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Distribution Agreement: in Presenting This Thesis Or Dissertation As a Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for an Advanced D Distribution Agreement: In presenting this thesis or dissertation as a partial fulfillment of the requirements for an advanced degree from Emory University, I hereby grant to Emory University and its agents the non-exclusive license to archive, make accessible, and display my thesis or dissertation in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known, including display on the world wide web. I understand that I may select some access restrictions as part of the online submission of this thesis or dissertation. I retain all ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis or dissertation. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation. Signature: _____________________________ _________________ Ronald Mendoza-de Jesús Date Reading Now: Historical Danger in Spanish Caribbean Literary Modernism By Ronald Mendoza-de Jesús Doctor in Philosophy Comparative Literature _________________________________________ Geoffrey Bennington, D.Phil. (Oxon) Advisor _________________________________________ José Quiroga, Ph.D. Advisor _________________________________________ Andrew J. Mitchell, Ph.D. Committee Member Accepted: _________________________________________ Lisa A. Tedesco, Ph.D. Dean of the James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies ___________________ Date Reading Now: Historical Danger in Spanish Caribbean Literary Modernism By Ronald Mendoza-de Jesús Bachelor of Arts Advisor: Geoffrey Bennington, D.Phil. (Oxon) and José Quiroga, Ph.D. An abstract of a dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies of Emory University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature 2015 Abstract Reading Now: Historical Danger in Spanish Caribbean Literary Modernism By Ronald Mendoza-de Jesús Can history be conceived and practiced otherwise than in accordance with historicism’s idea of history? Given the complicated status of the “literary” vis-à-vis any traditional notion of epistemological certainty and ontological reality, is it possible to historicize literary texts while doing justice to their literariness? Finally, if modernist literature is often defined by the challenge that it poses to historicist forms of narrating and remembering the past, then what kind of literary history would be attuned to the historicity of modernism? This dissertation proposes an answer to these three questions by developing the “concept” of “historical danger” to designate the intense historicity that irrupts whenever the possibility of appropriating the past—predominantly through the form of a narrative—becomes impossible. Rethinking the historicity of history as a dangerous experience that deprives the historical subject of the power to secure its position as the ground of historical knowledge, this dissertation also elaborates a concept of reading danger to theorize a historical “method” that is better equipped to respond to events that elude the form of presence and resist historicist frames of representation. By reconfiguring literary history as “reading danger,” this dissertation seeks to displace the epistemological imperative that often animates literary historiography in favor of an ethical approach to the past that emphasizes the instability that marks historical encounters. The first section of the dissertation, “Reading Danger: Another Literary History,” proposes a new definition historicism by retracing its historical “closure.” If history for Aristotle was the domain of the accidental and the concrete and was thus incapable of yielding the totality that characterizes philosophy and poetry, historicism turned the past into a possible domain of teleological totalization. When grasped from the point of its closure, historicism emerges as the transposition of an ontology of actuality—an ergontology—unto the domain of historical reality. In showing that the determination of the past as a possible object of experience and knowledge for the historian constitutes the metaphysical decision that structures the very history of historicism, this dissertation seeks to argue that the deconstruction of historicism requires interrupting the ontology that privileges the historian’s presence as the surreptitious source of history’s possibility. The second part of the dissertation, “Reading Now: Spanish Caribbean Literary Modernism,” turns to two literary authors whose work thematizes the historical force of events that threaten the historian’s capacity to represent and narrate the past. Through chapter-length readings of Julia de Burgos’s elegiac poetry and of Giannina Braschi’s engagement with embodiment, I show that these writes invite us to think history otherwise. Historicity emerges in their texts as a dangerous event, whose legibility calls into question our capacity to witness and reliably represent history in the form of actuality. Reading Now: Historical Danger in Spanish Caribbean Literary Modernism By Ronald Mendoza-de Jesús Bachelor of Arts Advisor: Geoffrey Bennington, D.Phil. (Oxon) and José Quiroga, Ph.D. A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies of Emory University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature 2015 Acknowledgments Y en nosotros nuestros muertos pa’ que nadie quede atrás. A. Yupanqui, “Los Hermanos” Since the reader will soon corroborate that this dissertation, which promises to be a study on the theory of literary history, is rather a set of loosely gathered notes on the im- possibility of dying one, single death, it would have been impossible not to begin this parergon without mentioning the names of those who have made possible the composition of these pages and who are no longer here: Donald Mendoza, whose love and vigilance accompanied every step of my childhood until his sudden departure, more than twenty years ago. Later on in life many who knew him would remark that we have much in common, including a somewhat exacerbated tendency to indulge in reflections of a mystical kind. Delia Rodríguez, who took care of me with devotion both unconditional and infinite, devotion that did nothing but intensify exponentially after Donald’s death, until the time came for me to leave her home and our island. But the time of my departure was not only mine, it was also hers: it was then when she was forced to embark on a long and opaque journey towards immemoriality. Lydia Bonet, my living image of resilience, dignity and joy in the face of so much worldlessness. Amado A. Pereira, who, more than anybody else, continues to give me undeserved gifts of expropriation from the other side. Friend, model, most excellent paternal prosthesis, the secret referent of all the pages that follow, their intimate addressee, as well as their most efficient cause. The law of this genre is well-known and any degree of familiarity with the impossibility that it prescribes does not absolve anybody from responsibility. For this reason, it is perhaps advisable to adhere to conventions. Therefore, I must above all acknowledge the bonds of transatlantic family love that have sustained me during this decade of devotion to philosophical and literary reflection outside of my home: my mother, Angie, my aunts and uncle, Carmen, Doris, Edna, Zilkya, and Robert, my siblings, Natalia, Arnaldo, Juan Carlos, Katherine, and Ricardo Jesús. Barely a day has passed since 2005 in which I have not asked myself whether the pursuit of a life of study is worth me being separated from you. I must also acknowledge the support of friends, new and old: Rafy and Zoriel, Beatriz and Orlando, Michy, Nicole, Chiara, Wilda, Graciela, Nilda, Modesto and Evelyn, Jaime. These pages pale in comparison with your luminosity. My time at Emory marks a before and after in my life, and this is mostly because of Christina León. I still do not know what I would do—or, truly, who I would be as a scholar and a person—without your vigilance and our enduring friendship. Emory and Atlanta were generous to me in many ways, above all in putting in my path friends whose intellectual interlocution and emotional support has made possible seeing this project through. I would like to thank in particular Aaron Goldsman, Mark Stoholski, Matías Bascuñán, Melinda Robb, Ania Kowalik, Taylor Schey, Tze-Yin Teo, Adrian J. Long, Ana María Díaz Burgos, Margarita Pintado, Stu Marvel, Marta Jiménez, Richie Hoffman, Hannah Markley, Perry Guevara, Phillip Meeker and many other friends and colleagues who have heard or read parts of this manuscript, helped me to clarify arguments in our conversations or patiently understood when I had to stay home working on this manuscript. I must also thank Naveen Kanalu for reading most of the dissertation, making helpful corrections, and listening lovingly to my rants against historicism in spite of his own commitments to more traditional ways of thinking history and practicing historiography. In my academic career, I have been blessed by the support and the vigilance and generosity of incomparable mentors. In chronological order, I would like to acknowledge Isabel Armstrong, who urged me to leave my hometown in order to pursue studies in philosophy in a more serious manner. At Boston College, I had the opportunity to study with kind and engaging scholars whose work still provokes my own: Vanessa Rumble, Richard Kearney, Frances Restuccia, David Rasmussen, John Sallis. But, above all, is Kevin Newmark, who
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