File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_2001/postcolonial.0105, message 79


Date: Wed, 23 May 2001 11:37:00 -0400 (EDT)
From: Nacho Cordova <cordova-AT-wam.umd.edu>
Subject: Re: Latin American Literature


Hi Folks:

	Intriguing question. I've been working on a paper on a related
issue.  My first reactions are: 1) that we need to explain whom we include
in the Latin-America category, 2) that we need to address carefully
whether we need to make distinctions about "literature" versus other forms
of discursive interaction or textualities, 3) that we need to consider
that the history of Latin-America, in particular colonial history, might
not be profitably seen as one monolithic colonial encounter for all, 4)
that there were a variety of people that we could call Latin-American that
despite their ties to the settler country can be considered deeply
imbricated in the repercussions of colonialism, 5) that a more nuanced
definition of postcolonial besides the periodization one, is needed to
address Latin-America, 6) that terms like Latino or Hispanic do not
necessarily apply in this realm; and finally, 7) that a critical narrative
of the aims of the application of the term postcolonial needs to be part
of the process of such inquiry.

	I'm not certain what the use of the term postcolonial adds, when
taken strictly to mean the period after the end of de facto colonial
occupation, to an analysis of texts. Then again, in any other way it
raises its own problems.

About your post Mhemet:  I think one can speak of multiple cultures in
South America apart from what one might consider "Hispanic" but of
course, we need to define that term. Now,the focus on South America in
your post further reduces the circumference with which you started (Latin
America). Your statement that: 

> There isn't, for instance,
> any native colonised individual writing in the coloniser's
> language to force the storytelling norms of the Hispanic
> literary traditions by using his own cultural
> peculiarities.

raises many questions for me. Who is the colonised individual for whom we
dig here? What is the logic of "colonised" in this instance? Why wouldn't
creoles of 2nd, 3rd, or 4th generations be considered natives? What
defines "nativeness?" In Puerto Rico at least there were accounts of
"chinos, salta-patras, moros, and other "types." The language certainly
has changed and adapted since the historical period of massive physical
colonization, why would that be the colonizer's language still? Why
wouldn't we look at linguistic practices that disrupt other more local
conditions (gender, power, class, colonizing practices of our own making).

Finally, to reiterate a pet issue of mine. What about Puerto Rico? To what
extent are we willing to consider it part of Latin America for the
purposes of post-colonial critique? Would such a post-colonial critique
considering Puerto Rico part of Latin-America differ from a post-colonial
critique that does not consider it as such? My contention is that Puerto
Rico is not postcolonial at all in the sheer sense of after de facto
colonial occupation. And that if we take postcolonial as varying with
regionalisation we might engender a better reading of what it might mean
for the island to be considered under such a rubric.

Thanks for the post, 

Best Regards,

Nacho Cordova
cordova-AT-wam.umd.edu
University of Maryland

 On Wed, 23 May 2001, Mehmet Ali
Celikel wrote:

> 
> Hello all,
> 
> I just want to drop a few lines on the question whether 
> Latin American literature could be or should be described as
> 'postcolonial.' Quite like Joseph, I, too, think that it 
> depends on what one really means by 'postcolonial.' When the
> term is used to refer to the period after colonization, 
> -strictly in periodical sense- then it is surely possible to
> read Latin American writing as postcolonial. However, Latin 
> American countries are the 'settler' colonies, just like 
> USA, Canada, Australia and the like, where there is no 
> native culture set free after colonisation. For this 
> reason, is it possible to argue that the literature written 
> in Spanish or Portuguese in South America by the authors of 
> European Hispanic origin changes the cultural perspective, 
> bringing the formerly colonised culture into the centre of 
> the coloniser's language, as in the subcontinental Indian 
> literature written in English? It is hard to believe so, 
> because one cannot speak of any other culture in South 
> America apart from the Hispanic. There isn't, for instance, 
> any native colonised individual writing in the coloniser's 
> language to force the storytelling norms of the Hispanic 
> literary traditions by using his own cultural 
> peculiarities. 
> 
> Mehmet 
> 
> On Tue, 22 May 2001 11:44:15 -0400 (EDT) Joseph Flanagan 
> III <flanagan-AT-odin.english.udel.edu> wrote:
> 
> > When you ask if it possible to describe LAtin America as "postcolonial," 
> > are you asking whether people have done so or whether it is appropriate
> > for them to do so?  There are a number of people who read South American
> > literature through a postcolonial lens --see, for instance, John
> > Beverley's Subalternity and Representation. There are just as many who
> > question that claim that, say, Borges, is a "postcolonial" writer.  The
> > countries of South America are certainly diversified, both internally and
> > externally.  Depends a lot on what you mean by postcolonial, I suppose,
> > but I am wondering whether the term is even helpful right now, given how
> > many areas it has expanded to include.  Seems more like a form of
> > institional and commerical marketing than a conceptional category. Joe
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> >      --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
> 
> ----------------------
> bebeg1m-AT-liverpool.ac.uk
> 
> 
> 
>      --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
> 



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