Clio’s Laws: On History and Language

271 Pages·2019·18.932 MB·

by  Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo

CLIO’S LAWS
Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Series in Latin American and
Latino Art and Culture
CLIO’S LAWS
ON HISTORY AND LANGUAGE
MAURICIO TENORIO-TRILLO
TRANSLATED BY MARY ELLEN FIEWEGER
University of Texas Press Austin
Chapters 1 and 5 were part of Historia y celebración (two editions, Mexico City, 2009, and
Barcelona, 2010, both published by Tusquets). Different versions of chapters 2, 3, 7, and 9
were published in Culturas y memoria (Mexico City: Tusquets, 2012). The author thanks
Editorial Tusquets for reverting the rights to both works to him. A preliminary version
of chapter 4 was published in the magazine Letras Libres; a shorter, different version of
chapter 6 was published in Nexos; parts of an early version of chapter 8 were published in
Public Culture (19, no. 3, 2007); and chapter 10 was extracted from Maldita lengua (Madrid:
La Huerta Grande, 2016).
Copyright © 2019 by the University of Texas Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First edition, 2019
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Tenorio-Trillo, Mauricio, 1962–, author. | Fieweger, Mary Ellen, translator.
Title: Clio’s laws : on history and language / Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo ; translated by Mary
Ellen Fieweger.
Other titles: Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long series in Latin American and Latino art and
culture.
Description: First edition. | Austin : University of Texas Press, 2019. | Series: Joe R. and
Teresa Lozano Long series in Latin American and Latino art and culture | Includes
bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019012747
ISBN 978-1-4773-1926-0 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4773-1928-4 (library e-book)
ISBN 978-1-4773-1929-1 (nonlibrary e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Historiography. | History--Methodology. | History--Philosophy. |
Literature and history. | Language and history.
Classification: LCC D13 .T4545 2019 | DDC 907.2--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019012747
doi:10.7560/319260
CONTENTS
Preamble vii

I.  ON HISTORY
Chapter 1. The Laws of History 3
Chapter 2. Poetry and History 15
Chapter 3. The Historical Imagination 57
Chapter 4. Reading History Today 89
Chapter 5. Celebrating History: Between Ser and Estar 109
Chapter 6. Self-History and Autobiography 123
Chapter 7. Six Life Stories by Heart 139
II. ON LANGUAGE
Chapter 8. Polyglotism and Monolingualism 167
Chapter 9. Amar queriendo como en otro tiempo:
Language, Memory, and Boleros 185
Chapter 10. Wicked Tongue (Extracts) 209

Notes 239
Bibliography 245
THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
PREAMBLE
History is a serious matter; language, too, especially dwelling fully within
it. After years of toiling in these solemn matters, at times it has seemed
that writing and teaching history is like wrecking a riddle: either be-
cause the historian, being unable to approach it with all the facts in hand,
has to abandon the enigma or because the riddle vanishes when it is ex-
plained with method and precision. In order to advance a wise and well-
documented study, the historian must put her riddles away in a drawer, for
what history can be told by lingering over the many enigmas of each situa-
tion, fact, or concept? Then again, if the historian doesn’t possess a drawer
of doubts and riddles, what history can she tell? In short, a veritable mess;
every historian faces it as best she can.
Through the years, along with such serious and professional works as
I’ve been able to write in English and Spanish, I’ve published “diverti-
mentos,” attempting to deal with the riddles that attract me. I’ve done so
in the only tone and language in which I can: in Spanish—the language in
which I can experiment and at the same time be experimented on—and
in essays at once humorous, historiographic, and literary, blending facts,
research, and imagination of the past, present, and future. To be sure, the
style of each piece is no accident; I don’t know whether I would have been
able to explore my riddles without irony and paradox. The style frees me
to experiment, true, but it also forces me to explore historical, philosophi-
cal, and political riddles deeply and honestly. That rigor limits my pros-
pects of intellectual grandeur, political relevance, or stylistic innovation.
Don’t get me wrong: I claim neither innocence nor modesty; just like any
mainstream professor, I make use of those common, powerful contentions
of academic English—I argue, I submit, I theorize. I do it with my neck at-
tached to the leash of irony and to those few certainties that I have man-
aged to gain in my role as teacher, researcher, and writer of histories and
vII
vIII PREAMBLE
stories. I hope it is clear that I essay, that is, I try, I criticize, I self-criticize,
and I attempt to imagine better futures. Nothing more. If such a task dis-
plays a lack or an excess of intellectual vanity, let that be measured by the
annoyance, indifference, doubts, and laughter that my essays provoke.
I never thought, however, that my riddles in Spanish would be read in
English. Maybe I write essays in such a vernacular due to my inability to
feel at home in our current Latin (English), which I learned poorly after
language’s neurons had hardened. Maybe. But also I have done so to speak
to my tribe, which is much more and much less than “Mexico,” and thus
satisfy my passion for words and ideas. How much of this rusticity is trans-
latable or interesting, beyond the natural confines of my prose in Spanish,
remains to be seen. I thank the University of Texas Press for the interest
and efforts that have made the translation possible. I am of the opinion,
however, that most of what I’ve written in Spanish, the way I’ve written
it, either is untranslatable or is not of the slightest interest in the Latin of
our era. That’s why the experiment inspires in me both hope and terror.
The essays deal with two fundamental concerns: on the one hand, his-
tory, its what and its how; on the other, words, language, as a craft, as a
refuge, and as a jail. These are subjects so vast that my “divertimentos”
only add a few riddles, a bit of mocking, and, why not, a bit of irreverence:
a voice perhaps mistaken but not more of the same.
I thank the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung for the Humboldt-
Foreschungspreis, and the Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut, Freie Universität,
Berlin, for granting me the time and facilities to work on the translation
of these essays. I am profoundly grateful to both Mary Ellen Fieweger for
the translation of complicated prose and Matico Josephson, un hombre
de palabra, for his invaluable editorial work in the book’s last stages of
production.
I want the English rendition of these essays to be my belated statement
of gratitude to my friends Judith Coffin, William Forbath, James Sidbury,
William Tobin, Kevin Kenny, and Tony, John, Terrie, and Scarlet Nerad.
Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo
Chicago, Berlin, Mexico
Winter 2017–2018
CLIO’S LAWS