Ghost-Watching American Modernity: Haunting, Landscape, and the Hemispheric Imagination

238 Pages·2012·1.46 MB·English

by  Maria del Pilar Blanco

Ghost-Watching American Modernity
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Ghost-Watching
American Modernity
Haunting, Landscape, and the
Hemispheric Imagination
maría del pilar blanco
Fordham University Press
new york 2012
Copyright © 2012 Fordham University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Blanco, María del Pilar.
Ghost-watching American modernity : haunting, landscape, and the
hemispheric imagination / María del Pilar Blanco.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8232-4214-6 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Comparative literature—American and Latin American. 2. Comparative
literature—Latin American and American. 3. American literature—19th
century—History and criticism. 4. American literature—20th century—
History and criticism. 5. Spanish American literature—19th century—History
and criticism. 6. Spanish American literature—20th century—History and
criticism. 7. Ghosts in literature. 8. Landscapes in literature. 9. Nationalism
in literature. 10. Haunted places. I. Title. II. Title: Haunting, landscape, and
the hemispheric imagination.
PS159.L38P55 2012
809'.897—dc23
2011040568
Printed in the United States of America
14 13 12 5 4 3 2 1
First edition
A book in the American Literatures Initiative (ALI), a collaborative
publishing project of NYU Press, Fordham University Press, Rutgers
University Press, Temple University Press, and the University of Virginia
Press. The Initiative is supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
For more information, please visit www.americanliteratures.org.
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1 Unsolving Hemispheric Mystery 30
2 Desert Mournings 61
3 Urban Indiscretions 100
4 Transnational Shadows 149
Epilogue 179
Notes 183
Bibliography 209
Index 221
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Acknowledgments
Although the geographical scope of this book is the American hemisphere,
its development was very much a transatlantic affair that began in New
York City and culminated in various locations throughout the United
Kingdom. I take this opportunity to thank people on both sides of the
ocean for their support, friendship, and inspiration. At New York Univer-
sity, Gerard Aching, Ana Dopico, and Nancy Ruttenburg gave me intel-
ligent and useful advice on my writing as well as on my career moves, and
for this I’ll always be grateful. Martin Harries, a master of haunted writ-
ing, has been a true model for me. I met some wonderful and supportive
people when this project began to take shape, and I thank them here for
their continued friendship: Anna Brígido-Corachán, Ifeona Fulani, Jen-
nifer Kaplan, John Pat Leary, Emily Maguire, and Mariano Siskind. Along
with his friendship, Chris Bongie has given me invaluable help on all life
and career matters for well over a decade now. I thank him for always pos-
ing the most significant and challenging questions. I also give heartfelt
thanks to Sheila Debrunner, Tim Shaw, Jean Beier Murphy, Mike Pingicer,
Lavina Lee, Luke Andrews-Hakken, and Kat Driscoll, who, through visits
and several forms of technology, have always made me feel closer to home,
even when I was so many miles away. Beyond New York, I thank my sup-
portive network of friends from so long ago with whom I’ve reconnected
thanks to my adventures in research travels as well as my relocations: Ro-
berto Frau, Anna Orenstein, and Jason Sánchez.
Across the pond in Britain, I am grateful to all my fabulous colleagues
at UCL, within and outside of the Department of Spanish and Latin Amer-
ican Studies—among them Stephen Cadywold, Jo Evans, Gareth Wood,
viii / acknowledgments
Alex Samson, Claire Thomson, and Mi Zhou. I am indebted to Stephen
Hart and Dilwyn Knox for all their encouragement during my early ca-
reer as a lecturer. My deepest appreciation goes to Claire Lindsay, men-
tor extraordinaire, for her friendship and invaluable support. My gradu-
ate students have been marvelous interlocutors about the ways in which
haunting works in literary narrative, and I thank them for spending so
much time thinking about ghosts. I also express my gratitude to the lovely
people I’ve met since my move to the UK in 2006, for their hospitality,
brilliant conversation, good humor, and encouragement: Deborah Cohn,
James Dunkerley, Peter Hulme, Julia Jordan, Peter and Lizzie Howarth,
Jeremy Lane, Eric Langley, Sean Matthews, David McAllister, Gillian
Roberts, Mark Robson, Heidi Scott, Karina Lindeiner-Stráský, and the leg-
endary Phil Swanson. I give heartfelt thanks to Esther Peeren, impressive
scholar and editor, with whom I share a book and a lot of common ground
in matters of haunting. I also thank all the Popular Ghosts contributors,
for showing me new ways of discussing the pervasiveness of ghosts in our
everyday cultures.
A section of Chapter 2 (“Desert Mournings”) was published in Space,
Haunting, Discourse, edited by Maria Holmgren-Troy and Elisabeth
Wenno (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008). I thank them both for
their permission to publish it here. At Fordham University Press, I thank
Thomas Lay for his assistance throughout the many stages that the manu-
script has gone through to reach publication. My gratitude also goes to
the anonymous readers of the manuscript for both their criticisms and
their enthusiasm for the project. I especially want to express my enormous
appreciation to Helen Tartar, for taking an interest in this project and for
seeing it through to publication. I’m very fortunate to have my book spon-
sored by the American Literatures Initiative and would like to thank all of
those involved in this wonderful and much-needed venture. Very special
thanks go to Tim Roberts and Teresa Jesionowski, for their attentiveness
and thorough editorial work.
Finally, I return to the greatest source of support throughout these
years, my transatlantic family network. Huge thanks to my mum-in-law,
Janet, and the rest of the James clan, for making England (and the EU) feel
like a second home so quickly. In Puerto Rico, Susan Homar inspired me
to pursue literature as a career when I was half my present age. I feel so
blessed for her continued affection and support. My parents, Carmen and
Jorge Blanco, foremost role models and driving spirits, are always with
me, despite the distance between us. Despite my getting older, I continue
to get no bigger thrill than making them proud of me. My siblings, Jorge
and Lula; their spouses, Julie and Andrés; and my four amazing neph-
ews (Alex, Martín, Jack, and Sammy) have continually been the most
acknowledgments / ix
comforting company as well as true models of intelligence, responsibility,
and unconditional love.
The culmination of my gratitude goes to my media naranja, David
James. I first laid eyes on him during the Q&A session at a conference,
when he was making a characteristically lucid yet complex statement about
Roland Barthes’s punctum. From that day onward, he has punctuated ev-
ery single moment of my life with his love, absolute brilliance, humor, and
unfailing encouragement. The world is indeed smaller, and so much more
amazing, since he came along.
Note on the Translations
I’ve included published translations for most of the texts written origi-
nally in Spanish. The rest of the translations are my own.