The Everyday Atlantic

Tania Gentic

Description

In The Everyday Atlantic, Tania Gentic offers a new understanding of the ways in which individuals and communities perceive themselves in the twentieth-century Atlantic world. She grounds her study in first-time comparative readings of daily newspaper texts, written in Spanish, Portuguese, and Catalan. Known as chronicles, these everyday literary writings are a precursor to the blog and reveal the ephemerality of identity as it is represented and received daily. Throughout the text Gentic offers fresh readings of well-known and lesser-known chroniclers (cronistas), including Eugeni d'Ors (Catalonia), Germán Arciniegas (Colombia), Clarice Lispector (Brazil), Carlos Monsiváis (Mexico), and Brazilian blogger Ricardo Noblat.

While previous approaches to the Atlantic have focused on geographical crossings by subjects, Gentic highlights the everyday moments of reading and thought in which discourses of nation, postcolonialism, and globalization come into conflict. Critics have often evaluated in isolation how ideology, ethics, affect, and the body inform identity; however, Gentic skillfully combines these approaches to demonstrate how the chronicle exposes everyday representations of self and community.
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. Reading Time, Knowledge, and Power in the Ibero-American Atlantic

2. From Mediterranean to Atlantic: Imperialisme and Ideology in Eugeni d'Ors's Glosari

3. Reimagining America, Reproducing Europe: Ambivalence and Intersubjectivity in Germán Arciniegas's "Indigenous" Ethics

4. Knowledge Beyond Borders: Clarice Lispector Chronicles Affect in Dictatorship Brazil

5. The Virtual Subject: Carlos Monsiváis, Media Time, and Mexico's "Citizens-on-Their-Way-to-Becoming-Citizens"

Conclusion: (Digital) Knowledge and the Everyday Atlantic Subject as Palimpsest, From Chronicle to Blog

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Latin American
• América del Sur
• South America
• Spain
• Latin America
• History of the Americas
• Central America
• SS Central America
• Spain (groupe)
• Caribbean
• Portugal

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 02 décembre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438448602
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE EVERYDAY ATLANTIC
SUNY series in Latin American and Iberian Thought and Culture Jorge J. E. Gracia and Rosemary Geisdorfer Feal, editors
The Everyday Atlantic
Time, Knowledge, and Subjectivity in the Twentieth-Century Iberian and Latin American Newspaper Chronicle
TANIA GENTIC
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2013 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Production by Ryan Morris Marketing by Fran Keneston
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gentic, Tania, 1978–
The everyday Atlantic : time, knowledge, and subjectivity in the twentieth-century Iberian and Latin American newspaper chronicle / Tania Gentic.
pages cm. — (SUNY series in Latin American and Iberian thought and culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-4859-6 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Nationalism—Latin America—History—20th century. 2. Nationalism—Spain—History—20th century. 3. Group identity—Political aspects—Latin America—History—20th century. 4. Group identity—Political aspects—Spain—History—20th century. 5. Newspapers—Sections, columns, etc.—Political aspects—History—20th century. 6. Newspaper reading—Political aspects—History—20th century. 7. Time—Political aspects—History—20th century. 8. Subjectivity—Political aspects—History—20th century. 9. Spain—Intellectual life—20th century. 10. Latin America—Intellectual life—20th century. I. Title.
F1414.G388 2013
980.03—dc23
2012049544
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For my father, in memoriam
Contents
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Reading Time, Knowledge, and Power in the Ibero-American Atlantic
2. From Mediterranean to Atlantic: Imperialisme and Ideology in Eugeni d’Ors’s Glosari
3. Reimagining America, Reproducing Europe: Ambivalence and Intersubjectivity in Germán Arciniegas’s “Indigenous” Ethics
4. Knowledge Beyond Borders: Clarice Lispector Chronicles Affect in Dictatorship Brazil
5. The Virtual Subject: Carlos Monsiváis, Media Time, and Mexico’s “Citizens-on-Their-Way-to-Becoming-Citizens”
Conclusion: (Digital) Knowledge and the Everyday Atlantic Subject as Palimpsest, From Chronicle to Blog
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Illustrations
3.1 Images of the caballitos de Ráquira , from the September 1936 Revista de las Indias . (Image courtesy of the Ministerio de Educación Nacional de Colombia. Bogotá.)
5.1 “Balneario,” from the Sábado de Gloria series by Francisco Mata Rosas. (Photograph courtesy of Francisco Mata Rosas.)
Acknowledgments
I am deeply indebted to my colleagues at Georgetown University, who have supported the publication of this book in numerous ways. I wrote much of this text with the aid of several grants awarded by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, for which I am grateful. I was also fortunate enough to present an early version of chapter 4 to the America’s Initiative run by John Tutino, where I received many helpful suggestions. I must also thank my chairs, Alfonso Morales and Gwen Kirkpatrick, as well as the many colleagues in the Spanish and Portuguese Department who have made working at Georgetown such a pleasure. Various research assistants throughout the years have also assisted me in a number of ways: thank you to Óscar Amaya Ortega, Ángela Donate Velasco, Denise Kripper, María José Navia, Jovana Žujević, and most especially Marina Young, for your hard work on this project and others. I am also grateful for the services offered by the Office of Scholarly Publications, run by Carole Sargent.
Many wonderful readers, at Georgetown and elsewhere, have engaged with this work at various stages and provided indispensable suggestions for improvements. I have had fruitful discussions with others regarding the publishing process. My thanks for these dialogues go to Elisabeth Austin, Helen Blouet, Sara Castro-Klarén, Emily Francomano, Barbara Fuchs, Leslie Hinkson, Gwen Kirkpatrick, Francisco LaRubia-Prado, Adam Lifshey, Reinaldo Laddaga, Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel, Alejandro Mejías-López, Erica Miller-Yozell, Barbara Mujica, Sara Nadal-Melsió, Joanne Rappaport, Eunice Rodríguez-Ferguson, Verónica Salles-Reese, Vivaldo Santos, Angelina Stelmach, Lisa Surwillo, Scott Taylor, Aparna Vaidik, Alejandro Yarza, and the anonymous readers who evaluated this manuscript.
The Ministerio de Educación Nacional de Colombia allowed me to reproduce a photograph from the September 1936 edition of the Revista de las Indias , vol. 1.3, in chapter 3. Thank you as well to Francisco Mata Rosas, who graciously allowed me to republish as the epigraph to chapter 5 the photograph “Balneario,” from his Sábado de Gloria series. Raymond Mertens deserves special credit for his help formatting these images for publication. Additionally, I am grateful to the Revista Iberoamericana for granting me permission to include in chapter 5 portions of my article, “El relajo como redención social en Los rituales del caos de Carlos Monsiváis.” Revista Iberoamericana 73.218–19 (2007): 219–36.
I must also thank the many professors who inspired me over the years, first and foremost Carlos J. Alonso, whose intellectual rigor and mentorship have been invaluable to me; Michael Solomon, for his constant support; and my earliest mentors, Teresa Longo and Silvia Tandeciarz, who started me on the path to literary study.
Throughout this process I have been fortunate to have had the encouragement of more family and friends than I have the room to name here. Thanks to all of you.
Finally, my most heartfelt appreciation goes to David, whose faith in this book at times exceeded my own. For your love, support, and patience I will be forever grateful.
Introduction
¿Qué somnoliento conformismo hace que se siga recitando Carlos Monsiváis-Juan Villoro-Pedro Lemebel-Martín Caparrós-Cristian Alarcón como si se intentara formar un canon con una muestra gratis? [What tiring conformity has made it so that we keep reciting Carlos Monsiváis-Juan Villoro-Pedro Lemebel-Martín Caparrós-Cristian Alarcón as though we were trying to form a canon with a free sample?]
—María Moreno, “La crónica raabiosa” (n.p.)
In [the oceanic] space, composed of the sedimented traces of uncharted histories, a hegemonic temporality intersects with other times, with the times of others […] We are brought into the presence of a contingent, temporal relation and into the multiplicity of the present, which is irreducible to its representation.
—Iain Chambers, “Maritime Criticism and Theoretical
Shipwrecks” (682)
In November 1983, João Ubaldo Ribeiro published a crônica in Rio de Janeiro’s newspaper O Globo titled “No pasarán!” The text humorously details past and potential invasions of the island of Itaparica, located in Bahia, some one thousand miles from Rio. It jokingly describes Portuguese resistance to Dutch incursions on the island during the seventeenth century, as well as the short presence of Spanish soldiers there under the sixteenth-century reign of Felipe II. (This presence, Ubaldo writes, occurred while Portugal was under Spanish rule, so it did not actually count as an occupation.) He also discusses the English who, thankfully, were only in the area with “Um navio pirata ou outro [a pirate ship here or there]” as they focused their mission of bringing “Civilização e a Cultura ao Terceiro Mundo [Civilization and Culture to the Third World]” elsewhere. 1 Finally, he pokes fun at the French tourism that has recently taken over and turned the territory into a globalized “ tropiques éxotiques ” full of bars and restaurants with French names Ubaldo claims he does not know how to spell since he does not have a French dictionary handy (59; his emphasis). The crônica ends by discussing the United States, with whom “não temos praticamente nenhuma experiência [we have had virtually no experience]” but who are the topic of popular debate due to “[os] incidentes em Granada [the incidents in Grenada]” (60). He concludes that Itaparica is a tough place to conquer mainly because the people there take things with a sense of humor, and therefore only an atomic bomb could defeat it: “A sorte é que ninguém aqui é japonês. [It is fortunate that no one here is Japanese]” (61).
A fun text in tone and style, Ubaldo’s crônica is representative of the typical characteristics associated with the newspaper chronicle in the twentieth century. 2 The chronicle, a print precursor to the blog, is a daily or weekly literary genre that straddles fiction and nonfiction and is common to Spanish-, Portuguese-, and Catalan-language newspapers. 3 It avoids the rigid rules of “objective” and researched journalistic standards that have applied to Western reportage since the North American press established those standards in the nineteenth century, at the same time as it takes advantage of its formal flexibility to comment, at times obliquely, on contemporary social issues. 4 The chronicle described above is particularly illustrative be