que aqu tambin se puede ayudar a construir estos caminos (Correa 1997, 350); y (2) sealando la existencia de un espacio comn en el que los intelectuales hegemnicos y los indgenas pueden encontrar un importante punto de contacto: el espacio alternativo del intelectual como el que l representa, y el espacio de la lucha de resistencia de las culturas ancestrales.
[los indgenas] han hablado todo el tiempo, o casi todo el tiempo, de nosotros, de los no-indgenas, de la sociedad nacional: ustedes estn mal, ustedes no cumplen, ustedes mienten, ustedes... Bien, pero tenemos que reconocer algo: es propio de la cultura occidental eso que a veces nos muestran como un defecto en medio de nuestras limitaciones culturales, es en parte la virtud nuestra: me refiero a la crtica. Occidente decidi dar un rodeo muy grande a lo largo de su historia, pero ha venido replantendose y dentro de la sociedad nacional hay sectores alternativos, hay sectores buscando y es ah donde nos tocamos: lo diferente indgena-lo alternativo nacional, lo tradicional y la crtica, y sus relaciones (Correa 1997, 349).
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A pesar de su larga trayectoria como aliado de diversos grupos indgenas en sus luchas contra el Estado, Correa se encuentra inesperadamente emplazado y cuestionado por el indgena que lo convoca. De sbito, su tradicin cultural occidental se seala como falla, una falla cuyo intento de exorcismo ante el recelo del Otro indgena parece ftil. Esta especie de marca que se le asigna y que lo obliga a explicarse lo acerca incmodamente a la indignacin. Las diferencias culturales se vuelven de repente ms grandes de lo que la comn vocacin de cambio haba permitido vislumbrar. Esto recuerda, otra vez, el caso de Rigoberta Mench para quien la condicin de intelectual de algunos de sus aliados reafirmaba las diferencias culturales hasta el punto de neutralizar sus buenas intenciones.53 Sin embargo, la razn y la crtica prevalecen, y en medio de esas diferencias resaltadas por la desconfianza, Correa prepondera el terreno compartido con ellos, el cual no es otro que el de la congregacin en la accin. Refirindose al congreso sobre la jurisdiccin especial indgena que los aglutinaba en esta ocasin, Correa cree que el evento ha arrojado, tanto para los indgenas como para Colombia en general, esperanzas y caminos, porque son caminos los que estn recorriendo los Ember en el Choc, los Guambianos de la sierra, [caminos y esperanzas] no slo para ellos mismos, sino para la bsqueda de modelos alternativos de vida de parte nuestra (Correa 1997, 350). Muy distinto es el caso, por supuesto, de la antroploga que no tiene que dejar Francia para encontrarse con la activista Rigoberta Mench (ni sufrir, hasta donde nos deja ver el testimonio, su emplazamiento en razn de su extraccin cultural), o el de Rabasa quien result en medio de una rebelin de indgenas sin sospecharlo.54 Correa no solamente ha estado en medio de la lucha de y por los indgenas durante aos, sino que tambin ha colaborado con su presencia como editor, crtico, organizador de foros de discusin, asesor sobre asuntos indgenas y mediador en gestiones con el Estado. La persistencia de esta presenciacomo intenta l hacer evidente en su interpelacin de la desconfianza de los indgenas se convierte en prueba de la factibilidad de la relacin entre indgenas, intelectuales hegemnicos, intelectuales indgenas, sus comunidades y las instituciones alternas al Estado local. Burgos, en cambio, reactiva su mancomunidad con Rigoberta escuchando y grabando magnetofnicamente durante una semana los detalles de su asombroso y espeluznante testimonio, enmarcando su esfuerzo editorial en una misma perspectiva crtica contra el status quo social
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de Latinoamrica, y compartiendo la culinaria nativa (explica Burgos que Rigoberta confi ms en ella cuando la vio comer lo mismo que ella coma en Guatemala). Rabasa, por su parte, admite valerosamente las limitaciones de su actividad acadmica y deja que los eventos alteren sus paradigmas tericos. Todos estos esfuerzos de intelectuales distintos son vlidos en una aspiracin general de transformacin social. Ellos son, como dice Rabasa, one more intervention in insurgent movements (197), y son intervenciones hechas no por simples ciudadanos vegetantes (a quienes les teme Piacu, 363), sino por agentes solidarios con un movimiento indgena que se puede beneficiar con colaboraciones de distinto origen. Estos obstculos entre intelectuales alternativos e indgenas son sempiternos, inquietantes, pero transitables. Sin embargo, el punto de contacto que Correa les seala a los indgenas que lo cuestionan es imperecedero; tambin la capacidad crtica y operante de estos intelectuales como mediadores entre ellos y el Estado o como transformadores de la opinin pblica, y con ella la comn esperanza del intelectual y del indgena por el cambio social. En cuanto a acadmicos como Rabasa y como nosotros, ms alejados de la realidad cotidiana del indgena, nos quedara la tarea de re-politizar nuestra labor como miembros activos de instituciones acadmicas norteamericanas. Esto es posible superando el diseo de nuestra funcin en ellas, es decir, franquear la simple reproduccin de nuestro cmodo espacio social y de nuestra creciente y excesiva especializacin. O evitando reducirnos a conseguir fondos para producir y publicar para conseguir ms fondos, como palmariamente lo expres Snchez Gmez (146). La de Vctor Montejo en el campus y las de Rabasa y Correa en el campo de la accin poltica con los indgenas son todas experiencias difciles, si no amargas. En cada caso, cada individuo es objeto de la interpelacin rigurosa de una subjetividad alterna que realza su condicin de Otro. La Otredad del acadmico o intelectual activista occidental fuera del campus se construye en el campo mediante el ejercicio de la sospecha de parte del subalterno; y la del indgena en ese campus mediante su subalternizacin y encasillamiento en una condicin de miserable desheredado. Esta frecuente simetra de emplazamientos entre sujetos indgenas y no indgenas es reflejo de la contradiccin entre los grupos indgenasde verdad desheredadosy la hegemnica y opulenta sociedad del intelectual de occidente, o mejor, entre el capitalismo y las comunidades locales.55 De otra parte, qu aade en la dinmica de esta contradiccin el factor del inappropriate Other indgena? Sujetos como Vctor Montejo se
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han apoderado (afortunadamente) de una destreza alfabtica metropolitana con su respectiva acumulacin de capital cultural, social y econmico (al igual que Correa, Burgos, Rabasa o nosotros, Montejo gana ms dinero que el ciudadano promedio de Colombia, Guatemala, Mxico y EE.UU.). La superacin consecuente de su condicin individual de subalterno (sin abandonar su identidad colectiva de tal) lo convierte tal vez en el Otro ms apropiado para representar las comunidades indgenas en sus negociaciones con la sociedad hegemnica. Supone esto acaso la obsolescencia de mediadores como Elizabeth Burgos o Hernn Daro Correa? Lo dudo. Los intelectuales indgenas, a pesar de su creciente visibilidad, son pocos en relacin con la magnitud y variedad de los movimientos indgenas. Adems, la lucha del subalterno indgena (marginado, aislado, desamparado, desheredado y con frecuencia sin voz) contra la sociedad hegemnica y sus respectivos estados nacionales necesita de todos los aliados posibles. En ese sentido la convocatoria de Piacu es no solamente vigente sino tambin necesaria si la lucha de los indgenas espera resultados en un futuro reciente en vez de uno remoto e incierto. John Beverley, insistiendo pertinaz y admirablemente en la tarea poltica de los estudios subalternos en las Amricas, emerge con optimismo como intelectual en medio de la encrucijada de la crisis del comunismo y la democracia liberal a fines del siglo XX y principios del XXI para ponerse a disposicin de la lucha del subalterno en general: Subaltern studies is born directly out of this crisis. It is not only a form of academic knowledge production, then; nor is its field of vision limited to the postmodern. It is also a way of intervening in the present on the side of the subaltern (Beverley 2001, 49). Por su parte, Mara Milagros Lpez vea en la sociedad de hoy (se refiere a su nativo Puerto Rico) una multiplicidad de espacios de resistencia de ese subalterno, no ya ligado a la toma del poder por las armas (como propona el marxismo) sino a una lucha vigente en la cotidianidad de los diversos espacios sociales habitados por el subalterno contra los excesos del neoliberalismo. Es, en mi opinin, una tarea en la que cabemos todos, incluso los acadmicos de la universidad:
The social salary, the guaranteed minimum wage, the shortening of the work day, the democratization of consumption, the increased security in spaces of employment, paternal and maternal leavesall become necessary claims to be recognized and amplify the exercises of resistance. This is particularly important in those moments where capital and State pretend to submit us to
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the labor conditions of the nineteenth century, belittling so the struggles of this century to gain spaces of possibility (Lpez 77).
La tarea del intelectual es entonces no solamente una crtica de la hegemona (como la que he intentado hacer aqu desde el punto de vista del acadmico frente al subalterno indgena), sino tambin segn Lpez una construccin de una nueva hegemona que considere la voz y la subjetividad del subalterno. Se trata, en palabras de Lpez, de a constructive articulation of emergent and residual forms of political and cultural agency in the context of globalization (49). Es el mismo espacio alternativo de Correa, el campo turbulento de Rabasa, el apacible espacio privado abierto al peregrinaje del subalterno de Burgos, el del intelectual para la democracia de Snchez Lpez. Sin embargo, puede tambin ser nuestro campus, aquel espacio lleno de subalternos, a veces silenciosos y a veces invisibles, campus complejo porque a la vez le puede ofrecer al subalterno indgena un estrado para la denuncia de su opresin en todas la Amricas, o agredirlo al intentar devolverle a un inappropriate Other como Montejo la subalternidad que tanto le cost superar. En este contexto, la representacin acadmica del subalterno indgena (como la de cualquier otro subalterno) es un espacio estril que podra convertirse en feraz comenzando por admitir en el campus mayor presencia de su subjetividad cultural y poltica. A esta altura me parece necesaria, adems de estupenda, la idea de realizar otro congreso con indgenas de las Amricas, con o sin la ayuda de mi colega del Departamento de Historia.
NOTES
1
Gracias a Claudia Garca por sus comentarios a una primera versin de
este texto. Los movimientos indgenas de pases como Guatemala, Colombia y Brasil han aprovechado las aperturas democrticas de los aos ochenta y noventa en Latinoamrica bajo propsitos reivindicativos ms o menos generalizables tales como y en palabras de Warren y Jackson: self-determination and autonomy, with an emphasis on cultural distinctiveness; political reforms that involved a restructuring of the state; territorial rights and access to natural resources, including control
2
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over economic development; and reforms of military and police powers over indigenous peoples (Warren y Jackson 7). Me refiero a la rebelin indgena en el Ecuador entre marzo de 1999 y enero del 2000 que culmin con la cada del gobierno de Jamil Mahuad (vase Lucas) y a la de los indgenas del departamento del Cauca en Colombia en junio de 1999 quienes bloquearon la carretera panamericana y forzaron al Estado a atender las por mucho tiempo ignoradas reivindicaciones de aqullos (vase Rappaport 2003). Es decir, nos movemos dentro de la funcin social de una universidad de una potencia mundial como los EE.UU. y que John Beverley ha caracterizado como the cosmopolitan academy and its information retreival apparatus (1999, 2). Una ilustracin de este efecto sobre las comunidades indgenas en Latinoamrica la ofrecen Warren and Jackson: foreign debt inspired uncontrolled colonization of Indian territories in rain forest regions, guerrilla movements and drug traffickers in contested indigenous areas, and militaries shifted their mission to border and conflict zones disproportionately inhabited by tribal peoples (). Overexploitation of forest resources, ecologically unwise hydroelectric projects, and increased exploitation of subsoil resources on much vaster scales have been steeped up in many areas, posing new threats. The potential destabilization of local forms of governance of communal lands produced by the liberalization of land markets is another example (Warren y Jackson, note # 25, 33). Por ejemplo, Sabine MacCormack, respondiendo a una de mis preguntas despus de su conferencia titulada In the Wake of Carnivale: Ritual Wandering as a Prelude to Paradise (University of Florida, febrero 26, 2003), y en la que me refer a los indgenas del Per en el perodo colonial como subalternos, descalific enrgicamente el trmino con el argumento de que sus amigos nativos de los Andes se sentiran ofendidos si se usara para designarlos a ellos. Es un insulto se me dijo cuando me refer con el mismo termino a los indgenas colombianos en un comentario del pblico a mi ponencia titulada El intelectual de Occidente y las comunidades indgenas en el pas del Plan Colombia, leda en el XXIV International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, LASA (Dallas, Texas, March 27-29, 2003; y recientemente Joanne Rappaport, quien con precisin caracteriza su trabajo con los indgenas Nasa de Colombia como a politically committed ethnography, encuentra parte del xito de su dilogo con los lderes e intelectuales indgenas en su reticence to view these complex political actors as subalterns (2003, 336).
7 6 5 4 3
Me refiero otra vez a Joanne Rappaport quien considera a los indgenas
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objetos y sujetos de sus estudios, no simplemente objetos pasivos de ellos. Rappaport no solamente ha trabajado por muchos aos con los indgenas Nasa sino que pone sus proyectos de escritura e investigacin, y los textos resultantes, a disposicin de los indgenas para la discusin. Ella busca que su trabajo sobre estos indgenas seaen sus propias palabrasreinscribed, perhaps under very distinct terms [es decir trminos distintos a los de la academia norteamericana de donde ella procede], in Nasa constructionist intellectual process raher than in our own (2003, 336). Irresponsibility, itself an aspect of all truth that does not exhaust itself in responsibility to the status quo, then justify itself to the needs of established consciousness; bad essays are just as conformist as bad dissertations. Responsibility, however, respect not only authorities and committees, but also the object itself (Adorno 6). Sobre las limitaciones del trmino subalternos en Gramsci (en particular su exclusin de campesinos o indgenas), vase Rabasa. Segn Beverley la sociedad civil es un concepto burgus que supone miembros de la sociedad sin las deficiencias y carencias del subalterno: [the Civil Society is] tied itself to a normative sense of modernity and a narrative of necessary development or unfolding, which by virtue of its own requirements (formal education, literacy, nuclear family units, attention to party politics and business news, property or a stable income source) excludes significant sectors of the population from full citizenship or limits their access to citizenship. That exclusion or limitation is what constitutes the subaltern (2001, 50). Ileana Rodrguez, una de las fundadoras del Subaltern Studies Group of the Americas explica con su experiencia el carcter del projecto del grupo y su espritu contestatario. In the nineties, we percived in the South Asian group a new kind of social sensibility that, coupled with theoretical stubborness and a spirit of academic militancy, was very much in agreement with what we called new humanism. By new humanism we meant a postrevolutionary sympathy with the struggles of the poor at the time when the collapse of socialism had made that posture very unpopular. Many around us had already realigned themselves with the winners. (Rodrguez 3). Una manera de desfigurarla sera abandonar el espacio institucional que conocemos y unirnos al espacio de lucha de los indgenas en Latinoamrica, lo cual sera un gesto que, dada nuestra falta de preparacin en otras funciones como sujeto social, no le servira a nadie y podramos terminar convirtindonos en un estorbo. Estoy admitiendo, como dira Beverley, que nuestro proyecto de solidaridad es uno realizado dentro de la universidad. It is not a way of saying Give up
12 11 10 9 8
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what youre doing and go work with communal groups in India or refugees in Guatemala or Act-Up (2001, 38), lo cual es a su vez admitir, que los sujetos subalternos que quisiramos ayudar estn, por sus muchas diferencias on the other side of [our] position (Berverley 2001, 38). Sin embargo, y como veremos despus, ese other side of our position no siempre supone lejana fsica del subalterno. Chakrabarty se propone desmenuzar el concepto de Europa (resaltar su verdadero carcter provinciano) pero reconociendo primero que tal proyecto crtico es imposible realizarse por fuera de aquella imaginary figure that remains deeply embedded in clich and shorthand forms in some everyday habits of thought, hbitos que encuentran su expresin en la reproduccin de conceptos cruciales de la modernidad como citizenship, the state, civil society, public sphere, human rights, equality before the law, the individual (etc.) todos los cuales bear the burden of European thought and history (Chakrabarty 4). Soy consciente del peligro del carcter privilegiado que me asigno como intelectual con una suerte de poder sugestivo en la bsqueda de una sociedad ms justa dentro de la universidad norteamericana. Esta posicin fue ya descartada por Antonio Gramsci como una ilusin de autonoma e independencia del intelectual en relacin con el grupo social dominante. En palabras de Gramsci, se trata de that social utopia by which the intellectuals think of themselves as independent, autonomous, endowed with a character of their own, etc. (Gramsci 8). La alternativa que deja la posicin de Gramsci es la confrontacin directa del sistema capitalista por medio de la accin revolucionaria y la gua de la teora marxista, estrategia desvirtuada por la crisis del Marxismo, el fracaso del socialismo a fines del siglo XX as como mi mismo perfil de educador. En este contexto la alternativa sigue siendo para m el trabajo en la universidad con las generaciones de jvenes que pasan por mis aulas y el estmulo del debate con todos aquellos que lo permitan. A veces me pregunto si la reluctancia de mi colega de historia con el evento propuesto resida en el cliche de la equiparacin de la subjetividad indgena con el espacio de la barbarie y el folklore. Pensara l que el evento supondra la presencia precaria de intrpretes entre lenguas nativas y el castellano o el ingls y la exhibicin de atuendos tradicionales como plumas, flechas, taparrabos, etc.? Para Warren y Jackson esta actitud revela de parte del antroplogo tradicional desconocimiento de la magnitud e importancia de los movimientos indgenas a partir de los aos 60 y 70: To neglect the diverse early movements in which Indigenous communities were involved is to miss important transformations in Latin American political life (1). Aludo al concepto del intelectual como funcionario de un complejo de superestructuras y cuya funcin central es la creacin y reproduccin de uno
17 16 15 14 13
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de los dos tipos de control que ejercen las elites en el sistema capitalista: el de la produccin de la hegemona, which the dominant group exercises throughout society (12). El otro tipo de control corresponde a una direct domination, es decir, un command exercised through the State and juridical government (Gramsci 12). En su estudio sobre el matrimonio, la violencia y la nacin en la literatura norteamericana sobre el oeste, William Handley explica que en el siglo XIX la idea de la solidez de la nacin dependa de la integridad de la familia ideal de los padres de la patria (blanca, mongama, cristiana, bajo la direccin del varn, etc.). Tal ideal supona la marginacin drstica de sujetos que practicaran nociones distintas de familia: Marital noncomformist, such as Indians and Mormons, were most commonly defined as racially different from the white majority, even when, in the case of the Mormons, they were white (Handley 3). La vigencia de esta idea de familia y de la marginacin de quienes la retan es obvia en este pas hoy, especialmente a la luz de la actual controversia en EE.UU. sobre los matrimonios entre personas del mismo sexo. Nosotros en este caso somos sujetos metropolitanos, lectores y escritores profesionales que en razn de la funcin social que nos exige la universidad (la reproduccin del status quo) y nuestra privilegiada posicin en la jerarqua social podemos dedicarnos a la lectura y al comentario de textos en lenguas predominantemente europeas ante un pblico de identidad similar a la nuestra (estudiantes y profesores de clase media o media alta por lo general adeptos a ese status quo). Un ejemplo del tipo de evasin del subalterno inmediato que se propicia entre estudiantes y profesores en una institucin educativa como la University of Florida (y seguramente en muchas otras en el pas) se encuentra en los Study Abroad Program que funcionan bajo la premisa de que para que el estudiante aprenda la lengua escogida debe entrar en contacto con hablantes nativos los cuales estn en el exterior (para el caso del espaol, en Espaa y Latinoamrica). Esa premisa, sin embargo, supone ignorar que en el caso concreto del Alachua County (donde est la University of Florida) estamos rodeados de hablantes nativos del catellano, la mayora de los cuales suministran mano de obra barata a las industrias locales. En terminos de la maduracin que buscamos en nuestros estudiantes, la experiencia de viajar al exterior no se compara, por supuesto, con un contacto controlado con estas masas de trabajadores locales; sin embargo, la premisa mencionada elude la cuestin tica y poltica de que el castellano no es ya una lengua extranjera en el estado de la Florida y que es hablada en gran parte por subalternos. La poblacin hispana del estado de la Florida es del 16.8% (es decir, 2,682,715 his20 19 18
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panos, siendo el total de habitantes 15,982,378), segn el Census 2000. Por supuesto, no todos los hispanos de la Florida son subalternos. La iniciativa del congreso provino del entonces director del Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos, W.E. Carter y de la profesora de lingustica andina, Martha Hardman. Esta ltima edit el libro con las actas del congreso, la transcripcin y traduccin de las intervenciones de los indgenas y otra informacin muy til sobre el evento (Hardman 1975). Los indgenas provenan de Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mxico, Panam, Paraguay, Per y los EE.UU. Entre los asistentes de EE.UU. estaba Russell Means del AIM, American Indian Movement y otros representantes de los pueblos navajo, sioux,chikasaw, cherokee y pueblo. Adems de los profesores, estudiantes de la universidad y miembros de la comunidad de Gainesville, asistieron observadores de Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mxico, Panam, Per. EE. UU. y Canad. Aunque la lengua franca del congreso fue el castellano se escucharon muchas lenguas nativas, especialmente en forma de saludos, mensajes y despedidas. Algunas de ellas fueron: del Per (aguaruna, ayacuchano, wanka y jaqaru), Bolivia (aymara), Guatelama (cakchiquel, kekchi, y quiche), Mxico (chinantec, huasteco, nahua y maya yucateco), Paraguay (guaran), Panam (cuna y guaymi), Chile (mapuche), Ecuador (quichua y shuara), y Colombia (guajiro). La edicin de Hardman provee transcripciones de algunos textos y saludos en estas lenguas. Por eso se arregl que por las maanas se reunieran los indgenas a solas. En las tardes ellos tenan la plataforma para decirnos a nosotros lo que a ellos mejor les pareca (Hardman, Prefacio a las actas 6, nfasis mo). El nosotros a que alude Hardman es, para los indgenas visitantes, un Otro investido de una intelectualidad de la cultura hegemnica occidental percibida por ambas partes como superior. Quizs muchos de nosotros estamos aqu en ciertos estratos desde el punto de vista culturaldice, percibiendo esta inferioridad, Dimas Bautista Iturrizaga (jaqi del Per)pero eso no ha dejado que nosotros dejemos de ser indgenas (Hardman 50).
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Entrevista telefnica con Martha Hardman, mayo 7 del 2004.
Por lo general mediante los profesores que hacan su trabajo de campo all. Brasil y las Guyanas se excluyeron por razones de la lengua franca escogida y pases como Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Nicaragua y Honduras no tuvieron representantes, seguramente por la falta de contactos en esas zonas en el momento de la organizacin. Los casos de Estanislao Lpez, cacique de los Cuna, y Lorenzo Rodrguez, cacique de los Gaymi, ambos de Panam; Flix Chen (Kekch, Guatemala) era alcalde de San Juan Chamelco, Alta Verapaz.
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Jos Mara Chvez Morales (Quichua del Ecuador) estudio en la University of Wisconsin; Remedios Fajardo Gmez (Guajira de Colombia), en la Universidad Pedaggica Nacional; Ignacio Sols (Cuna de Panam), estudio en la University of Pittsburgh y Juan de Dios Yapita Moya (Aymara, Bolivia) estudi en la University of Florida. Pedro Curihuinca (Mapuche, Chile), profesor de la Universidad de Chile de Temuco, present en el congreso un anlisis del problema de la tenencia de la tierra, agricultura, educacin, salud, economa en torno a su cultura Mapuche (Hardman 19); Pedro Verona Cmez Garca (Cakchiquel, Guatemala) era diputado en el Congreso Nacional de Guatemala; Remedios Fajardo Gmez asesoraba entonces al gobierno de su provincia (la Guajira) en asuntos indgenas. En el Homenaje a los hroes indgenas de las Amricas, Roman Shajin Sakejat (jbaro del Ecuador), comenz diciendo: Seores congresistas y amigos observadores, tengo la suerte de no llevar ninguna mezcla de sangre. Tengo el orgullo de ser indgena americano y hablar ante ustedes, con pocas palabras y en castellano mal hilvanado, nuestra inquietud como pueblos oprimidos y marginados (Hardman 10). La relatora del congreso, la representante guajira (Colombia), por ejemplo, lee el texto de las conclusiones resultantes ante este pblico para que sean analizadas y discutidas. Respecto de la recomendacin No. 6 (Que existen organismos de diverso tipo que operan en los pases de Latinoamrica y en los grupos indgenas que antes que elevar el nivel humano sirven ms bien como elementos de alienacin) un observador pregunt qu se entiende por elemento de alienacin? Esto, a su vez, propicia la siguiente intervencin aclaratoria de un observador de Per, Clotaldo Soto: La verdad es que en Latinoamrica existen organizaciones especialmente de origen extranjero que bajo la intencin de ayudar a los indgenas, no s si consciente o inconscientemente (...) tratan de introducir realidades distintas a las culturas de los grupos indgenas (Hardman 52). Esta seccin del congreso representa quizs la mejor y ms productiva instancia de dilogo entre los indgenas y los intelectuales de la universidad. Ejemplos de ellos son Demetrio Rodrguez Guajn Raxch (autor de Cultura maya y polticas de desarrollo, Ciudad de Guatenala: COCADI, 1989), Salvador Palomino Flores, Enrique Sam Colop, Demetrio Cojt Cuxil (autor de Configuracin del pensamiento politico del pueblo maya, Quetzaltenando, Guatemala: Asociacin de Escritores Mayances de Guatemala, 1991), Ailton Krenak (editor de Nucleus of Indian Culture/Indian Research Center. So Paulo: Ncleo de Cultura Indgena, 1996) (vase bibliografa en Warren y Jackson). En Colombia hay intelectuales y activistas como Lorenzo Muelas de Guamba, Alfonso Pea
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Chepe (de la comunidad Nasa) y Francisco Rojas Birry (de la comunidad Ember) quienes participaron en la asamblea nacional constituyente que redact la constitucin colombiana de 1991 (vase Rappaport 2003, 337). Otros lderes e intelectuales de este pas son Jess Enrique Piacu (presidente del Consejo Regional Indgena del Cauca, CRIC), Alberto Achito (miembro de la comunidad EmberaKato del Choc), Jess Rodrguez (miembro del pueblo Wayu), Leonor Zalabata (miembro del pueblo Arhuaco), lvaro Morales Tunubal (del pueblo Guambiano), Arregocs Conchal Zalabata (del pueblo Kogi), Gerardo Antonio Jim (del pueblo Ember y recientemente electo senador de la Repblica) (vase Correa y Jimeno). La lista es parcial. Dict una conferencia el 17 de octubre de 2002 y se titul: Connecting with cultures and communities through language: The Maya Case. Segn el U.S. Census 2000 hay 53,541indgenas en el estado de la Florida, es decir, el 0.3% (en 1990 la poblacin indgena era solamente de 36,335 habitantes). Si se considera tambin a aquellos individuos que admiten ser una combinacin de indgena con otro grupo tnico (American Indian and Alaska Native alone or in combination population) el nmero de habitantes indgenas en 2000 sube a 117,880 habitantes. Vase The American Indian and Alaska Native Population: 2000, Census Brief. U.S. Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration, U.S. Census Bureau. Uno de cada diez ciudadanos guatemaltecos vive actualmente en los EE.UU.: There are especially large and cohesive Guatemalan Maya groups residing in various communities in Florida, Texas, Horda Island, and California, and dispersed throughout the 50 states and Canada (Rodman Ruiz 11).
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Sobre la emigracin maya a la Florida vase Burns.
Entre sus obras estn: Kanil, Man of Lightning. Spanish Jacalteca (Ed. bilinge. Ranco Palos Verdes, CA: Fundacin Yax t, 1999); El pjaro que limpia el mundo y otras fbulas mayas (Ranco Palos Verdes, CA: Fundacin Yax t, 2000); Testimonio: muerte de una comunidad indgena en Guatemala (Guatemala: Editorial Universitaria, 1993); The Dynamics of Cultural Resistance and Transformations: the Case of Guatemalan-Mayan Refugees in Mexico (1993); Voices from Exile: Violence and Survival in Modern Maya History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999). La lista es parcial. Gracias a Allan Burns por ayudarme a discernir este aspecto del tratamiento recibido por Montejo. Segn Warren y Jackson, la construccin de identidades subalternas pueden ser supectibles de manipulacin tanto de parte de los indgenas como de la
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sociedad hegemnica: Discourses of racial difference and inferiority are another form of essentialism, and their virulence in Latin America reminds us that essentialism can be coercively imposed by the state as well as deployed by indigenous groups as a form of resistance to demeaning political imaginaries and policies (8). Min es explcito en la peligrosidad de la negacin de la identidad indgena: la posibilidad de que grupos financieros de su pas desalojaran a los indgenas de las tierras de sus antepasados, ricas de minerales estratgicos, codiciados por las grandes compaas multinacionales (Min 17). Por ejemplo, segn ilustra Gros el gobierno colombiano ha intentado desvirtuar la indigenidad de las comunidades indgenas con el propsito de negarles la posibilidad de que, amparados en remanentes leyes coloniales, reclamen legalmente y como comunidad las tierras en que viven (Gros 1991). La University of Florida es un lugar predominantemente de blancos. Sus estadsticas sobre la etnicidad de sus empleados, incluidos los profesores, ofrece el siguiente panorama: de un total de 11.292 empleados, 28 son indgenas americanos, 406 somos hispanos, 652 asiticos, 1.523 afro-americanos y 8.683 son blancos. Vase Employees by Ethnicity, Rank and Employment Status, Fall 2003, UF Facts, Office of Institutional Research: www.ir.ufl.edu Como ha ilustrado Jean Jackson Indigenous communities are targeted by all the armed groups: military (army and police), paramilitaries (Autodefensas de Colombia, AUC-Self-Defense Forces of Colombia), and insurgents (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, FARC-Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, and the Ejrcito de Liberacin Nacional, ELN-the National Liberation Army). (Jackson 2003). En cuanto a los desplazados Hylton dice: The country has the third highest number of internal refugees in the world with over 2.9 million, out of a population of nearly 45 million, driven from their homes in the countryside (Hylton 52). Beverley, por ejemplo, imagina una participacin poltica a favor del subalterno en un frente politico multicultural en el que la diversidad del pueblo y de los subalternos se enfrente a la cultura hegemnica burguesa: Such a politics would seek to articulate the people as a historical block, in Gramscis sense, but not as a unitary, homogeneously modern subject, for example). Rather, the people (and so, too, the nation) are itself internally fissured, heterogeneous, multiple. This people-multitude or people-as-many would be the political form of the egalitarian imaginary inherent in multicultural heterogeneity (2001, 57). Caso de organizaciones globales de resistencia como el Comit de Unidad Campesina, CUC, que surge en 1978 con el propsito de agrupar a todas las organizaciones campesinas e impulsar la lucha conjunta obrero-campesina
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INTELECTUALES, COMUNIDADES INDGENAS... (Burgos 275), y a la que se unen los maya-quich de Rigoberta Mench.
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El espacio social del intelectual crtico en Colombia hoy es tambin un objetivo militar de los grupos armados. El profesor Jess Antonio Bejarano, consultor de varios gobiernos en el proceso de paz y profesor de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia, fue asesinado en el campus mientras iba para clase en septiembre de 1999; Hernn Henao, antroplogo de la Universidad de Antioquia, fue asesinado en su misma oficina del campus; tambin Eduardo Umaa Mendoza, defensor de los derechos Humanos y crtico del status quo fue asesinado en abril de 1998. Igual suerte han corrido investigadores del Centro de Investigaciones y de Educacin Popular, CINEP, por similar postura crtica. Junto con la recuperacin de sus tierras y la defensa de su identidad cultural, el respeto de parte de la sociedad hegemnica es objetivo central en la lucha de los indgenas. Dimas Bautista Iturrizaga, dirigindose a su auditorio, encuentra tres objetivos del congreso de la University of Florida de 1975: conocernos en primer lugar, para entendernos luego, y posteriormente organizarnos en forma fuerte, para pedir que tambin los indgenas seamos tratados como humanos (Hardman 50, nfasis de editora). Patricia Seed llega incluso a indicar que para los indgenas colonizados por culturas de origen ibrico es ms importante el logro del respeto que el de otras reivindicaciones: The English had conquered property, categorically denying the natives true ownership of their land. Spaniards on the other hand, had conquered people, allowing sedentary natives to retain their terrain in exchange for social humiliation. Thus regaining soil comes first on the agenda of aboriginal communities once dominated by England, whereas seeking human respect is central to contemporary aboriginal struggles in regions once controlled by Spain (Seed 2001b, 2). Han sido una buena voluntad y generosidad que no se han quedado sin recompensa, por supuesto. No solamente Burgos se ha beneficiado enormemente del prestigio y visibilidad de la ahora premio Nobel de la Paz sino que la autora del testimonio que le dio la fama a la Mench le rinde las respectivas regalas de autor. Gracias a Luis Fernando Restrepo por sealar este detalle. Bill Weinberg (2004) explica la rebelion as: Because of its proximity to Mexico Citys new yuppie economy, it is undergoing a development boom. In the 1980s, the village of Tepoztlan became a fashionable place for the Mexico City elite to build second homes. But in September 1995, when a Cuernavaca development group unveiled plans for a giant GTE computer complex and golf course on Tepoztlans communal lands, the Tepozteco staged an uprising, erecting roadblocks, kicking out all the PRI politicians and bureaucrats, and declaring the town in rebellion against the Morelos state government. Central to the issue was the
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towns limited supply of water, needed to maintain the world-class golf green. After a year stand-off, which climaxed in the death of an elderly Indian militant at the hands of state police, the developer pulled out of Tepoztlan. Estrategia militar que augura ms violencia dada la fortaleza histrica de la guerrilla la cual, segn Hylton, ha dependido de cuatro factores todava presentes en Colombia: the closure of the political system; the extent of the countrys agrarian frontiers; its highly divided and corrugated topography; and the contingencies of the coca boom (Hylton 91). Me refiero a las muy osadas y riesgosas medidas del presidente Uribe Vlez (que incrementa la violencia en los espacios de accin de los indgenas) de ampliar los poderes de su poder ejecutivo, proveer de armas a los campesinos para su autodefensa, y la creacin de un cuerpo de un milln de informantes sobre las actividades de los insurgentes y la oposicin (vase Hagen). Aunque acierta (en el epgrafe con que inici este trabajo) al recoger el concepto crucial de Chakrabarty de la inevitable negociacin que las comunidades locales tienen que hacer con la sociedad hegemnica para asegurar su supervivencia (espacio de negociacin en que cabe el intelectual hegemnico), Thurner no acierta con su cuestionamiento del uso que las comunidades indgenas hacen del trmino resistencia. El cuestionamiento tiene sentido en un contexto terico-acadmico (resistir no es, por supuesto, lo mismo que negociar). Sin embargo, cuando el trmino est en manos de los indgenas que a duras penas han sobrevivido tanto una explotacin por quinientos aos como los recurrentes programas nacionales de exterminio en todas las Amricas, el trmino resistencia adquiere una legitimidad ajena al intelectual hegemnico y alude tanto a la violencia sufrida as como a sus dramticas transigencias (o negociaciones) para escapar de la muerte (individual y de sus cultuturas). El prurito acadmico de pureza terminolgica de Thurner termina desconociendo la violencia que sufre el subalterno. Convocado por el Consejo Regional Indgena del Cauca, CRIC, la Direccin General de Asuntos Indgenas del Ministerio del Interior, el Ministerio de Justicia y la Defensora del Pueblo. Tuvo una masiva participacin de 500 indgenas, autoridades tradicionales, cabildos, gobernadores, lderes y representantes de diversos pueblos y comunidades indgenas de diferentes regiones del pas. Correa, junto con Gladis Jimeno, edit en octubre de ese mismo ao el libro que contiene las intervenciones de los participantes en este histrico seminario, demostrando as su voluntad en la divulgacin masiva en Colombia de los temas de las reivindicaciones indgenas. El libro fue publicado ese mismo ao (vase Correa y Jimeno).
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Est especie de mcula atvica del intelectual es algo que Rogoberta Mench no deja de sealar al referirse a uno de sus aliados metropolitanos y su incapacidad en razn de su condicin de intelectual: Ese seor era un compaero que haba optado mucho por los pobres. Aunque tengo que reconocer que era de clase media. Era una persona que tuvo acceso a estudios, que lleg a sacar su profesin y todo eso. Pero tena claro que tena que compartir todas sus cosas, incluso sus conocimientos con los pobres. Le gustaba trabajar ms a nivel de colaborador. No quera ser miembro del CUC [Comit de Unidad Campesina] porque l deca, no merezco llamarme campesino porque yo soy un hombre intelectual. El reconoca la incapacidad que tena muchas veces de hacer o de conocer tantas cosas que el campesino conoce, o como las que el pobre conoce. Deca, yo no sabra hablar de hambre como un campesino (Burgos 192). Aunque Rabasa estaba en Mxico por razones de su investigacin sobre la cultura nahualt (realizada en archivos de la Ciudad de Mxico) y en Tepoztln por eventualidades de su alojamiento, su programa de investigacin no tena nada que ver con los indgenas de Tepoztln ni con la rebelin de que fue testigo directo. Entrevista telefnica con Rabasa (Mayo 19, 2004). Recurro aqu a la nocin de Chatterjee de la universalidad que buscan la modernidad y el capitalismo como peligrosamente opuesta a la integridad de las comunidades locales: It is the narrative of capital that can turn the violence of mercantilist trade, war, genocide, conquest and colonialism into a story of universal progress, development, modernization, and freedom. For this narrative to take shape, the destruction of community is fundamental (Chatterjee 235).
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Adorno, Theodore. 1991. The Essay as Form en Notes to Literature. New York: Columbia University Press. 3-23. Beverley, John. 1999. Subalternity and Representation. Arguments in Cultural Theory. Durham and London: Duke University Press. , 2001. The Im/Possibility of Politics: Subalternity, Modernity, Hegemony. The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader. Ed. Ileana Rodrguez. Durham and London: Duke University Press. 45-63. Bourdieu, Pierre. [1977] 2000. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge University Press.
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Burgos, Elizabeth. 1983. Me llamo Rigoberta Mench y as me naci la conciencia. N.p. Arco Iris. Burns, Allan F. 1993. Mayas in Exile. Guatemalans in Florida. Intro. Jernimo Camposeco. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Castro-Klarn, Sara. 2002. Writing with his Thumb in the Air. Coloniality, Past and Present. In Colonialism Past and Present. Reading and Writing about Colonial Latin America Today. Eds. Alvaro Flix Bolaos and Gustavo Verdesio. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. 261287. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2000. Provincializing Europe. Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Chatterjee, Partha. 1993. The Nation and its Fragments. Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Correa, Hernn Daro y Gladis Jimeno. 1997. Editores. Del olvido surgimos para traer nuevas esperanzas. La jurisdiccin especial indgena. Santaf de Bogot: Ministerio de Justicia y del Derecho, Direccin General de Asuntos Indgenas del Ministerio del Interior, Consejo Regional Indgena del Cauca-CRIC. Correa, Hernn Daro. 1997. Algunos problemas. Del olvido surgimos para traer nuevas esperanzas. La jurisdiccin especial indgena. Santaf de Bogot: Ministerio de Justicia y del Derecho, Direccin General de Asuntos Indgenas del Ministerio del Interior, Consejo Regional Indgena del Cauca-CRIC. 343350. , 2002. Nosotros, los mismos. Ensayos sobre extravos y bsquedas del Otro en Colombia, Bogot: CEREC. CRIC. 2002. Carta abierta del Consejo Regional Indgena del Cauca: La resistencia indgena frente a la actual crisis nacional, Popayn, marzo de 2002. Los indgenas y la paz. Bogot: Organizacin Nacional Indgena de Colombia, Consejo Indgena de Paz. 63-68. Gramsci, Antonio. 1971. The Intellectuals. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Eds. And trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith. New York: International Publishers. 5-25. Gros, Christian. 1991. Ha dicho Ud. Indio? El Estado y los criterios que definen el carcter de indgena en Colombia y Brasil. Colombia indgena. Identidad cultural y cambio social. Bogot: CEREC, 201-244. Hagen Jason. 2003. Conflict and Security. Uribes People: Civilians and the Colombian Conflict. Washington Office on Latin America, WOLA. Winter/Spring. 65-71. www.wola.org/colombia/uribe_people.pdf
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Hall, Stuart. [1993] 1999. Cultural Studies and its Theoretical Legacies. The Cultural Studies Reader. Ed. Simon During. London and New York: Routledge. 97-109. Handley, William R. 2002. Marriage, Violence, and the Nation in the American Literary West. Cambridge University Press. Hardman, Martha. Ed. 1975. Los americanos autctonos opinan. XXV Simposio del Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos de la Universidad de la Florida. Ed. Martha Hardman. Gainesville, Florida: State University Press of Florida. Hylton, Forrest. 2003. An Evil Hour. Uribes Colombia in Historical Perspective. New Left Review 23: 51-91. Jackson, Jean. 2003. The Crisis in Colombia: Consequences for Indigenous Peoples. American Anthropological Association. M.I.T. March, 2003. Electronic edition. http://www.aaanet.org/committees/cfhr/rpt_crisis_in_columbia.htm Lpez, Mara Milagros. 2001. Solidarity as Event, Communism as Personal Practice, and Disencounters in the Politics of Desire. The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader. Ed. Ileana Rodrguez. Durham and London: Duke University Press. 64-80. Los indgenas y la paz. 2002. Pronunciamientos, resoluciones, declaraciones y otros documentos de los pueblos y organizaciones indgenas sobre la violencia armada en sus territorios, la bsqueda de la paz, la autonoma y resistencia. Bogot: Organizacin Nacional Indgena de Colombia, Consejo Indgena de Paz. Lucas, Kintos. 2000. We Will not Dance on our Grandparents Tombs. Indigenous Uprisings in Ecuador. Trans. Dinah Livingston. London: Catholic Institute for International Relations, CIIR. Min, Gianni. 1998. Prlogo. Rigoberta: la nieta de los mayas. Rigoberta Mench, con la colaboracin de Dante Liano y Gianni Min. Madrid: Aguilar. 15-20. Mench, Rigoberta. 1998. Rigoberta: la nieta de los mayas. Con la colaboracin de Gianni Min y Dante Liano. Mxico: Aguilar. Piacu, Jess Enrique. 1997. Apoyo internacional a las luchas de los pueblos indgenas del Cauca. Del olvido surgimos para traer nuevas esperanzas. La jurisdiccin especial indgena. Santaf de Bogot: Ministerio de Justicia y del Derecho, Direccin General de Asuntos Indgenas del Ministerio del Interior, Consejo Regional Indgena del Cauca-CRIC. 362-373.
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Rabasa, Jos. 2001. Beyond Representation? The Impossibility of the Local (Notes on Subaltern Studies in Light of a Rebellion in Tepoztln, Morelos). The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader. Ed. Ileana Rodrguez. Durham and London: Duke University Press. 191-210. Rappaport, Joanne. 2003. Redrawing the Nation. Indigenous Intellectuals and Ethnic Pluralism in Contemporary Colombia. After Spanish Rule. Postcolonial Predicaments of the Americas. Eds. Mark Thurner and Andrs Guerrero. Durham & London: Duke University Press. 310-346. Read, Malcolm. 2003. Educating Educator. Hispanism and its Institutions. Newark: University of Delaware Press. Rodman Ruiz, Debra. 2004. Maya Migration: Transnational Indigenous Identities. Cultural Survival Voices, Spring 2004, vol. 3, issue 1, page 11. (www.cs.org). Rodrguez, Ileana. 2001. Reading Subalterns Across Texts, Disciplines, and Theories: From Representation to Recognition. In The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader. Ed. Ileana Rodrguez. Durham and London: Duke University Press. 1-32. Said, Edward W. 1994. Representations of the Intellectual. The 1993 Reith Lectures. New York: Pantheon Books. Snchez Gmez, Gonzalo. 2001. El compromiso social y poltico de los intelectuales. Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies 7, 2: 133-149. Seed, Patricia. 2001a. No Perfect World: Aboriginal Communities Contemporary Resource Rights. The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader. Ed. Ileana Rodrguez. Durham and London: Duke University Press. 129-142. , 2001b. American Pentimento. The Invention of Indians and the Pursuit of Riches. Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1994. Can the Subaltern Speak? Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory. A Reader. Eds. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman. New York: Columbia University Press. 66-111. Thurner, Mark. 2003. After Spanish Rule. Writing Another After. After Spanish Rule. Postcolonial Predicaments of the Americas. Eds. Mark Thurner and Andrs Guerrero. Durham & London: Duke University Press. 12-57. Warren, Kay B. and Jean E. Jackson. Introduction. Studying Indigenous Activism in Latin America. Indigenous Movements. Self-Representation, and the State in Latin America. Eds. Kay B. Warren and Jean Jackson. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002. 1-46. Weinberg, Bill. 2004. Beyond Chiapas: Mexicos other Indian war. Indian Country Today, May 3. http://www.indiancountry.com
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POST-OBITUARY: WE ARE DEAD. LONG LIVE SUBALTERN STUDIES IN THE AMERICAS!

Fernando Coronil University of Michigan
Obituary: a published notice of a death, usually with a brief biography of the deceased The American Heritage Dictionary
bituaries are typically written by the relatives most intimately related to the deceased. I was present at the public birth of the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group during a Latin American Studies Association convention in 1992 (soon after it was conceived at a small gathering at George Mason University in 1992), accepted an invitation to join it at a meeting in Puerto Rico in 1996, and learned of its demise at LASA in 2001 just as I had learned of its birth, as part of the ordinary public attending the meetings. Although I knew that our life as a group was far from stable, and more than once it seemed to us that we were about to fall apart, I must confess that I was startled to learn through a public announcement that we had passed away. Far be it from me, then, to write even a brief biography of the deceased. Yet, in recognition of the Groups contribution to Latin American studies, to subaltern studies, and to my own work, I wish to respond to the public notice of our death in the same spirit of critical solidarity with which I welcomed the announcement of the Groups birth. From the outset, I saw the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group as the auspicious and yet confined expression of a magnificent project. The Group made it indispensable to rethink the intellectual and political engagements that had defined the
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field of Latin American studies. Still, its urgent call to go beyond traditional area studies and disciplinary conventions was smoothly cast in terms of the conventions of its own times. In my view, the project it allowed itself to imagine exceeded its incarnation in the group and even its identification as subaltern studies. A failed grant proposal submitted to the Rockefeller Foundation, its Founding Statement served as the Groups public presentation as the avant-garde embodiment of intellectual radicalism and theoretical discernment in an era of political disillusions and theoretical disenchantment. The call to redefine scholarly work on Latin America was presented as an intellectual and political response to the shortcomings of progressive movements in the region (with which some of its members had had close links). As the option of working towards radical change in Latin America no longer seemed viable in an era of utopian disillusion, the Group focused its attention unto academia, turning the university into a central political battleground. Riding smoothly atop the postmodern wave of the 1990s, the statement offered a sweeping overview of major stages of Latin American Studies, rejecting their common modernist foundations with typical postmodern self-assurance about its own uncertain foundations. The Group thus came into the world with its head turned towards the future. Radical intellectual politicsas a preferential option for the poorand theoretical discernmentas a critique of elitist attempts to represent the subalternwere indeed two rather formidable aspirations, particularly in the Americas, a continent that had already produced a plethora of creative attempts to relate and redefine letters and action on behalf of emancipatory projects. As if to mark its difference and to signal its search for new approaches, the Group established its affinity with a project produced in lands rather distant from the Americas. Just as parents name a child after a figure that may serve as an ideal role model, the group named itself after the South Asian Subaltern Studies Group. A tight collective of eight young historians of India under the leadership of Ranajit Guha, the South Asian Subaltern Studies Group was committed to recasting Indian historiography by recognizing the role of subaltern sectors in its making. Guhas group pushed beyond British social history by treating the subaltern not just as an object of historical scholarship, but as a political subject whose appropriate study would necessarily challenge history as a discipline and question, more broadly, the epistemological foundations of Western knowledge. Standing with one foot on
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Gramscis shoulders (and the Marxist tradition he represented) and the other on Foucault (and the poststructural wave he helped shape), by 1992 the group had already produced innovative historical works that effectively contested imperial, nationalist, and Marxist historiographies of India. Inspired by this achievement, founders of the Latin American Subaltern Studies group acknowledged that their shared concerns had made them establish towards the South Asian group an unmediated recognition and spiritual affinity. But, like selecting a name for ones child, choosing a model always entails complex mediations: a choice of this sort involves the negotiation of inclusions, exclusions, and therefore the management of risks. Why was this name selected over others? How to explain to my close aunt that I chose to name my child after her distant cousin? And even if I could persuade her of her cousins merits, I may fail to convince other relatives, particularly those already concerned about my influence over family affairs. Developed in influential metropolitan centers, the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group risked imposing a general standard for the region. Of course, particularly in an era given to the critique of foundations and essentialisms, it would make little sense to opt for familial or regional loyalties against superior political and intellectual affiliations. Indeed, one of the merits of the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group was its courage in establishing its own affinities, even at the risk of not sufficiently recognizing how much it owed to its own ancestors and could still learn from them. Its chosen affiliation certainly offered an opportunity, but it also entailed this risk. The choice of Subaltern Studies as a model offered two additional risks. The distant spiritual relative may prove to be surprisingly unfamiliar after all. And its ongoing evolution, given its youthful energy, could bring surprising challenges to the newborn. It makes sense that parents typically prefer to choose to name their children after dead or very old close relatives. A completed life provides relative closure, a stable ground for imagining a biography as a meaningful whole. But just as a marble sculpture offers a reassuring sense of permanent plenitude, made more compelling by the awareness that its inspiring earthly figure may have long vanished, a living model conjures up the spectacle of unfolding potentialities, an uncertain struggle made all the more dramatic by the knowledge that there can be no warranties concerning its outcome. A sculpture offers a complete model, a living figure the struggle to define it. It is to its credit that the Latin Amer-
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ican Subaltern Studies Group chose to struggle. Yet, how would it relate to its chosen model, both in its present configuration and as it evolved? This concern was not really addressed by the Founding Statement, as far as I know, and it was not an object of discussion in subsequent meetings. As is often the case with radical beginnings, when anxieties surrounding the always uncertain future are kept at bay, its birth was celebrated with fresh optimism. But then perhaps the Latin American Subaltern Studies Groups enthusiastic affiliation with its South Asian counterpart should not be mistaken as a tight identification, it may have adopted its spiritual relative as an inspiring force, not a tight mold. In fact, there were so many differences between the two groups that it would have been hard for one to serve as a close model for the other. Unlike the South Asian Group, the Latin American Studies Group was not united under a senior leader or common discipline. Of rather different ages, disciplinary training, and personal connections to different Latin American countries, its members shared not a national history with a recent postcolonial past and current political predicament, but a vast continent fragmented into many nations with long and differing entanglements with colonialism and postcolonialism. While the South Asian Subaltern Studies Group was consolidated as an editorial collective through the critical discussion and publication of their individual articles and books, the Latin American Group was configured as a loose federation of scholars who shared political, personal and intellectual affinities; discussion of their individual or collective texts was not the glue that united the group. The work of the South Asian Subaltern Studies Group, either at the outset or as it evolved, did not receive the sustained attention of the Group as a collective. Not even its own Founding Statement was discussed by its founding members before its public release. It was, clearly, a different kind of group. Yet, in the last analysis, the critical question was the work this affiliation would enable, the fecundity of the project of subaltern studies in Latin America. The Latin American Subaltern Studies Group led a particularly agitated and short life. Its membership shifted rather abruptly through time and, by the time of its death, the Group had more new members than old. Throughout these changes, an original handful of core members gave it some stability. But in our meetings, as new members appeared to form another hand, the two hands worked as part of the same body as frequently as they seemed to pull it in different directions in wanting to write different
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scripts for the Group. A broad commitment to progressive politics and to radical intellectual work united its members, but it also heightened the divisiveness of differing interpretations of this commitment. Yet perhaps what distinguished our Group was precisely its heterogeneity, mutability, and mobility. In its short life, within its fluid and contested space, two important collections of articles on Latin American Subaltern Studies were published, both the product of the careful editorial work of some of the Groups founders. And many of its members published individual articles and books that bore the mark of the Groups discussions and engagementsI, for one, am indebted to the Group for helping me define a subaltern perspective as central to my work. A careful review of the Groups collective and individual achievements is beyond the scope of this brief note. I take it as a sign of the Groups agitated vitality that through the work it inspired it came to outgrow the confining framework of its Founding Statement. The new directions were expressed less through collective attempts to define them than through the individual work of its members. It is perhaps the multifarious richness of these openings that made it difficult for the Group to contain them. Now that it has ceased to be, the Group can stay behind, like a snakes dead skin, releasing subaltern studies as the promise it generated but could not quite contain. And free from parental tutelage, subaltern studies may now grow ever stronger and perhaps eventually, like its parent, it will shed its skin and give rise to even more empowering engagements under different outfits from locations no longer identified by our familiar cartography. One may speculate about what would have happened if a critical project of this vast scope had been defined from the outset in other terms or had taken different organizational form. However brief and stormy, the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group had a fecund life. This note celebrates its achievement and the mutable vitality of subaltern studies: it is a post-obituary, not an obituary. We are dead. Long live subaltern studies in the Americas!
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INTERVIEW ABOUT THE SUBALTERN AND OTHER THINGS. A CONVERSATION WITH JOHN BEVERLEY *
Fernando Gmez Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Stanford University.
Making Sense of Gongora and Menchu Inside The Global Postmodernist Matrix of Intelligibility or Convergence.
Fernando Gmez: I might be tempted to say that there are two historical moments you lean on, the Baroque moment (Siglo de Oro) and the twentieth century (modernism or avant-garde). In a sense, I see you walking on two legs, Spanish (Iberian) and Latin American literature, but also the Baroque moment of high culture (Gngora) and the low or abject popular dimension (Mench or Subaltern Studies). Is this fair? John Beverley: Yes, I think thats fair. We have to take up here what postmodernism meant for me. When the postmodernist stuff started circulating I immediately took to it, almost instinctively. I felt very sympathetic to it all, totally uncritical [at first]: Tom Wolfe, Frank Gehry, Blue Velvet, Peewee Hermans Playhouse, postmodern dance, minimalist music, Philip Glass no problem at all. And I was brought up with a modernist aesthetic.
* [This interview took place at the University of Pittsburgh on May 8-12, 2002. What follows is a selection from the complete interview for the special issue of Dispositio/n on Subaltern Studies. The full version of the interview will be included in a forthcoming book of interviews with Latin Americanists titled Foreign Sensibilities]
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But maybe postmodernism is in any case just a perversion of high modernism, in the way Lyotard argued. Jameson suggests that too. My window on postmodernism was, of course, Jameson. But Jamesons own relationship to postmodernism seems to me very vexed because I know he loves all that stuff he writes about, but he thinks its bad because it is a symptom of late capitalism. But he likes it. FG: But your generation is not Jamesons JB: I am one generation removed. FG: That is basically how I see Jameson too. Trained in high modernism and then engaging with postmodernism JB: From a posture of distance and abjection FG: An Adornian kind of take. JB: Yes. FG: And you would be a more Marcusean take, maybe, since, at the sensibility level, you confessed to liking the stuff JB: As to Marcuse, yes and no. I loved it. And I immediately thought that postmodernism is how I would define myself. The ability to say that, the way these Gestalts sometimes happen it is like a paradigm shift, you are floundering around and all these different, contradictory things are happening. But the moment you say postmodernism is like zooming into a new, completely different framework and I think that was what it did that for me. It allowed me to rethink my leftism in a new way. I still consider myself a Marxist in some ways, but I have a very different way of thinking about Marxism, the Left, and history than I did before. A better way, I hope, more democratic, less authoritarian, less voluntaristic. Above all, postmodernism allowed me to get hold of my own investment in popular culture. I felt split between having a new critical literary training and a Marxist political commitment; Jameson allowed me to put these two things together if only momentarily. But like everybody in my generation, I have a heavy investment in American culture. We are, after all, the first generation of humankind raised by television; I watch a lot of television. The same thing could be said about American popular music, film, and so on. This was all part of my formation. The Frankfurt School take on popular culture was one that
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we accepted in principle, but in reality it did not correspond at all with what we were living, which was that American popular culture was one of the enabling conditions for the emergence of the radicalism of the New Left, as opposed to something blocking it. Marcuses vision was that the popular culture was consumerism that hegemonized the working class back into capitalist consensus. Whereas in our experience popular culture had this deep popular-democratic, desublimated dimension to it, and that was enabling. And postmodernism allowed me to get some of that. FG: Did the Frankfurt School take on popular culture strike you as something more or less meaningful according to your California experience and those San Diego years? I am asking because this reading that you are now giving to me is like a new thing later in life or you always felt that way JB: No, I was split and part of the split was due to the Frankfurt School and modernist ideology that was hostile to popular culture; but at the same time I was a consumer of popular culture in an enthusiastic way. And, as I was saying, postmodernism allowed me to reconcile those two things. In Subalternity and Representation (Duke, 1999), I make a defense of the Popular Front (pp. 88-96). I say in effect that the Popular Front was the real basis for Cultural Studies, and that the Left has been able to reconnect with the Popular Front through Cultural Studies, whereas the Frankfurt School model, like the Soviet model or in general the modernist model, were models of top-down cultural protagonism. From a different position than that of the masses or the people, we will produce the correct forms of culture, whereas the Popular Front position was to see in American popular culture a repository of virtues of class resistance, alternative forms of historicity, and notions of cultural heterogeneity and multiplicity. The U.S. is many cultures not just one whereas most avant-gardists would want to make it one! E pluribus unum; cubist collage instead of pastiche. [Walter] Benjamin would be a [possible] hinge between modernism/ postmodernism and the Baroque. You could sayI actually make this argument somewherethat the logic of the Baroque is not all that different from the logic of modernism, so it is not accidental that modernism rehabilitates the Baroque as an aesthetic category after the anti-Baroque position of liberalism, which says that the Baroque is basically reactionary.
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FG: What can you do with the notion of the Baroque today in a U.S. context in the early twenty first century? JB: One of the things that thinking about the Baroque allows you to do is to think in general about how a cultural formationor cultural logic, as Jameson would sayis created and what its internal form is. It is a kind of a Hegelian question: what is the relation between a cultural form and its historical form? And certainly with the Baroque one kind of has a hold on that, with a given social formation, the cultural logic that corresponds to it, and that is not irrelevant for thinking the question of the present. If you can make the equation between the Baroque and modernism that used to be fashionable, then there is also an equivalent fashionable, or perhaps trivial, way of thinking about the Baroque and postmodernism. Even I have committed the sin of talking about a Postmodern Baroque, proliferation, pastiche, etcetera. FG: This would be the Gruzinski take, and I use this name but many other people are doing this kind of thing. JB: Exactly. But if that is true, then thinking the Baroque is another way of thinking about the presentin a way it always was, right? History is always in some sense about the present. The question of the present is for me U.S. culture. I would say that this is the unsolved element in my work: what is my relationship to U.S. culture? Because for a series of reasons having spent most of my childhood in Latin America, Third World issues having a lot of prestige in the 1960s, going into Spanish literature instead of English or American literatureI have never really come to terms with U.S. culture. I can speak more comfortably and polemically about issues in Latin American culture, even Spanish culture, than I can about issues in American culture. And somehow that seems a problem. FG: It also seems a bit odd. JB: And that problem seems to be aggravated by the fact that, as you know, the criticism that I have been getting personally, or that the Subaltern Studies Group has been getting, is that we export metropolitan theory to the periphery. Of course, I argued against what I called the neo-Arielism of that critique. But at the same time I recognize an element of truth in it, which is, that if Subaltern Studies is going to have any effective power in Latin America, it has to be there. It has in one way or another to reorganize
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the way historians, literary critics and cultural people in Latin America think of what they do in new kinds of ways and not just be something that is happening in five or six departments in the U.S. The U.S./Latin America binary, I realize, is not as rigid as it used to be. But one of the consequences of that criticism is to impel me to think more and more about shifting my attention away from Latin America and closer to the U.S. And I have tried to do so by teaching on and off U.S. Latino literature, without claiming to be be an expert or even especially knowledgeable in the field. But this I understand as an intermediary position, and maybe I need to do something more dramatic than that. At the same time I find it hard to disconnect completely from Spanish and Latin American things.
Clarifying a Few Things About Subalternity and Latin American Studies.

FG: Let me ask you for a few clarifications in relation to your idea of Latin American Subaltern Studies. When you talk about the rhetorical figure of substitution and metalepsis in relation to subaltern studies, what do you mean by that in what sounds like a thinking strategy? JB: Thats a reference to Spivaks discussion of agency in Deconstructing Historiography. She says that there is a problem in the work of the Subaltern Studies historians. Ranajit Guha, for example, says that the aim of his work is against the whole historical tradition that denies political agency to peasant rebels and bandits. He is thinking for example of Eric Hobsbwans characterization of peasant insurgencies as pre-political. Spivak says that this is a good goal, politically, but that it runs afoul of the other direction of Subaltern Studies, which is to deconstruct the discourses that constitute subjects as subaltern in the first place. In other words, there is a difference between claiming agency for subaltern subjects and deconstructing discourses of history, culture, power in terms of which the subaltern is denied agency. The metalepsis is the substitution of cause for effect or vice versa. I will try to invent a metalepsis for you: The subaltern is an effect of certain discourses, and hence the metaleptic gesture of the Subaltern Studies historians is to make something that is the effect of discursive construction of difference the cause of political action.
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FG: Fine. But what does that mean? On the one hand the subaltern dimension is thought about in terms of what is and cannot be represented and put on display gracefully or invitingly at the official level, what you say cannot be put safely inside University circles. So, o.k., if this is how we think about it, what does it mean to make it a cause? In your essay in The Latin American Studies Reader (The Im/possibility of Politics: Subalternity, Modernity, Hegemony, 47-63), you write about a metalepsis that nevertheless inescapably characterizes [the subaltern subject], since its alterity is bound structurally to forms of subordination and exploitation that cannot be unfixed [sic] except by a radical change in social relations (52). JB: That was intended to critique Spivaks position. Deconstruction and subaltern studies seem to come together around certain issues. In some ways you can even imagine deconstruction as the theoretical correlative of subaltern studies. That is certainly Spivaks gesture and perhaps also Alberto Moreirass. In my own articulation, however, there is a moment in which deconstruction and subaltern studies move away from each other. And this has to do with a recognition of the limits of critical thinking and the limits of intellectuals. I think one of the key issues that brought together initially the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group was a sense of the limitations of intellectuals as agents of history and hegemony. And that sense took the form of a self-criticism of our own sense of agency as literary intellectuals in relation to Latin American revolutionary movements in the 1970s and 1980s. So, since we were mainly literary intellectuals, it involved necessarily the critique of literature. The notion that a kind of progressive, modernist, democratic, left-oriented literature, such as the one produced by the Boom or people like Ernesto Cardenal, Roque Dalton, or Cuban writers of the Retamar type, and the Calibanesque role of the intellectual, came into crisis for us. I would say this was a strong animating idea: that somehow we should no longer see intellectuals as the main agents of hegemony, consciousness, history. That is why we decentered literature, the vanguardist assumptions of Boom literary ideology. It seemed to us, at least according to Ramas argument, that literature simply reinscribed colonial cultural stratifications in societies where literacy was not by any means generalized. And it was not clear it was ever going to be generalized. FG: And that is what your students tell you at Pittsburgh: we dont want literature. We dont need literature. Bye, bye, let us do something else. What figure would you propose instead of Caliban?
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JB: That was the image we wanted to critique because we were the Calibans in one way or another. We still had the idea that the model for what we were doing in cultural theory, criticism and literature and the model was Retamars Caliban, the post-colonial intellectual, Fanon or even someone like Edward Said. And that was what we wanted to critique. In other words, we started from a position that coincided with Retamar and Said, but then moved into a critique of the adequacy of the literary intellectual who wishes to rework the canon in the name of postcoloniality. We wanted to displace agency towards a broader subject. In that sense, Cultural Studies was implicated in our conception of Subaltern Studies, because Cultural Studies was already taking the step of saying that hermeneutic authority is no longer located in the place of the traditional intellectual, the letrado, the humanistic intellectual, but is now displaced to a multiform popular subject that is literally ungraspable because it is too large. It is millions, statistically speaking. FG: If you let me insist, what would the new image be? JB: The subaltern. FG: In trying to imagine the subaltern I can only come up with something like a faceless multitude. JB: That is one way of imagining it. There is both coincidence and discrepancy between the notion of the multitude, as it gets articulated by people like Paolo Virno and Antonio Negri, and the notion of the subaltern. But yes, the subaltern could be seen in this way. I suppose one difference would be that the subaltern is always concretely situated in cultural dynamics that constitute him or her as subaltern, whether these have to do with class, race, gender, language, or the like. Whereas the multitude is a more amorphous concept. It designates a kind of excess or supplementarity that late capitalism supposedly produces in populations that are no longer bound to national frames, ethnic frames, or [orthodox] forms of identity, and so begin to spill over and radicalize in certain ways. Another way to put this anticipating what might have been another discussionis that one point of difference with Hardt and Negri is that I see them basically articulating a Menshevik argumentWallerstein fits this tooin the sense that they say that the fruition of capitalism is a precondition for the creation of revolutionary, anti-capitalist subjects; and now capitalism is coming into full frui-
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tionthe living situation is one that transcends the interregnum of the nation-state and forms of identity tied to the nation-state. So now that we have diasporic semi-proletarian populations that seek to escape the frame of the nation and traditional forms of community, we have also the possibility of radical negation of capitalism. Thats in any case how Virno and Negri see it.
Many Roads, One (Modern) Rome? Or Many Roads, Many Romes? Or About the Unfittingness of Indian (Subaltern) Testimonio Inside a Singularizing Modernizing Capitalist Frame.
FG: Do you see all these three authors, Hardt, Negri and Wallerstein, essentially saying that all roads lead to Rome, while you will say something like there are many roads and many Romes JB: Yes. I think testimonio is in some way implicated in this predilection for the displacement of agency. It suggests a different hermeneutic model. In the case of Rigoberta Mench, what constitutes the subjectivity that Hardt and Negri want to call the subjectivity of the multitude, which I am sure they mean to include Mench or people like her involved in struggles in Guatemala, Chiapas, Palestine, etcetera? This is in part a subjectivity defined by new, transnational forms of capitalism, but also by resistance to these new forms. The traditional debate about what was called the Indian question in Latin America was a debate about how Indians would become available to the Left as political subjects. And the orthodox Marxist answer was as Indians become proletarianized and acculturated, they would become available to the Left. So the Left should support policies of industrialization, agricultural modernization, cultural mestizaje that would bring Indians into the historical framework of modernity in which the discourse of Marxist or populist parties would become relevant to them. What we became aware of, in taking up the Indian question from a subalternist perspective, is that the radical potential of Indian movements in Latin America was precisely predicated on the resistance to becoming incorporated into capitalist frameworks. If the model you are proposing in Guatemala, for example, is the Communist Party model of drawing Indians into becoming a ladino or mestizo labor force and losing their identity as Indians, then Indians in general would not participate in or identify with the
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Left. Whereas what happens in Guatemala in the 1970s is precisely that the Left changes its perception of the Indian question away from a paradigm of modernization, in which the Left is going to create a modern society in which the Indians will be transformed into modern, Spanish-speaking subjects, in a supposedly democratic state that will represent them adequately, unlike the existing oligarchic regime that simply beats them over the head. In fact, economic modernity is seen as the pre-condition of acculturation of Indians. But Indian demands are radical to the extent that they constitute demands that cannot be met by the forces of capitalist modernization, because they involve forms of community, land tenure, education, and so on that do not fit into a modernizing model. And it is to that extent that Indians are potentially revolutionary subjects. What is driving agency, at least on the part of Indians, then, is a resistance to formal and real subsumption under capitalist relations of production: as global capitalism increasingly impacts on their lives, they also become increasingly aware of their destructive effects it has on their lives. The historical dynamic of the Left in Latin America always seemed to be tied to a telos of modernization: the bourgeoisie was unable to create modern societies because of its contradictions, dependency theory told us. But the goal was still modernity, connected with the march of history moving forward into the creation of national identities that would also be modern and relatively homogeneous, whereas colonialism and dependent capitalism left us with these nations that are not really homogenous or sovereign. The Sandinistas had that modernizing vision for example in the desire of incorporating the Atlantic coast, because it had never been completely integrated into the rest of Nicaragua by the oligarchies. The Subalternist perspective was questioning that telos of modernization and opening up a sense that different sections of the population could have different goals that could not necessarily be summed up by some image of modernity that we inherited from European culture or classical Marxism. This has to do with the displacement of intellectuals we were talking about earlier, because the intellectuals are the engineers of the project of modernity. The Calibanesque intellectual who is a politician, an artist, a writer, an architect producing a form of modernity and transculturation that is adequate, or so s/he thinks, to creating a more modern, democratic, representative state and society in Latin America.
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FG: You talk in your essay in The Latin American Subaltern Studies Raeder about the subaltern as the subject that interrupts [sic in quotation marks in the original] the modern narrative of the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the rise of the nation-state You talk about the self-recognition on the part of intellectuals of their very limited and limiting power. You also locate the subaltern near the category of the abject (51) JB: I think the way intellectuals think about the subaltern is that the subaltern is abject. I dont think the subaltern thinks of itself as abject. FG: It is always a bit difficult to grasp the subaltern. It is as though the subaltern, often in the neutral-gender, third-person singular abstract form, were some kind of star out there. I see you in this essay still clinging to the notion of the impossibility of representation. Why dont you just throw away the notion of representation altogether, or would this be throwing out the baby with the bath water? JB: I thought I had thrown it away actually. I thought Spivak paradoxically still clings to the notion of representation. If you read Deconstructing Historiography, in a way it is a response avant la lettre to the position the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group took, and that I myself took in my work on testimonio. My earliest testimonio essay first comes out in 1987 in Revista de Crtica Literaria Latinoamericana (25, pp. 7-17), and then in English in 1989 in a special issue of Modern Fiction Studies (39, pp. 1128). Spivaks Can the Subaltern Speak? essay is published around that time, although it was produced much earlier in 1983 at the Illinois Conference that led to the collection in which it appeared (Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988]). So there is a temporal difference. But you can read Can the Subaltern Speak? also as a critique of my testimonio essay. Because I seem to be saying there, in effect, that I agree with Deleuze, Guattari, Foucault et als., that there is no need to represent the poor or anything like that anymore. It is embarrassing for intellectuals to say they represent the poor. The poor can speak for themselves. Testimonio is an example of the poor or the subaltern speaking for themselves. The intellectual gets out of the way and gives up the function of speaking for. The intellectual is just the interlocutor through whom the testimonial narrative becomes available. Testimonio allows the entry of the subaltern voice into culture. And Spivaks articulation, by contrast with all that, is very careful in trying to construct a notion of repre-
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sentation and agency where the intellectual still has a necessary role. This is bound up with her definition of subalternity, because subalternity is that which is by definition not heard, not paid attention to, so the subaltern cannot speak and the claims for testimonial voice are fake claims: the intellectual still has the job of representing. It is only through the work of the intellectual that what is at stake in that silence, or silencing,of the subaltern can be made audible or visible. FG: Dont you think that the center is only too happy that you are bringing the margins to it? So when John Beverley keeps himself busy in the hope that a few things will have to change accordingly, if only in relation to frames of referentiality, intelligibility and all that, central managers will fake the funk and still find the strength to say that Life is beautiful, or that nobodys perfect. JB: Exactly. That is precisely Spivaks point in Can the Subaltern Speak? to the extent that I agree with it. But I would say that I am ambiguous about that essay now, because it straddles two possible models of agency. There is the Lacanian/Derridean argument about representation that Spivak is basically endorsing. And there is the other Deleuzian, Spinozian model that Spivak is critiquing. And this second model would say, there is this force in the world, which is the multitude or the subaltern, and it presses forward and from its force it gives rise to other things. So the mediation of the intellectual is at best secondary. This force constructs things out of its own living essence, creating new forms of culture, consciousness, and community that displace the representational function of the intellectual. FG: When I hear that, I fail to see the big revelation. Isnt this the everyday cup of tea? But it seems to me that you are still perhaps fatally hooked on that loss of cultural capital. To me this is as normal as taking any quick walk any day on Main Street U.S.A. JB: Thats probably right because my own intellectual heritage, like Spivaks, is structuralism and post-structuralism. But I [still] think the position I arrive atIm not going to say its more radical than hersbut I would say that there is more skepticism in it about the role of intellectuals. I would say that deconstruction is still an ideology of intellectuals that is text-centered, still essentially framed by the legacy of European Humanism, in the sense of creating a way to read texts to educate an elite no longer ade-
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quately educated in principles that derive from theology and scholasticism. Rhetoric and aesthetics then become central categories for the education of elites. This is not unrelated to the Baroque distinction A.A. Parker studied in Gracian between agudeza de artificio and agudeza de perspicacia, where the first pertains to the sort of wit or knowledge literature produces and the second to scientific or historical knowledge,truth, as in Kants distinction between aesthetic judgment and teleological judgment. There is a specific operativity in Renaissance Humanism for reading secular texts and talking about or even deconstructing them. I do not see deconstruction in essence moving out of that framework. So in effect deconstruction becomes for me the new ideology of the literary at a moment when the literary itself has come into crisis. Deconstruction offers itself as a way of saving the essential impulse in literary criticism and therefore redeeming the role of intellectuals.
The Academic Project of Subaltern Studies or the Production of a Radical Negativity Within Academic Disciplinarity.
FG: What would you say if the charges of text-centrism and solipsistic, nominalistic or even scholastic ways of thinking about social things, which can be heard in relation to deconstruction, were also thrown by some Devils advocate at The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader and at your essay in it? Isnt it true that your text production essentially engages with other texts? Isnt it also true that it is a bit difficult to pinpoint a notion such as referentiality? How differentially are things being done here? JB: I think we reached an impasse in the Subaltern Studies Group. And this has to do with the conditions of knowledge production in the University, and again this takes us back to the question of the role of intellectuals. It is clear that Subaltern Studies is an academic project. Its only raison dtre is being in, on, of and around the academy. FG: And there is no need to apologize in this regard. That is fine with me. JB: Although many of the people involved in Subaltern Studies, in Latin America and elsewhere come to the academy from other forms of militancy.
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FG: And that is good. Exactly. JB: In the case of the South-Asians, many of them were identified with the Communist movement in India. The Naxalite rebellion, a kind of Maoist peasant insurgency in Bengal, was an important reference for some of them, as Sandinismo was for some of us. But [Latin American Subaltern Studies] is an academic project and therefore it has something to do with understanding the University and the notion of studies as a space for intervention. As with the earlier optimism about the political effects of Cultural Studies, the idea is that Subaltern Studies would, by reorienting the way people think about literature and literary criticism, history, cultural anthropology, etcetera, have a radicalizing effect on knowledge production. When our interventions were critical or even nihilistic, we thought that we were transferring to the academic sphere part of the agency of the subaltern. If, in Ranajit Guhas account, the key characteristic of the subaltern is negation, then our work was essentially one of putting a radical negativity within academic disciplinarity. FG: And that radical negativity would be what? JB: Pointing out the limits of academic constructions of knowledge, but also how academic constructions of knowledge are in and of themselves implicated in creating relations of social inequality to the extent that the construction of the subaltern is a cultural construction, and not simply a matter of economic, political or legal disenfranchisement. We saw education itself as radically implicated in subalternity, and so there was always this tension in our work, which you have seen in the Reader, between creating new forms of knowledge that somehow bring the subaltern more into view, access it, and this other [important] thing which is to constitute a critique of academic knowledge as such, to show that academic knowledge is itself implicated in that which it pretends to study objectively or dispassionately. We were constituting a negativity in relation to academic knowledge, in essence by putting on the costume of the subaltern position and putting what we do in the academy under erasure. Take my own formula against literature. That is a gesture of simple negation, because I am not here speaking of dialectically sublating the literary into something richer in the sense of literature plus the non-literary fusing in some kind of higher synthesis. No, the against literature posture was rather a way of precipitating a crisis that was already latent in the field of literature and literary criticism.
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FG: But how should one understand the preposition against? I think I can see what you are saying. When you tell me that University settings in this country are oppressive, repressive and intensely limiting, also not entirely thriving spaces for [the growth] of intellectual creativity, I would say, sure, we kind of have known this all along. I guess I am asking what follows from the gesture of erasure? A different kind of scholarship? A different kind of pedagogy? JB: Yes, but go ahead. FG: I guess I am also saying that I do not quite understand oppositionality, in the sense that the center will say, sure, bring to the house of knowledge whatever you want to bring, be as outrageous as you can be, just make noise, keep this thing alive, the sky is the limit... JB: This would be quite close to Jamesons anti-multicultural formula, which says that global difference is global capital. FG: I am reminded of a recent performance-talk by Guillermo GmezPea at Stanford University in which he was saying that when his performances were getting really outrageous, he would cautiously approach the television crew that was there filming to see if it was o.k.; he says he was surprised to get in response that the more outrageous and weird, the better. So I guess I am saying, what is oppositional in all this? Perhaps the students who are saying to a department of literature that they do not want literature. JB: Well, yes, thats right. If they do in fact say that because, to tell the truth, most literature students dont: they still believe in literature. And even if they do, they are not exactly expressing a subaltern position in that rejection. What they are expressing is a desire to achieve some kind of social entitlement that no longer passes through the traditional institutions of the humanities, including literature, because they are considered to be now obsolete in some way or another. The relation between the University and social mobility has changed too. And maybe the discourse about the University is more skeptical these days. I think it would be true to say that in all capitalist countries, and probably in theformer socialist countries too, in the long cycle of economic growth that goes from the end of the Second World War through the early 1970s, the University was very closely tied to the welfare state and to the promise of social mobility for working class people, as in the Redbrick College system in England, or the National
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University of Mexico. The notion is that an expanding University will create new forms of social mobility that are tied, in one way or another, to sustained economic growth. You were a farmer or a peasant, your kids will go to Moscow University and become nuclear engineers or literary critics or whatever. You were a steelworker, your kids will go to the University of Pittsburgh and become lawyers or doctors. I think that model is clearly over. In the neoliberal model, there is no longer that kind of sustained growth, or at least the rewards of growth are no longer distributed downwards. The University is now reproducing the way the society is constituted. It is no longer a form of social mobility. Quite the contrary, recent studies tend to show that University graduates as a whole will not attain a class status higher than that of their parents. They may actually in terms of salary fall below their parents. So it is easier to be skeptical about the University. But I think the skepticism we are talking about here is more radical than that kind of skepticism. It has to do with a kind of suspicion about what it is one does. FG: Personally I feel the need to enrich the against, counter- or whatever you may want to call it. But I just dont know if we are not falling into, almost using a musical metaphor, the parallel singing voice of the countertenor, which ultimately enriches the main melody or orthodoxy sung by the tenor. To harp on something said before: the center is silent, it has no argument, it is there by virtue of keeping things under control, but is not articulating any kind of coherent narrative itself. So the more knowledge you give to it, the more nourishment the center gets. Perhaps this is also happening with the notion of the subaltern. The invocation of the poor in the Reader reminds me a bit of secular Christianity in that the neglected stone will become the cornerstone in the new Cathedral of Learning, probably in the early years of the new twenty-first century. I see among people in your generation the need to still make the against move. And I am not claiming I have any answers. JB: I know the moment things came into crisis for the Subaltern Studies group. This happened at a Duke University conference in 1998. And it is not incidental that it happened at Duke. Our own positions in the academy had been somewhat marginal. I mean none of us, at least in the original group, taught at the time in prestigious Ivy-League type institutions. We all had checkered histories that threatened our careers, we were too political or whatever. We did not have a lot of prestige. And that was good in a way. We
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were a little bit at the margins and we were making an intervention from the margins. There were famous post-colonialists like Spivak, or Rolena Adorno and Walter Mignolo who circulated in Ivy-League places, but we were not part of that. And that was good because it allowed us to be francotiradores [snipers] in a sense. We had nothing to lose. We were a group of more or less twelve, like the Apostles. Nobody wanted to give us fellowships. We applied to the Rockefeller Foundation and nothing. Jean Franco did not like the idea. So we felt a bit embattled and that was good. And that position of our own manufactured relative subalternity in the profession energized, I think, the work of the initial group. Then we started to catch on. Mignolo and Alberto Moreiras joined. And Duke comes into the picture with its great resources, and there is this big conference. Lots of money. Big names. MLA-style. Whereas our previous meetings had been very informal, low-budget affairs. We would sit down for a wekend at someones campus and talk like you and I are doing now. Nobody gave papers. Audiences were not invited to come or anything like that. So the Duke thing was much more dramatic and ambitious. FG: Yes, I recall the setting, I attended as a graduate student. JB: But we also had the aim of projecting ourselves into institutionality. And then your former Dean of Humanities, Cathy Davidson, says at the conference something like Subaltern Studies will be the model for the Humanities at Duke University. FG: Yes, you have written about it (The Dilemma of Subaltern Studies at Duke, Nepantla, 2000, 1-1, pp. 33-44). This was the Deans recognition that eagerly welcomed you to the house of knowledge. And then you get nervous, understandably so. JB: We did not want to resist that, because in a sense we took seriously that Subaltern Studies wanted to hegemonize the field by providing a new paradigm. Because it was a political project. We did not want to be abject and humble. FG: So when the Dean says, John, please bring me the subaltern, you say to yourself, hold on a second, what am I doing here? (laughter). JB: Because there is a problem built into that. That is why the idea of Subaltern Studies is oxymoronic or catachretic in some ways.
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FG: Could you talk a little bit about the notion of catachresis? JB: The catachretic aspect of studying the subaltern, right? FG: The dictionary definition speaks of the use of the wrong word for the context, or the use of a forced and paradoxical figure of speech, as in blind mouth. To echo what you just said, you claim (in Writing in Reverse: On the Project of the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group, Dispositio/n. Subaltern Studies in the Americas, Vol. XlX, 46. 1994/1996; pp. 271-288) that contradiction and catachresis [are] built into the very idea of studying the subaltern (p. 277). Again, what does this mean, because I suppose you do not merely wish to linger there at the rhetorical level? I am wondering what these rhetorical moves (metalepsis, oxymoron, catachresis) entail for your thinking practice? JB: I am not sure now if catachresis works well here, because it is a slippery word that people use differently. What I am saying is that Subaltern Studies is catachretic in the same kind of way blind mouth is, because you are applying something that belongs to one category of experience to something that is not only different but also in a way opposed to that. Studies is about the academy, Duke, privilege and power based on knowledge; the subaltern is the other side of that. Spivak once made the point that Cultural Studies was a bad name for the whole enterprise, because cultural already implies a kind of Arnoldian notion of culture, with its embedded ideas about the primary role and place of culture. Maybe then it would be more correct to call it Anti-Cultural Studies. FG: What follows after declaring something obsolete or wanting to move away from something? Something I see happening is that the notions of subaltern, culture, the multitude, etcetera become really diffuse and perhaps this is a strategy for intervention inside academic circles. There is one way of thinking about all these debates, and you have emphasized earlier the polemical nature of these debates, which I will put this crudely: a room of twelve people, using the movie analogy 12 Angry Men, talking to each other ad nauseam about the devaluation of intellectual labor in the American academy. And I can see that and I can respect that. There is no need, as far as I am concerned, to apologize for academic work. But I am wondering what happens when this kind of knowledge goes out there in the streets. We are talking about figures of speech hopefully wanting rhetorical
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precision . We are also talking about conceptual panoramas. Isnt this almost like nominalism and thats it? And in the meantime we make all those self-validating gestures, well, there is the poor, the Indian, I come from that foreign place, or I have visited that foreign place, or the like. I should say I see something of this happening. JB: Well, subaltern studies is nominalism, plus Foucault, plus Marxism and feminism maybe, because there is the concern with power and inequality. That is the essential issue: how what we do in our own work is bound up with creating relations of power and inequality. That is the paradox of studying the subaltern, because, again, studies refers to an academic field, mastery and hegemonic constructions of knowledge, and subalternity refers to that which is precisely denied agency, or authority, by virtue of that which is constructed as studies. So therefore the project is catachretic, oxymoronic, paradoxical or aporetic I dont know what the right word is. You would have to imagine, for example that if subaltern studies is an accumulation of cultural capital to the advantage of the University and academic knowledge, and if in one way or another academic knowledge is implicated in the construction of forms of hierarchy, privilege and discrimination, then almost by definition, the concrete subaltern would have to anti-Subaltern Studies. Because Subaltern Studies would be seen and resented as something antithetical to the interests of the concrete subaltern. Some of that is involved in the very tense and hostile Latin American reaction to Subaltern Studies I referred to earlier. There is a sense that here is a form of intellectual agency essentially connected to U.S. academy and U.S. hegemony. It is interesting that it is a reaction to the U.S. academy and not the European academy. Latin American intellectuals rarely complain about the intellectual imperialism of existentialism or structuralism. But the minute we start talking about multiculturalism and postcolonialism, they raise the charge of Anglo-American cultural imperialism. FG: One could rehearse something of Moreiras reading of some of your work against the looming shadow of Gonzlez-Echevarra in the vicinity of the theme of the Baroque. And one could perhaps repeat your own reading of tacit class and racial affiliations in Gonzlez-Echevarras understanding of the Baroque in relation to the roster of people included in The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader, published after all by Duke University Press. What do you think would come up with this kind of reading? NonIvy League? Sixties generation? I am not questioning the genuine commit-
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ment of you all to progressive politics. But I do think there is a serious concern here. But there is also the academic game that comes to the fore sometimes when you ask people what they mean by a term, say culture, in relation to their work, and some people behave like they are holding the secret password or some kind of secret key, almost like it were a shibboleth. I guess this might be more a strategy than anything else, almost like raising flags and signs and marking little territories inside which some people operate with a few allies. So, the academic landscape looks a bit like a little imaginary territory with a little logo side by side another little imaginary territory with a different logo and we have some dialogue with each other, but mainly to produce a book, foster some career inside an exceeedingly small group of people in the U.S. academy and that is pretty much it. Latin American Subaltern Studies is mostly literary critics inside Spanish Departments, and most historians will not devote five minutes to this. JB: True, but the historians, Florencia Mallon and others, also feel the need to have their own version of subaltern studies. FG: There is no dialogue or bridges between this kind of work in Latin American contexts and, let us say, American Studies. JB: Well, look, there is some connection. FG: And maybe there is no need for it. JB: Putting the subalternist argument inside a U.S. American frame is what I was trying to do at the end of Subalternity and Representation. Because the U.S. is also a postcolonial society. Subaltern Studies is not something that applies only out there, in the Third World, Latin America You asked me once whether I fall into the same trap Jameson falls into in essentializing testimonio as some kind of Third World abject that we bring home to scare people at Stanford or Pittsburgh for a little while until they get a little deconstruction and they can handle it. I would say that no, my position is that the U.S. is not outside the subaltern paradigm. The U.S. is very rich and powerful, but culturally it aint all that different. I remember as a kid in Latin Americabut [as] a kid with a U.S. identitythinking, well, things will be great when I finally get to live in the U.S. And coming to the U.S. in 1954-5, and driving through the South For some reason, I dont remember exactly why, we had to drive from Florida to New York, where my dad had a job. I remember thinking as I looked out the window, this is
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not all that different from where I just came from, which was concretely Colombia. So, whats the big deal? Where is it? And this was partly because I had imagined the U.S. as modernism, futuristic architecture, clean streets, different than those funny, Baroque, mixed Latin American cities that I had lived in like Bogota and Lima. Everything would be modern in the U.S. and of course it wasnt. So, the notion that you should put Subaltern Studies in an U.S. frame is a good one. The point of subaltern studies is not to articulate some kind of radical otherness that then can be brought into in the classrooms in the manner of a scarecrow. A lot of my models for testimonial narrative came from Latin America. But people havent noticed that some of these models, besides Mench and guerrilla fighters, came from drug narratives. The drug narrative was a key genre of American Beat writing. William Burroughs has a famous first novel called Junkie, which I consider a model of a flat, uninflected, non-literary, unpretentious, neo-testimonial I am just going to write about what it is to be a drug addict. And there are lots of books like it. John Rechys early novel about homosexual cruising, The City of Night, for example, has a kind of testimonial dimension. So I thought that there was a U.S. element in testimonio. There are plenty of testimonios in U.S. literature, which have the same role that they do in Latin American literature, and it might have been more productive pedagogically if testimonio had come into the North American academy with a U.S. referent instead of a Rigoberta Mench one, because then there would be less the question of radical othernessah Guatemala! Most North-Americans do not even know where Guatemala is, and the Indian woman in Guatemala, even more mysterious, right? But if it had been, say, Rigoberta Mench, an Indian woman in El Paso, Texas or Minneapolis But then it probably would not have been as interesting for the academy. FG: In trying to enrich the notion of the subaltern, I am getting increasingly nervous of the representational roles that foreigners are called upon to play inside the U.S. [It is a kind of] yes, sure, you bring in here a little bit of your (foreign) culture, and tell me a little bit about that international dimension, but not for too long and not in a way that is going to disrupt what we already have here in place, right? JB: Exactly. Thats the Stanford model. We live in an international world and globalization obliges us to pay attention to cultural difference. My Uni-
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versity has an international culture requirement for undergraduates, three courses FG: Human reality splits into the domestic and the international dimensions, and the latter most often inside the foreign affairs model of engagement with the world. JB: Heres an interesting footnote to that. We just had a debate at my university about curriculum requirements and it was generally conceded that there were too many. There was a group that wanted to introduce a cultural diversity requirement that would be U.S. centered in relation to how race, class and gender get talked about here. And in order to do that, without expanding the requirements, it was proposed to substitute that course for one international requirement. This, I think very good, idea was voted down by the faculty, however, because a lot of us, history, political science, the foreign languages, had a stake in that international culture requirement. And so at the University of Pittsburgh we do not have a requirement for cultural diversity in the U.S., but we do have a requirement for international cultural diversity courses.
About the Potential Politics of Multiculturalism.

FG: Do you want to add anything to what you say in your piece in the Subaltern Studies Reader in relation to multiculturalism? In this essay, and also at the end of Subalternity and Representation, you cling to multiculturalism and identity politics and you will not let these notions go. Another notion is diversity, which is non-white, non-mainstream, and that is the little house we have to go to, if only occasionally. JB: Multiculturalism and diversity are the key concepts. Exactly. But remember that I am Gramscian, so what I mean by identity politics is also working class politics. I do not consider working class politics anything other than identity politics. Like Laclau, I am not a believer in the classical Marxian idea that what working class politics expresses transparently is the wage-labor/capital relationship. Obviously economic exploitation is a feature of the contradiction between labor and capital, but Lenin already said in 1905, that the contradiction between labor and capital expressed, for example, in the struggle and over the length of the working day that is at the
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core of volume one of Capital, was not necessarily a radical contradiction in the sense that it was generally handled through trade union struggle. What is more contradictory, it seems to me, are the general claims that capitalism makes on classes, peoples, resources, populations, gendersin a word identitiesto bend themselves to its will. Lenin was already saying at the time of the First World War that with what he called Imperialism, the main contradiction in capitalism had shifted from capital-labor contradiction in individual countries such as France, England, or Japan, to the contradiction between dominating and dominated nations, so that now there was a dimension of identity in capitalist contradictions. Since capitalism in its monopoly phase required that certain nations are dominated, extinguished, reorganized or whatever, national identity, or better yet the struggle to affirm national identity, became operative as a form of revolutionary struggle. I am not sure that Marxism has absorbed the radicalism of Lenins argument about the national question. Zizek, who is skeptical about identity politics and multiculturalism in the same way you are, has no clue about this in his attempts to revive Lenin, for example. He goes on talking as though Lenin were some kind of enlightened Jacobin and he forgets to mention that Lenins main theoretical contribution to Marxism in his time was saying that the subject of the revolutionary activity was no longer the national working class but oppressed nations. The stuff about the vanguard Party and whether it should be democratic or centralist is not original to Lenin and in any case led, as we all know, to Stalinism, that is, to a dead end. Gramsci understood this very well. Zizek doesnt because he sees the whole issue of nationalism and ethnic identity as bad and reactionary and like you, in any case assimilable to capitalism, the ideal form of multinational capitalism, to cite his own phrase. Capitalism would say, oh yeah, diversity is great, give us more difference FG: Contradictions are fine, bring your identity and go ethnic as much as you want, thats fine. JB: My wager, and there is a wager here, is that pressed to a limit, multicultural demandsand remember that I see working class demands as cultural demands in some way, not just demands for wages, but demands for different ways of livinginvolve something like what Lenin was saying about imperialism. If in imperialism the national contradiction becomes a primary contradiction, and wars of national liberation become the form in which revolutionary struggle takes place, then one could say that the question of
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national identity is the repressed dimension of capitalist modernity. The question of multiculturalism may likewsie perhaps express a radical limit of postmodernity or post-Fordism. Therefore, to press for the construction of multicultural societies, where multiculturalism is essentially fed from positions that have been subalternized in one way or another by the forms of capitalist modernity, is politically enabling and could potentially be the basis for new forms of popular hegemony. FG: Correct me if I am wrong, but this is the apple in the eye of John Beverley. You want to join whatever potential for democratic impulse you may perceive to be out there, whatever that might be, inside academic circles and also outside. JB: That is what I sense the point of Subaltern Studies to be: potential politics. I mean, if the subaltern, as Guha and Gramsci in inventing the concept say, expresses subordinations that are not only purely economic in nature, but that also have to do with cultural hierarchies that are related to economic hierarchies but arent limited to them, and if it also has to do with different historical teleologies, so that we are not condemned to the narrative of capital, so we can imagine that there might have been moments in which humans could have developed in different ways, then it seems to me there is clearly a potential politics here. It goes without saying that I think multiculturalism is very relevant to Latin America, but what I am thinking about now is the Rainbow Coalition, multiculturalism as a banner of the Left and liberal communities in the U.S., and how to radicalize it, whether it is possible for a political-cultural majority in the U.S. to rally around the issue of multiculturalism. My assumption is that multiculturalism expresses in one way or another the living situation of the majority of the population in the U.S. FG: Which would be left out. JB: Which is left out. Subalternity is always relative. I mean, any given person, you, I, anyone, will have dominant and subaltern elements in their make-up. I spoke before of the relative subalternity of our position in the U.S. academy as one of the enabling devices of the group. I think if we all had been at prestigious Ivy League institutions and had been getting grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, our work would not have the kind of consequences that it had. It would have been perceived as yet another high-
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level academic project with little force behind it other than careerism. So you can say there was an element of subalternity operative in our own project. I am not trying to make any special claim to political correctness here. We were all college-educated, middle-class, etcetera. But there is relative subalternity and relative resentment. We say to ourselves how come they are getting all the grants? O.k. Fuck them. We are going to do our thing, we are going to do it differently, collectively. We are not into academic ego-trips, nobody will present papers, we are going to be more like a sixties-style affinity group. So that is what multiculturalism would do because multiculturalism would also flow from subalternity, right? If what multiculturalism expresses is a political will that is essentially founded on notions of cultural discrimination, then it can be radicalized because it is connected to structural inequality. And if our goal is, in one way or another, an egalitarian society, those cultural issues are the things we will have to work through. So, yes, there is a defense of identity politics in my work, not in the sense that I believe in identity as if identity were now in the place of religion or Marxism. I dont think identity politics expresses necessarily a belief in an identity, as if that had been decided on in advance of the struggle. It expresses instead a sense of being wounded, or hurt in some kind of way by the existing arrangement of things, and a desire for a different arrangement of things.
About Breaking With the Notion of History As Univocal Teleological Modernity (or Shit), and the Pleasure Potential In The Narrative of a De-Centered Subject.
FG: And this is the notion of history that I see articulated in the Subaltern Studies Group. The notion that history is just shit. We dont want to do this. We do not want it. Are we going to do something else? Or do we just want to shoot it down? JB: Yes, I like that. We do want to shoot it down and in that way you are quite right about expressing an anxiety on the part of many critics of Subaltern Studies on the Left, that Subaltern Studies may be complicit with neoliberalism and reactionary fundamentalism, because we critique modernity,
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and some could say, oh well and so does Osama bin Laden and right-wing Hindu fundamentalism in India. But we also want to say that there is a productivity in breaking with that narrative and that productivity is allowing for the expression of all those voices, positions that were defeated, subalternized, marginalized by what usually gets called history. So there is a moment of negativity but this moment of negativity then has to pass into the construction of what? It would have to be now a narrative of a subject that is de-centered and that finds pleasure in being de-centered. The way I express it in the title of a recent essay is: Can the nation be gay? (Puede ser gay la nacion: Subalternidad/ Modernidad/ Multiculturalismo, Revista de Crtica Literaria Latinoamericana, XXVll/53, pp. 153-163). Eve Sedgwick talks about homosexual panic: people think Oh, Jesus, what if I am gay, and then you discover you are gay, you know, and big deal, is it such a big deal that you or others are gay? Does this destabilize the order of things? In any case, people have been gay all through history. No big deal. But there are people around, both in relationship to their own or others sexuality, for whom the notion of being gay is some sort of radical otherness that is going to deconstruct everything: themselves, the subject, the nation, culture, morality, the family, biological reproduction, all this will be put into crisis. But, as Freud showed, there is no clear dividing line in sexual object choice. And the anxiety about that That is what is expressed by Sedgwicks idea of homosexual panic. But once we get over the panic, is pretty clear that we, and other people, can be gay or not and nothing is going to change all that much. So can the nation be gay too? In other words, can the nation be other than this totalizing mechanism? Can it have other identity than the identity it has now but somehow still have an identity as a nation? That is , I think, the question multiculturalism is posing. Can we live in a society which is organized around many different principles than the ones it is organized around now, including different economic principles, without things falling into anarchy, ethnic genocide, the clash of civilizations? And I would say yes: multicultural egalitarianism would be a fundamental form of that possibility. But I dont think that you can imagine an egalitarian society in the U.S. or anywhere else in which Duke and Stanford and the Ivy League continue to be what they are now. They will have to change in some way, or be changed. And if this is true, then you would have to say that the whole world of knowledge has to change too. I dont mean to say that literature, deconstruction, twelve-tone music or particle physics should go away. But the powerful hierachization that accompanies
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those things in terms of privilege, access to resources and cultural authority, yes, that should definitely be questioned, so my model would be, yes, literature, but literature as one among the discourses, as Wlad Godzich put it once.
About an Enduring Visceral Postmodernity.

FG: Let us move on to the postmodernism debate in Latin America. I have in mind the special issue of Boundary 2 (20/3, Fall 1993), edited by you and Jos Oviedo, that I have used often in my teaching. And I do not know if you want to make any connections between the work done in that monographic volume and the very recent conference entitled Fronteras de la Modernidad/Borders of Modernity put together by Mabel Moraa and Hermann Herlinghaus in the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literatures at Pittsburgh in March, 2002. Why am I saying this? Because I sense a certain retreat from the very label of postmodernism and now, it seems, we are back into modernity with or without its limits and boundaries So, what do we do with that postmodernism debate? Still keep it alive? I sense a contraction but I may be wrong about it. JB: As I said at the start, I like postmodernism. The limits of modernity people, it seems to me, are articulating something a bit different, which in Latin America is like this: They are saying our modernity consists in being postmodern. This is Brunners position. And I think Herlinghaus has essentially Brunners position; we need to complete our modernity in Latin America but since we are the kind of societies we are modernity looks like what you call postmodernity. This is not a Habermasian modernity but it is still modernity, the borders and edges of modernity, if you will. Some of the Subaltern Studies people, Dipesh Chakrabarty for example, think that way too. They are concerned with residual formations within modernity. Chakrabarty has a long essay in Provincializing Europe (Princeton UP, 2000) called Adda in which the notion of adda is something like a literary tertulia. I begin to lose connection with Chakrabarty at that point, because, as I was saying, in Latin American Subaltern Studies we had worked ourselves to a position that was radically critical about literature whereas here Chakrabarty has a kind of Arielista position, recycling the tertulia as a non-capitalist form of modernity. You know from your own work that there is a powerful discourse in Latin America about the Baroque
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as an alternative to Protestant capitalist modernity. I am thinking of the Chilean critic Pedro Morand. There are elements of this too in Lezama Lima, who if he were willing to visit us from the land of the dead, would articulate his position as something like: we are modern, but we are modern in a different way from you Northern capitalist Protestant Europeans, we have our own Hispano-American form of modernity, which is actually a modernity more pregnant with the future than yours. And I think this idea was already latent in the historical Baroque in ways we talked about. I do take seriously the idea of the Baroque as a non-capitalist, Latin form of modernity, over-determined by the rise of capitalism obviously, but a form of modernity nevertheless, an obsolete modernity if you will. Postmodernity, on the other hand, indicates to me something slightly different. When I said I identified viscerally with postmodernist art and the postmodernist posture, I thought I was identifying with something that represented a break with something, right? There was an element of break in it. Now that break could just be a misunderstanding or a perversion of modernism rather than a genuine coupure in the structuralist sense. Nevertheless I experienced the perversion and the break, which instituted a different sense of historical time, pleasure, hermeneutics, subjects, pedagogy, politics. The hypothesis of modernity is that development and equality go together. The question is whether we can have an egalitarian society. There is a funny paradox in Marxism in that regard: early or primitive forms of humanity are egalitarian, or at least some of them are, and this is the idea of primitive communism; but then how is it that we have to wait until the end of history to get back to the possibility of an egalitarian society again? Well, because the forces of production have to develop and new sensibilities have to be created, and so on and so forth. So somehow, capitalism is necessary to create the possibilities for equality. The postmodernist disposition in me would say, well, why do we have to wait? We are always postponing because we think we are trapped in some kind of march of history. And we are all marching and everything and everyone has a pre-assigned role. FG: Like a train in the railroad tracks. JB: Yes, postmodernism allowed me to get off the train, or the tracks. Postmodernism comes with the waning of the Cold War where both sides were essentially committed to a telos of modernity. What they were fighting about was who was better able to produce modernity, but they did not fight about modernity itself. About that, they were in complete agreement.
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Modernity meant secular, scientific, technocratic, bureaucratized societies, acculturation of people in traditional or backward positions, industrialization, the destruction of peasant agriculture, und so weiter. The only question was whether free market or state-directed economies would do a better or faster job in producing modernity.
About Divorces Already In the Past and the Anticipation of the Next Marriage (But Not Quite Yet).
FG: Where do you see yourself going? I have so far seen you going to Cultural Studies and Subaltern Studies, and showing some disappointment later. What follows from there? You have called yourself non-systematic, and perhaps you would not hesitate to call yourself a polemicist, and I do not necessarily see this as a bad thing. You are also talking about the impasse in the humanities, perhaps the last twenty-years are not tremendously energetic moments. So, what follows the sniper strategy? JB: I was telling you before the story about my friend who always had a woman lined up before he divorced the woman he was with, because his anxiety was being alone. He always had a next wife prepared and, in some cases, he had already been living with his wife-to-be before he divorced the wife he was with at the time. And this has been somewhat true of my work up to now. Before I could always see the germ of the next project, even if the next project was moving in a very different direction. I mean, how could I move from Gngora to Sandinismo? Thats a big jump, right? But there was something in the Gngora stuff that somehow had the seed of Sandinismo and testimonio in it, even though there was a divorce, a divorce from Hispanism in that case. But I dont feel this to be the case now. I dont have the seed of anything particularly new in me now. FG: Do you think that is a good, productive feeling? I mean, are you looking at the abyss while saying to yourself, yeah, I am going to take a good jump!, who cares? JB: No, I dont think its good. FG: You dont see it as an intellectually productive moment? JB: It might be.
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FG: But not right now? JB: No, I dont feel it to be. Maybe it is still mourning or melancholy about the collapse of the Subaltern Studies project, although I understand that it had reached a limit. I am not nostalgic about it. I am sad about it, but I dont want to go back to it. I think we hit a wall there. On the other hand, it was a tremendous project. Intellectually Subaltern Studies was the most exciting and powerful experience that I have ever had in the academy. Amazing. FG: Now, everybody is doing it JB: Or at least thinking about it. So, it is a kind of like wow, we were part of creating that! And that is exciting. But at the same time, like with Cultural Studies in the nineties, I was moving on to other things when other folks were just moving in. I found then I had to be careful with what I said because I did not want to discourage people: I thought there was a radical impulse in Cultural Studies and that it was good to move towards it. But at the same time I was moving beyond it. I guess I would say the same thing about subaltern studies now.
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BIOGRAPHIES:
John Beverley (PhD, University of California at San Diego), Professor of Spanish and Latin American Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. His books include: (ed.) From Cuba (2002); (ed.) La voz del otro: Testimonio, subalternidad y verdad narrativa (new edition; 2002): Subalternity and Representation. Arguments in Cultural Theory (1999); Una modernidad obsoleta: Estudios sobre el barroco (1998); (ed.) The Postmodernism Debate in Latin America; and Against Literature (1993). He was a founding member of the Graduate Program in Cultural Studies at the University of Pittsburgh and of the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group. He is the co-editor of the new Univ. of Pittsburgh Press book series Illuminations: Cultural Formations of the Americas. Fernando Gmez (Ph.D., Duke University) is an assistant professor of transatlantic literature in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Division of Literatures, Cultures and Languages at Stanford University. He is the author of Good Places and Non-Places in Colonial Mexico: The Figure of Vasco de Quiroga (1470-1565) and is currently working on three projects: a book of interviews with leading critics in Hispanic and Latin American studies, mostly in the U.S. environment, originally titled Foreign Sensibilities, inside which this version of this interview will be included, a collection of essays tentatively titled The Early Modern Atlantic of Hispanic Letters, and a major book project, Agonies of Historicity: Law and Literature in the Hispanic Atlantic.
REVIEWS
Ileana Rodrguez, ed. The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001. 459 pp.
Most likely, readers of Dispositio/n may already be familiar with the collective known as The Latin American Subaltern Studies Group, its Founding Statement, and the homologous South Asian collective that inspired the Latin American counterpart, thanks to the special issue of this journal on the topic which was co-edited by Jos Rabasa, Javier Sanjins and Robert Carr in 1996 (Disposito/n 46). The twenty essays contained in The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader continue working within the same paradigm, which, since the last two decades of the past century, has been redrawing the map of Latin American and Hispanic studies for the present global context. A number of intellectual currents converge in subaltern studiesMarxism, poststructuralism, postmodernism, feminism, cultural studies, post colonial studies, and ethnic studies. Subaltern studies is thus a very eclectic field of study whose trans-disciplinarity and anti-disciplinarity reveals its attempts to reconfigure the production of social and cultural knowledge. To better locate the work of this Reader I will start by focusing on some developments that led to the current epistemic conjuncture. During the past two decades of the twentieth century, a group of historians from India formed a collective called Subaltern Studies. Inspired in the work of the Italian critic Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), Ranajit Guha and other scholars reexamined the relationship between civil society and the state, focusing on what they felt was neglected until then: popular consciousness. For Guha, traditional historiography, both colonial and national, was concerned mainly with elite, liberal culture. Indian peasant society was seen as pre-political and its destiny was thought only within the telos of the
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colonial or national (bourgeois) narrative. As a result, popular consciousness was thought of only in negative terms, without autonomy. Its participation in national politics was seen only a response to the elite projects. Rereading against the grain the colonial and national historiography, Guha stressed the active participation of peasant society through the study of rural insurgency. The challenges of writing a history from below, outside of the elite, learned culture were highlighted by postcolonial critic Gayatri Spivak in a seminal essay from 1988 whose main point is still valid today: Can the subaltern speak? From the vantage point of deconstruction and poststructuralism, Spivak questioned the assumed transparency and essence of the subaltern subject as an object of study. Could the critic or historian represent the subaltern politically and discursively as a subject of history without inscribing him/her within the hegemonic rationality? In a few words, subalternity revealed at once the limits of modern knowledge systems and their inherent violence. This epistemic violence was illustrated quite clearly by the other side of subaltern studies, post colonial theory. Edward Saids seminal work Orientalism showed the centrality of discursive production in the rise of European colonialism. Colonial discourse analysis soon revealed the multiple discursive tropes by which the West legitimized its hegemonic role. Postcolonial theory sought ways to undermine from within the power of colonial discourse, highlighting its ambivalences and the unintended spaces of contestation that it opened (H. Bhabha. The Location of Culture: New York: Routledge, 1994). As a result, postcolonial theory comes to confront itself, its metropolitan theoretical language and its emancipatory project as one in many ways similar to the imperial projects that it sought to eradicate. The key question was how to think outside of the Western rational grid? The awareness of such a grid is precisely what made it possible to imagine and desire subalternity. That is what creates subaltern studies. The key question, then, is if subaltern studies as an academic endeavor can avoid reproducing neocolonial violence and become an emancipatory practice. That is, what are the real possibilities of the decolonization of knowledge and memory and the grounding of postOccidental reason? These issues also have been a main concern in the Americas, however differently they may have been expressed. Years before Said, Spivak, and Guha, Jos Mart, Jos Carlos Maritegui, Edmundo OGorman, Orlando Fals Borda, ngel Rama and many others have questioned the geopolitics of knowledge. A turning point, however, was when these Latin
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American perspectives converged with postcolonial studies. The paradigmatic change could be seen in three publications that appeared in 1986: Peter Hulmes Colonial Encounters,, Rolena Adornos Guaman Poma de Ayala: Writing and Resistance in Colonial Peru and a special issue of Dispositio/n (28-29), Literature and Historiography in the New World, which was co-edited by Cedomil Goic and Walter Mignolo. These publications coincided in an examination of the role of language and culture in the colonization of the Americas, turning away from traditional literary and aesthetic analysis. As Walter Mignolo asserted in La lengua, la letra, el territorio (o la crisis de los estudios literarios coloniales), Hispanism entered a renovating crisis (Dispositio/n 28-29 (1986): 137-160). From then on, Latin American postcolonial studies will take many other directions, moving beyond the so called colonial period (1492-1810) to examine national building projects and the present geopolitical order. Besides postcolonial theory, cultural studies was equally important in the emergence of Latin American subaltern studies. Modern communication networks and technologies altered in numerous ways contemporary culture and society. To understand these processes, traditional literary analysis was clearly inadequate. Studies on mass, popular and national culture by critics such as Jess Martn Barbero, Nestor Garca Canclini and William Rowe and Vivian Scheilling paved the way to studies that addressed the complex interaction of oral, visual, and written cultures in the Americas. Issues of hegemony and subalternity, along with Gramscis contributions, informed these cultural studies without recurring to the South Asian collective. In De los medios a las mediaciones (Mxico: Gili, 1987) Martin Barbero, for example, draws an illuminating genealogy of the concept of the people in Western culture and highlights Gramscis ability to reconceptualize the dynamic process of domination (85). The above picture of three of the constitutive elements of Latin American subaltern studies (South Asian subaltern studies, postcolonial theory, and cultural studies) is far from being the whole picture, which also ought to include many national, regional, and global events such as the Cold War, the civil rights movements, the fall of the Berlin Wall and more. What I hope is that even if somehow general, this introduction will allow the reader to better evaluate the contribution of the articles included in the Reader, especially because they address a wide variety of topics and issues from different nations and historical periods that would not seem related unless we establish some common ground. In the remaining pages I will
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briefly describe and comment on the articles of the Reader. Given the number of articles (20) and the complexity of the topics discussed, it is impossible to examine any of them in depth. The Reader is divided in five sections preceded by an introduction by the editor, Ileana Rodrguez. In her introduction Rodrguez elaborates a genealogical narrative of the Latin American Studies Subaltern Group that intertwines regional developments such as the defeat of the Sandinista government in Nicaragua and her personal trajectory and commitment with the Left. This genealogical narrative, developed in a similar way by John Beverley in the Reader, expressly works towards positioning subaltern studies as a reconfiguration of the intellectual project of the Left. In her introduction, Rodrguez also addresses some of the criticism that the Group has received, namely by Florencia Malln (Promises and Dilemmas of Subaltern Studies. American Historical Review Dec. (1994): 1491-1515) Hugo Achugar (Leones, cazadores, e historiadores Revista Iberoamericana 180 (1997): 379-87), and Mabel Moraa (El boom del subalterno. Revista de crtica cultural 14 (1997): 48-53). However, Gareth Williams insightful essay on the Fantasies of Cultural Exchange in Latin American Subaltern Studies (In Gugelberger, ed. The Real Thing. Durham: Duke UP, 1996: 225-53) is not mentioned at all. The rest of the introduction is dedicated to setting the ground for the ensuing discussions on subalternity, citizenship, and the state beyond Western bourgeois rationality: Latin American subaltern studies aims to be a radical critique of elite cultures, of liberal, bourgeois, and modern epistemologies and projects, and of their different propositions regarding representation of the subaltern (9). The first section of the Reader contains essays by Ranajit Guha, John Beverley, and Mara Milagros Lpez. For Guha, postmodernism, which collapses local and global times, provides the space of convergence of South Asian and Latin American subaltern studies. He reframes Kants famous question to ask: What is postmodernism? Guha argues that such a question cannot be posed without considering the experience of colonialism (40). Also, Guha suggests that we ought to think history and rationality beyond the state (45). Beverley addresses some of the recurring preoccupations of subaltern studies and postcolonial theory, the rupture with Western rationality and history: But can one imagine the project of the Left as detached from a telos of modernity?(49). After discussing the shortcomings of cultural studies a la Garca Cancliniwhich for Beverley do not break with the values of modernity(55)he proposes that subaltern stud-
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ies can profit from a rearticulation of the people as a historic bloc, [although] not unitary and homogenous but rather internally fissured and heterogeneous (57). In the next essay Lpez examines the conditions of possibility of collective solidarity action in contemporary, post industrial society. The technological advances of the digital era are paradoxically accompanied by the atomization of social life. Under such circumstances, what possibilities are there for social activism? How is network society reconfiguring our sense of the public sphere? In addition, can consumption practices be useful for forging new social-oriented collectivities? The new collective identities that emerge in contemporary society may be co-opted from the beginning by the hegemonic culture, the commodification of natural lifestyles and products for environmentalists, for example. For Marxism the traditional work ethic structured social action. What happens in a post industrial, post work society? Traditionally, the left had looked down on consumption, pleasure, leisure. Yet they are at the center of emergent social movements. Will a reemergent Left meet these challenges? Consumption practices is precisely one of the topics addressed by the following essay. Alberto Moreiras pays attention to an important challenge that faces Latin American subaltern studies. The current shift from area studies (where knowledge is produced from the metropolis) to area based studies (local knowledge appropriated by transnational knowledge markets) may end up co-opting any subaltern studies project. How to address Latin American singularity without (re)producing colonial differences? That is, without rushing into any idealization of local difference. What Moreiras calls for then is the production of a critical regionalism that would be conscious of the global markets that frame the production and consumption of intellectual work: It does not point to the production of any kind of counter-identity; rather, it moves beyond identity as well as difference in order to interrogate the processes of their constitution(97). The second section of the Reader, Indigenous Peoples and the Coloniality of Power brings essays by Marc Zimmerman, Patricia Seed and Sara Castro-Klarn. Zimmerman examines Rigoberta Menchs political action after being awarded the Peace Nobel Prize in relation to the burgeoning indigenous organizations in Guatemala that gained some political power outside existing structures and norms of the Left (124). The Guatemalan case illustrates the emergence of new social movements that defy traditional theorization (i.e Leninist or Laclau-Mouffean post Leninist alli-
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ance politics) (126). Next, historian Patricia Seed examines the colonial legacies and continuities in the corpus of legislation regulating indigenous land rights in the world. The aboriginal people of former Iberian colonies, for example, can only claim rights to the surface of the land, whereas the state claims ownership of underground minerals and wealth. In former English colonies, in contrast, the cultural assumption is that natives are entitled only to lands that are unproductive or worthless (134). Also, the national government sets the price of indigenous lands and any indigenous land sale document does not need native consent to be ratified. The subsequent essay, written by Castro-Klaren, examines how Viceroy Francisco de Toledo commissioned an ample corpus of discursive workslaws, dictionaries, histories, civil ordinances, university curriculaon Andean culture with the intent of undermining the power of local leaders or curacas. Delegitimizing Inca memory was an important step in the de-structuration of Andean social order and in the construction of the colonial state. Discussing Guaman Pomas text in this context, Castro-Klarn shows that Andean people did not accept passively the imposition of the Spanish epistemic regime. In this respect, from a subaltern studies perspective, there is still much to be done to understand Andean peoples multiple responses to Spanish colonization beyond the handful of classic texts (Guaman Poma, Garcilaso, Pachacuti, and the others) as Karen Spalding has suggested (Crisis and transformation in The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas 3.2 (1999): 904-72). The third section of the book, Subject Positions: Dominant and Subaltern Intellectuals?, starts with an essay by Doris Sommer followed by Jos Rabasa and Abdul-Karim Mustapha. Sommers article illustrates the complex relationship between peripheral or marginal writers and metropolitan readers. The apparent panoptical power of the empowered metropolitan subject of knowledge has its limits. The metropolitan reader can often be deceived by his or her native informant, who strategically places traditionally privileged readers beyond impassible borders(177). Rigoberta Menchs secrets is a telling example. Why proclaim secrets?[...] it was to engage readers without surrendering herself (175). The liberal politics of disclosureto negotiate the public spheremay not work towards emancipation under conditions of social and cultural inequality. More than an identification with the Other, what is needed are reading strategies that seek to understand the gaps and differences among culturally and economically situated subjects. This allows for a space of democratic negotiation (181).
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Jos Rabasa discusses the different appropriations of Gramscis critical concepts in India and Latin America. Gramscis work basically addressed issues related to modern industrial Europe. In this respect, his Eurocentric perspective leads him to consider non Western forms of knowledge folklore and superstition. The South Asian collective went beyond Gramscis presuppositions, questioning modern (colonial, national) history and consciousness and seeking to re-inscribe non-modern (peasant) consciousness and history. The South Asian proposal, Rabasa argues, placed too much emphasis on the work of historians and intellectuals (2000). Recent developments in Mexico, in contrast, question the mediating and privileged role of the intellectual. Rabasas article examines the emergence of social movements in Mexico such as the Zapatistas and the Tepoztln rebellion in 1995 which involve multiple sectors of civil society confronting neoliberal politics. One aspect that the present reviewer has noted in some subaltern studies essays, with Rabasa and Beverley in particular, is a tendency to claim that Gramscis intellectual production is based exclusively on an Italian and European context. That is not the case. In Further Selections from the Prison Notebooks (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1995) we can see that Gramscis reflections on world religions were important in conceptualizing the relationship between civil society and the state. For example, Jesuit colonial ventures in India allow Gramsci to discern the important role of local intellectuals and local knowledge in achieving hegemony (123). This means that colonialism is already informing, in many unrecognized ways, forms of knowledge that are thought to have originated in Europe. In the next essay, Mustapha examines the political implications of subaltern studies main strategy, to place subalternity as the grounding question of intellectual production. If I understood it correctlyfor the article is not clear at allthe real challenge of subaltern studies is to remain open to subalternity, to avoid the closure of populisms that in the search of hegemony exclude the subaltern. The fourth section of the Reader is Ungovernability: Authoritarian and Democratic Hegemonics. It includes articles by Rober Carr, Michael Clark, Gareth Williams, and Javier Sanjins. The first essay does not address a Latin American topic per se, although its reflection is based on subaltern studies. Carrs article focuses on the representation of African Americans in two U.S. films, Glory and Menace II Society. The essay discusses in particular how these films present African Americans access to citizenship. The first film, Glory, is about black participation in the U.S.
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Civil War, where the subalterns access to equality is dictated by the state: The struggle for citizenship is managed within the terms of the U.S. military. The ungovernable exist to the extent that they conform to the parameters proffered by the state(234). In Menace II Society contemporary African Americans access to citizenship is limited by poverty, police repression, or incarceration. Drug trade, weaponry, alcohol and street life define honor and manhood: access to money substitutes for citizenship (236). In the next article Clark challenges the general notion of the failure of Haiti as a state. How to understand its corrupt and violent dictators and officials? This violence, Clark convincingly argues, is not inherent: Conceived as an international relation, we can understand the violence of the Haitian state as the enactment or performance of a relation of violence between the Haitian subalterns and the outside world (250). Indeed, repeated invasions, embargos, non-recognition, occupations, conditioned economic support, all these indicate that what we call the government of Haiti is not necessarily a government by Haitians (251). Foreign observers often condemn Haitians backwardness and stubborn attachment to peasant agriculture without understanding the historical and religious importance of the land. Clarks insights on Haiti are quite revealing of the Wests assumptions on the subaltern nations governability, quite similar to the current U.S. discussion on Iraq: International state-making in Haiti has been based on a fundamentally flawed premise: that by changing the nature of the persons who occupy the space of government, you can change the nature of the state. The common sense behind recent international statecraft in Haiti has been the assumption that the problem is rooted in character (252). Next comes an essay by Gareth Williams that clearly illustrates the limits of subaltern studies projects. During the political violence of the 80s in Per, popular urban rumors of organ stealing doctors spread throughout Limas shantytowns. These rumors, read as superstition and backwardness by the neoliberal elite (for example in Vargas Llosas novel Death in the Andes), are related to the Andean figure of the nacaq or pishtaco, an evil spirit that sucks fat from its victims. Yet the challenge is not to read the presence of this figure as an ahistorical, irrational or backward element. Rather, the challenge is to see it as a complex, disjointed subaltern experience of a traumatic decade of persecution, exploitation, and violence brought by neoliberalism. Subaltern consciousness escapes our sense of rationality. However, Williams rightly questions if by explaining subaltern memory we become complicit with neoliberalism: the subaltern as limit-
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experience of knowability is dutifully returned to the civilizing fold of the knowable [...] and hence inevitably to the civilizing metropolitan space of the epistemological governable(278). In the next essay Javier Sanjins looks at the limits of traditional Bolivian social science research which has focused on formal, modernizing institutions, neglecting the mediating role of the media and multiple aspects of everyday life: the development of a vibrant cholo / Indian urban culture that formed a spatial environment for an alternative public sphere: the marketplaces, the festivities, the ritual, and the like (292). For Sanjins these everyday practices constitute the flesh of contemporary Bolivian society. These practices cannot be understood in terms of the state-oriented liberal notion of citizenship. The fifth and final section of the Reader is Citizenship: Resistance, Transgression, Disobedience. First Beatriz Gonzlez Stephan discusses nineteenth century efforts to create productive citizens by disciplining their bodies: postures, hygiene, emotions, and language. Gonzlez Stephan illustrates how grammar books and manuals of conduct, such as the Manual de urbanidad y buenas maneras by Manuel Antonio Carreo, were instrumental in such citizen-building projects. In the next essay Ileana Rodrguez contrasts two late eighteenth century English travel narratives, R.R. Maddens Twelvemonth Residence in the West Indies and Mathew Gregory Lewis Journal of a West Indian Proprietor, with the writings of a Jamaican born Creole, William Beckford, A Descriptive Account of the Island of Jamaica. Rodrguez analyzes how the colonizers textual descriptions of the West Indies, the land and the people, strategically locate them within the imperial realm. Liberal English subjectivity is posed as idealself-control, self-restraint, characterwhereas the West Indian is described by his/ her excess: flamboyance. Rodrguez pays close attention to the economic discourse that defines liberal citizenship, when slaves rights are reinscribed from the private domain of the plantation into the realm of the state. At the end of her article Rodrguez seeks to highlight where these colonial texts open to subaltern culture. That is, where their gaze becomes ambiguous and also where solidarity towards the subaltern and a critique of empire emerge. Next, Marcia Stephenson examines the ideological implications of modernizing architectural projects for peasant and poor Bolivians. These projects seek to reproduce Western, liberal notions of subjecthood and womanhood in particularly: Dominant depictions of the house, emphasizing enclosure, the privatization of space, and individualization, become an important mechanism with which hegemonic discourses
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repeatedly attempt to order and discipline the racially heterogeneous social body through the second half of the twentieth century (370). Stephensons top down analysis of architectural projects is theoretically well informed and convincing. What is missing, however, is a reading of Andean sense of home. Instead, what Stephenson does offer is a subaltern reading and confrontation of hegemonic space. Stephenson discusses Ana Mara Condoris testimonio Nayan Uatatawi: Mi despertar (1988). This testimonio tells the story of a young Aymara woman who travels to La Paz to work in a Criollo home as a domestic worker. There she is subjected to confinement, exploitation, and continuous humiliation. Condori reaches the point where she can take it no more and confronts her employer. Next, Marcelo Bergman and Mnica Szurmuk examine the dynamics of new social movements in Argentina, which are not organized by political parties or unions, rather by civil society. Bergman and Szurmuk discuss the marches of silence movement in the provincial city of Catamarca where the son of a powerful political family that had ruled the province for several decades is implicated in the death of a poor teenager. When the governors family tried to cover up the case, the community responded in a manner similar to the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. Womens, students, and the Churchs demands for equal treatment and justice successfully challenged the political elite. The result is a citizenship that is claimed from below, not given from the top (the state). In the following essay Josefina Saldaa Portillo discusses the citizenship demands of the Zapatistas from Chiapas and U.S. Chicanos. She discusses the limits of mestizaje, its biological reductionism and its assimilation politics. Also Saldaa Portillo argues that indigenismo ultimately erases present-day indigenous communities. Her observations on the shortcomings of the agrarian reforms of the Mexican Revolution and on Gloria Anzaldas mestizaje are quite sharp. Finally, we come to the last essay, written by Walter Mignolo. As I noted above, Ranajit Guha located the convergence of Latin American and Subaltern Studies as a product of postmodernism, under which local and global times collapse. Mignolo redraws the story of subaltern studies by adding two important moments. First, instead of taking as a departing point the Enlightenmentas Guha doeshe proposes early modernity, the 16th century, including thus the Spanish colonial experience, furthermore Mignolo also looks back at some of the intellectual proposals developed in Latin America since the 1970s, including dependence theory, internal colonialism, and the coloniality of modern knowledge. Clearly, with Mignolo the concept of subalternity is brought to mean
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much more than the relationship between sectors of civil society and the state. It is also a matter of the structures of domination of the modern/colonial world (426). A couple of concluding remarks. Overall, as a collective intellectual project this Reader and subaltern studies in general represent a committed effort to produce socially responsible scholarship even though it is conscious of the limits of the theoretical tools available and is trying to push through from within metropolitan discourse to open spaces for the emergence of emancipatory, non-coercive forms of knowledge. The call for a more engaged critical practice is imperative when we look at the challenges that Latin America faces today: Neoliberalism, extensive poverty, environmental degradation, internal repression and colonialism, and increased threats of U.S. police actions in the region under the War on Terrorism. More projects like The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader are needed, in Spanish, Quechua, Tzotzil, and other languages and media (film, art, music), engaged in a creative, critical dialogue with NGOs, Human Rights organizations and all sorts of existing and emerging communities that will allow us to co-produce a post- Occidental public sphere.
Luis Fernando Restrepo University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
Linda Martin Alcoff and Eduardo Mendieta, Eds. Thinking from the Underside of History. Enrique Dussels Philosophy of Liberation. London, Boulder, New York, Oxford: Rowan and Littlefield Publishers, 2000. 300pp.
Most English-speaking readers have never heard the name Enrique Dussel before. And I am almost certain that most philosophy professors and students in the US have no idea who he might be. Well, there are very good reasons for that. First, there is a language that carries all the prestige in present-day academic debates: English. Dussels native language, Spanish, is, as Walter Mignolo has argued more than once, rather devalued as a language of, or for, knowledge. Thinkers who come from this linguistic background, and the geopolitical area in which it is spoken, have very few
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possibilities to make their work known in the dominant market of ideas. In that market, postcolonial theory, understood as thought coming mostly from Asia regarding English colonialismwhich comes long after that of sixteenth-century Spanish imperialismhas much more value. However, Dussel has been translated into English. In fact, some of his works are available in US university libraries in translation. So the language issue alone, although an important one, cannot explain why he is almost never quoted by scholars who write in English. That some of his works are translated into English does not give his culture and native language much prestige in the US dominated academy. Dussels philosophy does not enjoy much enthusiasm among US Latin Americanists either. In the introduction to this issue of Dispositio/n, I have commented on the fact that only one of the members of the Latin American Subaltern Studies groupMignolohas shown interest in Dussels work. Given this scenario, one should not be surprised that US-based scholars prefer to discuss the works by Jacques Derrida, Giorgio Agamben or Dipesh Chakrabarty than to read Dussel. I believe one of the reasons for this blatant ignorance of Dussels work is, of course, a geopolitics of knowledge that privileges certain issues and certain places, certain languages and certain histories, as well as the critics good behavior that manifests itself in forms of criticism that do not put into question what Gramsci used to call the hegemonic principle. His ideas are perhaps too radical for a US academy that is more interested in fashionable but understandable, rebellious but not revolutionary theoretical moves than in a truly oppositional thinking. Unfortunately for Dussel, but fortunately for those of us who believe his kind of thinking is absolutely necessary, his ideas and his impressively coherent philosophical practice are too revolutionary to be embraced by the predominant academic climate. His 1975 Philosophy of Liberation (available in a 1985 English edition, by Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY) is a daring attempt to find a way of philosophizing from the periphery. Dussels philosophy of liberation, strongly influenced by dependency theorywhich predicates a world in which there are central and peripheral countries, whose relationships are asymmetricalcan be read as a product of the very same years that saw the rise of said economic theory. Those were years, at least for Latin America, when vast segments of the population believed in the possibility of ending social injustice and creating a better society for all in the near future. Those were years, also, when very few were afraid of using words such as libera-
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tion, revolution and socialism. Today, scholars producing in the US academic system will not even touch those words, unless, of course, the goal is to criticize them and the people who uttered them in the past. Dussels elaboration of a philosophy that finds inspiration in the poverty and injustice generated by an unjust world system comes from a very personal itinerary, one which includes a Christian background, a couple of Ph Ds from European universities and many years of exile. It is in exile, deprived of his personal library, that he writes his Philosophy of Liberation, a book that attempts to rethink the history of Western philosophy and its foundations. The result of such an endeavor is a powerful critique of the Western conception of Being that comes, unlike other critiques of Occidental philosophysuch as the ones advanced by, say, the French post-structuralistsfrom outside the system. When I say outside the system I mean it not only in a geographical but also in a philosophical sense: it is a critique of Occidental reason produced from a position of exteriority. That is, it is a critique that positions itself outside Totality and outside the realm of Being as understood by the West. Alterity, understood in his philosophy as something other than what Occidental reason understands as Being, is not part of a Hegelian Totality that subsumes differences in a continuous process of synthesis. Alterity, in Dussels system, is different from difference. Unlike Chakrabarty, Dussel does not say that Western philosophical tools are necessary but insufficient to the understanding of the periphery. What he proposes, instead, is a critique that stems from the lived experience of those who have been relegated to the margins of the province of Being, that is, from the perspective of those who are notthose who have no Beingbefore the eyes of the dominant system. In todays parlance, those who do not inhabit the province of Being could be called subalterns, but when Dussel wrote his Philosopy of Liberation, he understood them as Others. However one calls them, what is clear is that a philosophy inspired in the lived experience of those marginal subjects is doomed to have little currency in the world we live in and in the academic system in which we produce. It is understandable. After all, the academic system that provides the framework for our intellectual production (like this volume of Dispositio/n, for example) is, in turn, a product of, and a tool for, the domination of precisely those Others or subalterns that inspire Dussels philosophyas John Beverley has stated repeatedly. This is a system that is the product, also, of the Eurocentrism that Dussel attributes to Modernity in one of his most impressive historicizations of domination, The invention of the Americas :
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eclipse of the other and the myth of modernity (available in English in the version published by Continuum, NY, 1995). In it, Dussel dismantles what he calls the myth of Modernity: a myth that justified the rise of Europe to world dominance by hiding, at the same time, the horrendous crimes it committed in the name of progress and emancipation. Modernity and the West have evolved into what is now called globalization, an era that has also been criticized acutely and repeatedly by Dussel. The most recent critique of the West and its philosophical as well as political tools he has produced is his monumental and yet generally unread Etica de la liberacin en la edad de la globalizacin y la exclusin (Madrid: Trotta, 1998). Europe and the US, then, as heralds of globalization and heirs to the legacies of Modernity, might not be the most friendly places, academic or otherwise, for the reception of Dussels ideas. The much-needed book compiled by Linda Martin Alcoff and Eduardo Mendieta is a wonderful opportunity for the English-speaking reader not familiar with Dussels work to get a first glimpse of both his amazingly vast production and his original and daring ideas. The editors have done a great job, not only of selecting the contributors (who cover a wide ideological, philosophical and disciplinary range) but also of presenting the materials: the introduction to the book is a very well conceived tour both for those in the know and for those who are not familiar with the works by the Argentinean philosopher. The first article is written by Walter Mignolo, a true admirer of Dussels work and probably the only literary critic of status to have ever quoted or used the latters ideas in his own scholarship. His critique of Levinas is impeccable: it lays bare the profoundly Eurocentric bias of his philosophy. His attempt to clarify the connections of Dussel and his philosophy of liberation with theorizations such as the coloniality of power and the endeavors of the Latin American Subaltern Studies group is also very compelling. Yet, Mignolos most personal contribution in his article is the description of a project that would pose diversity as a universal project that he calls diversality (38-45). James L. Marshs article on the material and formal principles in Dussels ethics is very enlightening and it compares the Argentinean philosopher favorably with much more famous European thinkers (Jurgen Habermas and Karl-Otto Apel (51-67). The latter has responded to some of Dussels criticism of his work in more than one occasionwhich makes him an oddity, given the deafening silence of most European philosophers
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regarding Dussels work. In Apels piece, two things are clear: 1) that he is not interested in a kind of ethical criticism that comes from the periphery, 2) that he may not even understand why he is being criticized. This is not surprising because Eurocentric thought is such, in part, due to its incapacity to view itself as a product of colonialismthe darker side of the Renaissance, in Mignolos words. Other pieces, like the one penned by Hans Schelkshorn, attempt to make Apels and Dussels philosophies harmonize with each other. His article, however, ends up acknowledging the limitations of discourse ethics under totalitarian conditions (111)and as the reader knows, these are the conditions under which an important percentage of humankind lives. Dussels Ethics of liberation, on the contrary, presents itself as a form of solidarity with the poor (112). Mendietas article is an excellent introduction to, as well as a subtle interpretation of, Dussels thoughts on globalization, especially his consideration of globalization as an ethical problem that has a specific history (16129). It is because of radical positions like this that Dussels thought has very few possibilities of entering the philosophical dialogue that takes place in the great academic markets. Those markets are, understandably, not interested in a serious ethical discussion that would put into question their very own foundations. The volume includes more than one feminist or gender studies oriented article. This has always been an area of theoretical inquiry and social activism where Dussels ideasand for good reasons, I believehave found more resistance. However, Lynda Langes article is rather positive in that it defends Dussel from potential critics coming from the feminist campespecially those coming from first world feminismbasing her arguments on geopolitical thinking (see especially 145-146). Elina Voula, for her part, criticizes Dussel (especially his early work) for not being very compatible with feminist critique. However, she makes it clear at the beginning of her article that her critique raises from an empathetic demand to take a more critical look at the status of our [that is, womens] truth claims (150). Her criticism of the limitations of Dussels philosophy with regard to sexual ethics (160-164) are sound and are reason for concern. Fortunately, Dussel has already started to address these issues in a more sensitive way, as Voula herself informs us (161) and as Dussels responses to her criticisms confirm (284-286). Yet, there is still much to be
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done if the goal is to find room for feminism in the framework of liberation philosophy. For reasons of space, I am going to skip commentary on the very solid articles by Roberto Goizueta and Michael Barber and go directly to the wonderful piece by Mario Saenz. In it, the author offers an exhaustive analysis of Dussels treatment of Marxs notion of living labor. His critique of Habermass and Apels philosophical work, as systems independent from social conditions, can best be described as a true demolition (228230). Yet, it is his careful scrutiny of what Dussel does with Marxs ideas that makes this article a very important contribution for anybody interested in Marxism or in progressive critical thinking. Those who are interested in the issue of materiality should also read his very meticulous analysis of that notion and its implications for an ethical system of liberation. Linda Martin Alcoffs is a piece about the possibility of finding a certain point of contact between Foucaults notion of subjugated knowledges and Dussels geopolitically founded philosophy. In her own words, despite their significant differences, Dussel and Foucault can be viewed as having complementary projects, the one developing an immanent critique of European discursive regimes, the other developing an external critique from the perspective of the victims of these regimes in the Third World (249). This very interesting piece suggests that the homogeneity of Dussels oppressed subjects can be made less monolithic by having recourse to Foucaults notion of subjugated knowledges (250). It also suggests that Dussels ethics, founded as it is on an awareness and critique of colonialism, could help us explain why Foucaults work replicates a colonial unconscious (250). The latter never took into account the colonial encounter in his work and therefore failed to relate the power/knowledge structures of modernity with colonialism (253), a relationship that that Dussel has abundantly explored. In the Epilogue Dussel responds to the articles in this volume. This is an opportunity to read his opinions about topics he treated many years ago as well as some of his most recent concerns. It is in these pages where the reasons for the lack of exchange value of Dussels work in the world of philosophy and critical thinking dominated by European subjects and institutions is most clearly exposed: he is a true revolutionary thinker. His stress on ethics instead of on harmless theoretical fashions written in English and addressed to metropolitan elites makes him a very good candidate for intellectual ostracism. In spite of the hostility or indifference shown by scholars in the humanities to this kind of thinking, this book dares to make the
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strength of Dussels arguments and the noble nature of his goals available to an English-speaking public that has chosen, hitherto, to ignore him altogether. In an academic world dominated by corporate and neoliberal values, his work is a very necessary antidote against the inoffensive role we scholars choose to play in it.
Gustavo Verdesio University of Michigan
Beatriz Sarlo. Scenes from Postmodern Life. Translated with an Introduction by Jon Beasley-Murray. Minneapolis-London: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. 170 pages.
The publication in 2002 of the English translation of Beatriz Sarlo's Scenes from Postmodern Life (Escenas de la vida Posmoderna, Buenos Aires: Ariel, 1994) confirms both progress and distance in the relationships between Latin American and American Cultural Studies. The progress is, to a great extent, due to the editorial/ publishing efforts of Duke University Press and University of Minnesota Press (although Verso could have also been mentioned here). Duke has published such crucial books as Angel Rama's The Lettered City (1996), No Apocalypse, No Integration Modernism and Postmodernism in Latin America by Martin Hopenhayn (2001), Divergent Modernities: Culture and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Latin America by Julio Ramos (1999), The Space In-Between: Essays on Latin American Culture by Silviano Santiago (2001), the Argentina, Brazil and Peru Readers and announces the forthcoming The Gaucho Genre: A Treatise on the Motherland by Josefina Ludmer and the Mexico Reader. The University of Minnesota Press has done an equally impressive job with the publication of Sarlo's book, here reviewed, along with Hybrid Cultures. Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity, Consumers and Citizens. Globalization and Multicultural Conflict both by Nstor Garca Canclini (1995 and 2001) and the late Susana Rotker's Captive Women: Oblivion and Memory in Argentina (2002). It took fourteen years for The Lettered City to be published in its English translation, ten years for Ramos' Divergent Modernities, and more than fourteen for Ludmer's The Gaucho Genre. That is the distance. By
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comparison it has taken eight years for the translation of Sarlo's book to appear and only two for that of Rotker's. That could be an indication of progress. As in Pierre Menard's case, the eight years between the publication of the original and the English translation of Sarlos text have added new layers of meaning to an already rich work. Sarlo's declaration that Argentina is like almost everywhere else in the West in that it is going through a process of increased cultural homogenization () in which the wealth of goods is no compensation for the poverty of collective ideals cannot be read today in the way we read it eight years ago. It is simply not the same statement. Scenes from Postmodernity was reviewed here in its Spanish version by Pablo A. J. Brescia (Dispositio/n 50). In its English incarnation, Sarlo's book comes with an excellent short introduction by the translator of the work, Jon Beasley-Murray. In it, Beasley-Murray provides brief but useful comments to contextualize Sarlo's book in her oeuvre and within the specific Argentine cultural and political context. Her critique of neopopulism in Scenes is thus related to the long history of populism in Argentina. Outlining Sarlo's political trajectory from a socialist to a social democrat Beasley-Murray states that Sarlo identified the two major objects of her critique as neopopulism and neoliberalism and not just, or at least not directly, capitalism per se. The book has two broad parts: the critique of the market and the cultural consumption it promotes, and the critique of intellectuals and their role in a postmodern society. They are both equally stimulating if not equally convincing. Perhaps the crucial moment in Scenes, that moment which Roman Jakobson would have called the poetic or self-referential moment in the text, that page where the text thinks its own space of textual production of meaning, comes when Sarlo maps out two responses the intellectual elite has developed concerning the crisis of legitimacy affecting traditional high bourgeois culture. She rephrases the now classical Umberto Eco['s] dichotomy between apocalyptic and integrated: Those prophesying apocalypse (whom we would call today partisans of the old mode of legitimation, unyielding in their defense of the way culture was before its media reorganization) face the advocates of integration (the unpaid or self-elected defenders of the media industries and their new mode of cultural legitimation) (97).
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In her contrast between these two positions there seems to be no alternative left for a constructive Left. Yet her book presupposes or requires the existence of just such a third space where her text demands or would want to deploy itself. Scenes tries to map out such a territory, moving carefully to avoid the pitfalls of the apocalyptic and the integrated. This negative tension will mark the development of Sarlo's arguments when analyzing the three aspects of Argentine culture her book explores: Media (videoculture and TV consumption), Popular Culture and High Culture and Art. Her intellectual position is summarized as follows: The question is not what is to be done but rather how to set up a standpoint from which we can see (6). In the process of constituting such a perspective, Sarlo will develop a sustained critique of the market in its neoliberal form. For her, the market demands a political counterpart, a democratic will to check its totalizing order. Under the faade of total freedom to choose, the market hides a tyrannical reproduction of order. This order is the more insidious in that, like the urban shopping mall which she analyzes in interesting detail, it provides a simulacra of identities, it reterritorializes social spaces and creates, under effective unification of some part of society, the mirage of difference and diversity. Against the figure of the mall and TV, Sarlo will revisit the locus classicus of the encounter between the masses and the leftist intellectual elite. In fact, school provides an interesting counterpoint insofar as Sarlo sees it as the most important space for the inculcation of critical thought. In Sarlo's view, school, contrary to the media, is capable of producing a cultural authorization to critique authority. It is then the empowering space par excellence. School, Sarlo continues, was never simply an instrument of domination and homogenization. It was also a space of modernization and democratization. The people learned to use school and incorporated that experience into their own modern identity. Sarlo does not seem inclined to grant TV consumption the same kind of ambivalent status. It is as if the critical popular subject of the school vanished as soon as s/he starts watching TV, unable to connect with its media consuming self. Not surprisingly, Sarlo advocates a school-taught critical media literacy that would provide access to the hermeneutic tools for an understanding of symbolic production. The last section of Scenes is devoted to a critique of sociological understandings of high culture as represented by the work of Pierre Bourdieu (chapter 4) and to a related discussion on intellectuals (versus experts) in the postmodern world (chapter 5). Three of Sarlo's statements summarize
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the complexity and tensions of these sections: 1) Artists' may well be driven by the rules of this game ['relations of force within the intellectual field.']. But while the sociology of culture manages to dislodge idiotic notions of disinterest and aesthetic priesthood, it equally soon dispenses with any analysis of those properly aesthetic resistances that produce art's semantic and formal density (p.126.); 2) In claiming value neutrality, experts are less well equipped than ever at such turning points where values are inextricably at stake. By contrast [] taking sides constitutes the very motive force for intellectual practice. The clash of values is its favored terrain (p.150) and 3) Of course no one would want to bring back a pedagogic paradigm whose program would be the aesthetic indoctrination of the multitudes. Rather what I am arguing is for incorporating art back into our reflections on culture, from where it has been dislodged by broad definitions of culture along anthropological [and value neutral] lines (p.160). In light of her later critique of cultural studies in literary studies (see Revista de Crtica Cultural, number 15, 1997) to advocate a return to aesthetics and to the problematic of true values in the shape of the modernist formal and conceptual density, as Sarlo seem to do here and there in Scenes via her critique of cultural studies, may have been understandable in the context of the highly developed cultural academic world of Buenos Aires eight years ago. From the viewpoint of the rest of Latin America, and perhaps from that of contemporary Argentina, it would seem to foreclose the development of the still pending task of real cultural democratization of school and university curricula in the continent and of the multidisciplinary approaches required to account for its complexity. Nevertheless, Scenes from Postmodern Life is perhaps one of the best introductions to that problematic we call cultural studies available in any language. It is also an excellent example of Latin American cultural studies, now, finally, available in this fine English translation.
Juan Poblete University of California-Santa Cruz.
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Graciela Batticuore. El taller de la escritora: Veladas literarias de Juana Manuela Gorriti: Lima-Buenos Aires (1876/7-1892). Buenos Aires: Beatriz Viterbo Editora, 1999. 233 pginas.
El taller de la escritora es una excelente coleccin de ensayos sobre literatura y gnero en la que Graciela Batticuore aborda con gran sensibilidad crtica un tema poco estudiado dentro del campo de los estudios latinoamericanos. Se trata de la cultura eminentemente oral de las veladas literarias de Lima que Juana Manuela Gorriti organiz en 1876-1877 y que Batticuore propone recuperar como objeto de estudio. El libro se compone de varias partes entre las que figuran, por un lado, una seleccin antolgica de ocho ensayos que fueron ledos en las veladas, y por otro, siete trabajos en los que Batticuore teoriza este modelo de sociabilidad letrada tanto dentro como fuera de su contexto de emergencia. Las creativas hiptesis de la autora se plantean desde una perspectiva historicista que se nutre, por momentos, de enfoques comparatistas. As, por ejemplo, al trazar la heterognea genealoga de las soires literarias de Gorriti, Batticuore compara la sociabilidad letrada europea con su contraparte limea. De este modo, Batticuore completa desde una perspectiva latinoamericana los estudios que Deena Goodman, Verena von der Heyden-Rynsch y Roger Chartier (autor de la introduccin del libro) han hecho recientemente sobre la historia europea de la cultura del saln. El volumen incluye tambin una seleccin de reseas periodsticas sobre el happening cultural de las veladas que aparecieron ese mismo ao en el diario El comercio. Los ocho ensayos que Batticuore selecciona para su antologa se publicaron por primera vez en 1892, en un volumen que Julio Sandoval, el hijo de Gorriti, edit a manera de homenaje en el ao de la muerte de la escritora. Batticuore se detiene en el gesto casi anacrnico de la publicacin tarda de varios de estos ensayos, dieciseis aos despus de haber sido ledos, en un marco geogrfico que les es ajeno: la primera edicin de las veladas no aparece en Lima sino en Buenos Aires, cuando la crisis del noventa ha cancelado el optimismo de la dcada anterior. Batticuore lee el impulso memorialista que rige el traspaso de la oralidad a la escritura como parte del espritu de una poca en la que estn de moda las causeries y los libros de memorias (113). En este sentido, el gesto utpico retrospectivo de Sandoval se entreteje con una mirada nostlgica en la que un pasado idealizado y provinciano le sirve para criticar la modernidad materialista del presente. No por nada Ricardo Palma, escribe una carta de introduccin a la edicin
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de Sandoval (que Batticuore no incluye en la antologa) invocando el motivo del ubi-sunt que haba ocupado un lugar tan importante en sus propias Tradiciones Peruanas. Si para Ricardo Palma el orden del Virreinato era preferible a la corrupcin republicana, en las veladas es el americanismo pasado y perdido lo que resulta atrayente como forma de subvertir el cosmpolitismo europeizante de la capital portea. En este sentido, Batticuore tiene razn cuando apunta que las veladas de Gorriti se pensaban en trminos de un oasis de corte latinoamericanista en el que el arte de la conversacin corts desafiaba las fronteras nacionales en aras de una clara voluntad continental (99-103). Para Batticuore, una de las diferencias significativas entre el saln latinoamericano y el europeo fue la relevancia que se dio en aqul a normativizar el controvertido perfil de la mujer escritora en la esfera pblica. Por eso, denomina al saln de Gorriti taller de la escritora ya que en este cenculo la mujer no slamente actuaba como anfitriona que posibilitaba el intercambio intelectual entre grandes hombres de letras, sino que ella misma reclamaba para s el rol protagnico de estrella de la cultura. (58) La salonnire criolla se asigna la misin de modernizar al sujeto femenino republicano a travs de la cultura. De ah que los ensayos de invitados hombres (Alejandro Cerdea, Abel de la Encarnacin Delgado, Jos Arnaldo Mrquez, Benicio Alamos Gonzlez) y mujeres (Rosa Mercedes Elspuru y Lazo, Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera, Mercedes Elspuru y Lazo y Teresa Gonzlez de Fanning) seleccionados en la antologa giren todos alrededor de la construccin de un sujeto femenino capaz de funcionar en la modernidad Latinoamericana. Batticuore especifica este criterio de seleccin en la introduccin al libro cuando dice que [le] ha interesado recopilar los ensayos que desde diversos enfoques convergen en torno a la cuestin de la educacin y la insercin social de la mujer, y a su vinculacin con los debates sobre nacin y americanismo. (133) As, la antologa busca reproducir el carcter sexualmente mixto de estos espacios que aunque estaban liderados por mujeres incluan hombres receptivos a la causa de la ilustracin femenina. Batticuore recurre a la terminologa crtica de Raymond Williams y a su concepto de fraccin de clase para conceptualizar esta alianza que excluye a un sujeto femenino indgena con el que muchos de los personajes femeninos criollos de Gorriti se alan en la ficcin. En este sentido, la solidaridad de clase es aparentemente ms fuerte en las veladas que la de gnero y raza:
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Los hombres y las mujeres de veladas pertenecen a un sector privilegiado de la sociedad. Si este sector accede a la incorporacin de las literatas al campo cultural es porque la alianza favorece a ambos: ellas adoptan en sus ensayos la retrica del cambio social como factor necesario para el progreso nacional; por su parte, los intelectuales legitiman la voz y la escritura de la mujer ilustrada como instrumento de moralizacin social. (47)
Sin embargo, me parece importante subrayar que lejos de celebrar unvocamente a la mujer letrada, la cultura masculina siempre estuvo dividida con respecto a esta cuestin. Por cada uno de los letrados que aceptaron a la mujer escritora como emblema de la modernidad hubo muchos que la ridiculizaron desde la prensa y la ficcin. Algo no muy diferente ocurri en Europa cuando Molire escribi una stira sobre las preciosistas del saln de Madame de Rambouillet que titul, significativamente, Les Prcieuses ridicules . Por otro lado la construccin cultural de una esfera masculina dividida les sirvi muchas veces a las mujeres para construir una utopa sororal compensatoria bajo la mirada perifrica de los hombres. El hogar de Gorriti fue un lugar donde las mujeres pudieron asociarse, elegir temas de conversacin, ilustrarse y buscar modelos intelectuales femeninos, en una poca en que, como bien lo indica Batticuore se les negaba el acceso a los cenculos masculinos. Este impulso sororal es reconocido por el mismo Benicio Alamos Gonzalez en un ensayo includo en la antologa, cuando apunta, dirigindose a un ustedes femenino, lo siguiente: [] Asocindose, escribiendo, publicando sus producciones, han probado que las mujeres son capaces de pensar , que son dignas de ilustrarse, que tienen fuerzas bastantes para ilustrar a los dems (166). El nfasis que Alamos Gonzlez pone en la homogeneidad de esta comunidad intelectual de mujeres revela que l mismo perciba que el espacio de las veladas era un crculo femineizado regido por lazos sororales. Vencer el aislamiento de lo domstico a travs de la asociacin fue una de las contribuciones ms salientes de las veladas a la cultura del siglo XIX. Se podra pensar incluso que dentro de esa alianza inter-genrica que Batticuore detecta en las veladas fueron las mujeres las que usaron a los hombres para desviar la atencin de una propuesta sororal que resultaba amenazante en el contexto patriarcal de la poca. Este libro sin duda entrar en dilogo con el trabajo de investigadoras que en los ltimos aos han hecho importantes aportes al estudio de la obra
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de Juana Manuela Gorriti (Francine Masiello, Cristina Iglesia, Francesca Denegri, y Maritza Villavicencio). La pasin de Batticuore por su objeto de estudio se traduce en una prosa cautivante que transmite al lector un entusiasmo contagioso por el siglo XIX. Uno de los grandes mritos del libro es hacer accesibles al lector las preocupaciones ideolgicas de una generacin de escritoras que haba sido hasta ahora injustamente marginada por la crtica cannica. De esta forma, al mismo tiempo que se compilan materiales bibliogrficos de difcil acceso en bibliotecas, se reconstruyen para el lector contemporneo los debates culturales que marcaron la construccin de la subjetividad femenina en el siglo XIX.
Ana Peluffo University of California, Davis
Francine Masiello. The Art of Transition. Latin American Culture and Neoliberal Crisis. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001.
The Art of Transition explora las topografas esttico-polticas de las culturas literarias chilena y argentina durante el fin de siglo y la inauguracin del nuevo milenio. A este corte temporal, Masiello le superpone uno analtico-conceptual a partir del cual postula su primera hiptesis: durante las dictaduras, el anhelo democrtico hizo que se celebrara lo popular y se lo construyera como representacin de la resistencia. Sin embargo, con las democracias, los crticos comenzaron a sospechar de [esas representaciones de] los sujetos populares, concebidos ahora como meros fetiches postmodernos. Segn Masiello, en este momento es el gnero the principal token that moves on this gameboard of global meaning (17) y que permitir a los intelectuales abrir brechas para una mayor conciencia crtica. Como la primer parte de su ttulo establece, sus reflexiones giran en torno al arte de la transicin; en otras palabras, analiza las estrategias discursivas elaboradas por ciertos intelectuales, escritores y artistas para rearticular crticamente las dimensiones esttica, poltica y tica en dos contextos postdictatoriales diferentes pero sometidos al mismo proceso globalizador. A pesar de resaltar similitudes regionales, Masiello propone una segunda hiptesis diferenciadora a nivel nacional relacionada a dos formas
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distintas de comprender y narrar lo real. En Argentina, la crisis del pensamiento liberal gener una narrativa peculiarmente masculina sobre la bsqueda de autenticidad y la subsecuente desilusin intelectual, mientras que el estado neoliberal engendrado por dictaduras militares ha hecho que los intelectuales recuperaran un relato totalizante que podra contar el destino de una nacin en el cual an los menores detalles sirven para alegorizar el dilema nacional (3). En Chile, al contrario, Masiello afirma que parece haberse disuelto cualquier fe en las grandes narraciones [...] Desmembramiento y violencia, en cambio, se vuelven el ncleo de la leyenda nacional de Chile, micronarrativas truculentas observables desde el siglo XIX. La ficcin y la historia chilenas estn llenas de cadveres mutilados y cuerpos fragmentados, metforas grotescas de la descomposicin de cualquier totalidad social deseada (3). A pesar de esta diferencia, para Masiello todava es posible articular un territorio comn de futuras alianzas: su atraccin cultural hacia las figuras marginadas y abandonadas de la sociedad, aquellas que plantean un dilema a la representacin de la otredad. Como tal, anuncian la problemtica del forastero, una figura que se ha feminizado con relacin a los ojos del estado patriarcal (4). Este es precisamente el campo de fuerzas en el cual Masiello traza sus reflexiones. Luego de haber estudiado en la literatura argentina los cruces entre esttica y poltica durante los aos 20 en su Lenguaje e Ideologa: Las escuelas argentinas de vanguardia (1986), y la emergencia disruptiva del sujeto-mujer con relacin a la nacin y a la cultura literaria nacional desde el siglo XIX hasta los aos 30 en su Between Civilization and Barbarism (1992), Masiello se desplaza histricamente al presente para explorar, esta vez comparativamente, el papel que juegan los intelectuales argentinos y chilenos, en tanto sujetos que se apropian de otros sujetos (lo popular, lo subalterno, lo marginal), y las inscripciones, registros y usos de sus respectivos corpus literarios nacionales en los procesos de transicinde las dictaduras a los regmenes democrticos. Lo esttico y lo poltico, lo histrico y lo geogrfico, atravesados oblicuamente por las categoras de lo popular y de gnero constituyen los ejes que entretejen el marco cultural. Esos cruces de lmites, problemticos y ambiguos, son reconfigurados en frtiles metforas y, muchas veces, en alegoras y procedimientos metonmicos que Masiello trenza muy cuidadosamente a travs de una narracin que incita al movimiento, a la accin, al desplazamiento continuo para mostrar diversas facetas de las culturas argentina y chilena.
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Mscaras, mapas, mercados: tres metforas que organizan el libro en secciones que re-escenifican transiciones, trnsitos, traducciones pero que a la vez establecen lmites dentro de los cuales esos vaivenes se interrelacionan. Transformaciones en las maneras de representar sujetos, tanto esttica como polticamente. Mutaciones de recorridos que delimitan oscilaciones entre dos polos extremos: de la experiencia a la narracin, de la memoria al olvido, de lo privado a lo pblico, de lo popular a lo letrado, de lo local a lo global, del espaol al ingls, de lo femenino a lo masculino y viceversa. Alteraciones que demarcan itinerarios de tensiones contradictorias y flujos de trfico en sentidos mltiples. En The Art of Transition, Masiello propone crear puentes, tender redes, abrir pasadizos que establezcan canales de comunicacin, centrndose precisamente en el ir y venir. El nfasis metodolgico es hermenutico y recae sobre el movimiento intrnseco de dichas mutaciones y la consecuente ambigedad dual que cada una de ellas produce. Transiciones de estrategias polticas, de las dictaduras a los regmenes democrticos; transiciones de prcticas culturales, de apropiaciones de sujetos populares a las de sujetos sexuados y de gnero; transiciones de estilos de representacin, de la nostalgia moderna al pastiche postmoderno. The Art of Transition est dividido en tres secciones desarrolladas en dos captulos cada una. En todos los captulos, Masiello comienza y concluye sus anlisis con una interpretacin de textos visuales: en la introduccin, el documental Fernando ha vuelto (1998) dirigido por el chileno Silvio Caiozzi; en el captulo uno, la instalacin de arte, Burning BedsA Survey, 1982-1994 del argentino Guillermo Kutica; en el segundo, la postal El Libertador Simn Bolvar (1994) de Juan Dvila, chileno residente en Sydney; en el tercero, la instalacin Mutaciones con el platito del Ch (1994) de Liliana Porter, argentina residente en New York; en el cuarto, Happy Together (1997) una pelcula sobre dos inmigrantes chinos en Argentina, dirigida por el chino Wong Kar-Wai; en el quinto, la instalacin Quadrivium (Ad usum Delphini) (1998) del chileno Gonzalo Daz; y por ltimo en el sexto, los Imbunches (1977) de la chilena Catalina Parra. Estas series de imgenes le permiten, por un lado, condensar los temas a tratar en cada captulo a partir de un ejemplo especfico anclado socio-histricamente y, por otro lado, formular inteligentemente las preguntas que guiarn su deriva reflexiva. En la Introduccin, Masiello emprende una trayectoria alegrica en reversa a partir del documental Fernando ha vuelto: los restos estn aqu, es
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posible reconocerlos, por lo tanto, nuestra tarea como intelectuales crticos es tratar de nombrarlos, aunque sea fragmentaria y contingentemente. De all que el epgrafe plantee una problemtica central que recorrer todo el texto: cmo nombrar lo abyecto? La primera seccin, Mscaras, sondea las fluctuaciones (construccin, negociacin y alianzas) de identidades de gnero marginales. Para ello, se rastrean las principales problemticas debatidas en los campos intelectuales chileno y argentino en sus relaciones con la academia estadounidense. Dos captulos conforman esta seccin. El primero, In Search of a Subject: Latin American Intellectuals at Centurys End, analiza posibles estrategias de identificacin a travs de otros. El devenir mujer se convierte en el dispositivo de transgresin por excelencia para reconfigurar la experiencia del nombrar (42). En el segundo captulo, The Spectacle of Difference, se indaga, a travs de impostores y dobles agentes, los dos sentidos de la representacinesttica y polticay sus repercusiones en la construccin y el trfico de diferencias. Masiello se pregunta si el nfasis posmoderno del desplazamiento basado en el gnero nos permite llegar a las mismas conclusiones con respecto al potencial oposicional del arte y la literatura? (53-4). Mapas, la segunda seccin, se concentra en el debate identitario que reconfigura las cartografas modernas. En Gender Traffic on the North / South Horizon, tercer captulo, explora la manera en que se exotiza, a travs de la imaginacin femenina, el sujeto de gnero en Amrica Latina, ya sea por la influencia de la academia estadounidense o por el mercado del best-seller. Cmo emerge la invisibilidad femenina en la sintaxis de los intercambios norte / sur? (108-9). En el cuarto captulo, Bodies in Transit: Travel, Translation, and Sexuality, considera las ansiedades geopolticas producidas por las cartografas modernas, a travs del gnero y la traduccin, enfatizando la recuperacin del Orientalismo como construccin de la otredad. La subjetividad de los inmigrantes no encuentra un lugar adecuado en un contexto extranjero a pesar de todos los esfuerzos por encontrarlo...: Podemos redirigir el deseo a travs de la experiencia de lo extranjero? Cmo se puede sostener un circuito de interlocutores en mltiples lenguas? (143). Por ltimo, en Mercados, Masiello investiga alternativas en el paisaje de representaciones diseado por el mercado. El nfasis se sita en el uso de dispositivos provistos por el mercado pero que ejercen una resistencia crtica hacia el mismo. En The Politics of the Text: Experience, Rep-
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resentation, and the Return of lo popular, quinto captulo, reflexiona sobre la distancia entre poltica y representacin y discute las maneras en que las polticas del texto resisten (las cooptaciones de) el mercado. Nos incita a reflexionar sobre la comprensin verbal del espacio y nuestra construccin del movimiento en la historia: el intelecto y la mirada del sujeto deberan reconstituir signos desconectados, referentes locales con marcos de sentido globales (180). Finalmente, en el sexto captulo, From Museum to Street: Poetry for the New Millennium, investiga la poltica de las voces que emerge de la poesa experimental contempornea de mujeres. Al postular este espacio como margen del margen, Masiello reconstruye los fragmentos que solicitan recomposicin a partir de las siguientes interrogantes: Qu forma puede adquirir el lenguaje potico del comienzo del milenio? Qu le est permitido decir a la poesa? Qu pasa por el curso de poesa experimental cuando es reclamada por escritores cuyas vidas estn definidas ms all de las instituciones y los cnones, ms especficamente por mujeres contemporneas? La poesa de mujeres regresa a la historia y a la identidad, a la experiencia y a la representacin (222), regresa para no tener miedo de volver a nombrar, aunque sea tentativamente; regresa para suturar significados marcados por la contingencia. En The Art of Transition, Masiello recorre una enorme cantidad de textos contemporneos crticos, narrativos, poticos y algunos de ellos visuales, a partir de los cuales revisa las tradiciones literarias cannicas y emergentes de Argentina y Chile. A mi entender, sus logros ms destacables son: reservarse en todo momento el derecho a leer de una manera diferente, y volver a nombrar, estableciendo clausuras de significados contingentes, sin temores a ser acusada de pasada de moda. En un momento en que la teora ha hecho implosin en el campo de la crtica literaria, la lectura de The Art of Transition es refrescante, en la medida en que la teora parece no predominar sobre la interpretacin textual, y, a la vez, aparece como cuestionadora de la institucionalidad que se est tratando de imponer en este mismo campo. Masiello no se estanca en polmicas terico-crticas que ocluyen a priori posibles itinerarios, sino que las recorre con el propsito de encontrar espacios alternativos de posibles alianzas. Por ltimo, slo quisiera plantear dos reparos crticos sobre lo que el texto promete pero no hace. Por un lado, las expectativas -insatisfechas a lo largo del texto- que genera su subttulo, Latin American Culture and Neoliberal Crisis. No creo que Masiello considere a Chile y Argentina como ejemplos representativos de la cultura latinoamericana, pero slo
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establece comparaciones ocasionales con el caso de Mxico. Por otro lado, el hecho de quedar atrapada en una caracterstica paradoja de fines de siglo: proclamar la necesidad de reconsiderar el concepto de cultura que ha sido moneda corriente hasta este momento, mientras todo su anlisis se construye a partir de una concepcin vanguardista de la misma.
Ana Del Sarto Bowling Green State University
Andermann, Jens. Mapas de poder. Una arqueologa literaria del espacio argentino. Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo Editora, 2000. 315 pgs.
Un hombre va en busca de otro para desafiarlo (13). Con esta frase que condensa el primer cuento de Borges,Hombres pelearon, comienza Jens Andermann su libro sobre el espacio argentino. Esta retrica de los pasos que lo lleva al hombre a enfrentarse con el Otro para desafiarlo inscribe la trama elemental (en el sentido borgeano de la palabra) de Mapas de poder, ya quecomo explica Andermannla caminata hacia el Otro traza un mapa, funda un territorio, un espacio de la representacin, un universo de sentidos (13). Precisamente, como el hombre del cuento, Andermann va en busca del espacio argentino, de la cultura otra, para desafiarla crticamente y para proponernos un mapa de sentidos. En cierto modo, Andermann es un viajero que cruza los bordes fijos de la nacionalidad para explorar desde un exterior de sentidocomo observa Graciela Montaldo en la contratapalos mitos/mapas fundacionales de la cultura argentina. Andermann, sin embargo, no es en ningn momento el viajero europeo tpico del siglo XIX que exotiza, canabaliza y silencia el sujeto para transformalo en simple objeto/campo de estudio. Por el contrario, la arqueologa que propone el crtico alemn en Mapas de poder construye y nos revela un nuevo modo de articular esa cultura otra que lejos de re-marcar el adentro y el afuera de esa culturacomo lo hace la propuesta de Piglia al leer a Groussac y Gombrowiczpropone, en cambio, construir un lugar utpico de lectura que destruya esos lmites en cuanto dicho lugar permitira cuestionar la naturalidad de las canonizaciones y del patrimonio (272). As, en Mapas de poder Andermann es un viajero entre los tex-
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tos, porque su lectura es mvil y transgresora y no por su calidad de extranjero, que a esta altura ya no significa nada. Al fin de cuentas, todos somos extranjeros si nos atrevemos a salir fuera del canon cerrado, de ese mapa de lecturas presentado como sinnimo exclusivo de lo argentino. Andermann inicia su viaje inter-textual delimitando un modo de ver capaz de revelar el territorio nacional convencionalizado en tropos, en figuras, en imgenes retricas (18), es decir, al crtico no le interesa fijar su mirada en el espacio argentino para describir una topografa (18), sino que busca, por el contrario, mostrar cmo se inscribe en dicha topografa una tropografa que se presenta como el espritu de la nacionalidad (18) . Mapas de poder es, entonces, un estudio del y no en el espacio argentino (18), ya que se articula a partir de una mirada desarticuladora de lo geogrfico para hacernos ver los sentidos polticos y culturales de esos espacios construidos como argentinos. Desde el subttulo mismo, Andermann identifica esta mirada como una arqueologa que, a diferencia de la historia de las ideas, no pretende realizar una lectura alegrica de los documentos. Por el contrario,la arqueologa se inclina a la descripcin intrnseca de monumentos (19) , supone la descripcin de los discursos como prcticas especficas en el elemento del archivo (19), lo que permite no slo el cuestionamiento de las construcciones cannicas (la obra, el autor, la disciplina) sino que tambin posibilita una reescritura crtica, una transformacin reglamentada de lo que ya estaba escrito (19). Es, en definitiva, esta aqueologa del espacio argentino la que le permite a Andermann construir ese lugar utpico de lectura re-definidor del adentro y del afuera. Y es, a su vez, ese lugar y esta mirada arqueolgica las estrategias que le permiten a Andermann inscribir en su texto una crtica aguda del archivo, de la memoria. Cules son, entonces, esos mapas de poder que nos propone Andermann en su viaje inter-textual? En primer lugar, dichos mapas estn temporalmente localizados entre, aproximadamente, 1830 y 1930 (19), perodo clave en la semiotizacin de lo nacional ya que abarca desde la generacin del 37 a la vanguardia, pasando por la generacin del 80 y la del Centenario. Lejos de ser una delimitacin arbitraria, esta localizacin temporal de los textos le permite a Andermann trabajar con la apora fundacional de la nacionalidad desde lo cannico (Sarmiento, Mrmol, Echeverra, Hernndez, Mansilla, Payr, Rojas, Lugones, Giraldes, Quiroga, Arlt, Martnez Estrada, Borges) pero tambin desde los rarosal decir de Montaldo (Moreno, Estrada, Zech). En segundo lugar, Andermann propone leer esta
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cadena de textos a partir de un triple movimiento que va construyendo distintas imgenes de la frontera (19), en cuanto que dicho movimiento supone una relacin con la alteridad, con ese otro que se quiere re-significar, saturar, en definitiva, de sentidos. Este triple movimiento segn lo piensa Andermann est compuesto por dispositivos diferenciables a los que denomina respectivamente apercepcin, apreciacin y apropiacin. A cada uno de estos dispositivos le corresponde, sin embargo, un momento preciso en el siglo recortado por el crtico. As, el dispositivo de apercepcin se inscribe en el momento de la escritura letrada proscripta anterior a Caseros, el de apreciacin, en cambio, se articula durante el perodo posterior a Caseros (20) siendo el Ochenta el momento clave de esta reconfiguracin de lo nacional (20), aunque Andermann integra a este dispositivo los viajes modernos de Arlt y de Quiroga. El tercer movimiento, el de apropiacin, se extiende, por ltimo, en la etapa final del siglo estudiado, concentrndose en el Centenario y en Martnez Estrada para culminar con Borges. Sin embargo, al detenerse en las difrentes lecturas del gnero gauchesco, este dispositivo incorpora a Hernndez y al Martn Fierro. De acuerdo con Andermann, apercibir, apreciar y apropiarse del Otro constituyen dispositivos resemantizadores que van mapeando tanto la topologa como la tropologa nacional. Cada una de estas miradas proyectadas sobre el espacio suponen, por lo tanto, modos diferentes de narrar, de construir la frontera donde el letrado o el escritor se encuentra con ese Otro a quien va a desafiar. La generacin del 37 apercibe el espacio argentino, es decir, no slo lo advierteen el sentido de tomar conciencia a la vez que comunicar, avisar (40)sino que lo prepara, lo arma en funcin de un proyecto de nacin determinado (40). El dispositivo posterior, en cambio, se lanza a apreciar ese espacio armado al incursionar sistemticamente en l para valorarlo a fin de hacer el relevamiento de sus contenidos y de reducirlo a la territorialidad normativa del Estado-nacin (108). Los viajes de Mansilla, de Santiago Estrada, de Moreno, de Payr, pero tambin los de Arlt y los de Quiroga, se leen como viajes nacionales en los cuales la nacin y no ya el imperio, hace el catastro de sus posesiones. Ahora bien, si los primeros celebran el catastro de las posesiones y re-significan la expansin territorial, Andermann hace ver cmo tanto Arlt como Quiroga en sus viajes al interior inscriben en sus textos el fracaso del proyecto liberal de construir una nacin distinta (140). Por ltimo, el dispositivo de apropiacin constituye una serie compleja y contradictoria de lecturas y de
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re-escrituras del patrimonio cultural nacional ya armado por los otros dispositivos (20, 178). Dichas apropiaciones buscan canonizar una serie de normativizaciones de los usos nemnicos de la otredad popular (21) , es decir, tienen la misin de memorizar, de conservar en la letra lo que ya no queda ms all de ninguna frontera y construir a partir de ellas el alma de la nacionalidad (178). [L]os lugares hablan (101), afirma Andermann en Mapas de poder. Los lugares, por lo tanto, no son neutrales, transparentes, ni mucho menos inocentes. Y sa, sin duda, es una leccin vieja. Reducir, sin embargo, Mapas de poder slo a esta lectura sera un error, ya que el texto de Andermann propone mucho ms. Lisa y llanamente, Mapas de poder nos propone re-ver eso que nos dicen los lugares. As, la pregunta que encierra el estudio no es slo qu escuchamos cuando nos enfrentamos a los espacios canonizados como argentinos: la pampa, la Patagonia, el Interior y Buenos Aires. La pregunta es tambin desde dnde los escuchamos y desde dnde fueron escritos. Slo desde esta complejidad, uno se puede acercar a descubrir el habla de los lugares, ya que slo as uno puede des-cubir en la topologa la tropografa. En su estudio, entonces, Andermann nos deja un modo de leer, donde no basta con enredarse con el tramado de los mapas y de las citas. Todo lo contrario, ese modo de leer nos ensea a usar esos mapas de lecturas, eso que dicen los lugares, para cruzar las fronteras fijas del archivo y desafiarlo. Sin duda, sta es la leccin magistral de Mapas de poder y es, por supuesto, una leccin agudamente nueva, porque si todos los lugares hablan, Andermann nos ensea a escucharlos slo desde el desafo de la crtica.
Laura Demara University of Maryland, College Park
STUDIES IN LATIN AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE Volume 23 / 2004

Introduccin JAVIER DURAN Viva la Revolucin! Los Agachados and the Worldview of Eduardo del Ro (Rius) BOB AGNEW Del corrido de narcotrfico al narcocorrido: Orgenes y desarrollo del canto a los traficantes JUAN CARLOS RAMREZ-PIMIENTA Todava es el corrido la voz de nuestra gente?: Una entrevista con Enrique Franco JUAN CARLOS RAMREZ-PIMIENTA y JORGE PIMIENTA Crnica musical en Mxico: el caso de Chava Flores EDUARDO GUZAR Mapping Border Music: Sonic Representations of la frontera JOS PABLO VILLALOBOS Ms all de la historia oficial: machos, compadres, hroes y villanos en el cine de la revolucin de Fernando de Fuentes y Paul Leduc ISABEL C. ANIEVAS GAMALLO Post-NAFTA Mexican Cinema, 1998-2002 EMILY HIND Cultural Refractions: Border Life en la tierra de nadie BYRON BRAUCHLI Lourdes Portillos Seorita extraviada: The Poetics and Politics of Femicide ALEJANDRO ENRQUEZ Delete the Border! FRAN ILICH Literary Syncretism in Ana Castillos So Far From God DANIEL COOPER ALARCN Book Reviews and Review Essays
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Dispositio/n 52

American Journal of Cultural Histories and Theories. Vol. XXV, No 52

LATIN AMERICAN SUBALTERN STUDIES REVISITED

373 383 389

Founder: Editor: Managing Editor:

Walter D. Mignolo (Duke University) Gustavo Verdesio April Caldwell

CORRESPONDENCE should be sent to:

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GUSTAVO VERDESIO 65.2 (2000): 267- 290.

LATIN AMERICAN SUBALTERN STUDIES REVISITED:...

IS THERE A NEED FOR SUBALTERN STUDIES?

Subaltern, Cultural, and Post-colonial Studies: Their Genealogies

IS THERE A NEED FOR SUBALTERN STUDIES?

IS THERE A NEED FOR SUBALTERN STUDIES?

IS THERE A NEED FOR SUBALTERN STUDIES?

IS THERE A NEED FOR SUBALTERN STUDIES?

IS THERE A NEED FOR SUBALTERN STUDIES?

South Asian and Latin American Subaltern Studies Collectives

IS THERE A NEED FOR SUBALTERN STUDIES?

The Organizational Structure of the Group

IS THERE A NEED FOR SUBALTERN STUDIES?

IS THERE A NEED FOR SUBALTERN STUDIES?

IS THERE A NEED FOR SUBALTERN STUDIES?

ADIOS: A NATIONAL ALLEGORY (SOME REFLECTIONS ON LATIN AMERICAN CULTURAL STUDIES)

ADIOS: A NATIONAL ALLEGORY

ADIOS: A NATIONAL ALLEGORY

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ADIOS: A NATIONAL ALLEGORY

ADIOS: A NATIONAL ALLEGORY

ADIOS: A NATIONAL ALLEGORY

ADIOS: A NATIONAL ALLEGORY

The Philosophy of History (New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1902).

THE RECOGNITION OF CONVERGENCE: SUBALTERN STUDIES IN PERSPECTIVE

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HOW RANAJIT GUHA CAME TO LATIN AMERICAN SUBALTERN STUDIES

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HOW RANAJIT GUHA CAME TO LATIN...