Why Nation and Narration? Difference between Nation and Country? "Imagined Communities" (Benedict Anderson) Homi Bhabha (ed.) Nation and Narration Foundational fictions (Doris Sommer) Overview of texts for this topic Independence 1810s & 1820s (1898 for Cuba & Puerto Rico) Independence texts El matadero (Esteban Echeverría - 1871 [1841]) Facundo (Domingo Faustino Sarmiento - 1845) Slave emancipation text Sab (Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda - 1841) 20th C texts Spanish-American War 1898 Ariel (José Enrique Rodó, 1900) Calibán (Roberto Fernández Retamar, 1971) El laberinto de la soledad (Octavio Paz, 1959) Historical Context: Argentina See David Rock, Argentina 1516-1982 16th & 17th C - River Plate territories ArgentinaColonial.jpg ArgentinaModern.jpg Part of Viceroyalty of Perú 750,000 Indians (compare 25 million in Central Mexico) 3,000 Spaniards 25 cities founded in 16th C in the region 18th Century Split between country & city (Buenos Aires) Bs As is merchant centre (silver from Potosí) Countryside: basic agriculture, little transportation International rivalries British try to oust Spanish Establishment of Viceroyalty of River Plate 19th Century British defeat of Armada 1804-05 (Trafalgar) British invasion of Bs As (1806) (failed) Napoleon invades Portugal & Spain (1808) Fall of Seville (1810), second week of May Independence: 25th May 1810 Post-independence struggles Loss of territories (Bolivia, Paraguay) Frictions between Bs As and hinterland exacerbated Emergence of Unitarians and Federalists Rise of cuadillismo Independance Wars / Civil War - till 1820 Unitarians vs Federalists 1826: Rivadavia vs Caudillos (Juan Facundo Quiroga) Rise of General Juan Manuel de Rosas Rosas' regime Exile of Unitarian intellectuals: Sarmiento / Echeverría etc. Mazorca Civilización v. barbarie Generation of 1837 Post-Enlightenment concepts of liberty / equality / democracy (influence of French Revolution) Spirit of European Romanticism Byron, Goethe, Schiller, Hugo, Chateaubriand (Atala) Hypostatization of landscape as sublime (freedom, immensity, escape from claustrophobic, unenlightened society, or, later industrial modernity) Problem in applying this to Argentina Dilemma Rosas was a dictator, but with a popular power base Attitude towards the populace In order to denigrate Rosas, the Men of 37 had to denigrate the people Racism Depiction of Federalists as uncouth, racially mixed rabble Binary oppositions (black-and-white thinking) Civilization = City / Barbarism = Countryside Binary oppositions tend to undo themselves: one term depends on other Construction of myths of nationhood always depends on exclusion of some other Ambivalent construction runs through these texts Powerful way of reading these texts: tease out the unsustainability of the oppositions presented Deconstructive reading of the instabilities at the heart of the oppositions which construct the nation From nation to dissemination In the end, the Nation is a powerful fictive construct Janus-faced ambivalence of language and Janus-faced discourse of the nation El matadero Slaughterhouse as allegory of Rosas' regime The judge of the slaughterhouse holds la suma del poder The state run as a cattle ranch The ambivalence of History From outset, the text ambiguously claims and eschews historical discourse Is the text claiming to be historical (historia as history), or fictive (historia as story)? Or both at once? Claims he will not begin with Noah's Ark, but proceeds to narrate an epic flood of Biblical proportions The nation is narrated in "the epistemological gaps that the non-science of history leaves open" (Sommer, 76) Hybridity of genre Historical account? Political satire? Racist propaganda? Picaresque fascination with low-life? Costumbrismo (observation of customs, description of people, recording of popular speech)? Unstable allegory The tormented Romantic (free-spirited) Unitarian is compared to wild animals and to the bull slaughtered earlier The Unitarian takes on contradictory attributes of civilización and barbarie The allegory collapses into a forced and unconvincing moral ending