The ideological critique of hispanism has the effect of delegitimizing it. That is, the traditional rationale for the discipline is nationalist and colonialist. The master narratives of the field are to be questioned.
What could emerge from the critique is a progressive hispanism, unlinked from its origins. It should mostly be devoted to things previously excluded from the canon. It will mostly talk about other languages, other than Castilian: Arabic, Nahuatl, Catalan, Bable.
But if the chief activity of the field is to critique itself, then maybe the field should not exist at all, or should exist only as a shadow of itself, in a weaker form, without confidence in its own validity.
You probably know where I'm going with this.
8 comments:
See Sara Castro-Klaren in the current Revista Iberoamericana, on decolonizing the discipline. Some of her points are good, I feel, others crappy.
In particular, I do not think it is conservative to say that the Spanish language (Castilian) is one despite variation.
Mil gracias. http://revista-iberoamericana.pitt.edu.www2.lib.ku.edu/ojs/index.php/Iberoamericana/article/view/8060
I think my idea is that you cannot read Sor Juana, Pizarnik and Neruda without reading Fray Luis, Góngora, and Lorca. Sor Juana is using a rhetorical and prosodical system developed by Garcilaso, Fray Luis, and Góngora. The unity of language allows for the boom novelists to publish in Spain, for Vallejo and Huidobro and Borges to exist.
Then she ends up advocating a comparatism that we already do when we teach peninsular and Latin American lit together. Ho hum.
And teaching more in English. I actually think that's a good idea. It could be that too worthy goals: having people read more Latin American Literature, and having people learn more Spanish, are in conflict. If students cannot read hundreds of pages in Spanish, they will never get there.
There are many problems with the article, but they are problems that nobody can solve. For example, teaching a heritage speaker standard Spanish through reading standard Spanish American novels, also represses the dialect they speak at home by putting it i a separate, inferior category.
I am taking her to justify two things I already believed in, but need support for.
1/ F*** the historical surveys typically given junior level. There is value in a survey but it should be graduate level. Otherwise give topics courses, or even courses where you read "representative" whole texts, but don't try to survey.
2/ They can read 7.5 pages in Spanish per class period, basically. So assign that. Then let them read longer things in English.
On repression of heritage speakers, etc.: they're actually cool with learning a different Spanish, and proud to come from countries with Nobel Prize winners in literature, etc. Everyone knows about different speech registers, etc. It is some sort of liberal trip from an elite institution to feel funny about repressing, etc. -- unless you actually DO repress, which you wouldn't be doing by assigning Rulfo or whomever.
P.S. on point 2: that's at junior level. And you still have to assign one whole book per course, for them to struggle with, so they can read more senior year.
Looking back: freshman and sophomore year I read whole stories, novellas, plays, and novelas ejemplares. Whole novels came junior and senior year. Junior year I read the Cid, the Celestina, Facundo, and various novels. Senior year there was the whole Quixote. And I wasn't even a major. But I do note: it was in junior year they started with the complete novels.
Now, where I am, senior year has to be like my junior year. One of my students recently went to the M.A. program down the road and a professor was surprised that they had read whole novels before. This indicates how far we have all fallen, I guess.
...how about ideological critique of Francophonie, American Studies, etc.?
I just freaked out a French professor by saying the parallel discipline to Francophone studies was Hispanic studies, not Latin American Studies. They freaked out.
Post a Comment