Drugs, Pharmacy, Healing Rites, and Ethnobotany: Therapeutic Writing in the Foundational Narratives of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic
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Drugs, Pharmacy, Healing Rites, and Ethnobotany: Therapeutic Writing in the Foundational Narratives of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic by Olga Nedvyga A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Spanish and Portuguese University of Toronto © Copyright by Olga Nedvyga 2019 ii Drugs, Pharmacy, Healing Rites, and Ethnobotany: Therapeutic Writing in the Foundational Narratives of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic Olga Nedvyga Doctor of Philosophy Department of Spanish and Portuguese University of Toronto 2019 Abstract Foundational narratives from the Hispanic Caribbean were involved in projects of political modernization and relied on stylistic novelty and political disagreement. Turn-of-the-century Puerto Rican and Dominican intellectuals prioritized three areas of political modernization—decolonization, emancipation of women, and some sort of racial justice. They looked at pharmacy for ways of structuring their literary imagination and proposed psychoactive writing to boost agency. My dissertation relates their approaches to pharmacy to their political goals. Eugenio María de Hostos abandoned the politics of harmonization and invested in narco-analysis to make colonial traumas accessible to the reader on the cognitive and emotional level. Hostos required stimulants to counteract inertia of the colonial subject and to disclose the implication of Creole elites, like himself, in the hegemonic regime. I connect his psychoactive writing and its effects on the body to the post-Hegelian dialectic theorized by Nietzsche and Jean-Luc Nancy. From a comparably elitist perspective, Amelia Francasci sought to legitimize her work by suggesting parallels with the institution of pharmacy, consistently suspect of quackery at the turn of the century. I claim that Francasci opposed the discourse of the sick woman. I frame her pharmaco-writing within global feminist struggles to regain access to pharmacy, for which I build on Larry Duffy’s study of the nineteenth-century institutional transformations of chemistry and pharmacy in France and examine their repercussions in Haiti and the iii Dominican Republic. Two other writers I interpret—Francisco Gregorio Billini and Federico García Godoy—were more directly involved in Dominican politics and the state apparatus. They attempted to resolve what they perceived as national problems by assuaging racial tensions while exacerbating ethnic differences with Haiti. Billini and García Godoy incorporated Afro-Dominican healing rites into the national imagery yet misattributed them to European folklore. I suggest that such cultural appropriation of Afro-indigenous ethnobotany devalued Afro-indigenous connections. iv Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have been possible without ongoing support of my committee and my teachers at the University of Toronto. First and foremost, I am indebted to my supervisor, Néstor Rodríguez, whose influence on my work is immeasurable. His passion for literature and Dominican Studies has served for me as an example to follow. I also appreciate that Néstor Rodríguez always framed my research in terms of professional goals such as conference presentations and future publications. He has introduced me to many experts in the field so that graduate school did not feel like an isolated and isolating undertaking. Susan Antebi and Robert Davidson have always been there to provide me with rigorous feedback on my theoretical approaches and writing style. Susan Antebi’s two graduate courses helped me to position my research agenda in relation to modern nationalisms and medical discourses. Many thanks go to other professors for their challenging and thought-provoking seminars, namely to Josiah Blackmore, Rosa Sarabia, Michelle Murphy, Neil ten Kortenaar, and Willi Goetschel. Also, I would like to thank Susan Antebi, Robert Davidson, and other professors for organizing and inviting students to many interesting talks at the Latin American Studies Program, Northrop Frye Centre, and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. In this vein, an invitation Susan extended to me in the winter of 2018 to join an IHPST (Institute for History and Philosophy of Science and Technology) reading group on healing practices in the early modern Caribbean could not have been more timely for me. I owe a lot to apt commentaries by Lucia Dacome and many graduate students who participated in the group. No less timely was the chance I had to attend Rebecca Comay’s lectures on Hegel in the winter of 2016 for they gave me an inquisitive intellectual community to refresh my ideas on Hegel and political context of his work. Also thank you, Inesa (Inna) Khatkovskaya, for accompanying me in this as many other adventures. Being Victoria College Junior Fellow was invaluable to me, specifically in 2015-2016, due to our biweekly gatherings, followed by informal presentations and discussions of our projects in a great company of Leah Faibisoff, Marlo Burks, Johnny Bertolio, and some others. Also, I am thankful to the former Northrop Frye Centre Administrator, Alexandra Varela, who kindly invited me to give a public lecture as part of the Fellows Lunch Colloquium Series. v Of course, it would not have been possible nor desirable to write about Puerto Rican and Dominican literatures without leaving my campus comfort zone. I cannot overestimate the knowledge and inspiration I drew from my research trips to Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Spain. If I was not lost—who knows if forever—in archives there, it was due to continuous guidance I received from so many people. I would like to mention Juan Gelpí, Luis Felipe Díaz, Malena Rodríguez Castro, Fernando Feliú Matilla, Basilio Belliard, Nan Chevalier, Miguel D. Mena, Antonio Martínez Illán, not to forget such dedicated librarians and scholars as Marili Rodríguez at the Collección Puertorriqueña, UPR-RP and Alejandro Paulino Ramos at the Archivo General de la Nación, Dominican Republic. Since every journey begins before we realize it, I would like to thank Olga Blackledge for extending an invitation to me in 2010 to apply for a HESP (Higher Education Support Program) Regional Seminar for Excellence in Teaching “Philosophy and Media.” It turned out to be instrumental in my decision to pursue graduate studies in North America. I am particularly grateful to Brian Price, John David Rhodes, John Paul Ricco, Almira Ousmanova, Alessandra Raengo, Alexander García Düttmann, Scott Krzych, and others. To Meghan Sutherland and Sorin Radu Cucu for engaging us with Ernesto Laclau’s theories and then bringing him to our seminar on the scenic yet quiet Mediterranean coast in Akbük, Turkey. His and your dedication to less privileged academic contexts was remarkable, and I am sure it has positively marked the participants’ lives and careers. I am also deeply thankful to two people who encouraged my curiosity in reading and writing. I mean Robert Mayer, who convinced me in 2008 that my English was no hindrance to participating in his graduate seminar at Oklahoma State University and reading their English curriculum from Defoe to DeLillo. Next, I was lucky to work with Oleksandr Pronkevych whose authoritative voice in Eastern European Hispanism and Hispanism in general combined with his ethos of academic courage have inspired me at the initial stage of my research. Likewise, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my friends and family for staying with me throughout the grad school. To my son, Roman, for his most severe criticism, always followed by short truces and acceptance. Finally, I dedicate this dissertation to my husband, Oleksiy Babych, whose love and companionship have taught me a great deal about myself and the world. vi Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter One: The Restlessness of the Colonial in Eugenio María de Hostos 25 Introduction 25 Out of the Lettered City: The Pharmacology of Intoxication 26 Liberation Project: Toward Narcoanalysis 32 Labour of (Pharmaco-)Dialectic 37 Slavery in the Workings of Pharmaco-Dialectic 44 Chloroform, Morphine, Caffeine, Maxims 48 The Pilgrimage of Bayoán 55 Conclusions: “Complete Man” and the Phantom of Sobriety 64 Chapter Two: Pharmacy and Gender Emancipation in Amelia Francasci 72 Introduction 72 Self-Medication in Monseñor de Meriño Íntimo 75 Nineteenth-Century Pharmacy as a Profession 80 Pharmacy and Gender: Parallels between Emma Bovary and Francasci’s Protagonists 84 Professional Competition between Pharmacy and the Confessional 90 Revolution and Religion in the Medicalized Society: Francisca Martinoff 95 Drug-Assisted Emancipation in Madre culpable and Francisca Martinoff 104 Conclusions: Ambrosina against Eudosia 109 Chapter Three: Afro-Dominican Rites, Ethnobotany, and Healing: Messy Erasures in 116 the National Canon Introduction 116 Methodological Challenges 116 Afro-Creole Rites and Healing in the Dominican Foundational Narrative: Federico García 120 Godoy’s Rufinito Nature, National Landscape, and Medical Geography in Baní o Engracia y Antoñita 126 Ethnobotany: Guazábara and Bayahonda Ecologies 132 Espiritismo and Dematerialization of Afro-Creole Rites 137 Apotheosis of Libidinal Competition: Heliotropes in Baní 141 The Virgin of Regla, or Whose are the Mountains? 147 Conclusions 155 Conclusions 160 Works Cited 166 1 Introduction In a wider connotation, our study considers the humanum not as a “process” essentially driven by labor, work, and action, but as a “rhythmic” reality, as well, in which biological and anthropological forces play their constant