On Emerging from Hyper-Nation

Ronald W. Sousa

Description

On Emerging from Hyper-Nation represents Ronald W. Sousa’s attempt to answer the question, “Why do I smile on reading one of Saramago’s ‘historical’ novels?” Why that reaction of emotional release? To answer the “smile question” the book engages in a critical mode that could be described as “discourse analysis.” It combines several critical strains and relies on basic concepts from Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, Adlerian psychology, and contemporary cognitive psychology for their discourse-analytical value rather than as entrées into psychoanalytical reading per se. The introductory chapter presents some of the concepts that underlie that compound analytical modality and sets out an overview of twentieth-century Portuguese social and economic history. Then, with an eye to answering the “smile question,” the book reads Nobel Laureate José Saramago’s three novels, Baltasar and Blimunda (1982), The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (1984), and The History of the Siege of Lisbon (1989). Or, better, it seeks to read Sousa’s own reading of the three works, since focus falls on how each novel seeks to construct both its own reading and also Sousa as its reader. The discussion brings to light a number of textual phenomena that bear upon the “smile question.” Among them are that the novels invoke, often subtly, the fascist hermeneutical heritage remaining from before the revolution of 1974 as a constituent part of their communication with the reader; that they summon up historical trauma; that they function as Freudian-style “tendentious jokes”; and that, through these various invocations, they seek to constitute a postrevolutionary Portuguese subject. The reading of Sousa’s reading, then, ends up being a reading of some of the cultural forces at work in postrevolutionary Portugal.
Acknowledgments

Introduction: What’s in a Smile?

Chapter One: Portuguese Fascism and Literary Institutionality

Chapter Two: Baltasar and Blimunda: The Readership Pact and the Release of Pleasure

Chapter Three: Reading the Labyrinth: Text as Obstacle: in The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis

Chapter Four: Mastering the Culture’s Tool Kit, or “Is the City Still Taken?”: The History of the Siege of Lisbon’s Self-Invited Reader

Conclusion: What Has the Smile Brought with It?

Notes

Works Cited and Consulted

Index

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• Spanish
• Portuguese
• European

Informations

• Publié par: Purdue University Press
• Date de parution: 15 avril 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781612493503
• Langue: English

Extrait

ON EMERGING FROM HYPER-NATION
Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures
Editorial Board
Íñigo Sánchez-Llama, Series Editor
Brett Bowles
Elena Coda
Paul B. Dixon
Patricia Hart
Gwen Kirkpatrick
Allen G. Wood
Howard Mancing, Consulting Editor
Floyd Merrell, Consulting Editor
Susan Y. Clawson, Production Editor
Associate Editors
French
Jeanette Beer
Paul Benhamou
Willard Bohn
Gerard J. Brault
Thomas Broden
Mary Ann Caws
Glyn P. Norton
Allan H. Pasco
Gerald Prince
Roseann Runte
Ursula Tidd
Italian
Fiora A. Bassanese
Peter Carravetta
Benjamin Lawton
Franco Masciandaro
Anthony Julian Tamburri
Luso-Brazilian
Fred M. Clark
Marta Peixoto
Ricardo da Silveira Lobo Sternberg
Spanish and Spanish American
Maryellen Bieder
Catherine Connor
Ivy A. Corfis
Frederick A. de Armas
Edward Friedman
Charles Ganelin
David T. Gies
Roberto González Echevarría
David K. Herzberger
Emily Hicks
Djelal Kadir
Amy Kaminsky
Lucille Kerr
Howard Mancing
Floyd Merrell
Alberto Moreiras
Randolph D. Pope
Francisco Ruiz Ramón
El ż bieta Skłodowska
Marcia Stephenson
Mario Valdés
ON EMERGING FROM HYPER-NATION
Saramago’s
“Historical”
Trilogy
Ronald W. Sousa
Purdue University Press West Lafayette, Indiana
Copyright ©2014 by Purdue University. All rights reserved.
The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
Template for interior design by Anita Noble;
template for cover by Heidi Branham.
Cover photo: The Second Death of Ant ó nio de Oliveira Salazar in Santa Comba D ã o in 1975 . In 1965 a statue was erected to Oliveira Salazar, creator and leader of Portugal’s fascist regime. Seemingly designed to echo the Lincoln Memorial, it stood outside the municipal courthouse of small Santa Comba Dão, Salazar’s birthplace. With the 1974 overthrow of the regime, the statue was both covered with denunciatory graffiti and decapitated. In multiple ways, the image of the statue in this state (it was later further destroyed with explosives) serves as a metaphor for the argument advanced in this book. The photograph was taken on February 20, 1975, photographer unknown. (Reproduced with the permission of Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone/ Getty Images.)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sousa, Ronald W., 1943–
On emerging from hyper-nation : Saramago’s “historical” trilogy / Ronald W. Sousa.
   pages cm. — (Purdue studies in Romance literatures ; 62)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-55753-697-6 (paperback) — ISBN 987-1-61249-349-7 (epdf) — ISBN 978-1-61249-350-3 (epub)
1. Saramago, José.—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Historical fiction, Portuguese—History and criticism. 3. Literature and history. 4. Discourse anlysis.
I. Title.
PQ9281.A66Z8666 2014
869.3′42—dc23 2014033969
For Joyce—
To remember forever what Simon said …
As a group of rules for a discursive practice, the system of formation is not a stranger to time. … [I]t … outlines the system of rules that has to be put into operation if a change in other discourses (in other practices, in institutions, in social relations, and in economic processes) is to be transcribed within a given discourse, thus constituting a new object, giving rise to a new strategy, giving place to new enunciations or new concepts.
—Michel Foucault The Archaeology of Knowledge
It ought … to be possible to link the immanent analysis of works with reception research in such a way that they illuminate each other and not merely present a marginal reception history of individual authors alongside the interpretation of individual works … the institution functions within the work, just as the work functions within the institution.
—Peter Bürger The Institutions of Art
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
What’s in a Smile?
Chapter One
Portuguese Fascism and Literary Institutionality
Chapter Two
Baltasar and Blimunda : The Readership Pact and the Release of Pleasure
Chapter Three
Reading the Labyrinth: Text as Obstacle in The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis
Chapter Four
Mastering the Culture’s Tool Kit, or “Is the City Still Taken?”: The History of the Siege of Lisbon’s Self-Invited Reader
Conclusion
What Has the Smile Brought with It?
Notes
Works Cited and Consulted
Index
Acknowledgments
Many people, colleagues, students, and others, have participated, willingly or not, in the making of this book, having done so in ways ranging from basic support and simple comment to probing question to full-blown critique. Those (former and forever) colleagues of whose support in one or more of those modalities I am most aware in drawing this project to a close are Elena Delgado, Michael Palencia-Roth, Rolando Romero, Nicolau Sevcenko, Hernán Vidal, Anthony N. Zahareas, Russell Hamilton, and Rodolfo Cardona. Amongst students I am most grateful to are Saulo Gouveia, Derek Pardue, and Selma Vital, all now, happily, professorial colleagues. Especially Saulo, who not only provided both insightful questions and practical observations but also carried out much of the original spadework for what follows. I am similarly indebted to my wife, Joyce Sousa, and our son Benjamin Sousa for their work with the illustrations. I owe thanks as well to Gwen Ashburn, Dean of Humanities at University of North Carolina Asheville for her support, personal and financial. These are, however, but a few. As you will see, I am indebted as well to literally hundreds more, from undergraduate university students to colleagues to nonprofessionals, both Portuguese and other, who have made remarks and initiated conversations that have moved this project forward. Some of you may glimpse yourselves in the ensuing pages. To all of you, my thanks.
Some materials in this study have been drawn from projects I have published previously. A distant cousin to some portions of Chapter 4 is to be found in my “José Saramago ‘Re-vises,’ or Out of Africa and into Cyber-History,” Discourse 22.3 (Fall 2000): 73–86. © 2001 by Wayne State University Press. Reprinted with the permission of Wayne State University Press. Another part of that same chapter has appeared as “José Saramago and the Modalities of History, or Dragging Their Telos behind Him,” Da Possibilidade do Impossível: Leituras de Saramago , ed. Paulo de Medeiros and Jose N. Ornelas (Utrecht: Utrecht Portuguese Studies Series, 2007), 315–23.
Introduction
What’s in a Smile?
This is an unconventional little book—deceptively so, I think. At its core it is the record of my working through a problem, though in these pages that record appears reworked to produce a linear presentation for the purposes that I shall here introduce. In what follows I express that problem in the form of a question: “Why my smile?” Because, in point of fact, that is how the problem first presented itself to me: I found myself smiling and wondered exactly why I was doing so. Expressed in longer form, the problem has a number of facets to it: Why did I react as I did on first reading what I refer to as the “historical” novels of José Saramago? Why do I still react to them in a roughly similar manner? Have other readers reacted similarly (the quick answer to that question is “yes”)? In what ways can that similarity be accounted for? How can I seek to understand that reaction in historical terms—i.e., what investments in Portuguese history are at play in my own and others’ reader reactions? How can I seek to describe and understand those reactions in critical terms? That short list by no means exhausts the content of the problem, but it does set forth its principal dimensions, thus providing an idea of what the ensuing pages are about.
This study is, then, in effect, my attempt to read critically key aspects of my own reception of specific literary texts. That statement, however, is more complicated than it sounds. Allow me to explain. First of all, by “reception of specific texts” I mean something very precise: the initial operation in production of what follows has been my working through the texts in epoché , my goal being to understand the basic features of the reception that occasioned my initial smile and leads to smiles even today in myself and in others. That is my base operation—creation of a simple phenomenological inventory. But in the ensuing pages the results of that first gesture seldom appear unalloyed, and even when they do—largely at the outset of Chapter 2 but decreasingly thereafter—they are selected, contextualized, and rendered rhetorically (I shall demonstrate what that means as we move on), all to the end of my attempt to address the various facets of what I shall henceforth call my “smile question.” Normally appearing on the page are, then, the results of a second, very different operation. By “reading my reception” I mean something