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Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Nativism

So you have Latin American intellectuals contrasting nativism to "European" trends, without realizing that Europeans invented the idea of nativism. Importing German romanticism with its theory of Volkgeist and calling it something else?

"Assim, não foi a influênica européia, pela concepção de vida e pelo estilo estético, suficiente para deter a onda genuína de nativismo, mercê do qual a literatura brasileira, desde os primeiros tempos, viveu a luta pela conquista de auto-expressão e de diferenciacão."

[Thus European influence ... was not sufficent to stop the genuine wave of nativism, thanks to which Brazilian lit, from the very beginning, lived its struggle for self-expression and differentiation.]

1 comment:

Leslie B. said...

Yep. Essentializing, projecting national feeling backward, expecting it avant la lettre, exceptionalizing, saying everything is sui generis, etc. - I think this happens in Portuguese studies too. Huge issue in B. because of the way independence happened, I hazard. It is in the 20th century they seem to work out things discussed in Spanish in 19th. I need to take a history class / read up so I can find out if my theories are right.