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Copyright by Lanie Marie Millar 2011 Copyright by Lanie Marie Millar 2011 The Dissertation Committee for Lanie Marie Millar Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Realigning Revolution: The Poetics of Disappointment in Cuban and Angolan Narrative Committee: Hélène Tissières, Supervisor Jossianna Arroyo Martínez, Co- Supervisor César A. Salgado Sonia Roncador Omoniyi Afolabi Realigning Revolution: The Poetics of Disappointment in Cuban and Angolan Narrative by Lanie Marie Millar, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August 2011 Acknowledgements I would like to begin by thanking my tireless advisors, Hélène Tissières and Jossianna Arroyo-Martínez, who have generously offered their guidance and encouragement since long before this dissertation began to take shape. I am grateful for their outstanding models of scholarship and mentorship, as well as their astute feedback and constructive suggestions over the course of this project. I am also indebted to my additional readers: César Salgado, for giving shape to my project through his courses as well as his numerous insightful comments and suggestions as the dissertation developed, Sonia Roncador and Niyi Afolabi, for the kind dedication of their time and their thoughtful comments throught the writing process. I would like to thank Elizabeth Richmond-Garza, the Director of the Program in Comparative Literaure, for an outstanding graduate program and for the numerous occasions on which she generously offered advice and guidance. I greatly appreciate both Janet Swaffar and Katie Arens for their expert reading and invaluable comments on the early versions of this project—thank you. I am extremely grateful to Inocência Mata at the Universidade de Lisboa, for welcoming me into her course in the fall of 2009, directing my reading and generously providing advice on Angolan and Luso-African literatures. Thank you also to the staffs at the Biblioteca Nacional, the Arquivo Nacional Torre de Tombo and the Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino in Lisbon for their assistance. I would like to extend a heartfelt thanks to Luisa Campuzano and the generous staff at the Fundación Alejo Carpentier, and especially to Araceli Garcfa-Carranza at the Biblioteca Nacional for facilitating my research in Cuba. I am grateful to the Graduate School at UT for the fellowship support that allowed me to conduct this research. Finally, I would like to thank my friends and colleagues in the Program in Comparative Literature and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese for their camaraderie and lively conversations throughout my years at UT. I am especially indebted to Lorna Torrado, Rachel Showstack, Lydia Huerta and Regan Boxwell for reading numerous versions of these chapters iv and for their kind ears and unfailing support-thank you. Thanks also to Anna Marin, Naminata Diabate, Nandini Dhar, Joe Pierce, Karyn Rayburn and Alanna Breen. Finally, I would like to thank my parents and sisters for their encouragement, and Felipe, for his understanding, love and sense of humor. v Realigning Revolution: The Poetics of Disappointment in Cuban and Angolan Narrative Publication No._____________ Lanie Marie Millar, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2011 Supervisor: Hélène Tissières Co-Supervisor: Jossianna Arroyo Martínez This dissertation traces how Cuban and Angolan novels published in the final decades of the twentieth century engage with the political and artistic projects promoted by and through the post-revolutionary socialist-aligned political systems. The dissertation sustains that there are a collection of textual practices that insert themselves into the official ―orthodox‖ historiographic and literary debates by reconsidering not just historical moments in the past that are central to these debates, but also reference how these moments are written and read from an official point of view. By employing tactics of ironic citation, parody and anachronism, these works not only comment upon official readings of history and demands of post-revolutionary literature, but they also reveal ―silences,‖ to use Rolph-Trouillot‘s term, in the literary corpus and in the experiences of Angolan and Cuban people that these alternative corpuses represent. Through revision of official discourses, they present an alternative reading of present subjects‘ interactions with the past. vi These practices, which together I have termed ―poetics of disappointment,‖ allow an intervention into the discussions surrounding both the production and the criticism of contemporary Cuban and Angolan literatures from a variety of political perspectives. The dissertation analyzes Cubans Alejo Carpentier‘s La consagración de la primavera, Reinaldo Arenas‘ La loma del ángel and Eliseo Alberto‘s Caracol Beach as well as Angolans Manuel Rui‘s Memória de mar, J. E. Agualusa‘s Nação crioula and Boaventura Cardoso‘s Mãe, materno mar. On one hand, these works recall the monumental events that the Cuban Revolution and Angolan independence represented, evoking a collective optimism and sense of community forged among pueblos/ povos in the processes of decolonization and promoting movements for social justice. On the other hand, the novels analyzed point out the limits of programmatic interpretations of post-revolutionary history. Demonstrating positions of discomfort with the notions of messianic immanence, idealized racial synthesis and the aftermaths of violence and displacement that official sources rarely document, these novels both privilege and question literary creation as a way of negotiating this disappointment. vii Table of Contents Chapter 1: A Shared History? Decolonization, African Solidarity and Literature’s Politics: Backgrounds .............................................................1 Introduction .....................................................................................................1 Historical Novels and Revolution ...................................................................9 Revolutionary Histories ................................................................................15 Opacity ..........................................................................................................40 Chapter 2: Revolutionary ideology and textual practice: Alejo Carpentier’s La consagración de la primavera and Manuel Rui’s Memória de mar .........47 Introduction ...................................................................................................47 La consagración de la primavera .................................................................54 Memória de Mar. ..........................................................................................76 Conclusions ...................................................................................................97 Chapter 3: Underneath Whitening: Reinaldo Arenas’ La loma del angel and José Eduardo Agualusa’s Nação crioula .........................................................101 Introduction .................................................................................................101 La Loma del Ángel ......................................................................................104 Nação crioula..............................................................................................127 Conclusions .................................................................................................154 Chapter 4: The ends of the literary text: Boaventura Cardoso’s Mãe, materno mar and Eliseo Alberto’s Caracol Beach .................................................156 Introduction .................................................................................................156 Mãe, materno mar .......................................................................................160 Caracol Beach ............................................................................................185 Conclusions .................................................................................................205 Conclusions .........................................................................................................208 References ...........................................................................................................216 viii Chapter 1: A Shared History? Decolonization, African Solidarity and Literature’s Politics: Backgrounds INTRODUCTION In September of 2007, Angolan president Eduardo dos Santos made a state visit to Havana, meeting with Cuban president Raúl Castro in order to renew the official ties that had been established between the two nations after 1975. While Cuban troops saw the birth of the modern Angolan state at its independence from colonial Portuguese control in 1975, Angola also serves as a historical point of reference to Cuba‘s history of slavery. Dos Santos‘ remark that ―la amistad (entre Cuba y Angola) ha sido forjada con sangre [the friendship (between Cuba and Angola) has been forged with blood]‖ ("Presidente De Angola Agradece a La Habana Su Apoyo Militar") evokes not only Cuba‘s military, technical and humanitarian assistance to Angola‘s MPLA party from 1975-1991, but also recalls the renewed importance of African diasporic heritage and resulting creolized cultures in both Cuban and Angolan national narratives after their respective revolutions. The long fight for African decolonization and its intersections with
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