Archival reflections : postmodern fiction of the Americas (self-reflexivity, historical revisionism, utopia)

366 Pages·1999·11.033 MB·English

by  Santiago Juan-Navarro

ARCHIVAL
REFLECTIONS
ARCHIVAL
REFLECTIONS
Postmodern Fiction of the Americas
(Self-Reflexivity,
Historical Revisionism, Utopia)
Santiago Juan-Navarro
Lewisburg
Bucknell University Press
London: Associated University Presses
C 2000 by Associated University Presses, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Juan-Navarro, Santiago, 1960-
Archival reflections : postmodern fiction of the Americas (self-
reflexivity, historical revisionism, utopia) / Santiago Juan-Navarro.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. - ) and index.
ISBN 0-8387-5427-9 (alk. paper)
1. Historical fiction, Spanish American—History and criticism.
2. Historical fiction, American—History and criticism. 3. Spanish
American fiction—20th century—History and criticism. 4. American
fiction—20th century—History and criticism. 5. Postmodernism
(Literature)—Latin America. 6. Postmodernism (Literature)—United
States. I. Title.
PQ7082.H57J83 2000
863—dc21 99-40562
CIP
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
yoo
To Enrique Garcia Dfez,
In Memoriam

Contents
Acknowledgments 9
Introduction: Prospects for an Inter-American Approach to
Postmodern Fiction 11
1. Historiographic Metafiction in the Context of
Postmodernism Theory 19
2. Heretical History: Carlos Fuentes’s Theater of Memory 54
3. Displacing the Official Record: Ishmael Reed's
Reinvention of Western History and Myth 126
4. Between Political Commitment and Epistemological
Skepticism: Julio Cortizar and E. L. Doctorow 194
5. Toward a Pedagogical Political Culture: Historical
Revisionism, Fiction, and Resistance in the Americas 255
Conclusion 283
Notes 292
Bibliography 336
Index 355
7

Acknowledgments
I would like to thank all those who have contributed their time and
effort during the numerous stages in which this book was written.
To Jaime Alazraki, F&lix Martmez-Bonati, Eloise Quiflones-Keber,
and George Stade, who supervised the elaboration of the initial
drafts in Columbia University. To Mary Schwartz, Rick Shain,
Jenaro Talens, and the anonymous reader from Bucknell University
Press for their incisive observations and insightful recommenda­
tions regarding the final revision of the manuscript. To James L6pez
and Patricia Santoro for their untiring and effective editorial work.
The Florida International University Provost Foundation and the
Latin American and Caribbean Center provided me with grants and
financial assistance to advance the work of this study. And lastly,
this book would not have been possible without the support and en­
couragement of my wife, Maria Asuncidn G6mez, who also had the
patience to read and revise the manuscript during the course of its
writing.
I gratefully acknowledge permission from the Editors of Revista
Iberoamericana to reprint material in chapter 2 that originally
appeared in Vol. 62, No. 174 (“Sobre dioses, heroes y novelistas:
La reinvenci6n de Quetzalcdatl y la reescritura de la conquista en
‘El mundo nuevo’ de Carlos Fuentes”). A previous version of chap­
ter 1 was previously published as a monograph in Eutopias, Vol.
196/197 (La metaficcidn historiogrdfica en el contexto de la teoria
postmodernista: una perspectiva interamericana), reprinted with
the permission of the publisher of Ediciones Episteme and the Edi­
tors.
9

Introduction: Prospects for an Inter-American
Approach to Postmodern Fiction
In all the years I have dedicated to the study of the Spanish-Ameri-
can and U.S. literary traditions, I have always been puzzled by a
question constantly put to me by my colleagues in both English and
Spanish departments alike: Why the Americas? At first, I associated
this attitude of thinly veiled distrust with a lack of sensibility re­
garding comparative literary studies. However, this initial intuition
was disproved as I discovered that comparative studies among
works produced in the Western hemisphere and their European
“models” were not only abundant but rarely questioned. Whenever
the cultural traditions of North and South America have been dis­
cussed together, the tendency has been merely to point out their dif­
ferences rather than their similarities. As Gustavo P6rez Firmat
acknowledges, inter-American literary studies are still “terra incog­
nita,” a critical field yet to be developed.1 This scarcity of compara­
tive pan-American literary studies is caused by the rigid borders
that exist between academic disciplines. In both U.S. and Latin
American universities, departments of English and Spanish rarely
interact and encounters between “Americanists" and “Latin Amer­
icanists” are unusual.2 “Americanness” is frequently approached
from a narrow nationalist and Anglophone perspective, which can
be seen in the appropriation of the word “America” as a synonym
for the United States. Many Latin Americanists, in turn, look with
suspicion on any attempt at connecting their own literary tradition
to that of the United States, arguing that a history of economic and
cultural domination stands in the way of any positive interaction
between the two regions. Americanists and Latin Americanists in
the United States seem more concerned with establishing the
uniqueness of their respective cultures than with initiating a dia­
logue that would allow for an understanding of these cultures be­
yond their own limited, nationalist contexts.
The field of postmodern historical fiction in the Americas is par­
ticularly problematic in this respect. Because Latin American litera­
ture does not always conform to the models of Western literary
11