Note:This course’s meetings will be conducted in English. Students from Spanish will have to read the texts in the original language, and turn in written assignments in Spanish as well. Students from other graduate programs may use the available translations when necessary, and turn in their assignments in English.
 

Tarsila do Amaral (Brasil) Antropophagia, 1929

 
 

Wilfredo Lam (Cuba) The Jungle, 1943

“[La literatura latinoamericana] Hemos de rescatarla cortándole sus últimas amarras con el rastrero geografismo botánico y zoológico de la pasada generación costumbrista. Hemos de llevarla al plano de las grandes ideas, de los problemas del hombre moderno, de los ambientes complejos de nuestras ciudades, y no sólo de nuestros campos y montañas, en contacto con el pensamiento internacional para que contribuya con un caudal humano e ideológico propio a dilucidar el destino del hombre en el mundo contemporáneo”.

Fernando Alegría, “Resolución de mediosiglo” (Encuentro de escritores, Concepción, Chile, 1959).

 “Este amor por la naturaleza (por los árboles sobre todo) que he conquistado despaciosamente en USA, me ha llevado a la ecología. Estoy haciendo mías las demandas de tanta gente común que quiere un ámbito afín, que procura preservar nuestra “naturaleza” en un universo cada vez más contrario y cruel a las apetencias de la vida. En el seminario de integración, alguien se burló de esta búsqueda de “jardincitos amenos” para ricos. Es cierto que fueron los relativamente ricos de los países desarrollados quienes hicieron la protesta, pero ello no disminuye nada de su legitimidad.”

Ángel Rama (Setiembre 10, 1980), Diario 1974-1983.

This course is an introduction to the period that followed Spanish-American modernismo (1880-1920), and preceded the better known and studied “Boom” of the Latin American novel (1960s). The list of readings, therefore, consists of canonical texts (included in the MA reading list, for instance) that will help outlining the “evolution” and trends of Spanish American fiction from the 1920s through the 1950s. Among them, this course will pay special attention to Regionalism or novela de la tierra, Indigenismo, and Magical Realism.

• An underlying general topic for this selection is their awareness, at the end of a wave of modernization and globalization of the economy and culture, of the failure of modernization in Latin America (in the city, country, or wilderness) to accommodate any project of emancipation and self-fulfillment, individual or social. In fact, they critically addressed issues such as industrial exploitation of natural resources, rural environmental degradation, centralization and the political ecology of access to land and natural resources at a time when the continent is moving towards a nationalistic, urban and industrialized version of development.

• The fictions listed above were under the umbrella of literary modernism and the Avant-Garde. And in fact, they tried to perform or enact themselves an alternative encounter of modernity and popular cultural traditions in the continent. Given the instability of the world economy since 1929, this period reached an awareness of place and history, and started a search of roots for a “new” journey towards modernity, local and universal at the same time, that eventually marked the Latin American fiction and cultural criticism known since the 1960s. Nevertheless, still their deepest criticism was the lack of a true insertion into modernity: a land reform that would have revolutionized the pre-capitalistic and feudal social relationships in rural areas (especially racism), and a consolidation of a democratic national state that would have vindicated the indigenous legacy, overcome the racism against the African Diaspora, and embraced the new European immigrants.

• The literature and culture of this period are particularly useful for introducing ourselves into the following fields of inquiry:
1. Current revisionism in cultural and literary theory on the relationship between culture and environment, and nature in particular. This includes the underrepresented field of studies on literature and nature in Hispanic literary studies, as well as in Latin American cultural theories.
2. Criticism in social theory regarding the role of nature and environment, and of the role of culture in political ecology. The debate on development and sustainable development. Although this period in Latin American literary history has been stereotyped by “the struggle with nature, the effort to master it,” it is a period marked by discourses of nature, and of the Other that have resonances, not only in the fiction and criticism that followed, but in contemporary environmentalism and critique of development. Is it possible to re-conceptualize and re-envision meaningful sustainable development in the wake of globalization through readings of the Spanish American novel?

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Texts

Joaquin Torres-Carcia (Uruguay) New York City, 1920

Primary Sources

• Rivera, José Eustasio. (Colombia, 1888-1928). La vorágine (1924. The Vortex, trans. 1935).
• Gallegos, Rómulo. (Venezuela, 1884-1969). Doña Bárbara (1929. trans. 1948).
• Asturias, Miguel Angel. (Guatemala, 1899-1974). El señor presidente (1946. The President, trans. 1963).
• Rulfo, Juan. (Mexico, 1918-1986). El llano en llamas (1953. The Burning Plain, trans. 1967), and Pedro Páramo (1955. trans. 1959).
• Arguedas, José María. (Peru, 1911-1969). Los ríos profundos (1958. Deep Rivers, trans. 1978).

Secondary Sources

Criticism

1. Alonso, Carlos J. “The novela de la tierra.” Chapter 2. The Spanish American Regional Novel: Modernity and Autochthony. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990. pp. 38-77.

2. ---. “Doña Bárbara.” Chapter 4. The Spanish American Regional Novel: Modernity and Autochthony. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990. pp. 109-35.

3. ---. “La vorágine.” Chapter 5. The Spanish American Regional Novel: Modernity and Autochthony. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990. pp. 136-62.

4. González Vigil, Ricardo. “Configuración y sentido de Los ríos profundos.” Los ríos profundos. Ed. Ricardo González Vigil. Madrid: Cátedra, 2000. pp. 69-108.

5. Martin, Gerald. “El Señor Presidente: Una lectural ‘contextual’.”  El Señor Presidente. Edición Crítica. Paris: Editions Klincksieck; Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1978. pp. LXXXIII-CXXXV.

Nature and Culture in Social Theory and Political Ecology

 

1. Coronil, Fernando. “History’s Nature.” Chapter 1. The Magical State: Nature, Money and Modernity in Venezuela. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1997. pp. 21-66.

2. Leff, Enrique. “Nature and Society in Historical Materialism.” 1986. Green Production: Toward an Environmental Rationality. Trans. Margaret Villanueva. New York: Guilford, 1995. pp. 1-15.

3. ---. “Cultural Mediation between Economic and Ecological Processes.” 1986. Green Production: Toward an Environmental Rationality. Trans. Margaret Villanueva. New York: Guilford, 1995. pp. 37-49.

4. ---. “Pensar la complejidad ambiental.” La complejidad ambiental. Coord. Enrique Leff. Mexico: Siglo XXI, 2000. pp. 7-53.

Critique of Development, and Sustainable Development

 

1. Escobar, Arturo. “Introduction: Development and the Anthropology of Modernity.” Chapter 1. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1995. pp. 3-20.

2. ---. “Conclusion: Imagining a Postdevelopment Era.” Chapter 6.  Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1995. pp. 212-46.

3. Leff, Enrique. “Sustainable Development in Developing Countries: Cultural Diversity and Environmental Rationality.” Global Sustainable Development in the Twenty-First Century. Ed. Keekok Lee, Alan Holland and Desmond McNeill. pp. 62-75.

4. Mires, Fernando. “Hacia la formación de un pensamiento ecológico en América Latina.” Chapter II. El discurso de la naturaleza. Ecología y política en América Latina. San José, Costa Rica: Editorial Dei, 1990. pp. 59-76.

Culture and Nature

 

1. Buell, Lawrence. “Toxic Discourse.” Writing for an Endangered World.

2. ---. “The Place of Place.” Writing for an Endangered World.

3. Cronon, William. “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.” Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature. New York: Norton, 1996. pp. 69-90.

4. Harvey, David. “The Social Construction of Space and Time.” Chapter 9. Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference. Blackwell, 1996. pp. 210-47.

5. Milton, Kay. “The Naturalness of Ideas.” Chapter 2. Loving Nature: Towards an Ecology of Emotion. London: Routledge, 2002. pp. 26-39.

6. ---. “Knowing Nature through Experience.” Loving Nature: Towards an Ecology of Emotion. London: Routledge, 2002. pp. 40-54.

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Calendar