Against Abstraction: Notes from an Ex–Latin Americanist

245 Pages·2020·4.732 MB·English

by  Alberto Moreiras

AGAINST ABSTRACTION
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border hispanisms
Jon Beasley-Murray, Alberto Moreiras, and Gareth Williams,
series editors
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AGAINST ABSTRACTION
NOTES FROM AN
EX–LATIN AMERICANIST
ALBERTO MOREIRAS
University of Texas Press Austin
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Copyright © 2020 by the University of Texas Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First edition, 2020
Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to:
Permissions
University of Texas Press
P.O. Box 7819
Austin, TX 78713–7819
utpress.utexas.edu/rp-form
The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–
1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper).
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Moreiras, Alberto, author.
Title: Against abstraction : notes from an ex-Latin Americanist / Alberto Moreiras.
Other titles: Marranismo e inscripción, o el abandono de la conciencia desdichada. English
| Border Hispanisms.
Description: First edition. | Austin : University of Texas Press, 2020. | Series: Border
Hispanisms | Originally published in Spain as: Marranismo e inscripción, o el
abandono de la conciencia desdichada. Madrid : Escolar y Mayo Editores, 2016. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019021419
ISBN 978-1-4773-1982-6 (cloth)
ISBN 978-1-4773-1983-3 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-4773-1984-0 (library ebook)
ISBN 978-1-4773-1985-7 (non-library ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Moreiras, Alberto—Interviews. | Sociology—Philosophy. | Political
science—Philosophy. | Critical theory. | Deconstruction. | Latin America—Politics and
government.
Classification: LCC HM598 .M68 2020 | DDC 301.01—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019021419
doi:10.7560/319826
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Once again, to Teresa. And to Alejandro and Camila, because they
lived through these years.
To Cristina and Gareth, who also did.
And to Federico, who prompted me to publish a book like this in a
log cabin in the Córdoba Mountains.
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One has to get one’s own back a little.
GRAHAM GREENE, The Confidential Agent
In the design I have outlined here, he had intuitively hit upon the best way of
hiding his shortcomings and giving full play to his strengths, the possibility
of rescuing (albeit symbolically) that which was fundamental to his life.
JORGE LUIS BORGES, “The Secret Miracle”
What we must never do is willingly hand over our own bodies or the bodies of
our friends.
TA-NEHISI COATES, Between the World and Me
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Contents
A Preliminary Note ix
INTRODUCTION 1

CHAPTER 1. Marranism and Inscription 12
CHAPTER 2. My Life at Z: A Theoretical Fiction 55
CHAPTER 3. The Fatality of (My) Subalternism 72
CHAPTER 4. May I Kill a Narco? 93
CHAPTER 5. The Turn of Deconstruction 107
CHAPTER 6. We Have Good Reasons for This
(and They Keep Coming): Revolutionary Drive and
Democratic Desire 125
CHAPTER 7. Time Out of Joint in Antonio Muñoz Molina’s
La noche de los tiempos and Todo lo que era sólido 152
CHAPTER 8. Ethos Daimon: The Improbable Imposture 167
CHAPTER 9. A Conversation Regarding the Notion of
Infrapolitics, and a Few Other Things 183

Appendix. Marrano Religion: Javier Marías’s Los enamoramientos,
and the Literary Secret 200
Notes 211
Works Cited 221
Index 227
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A PRELIMINARY NOTE
The following book is a translation of Marranismo e inscripción, o el aban-
dono de la conciencia desdichada (Madrid: Escolar y Mayo, 2016). The
change of title was thought appropriate for the English version. The texts
the reader will find carry some emotional weight for me. Self-identifying
dimensions and critical aspects are found throughout: most of the people
whose work I use polemically have been close to me at certain points in
my life, but they are no longer. The second chapter speaks for itself. The
sequence of writings attempts to trace the figure of a particular itinerary
that I call, metonymically, a marrano destiny. It also draws a line toward
a phrase that was my subtitle in the Spanish version, “the end of unhappy
consciousness.” The phrase, but not the experience, has been eliminated
here. Readers may want to read the Madrid interview first (chapter 1) and
decide whether their curiosity is strong enough to warrant the potential
disappointment of reading the rest of the texts. But there is at least one
other way of approaching this book, which is to read the other interview
first, chapter 9, about present and future work. I think chapter 9 proposes a
cipher that explains this book, whose secret cannot really be named even if
I wanted to. The appendix, I should add, confounds everything intention-
ally, or rather it restitutes the book to its obscure nature, lest people think
they have understood everything all too soon.
I translated the book myself, except for chapter 9, which was trans-
lated by Jaime Rodríguez Matos. In the process, I have introduced some
changes, usually just nuances and clarifications, some of them suggested
by the press’s anonymous but very helpful readers.
Ix
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