UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Reimagining
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Reimagining Transatlantic Iberian Conquests in Postcolonial Narratives and Rewriting Spaces of Resistance A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Spanish by Seher Rabia Rowther March 2020 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Benjamin Liu, Chairperson Dr. Covadonga Lamar-Prieto Dr. Freya Schiwy Copyright by Seher Rabia Rowther 2020 The Dissertation of Seher Rabia Rowther is approved: Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside DEDICATION The best stories unite us despite our various disparities and experiences in life. The worst event I experienced in graduate school was the hospitalization of my mother and my grandmother in the winter of 2016. It was the most challenging period in my life because my parents have given me a beautiful life of love, laughter, protection, and guidance. My family has been the best living example of strength and compassion. The summer after my grandmother passed, I went to Spain for the first time in my life. While traveling through Spain, I saw her in a dream. She was smiling as she passed me by—the same way she used to walk through our house with her walker. When I left Spain to return home, I started reading Radwa Ashour’s trilogy on the plane. When Radwa wrote about the families of Granada historically removed from their homes and forced to trek across the kingdoms of Castile, she did not just describe the multitude and their possessions in tow. She wrote about a grandson carrying his grandmother until her last breath and then having to bury her in a place he did not even recognize. I was crying when I read those words. I have personally connected with every story I discuss here. My work is imperfect, but any merit within it, I would like to dedicate to my family—especially to my parents, Mohammed Najieb Khan Rowther and Shamim Fatima Rowther, and my siblings, Naseem, Nadia and Armaan. Lastly, this is dedicated to my husband, Farooq Mohammed. I love you all. Thank you for your support and patience. iv ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Reimagining Transatlantic Iberian Conquests in Postcolonial Narratives and Rewriting Spaces of Resistance by Seher Rabia Rowther Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in Spanish University of California, Riverside, March 2020 Dr. Benjamin Liu, Chairperson This dissertation analyzes the medieval and colonial imagery in three workswhich evokeahistory of epistemic violence and erasures againstindigenous, contemporaneous identities, communities, and traditions of knowledge in Al-Andalus and Latin America after 1492. Darren Aronofsky’s film, The Fountain, Radwa Ashour’s trilogy of Granada, and Laila Lalami’s The Moor’s Account, all show howfiction and film can both reinforce and subvert the mythology of conquestin the representation of transatlantic, sixteenth- century Iberian empire.Fiction offers a space of resistance to remember the voices of the subaltern, to deconstruct the silences of thesehistories, and to reflect on the perspectives and experiences of the colonized, occupied and displaced Others of colonial enterprise.Fiction can challenge the Orientalist tropes and imperial gaze which still color the contemporary imaginationtowards Amerindians, Muslims and Arabs.Reimagining the past speaks to the present, and redraws the blurred lines of historiography and storytelling. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction……………………………………………………………..…………………1 Chapter 1: Mythology of Conquest in Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain…………..……11 Chapter 2: ReinscribingSpaces of Resistance in Radwa Ashour’s Granada ……….….115 Chapter 3: The Departure and The Return of Radwa Ashour’s Trilogy…………..……181 Chapter 4: Erasures of Conquest in Laila Lalami’sThe Moor’s Account…………..……246 Conclusion…………………………………….…………………………..……………327 Bibliography …………………………………………………...………………………337 vi List of Figures Figure 1 Izzi’s handwriting in the first shot of the film …………………..…..……...…17 Figure 2 The conquistador remembers the face of his Queen…………..…….......……18 Figure 3 The Mayan priest stabs Tomas……………………………………….…….…19 Figure 4 The eyes of Tom awakening in his Treeship ……………….…………………20 Figure 5 Tom in a lotus posture in his Treeship …………………….………......……...23 Figure 6 Future Tom’s worn nib pen ………………………………………..….…..…..26 Figure 7 Tommy piercing his finger with the nib pen ……………………….……..…..27 Figure 8 The last page of Izzi’s writing …………………………………...…………...28 Figure 9 Tommy at Izzi’s grave at the end of the film …………….………………...….29 Figure 10 Dissolve from the Book of Genesis and Xibalba ………………….…….…..32 Figure 11 Dissolve from of the Book of Genesis and Xibalba to the monstrance in a makeshift altar of the conquistador containing locks of hair of Queen Isabel ...………..33 Figure 12 The Mayan priest with a flaming sword ……………………………....….......34 Figure 13 First scene depicting the Mayan warriors in New Spain……………………...36 Figure 14 The first scene depicting Captain Ariel……..………………………...…..….41 Figure 15 The monstrance in New Spain after the first fade transition………...……......49 Figure 16 The monstrance imagined in Spain…………………………………...…..…..51 Figure 17 The painting of in Izzi and Tommy’s house…………………….….………...57 Figure 18 The Museum Exhibition of Mayan Codices……………………….................57 Figure 19 The Mayan priest bows to the Tomas/Tom as First Father………..…..….…..61 Figure 20 The image of First Father and The World Tree………………...…..……..…..63 Figure 21 Tomas’s body forming earth like First Father……………………….………..64 Figure 22 Tom’s body mirroring the sacrifice of First Father……………...…...…….....64 Figure 23 Dr. Tommy Creo and Donovan’s X-rays………………………………….….66 Figure 24 Tommy analyzing the ethnobotanical compound under a microscope..….…..67 Figure 25 The map of Spain marked by blood under Silecio………………………..…..73 Figure 26 Queen Isabel’s frame superimposed by image of a tree…………….…….….77 Figure 27 Map of New Spain in light to find the Tree of Life….…………..……….….82 Figure 28 The Treeship at the beginning of the film…………………………………….83 Figure 29 Tomas Captain Tomas Verde walking towards Queen Isabel………………...84 Figure 30 The map of New Spain in darkness in Captain Ariel’s mutiny………….……86 Figure 31 The first image of Grand Inquisitor Silecio……………………………….......91 Figure 32 The Mayan Priest………………………………………………..…………….92 Figure 33 The nib pen Izzi gives to Tommy before she dies …………….………….......93 Figure 34 Grand Inquisitor Silecio speaking to the condemned…………………………94 Figure 35 The bodies hanging before the Grand Inquisitor…………………………...…95 Figure 36 The suspended skulls and bones in the jungle………………………….....…..97 Figure 37 Captain Tomas aiming his crossbow at the Inquisitor………………...……..100 Figure 38 Captain Tomas ascends the pyramid …………………………..……...…….104 Figure 39 Captain Tomas, Queen Isabel (center) and Captain Ariel (left)………..…....106 Figure 40 The reimagined spirit of Izzi giving Tommy a seed to plant………………..112 vii Introduction The goal of the project is not to relay a series of comparisons between fact and fiction. This analysis is a case study into the dynamic ways popular culture’s image of the history of conquest has been formed, reformed, and challenged through fiction. In The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality and Colonization, Walter D. Mignolo provides case examples of epistemic violence against indigenousconceptions of time, space and memory of the individuals and communities “discovered” in the post- 1492 period of imperial expansion. Contemporary works of cultural production carry a legacy of our imagination of this past. Domination and control of one culture over another shaped a malleable image of these colonial encounters. Aronofsky’s film, The Fountain, must be viewed under the scrutiny ofcolonial semiotics, the study of power and domination by imposed systems of knowledge and being, collective memories and conceptions of space. Colonial semiotics dissects the system of knowledge, which supported the policy of labor exploitation, resource extraction, and epistemic erasures of coloniality shrouded in a discourse of modernity. Language is power and to write is to possess. Colonial chroniclers of the Iberian conquest imposed an act of possession over the peoples and landscapes they interpreted and wrote about to send their accounts back to a royal audience across the Atlantic. However, as Mignolo points out, these accounts came from a specific locus of observation (perspective) with a corresponding locus of enunciation (manuscripts, maps) as the visual and narrative texts produced were seen as faithful, transparent, objective 1 accounts. Imperial knowledge ultimately served to create an imperial reality. Chroniclers with incomplete information screened the systems of knowledge, the spaces, sights and sounds, and the people they encountered through their cultural frameworks to make those bodies legible to an imperial enterprise. Postcolonial readings of each work are informed by the work of Edward Said’s Orientalism, to include Spain’s unique colonial history as it contrasts the British and French imperial enterprises. The analysis of how each work reinforces or challenges the representation of non-European, non-Christian, non-White Other is informed by Edward Said’s Orientalism, as the film recreates the binary imagery of Orient versus Occident, European Self versus non-European Other. Said acknowledges the uniqueness of Spain and its relationship with Islam and Muslims on separate occasions.1Still,Orientalism is a work that focuses on the “particular closeness” of Britain and France