Biopolitics, Violence, and Nation in Blood Meridian, Martín Fierro, and Os Sertões
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States of Exception on American Frontiers: Biopolitics, Violence, and Nation in Blood Meridian, Martín Fierro, and Os Sertões by Heath Wing, MA and BA A Dissertation In Spanish Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Approved John Beusterien Chair of Committee Sara Spurgeon Antônio Ladeira Earl Fitz Julián Pérez Mark Sheridan Dean of the Graduate School August, 2015 Copyright 2015, Heath Wing Texas Tech University, Heath Wing, August 2015 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would first like to thank the members of my dissertation committee. To the director of my dissertation, John Beusterien, who contributed to my interest in the US Southwest, and who encouraged me to specialize in Comparative Literature. A special thanks goes to Antônio Ladeira, who introduced me to the beauty of the Portuguese language. To Earl Fitz, I thank you for so wisely suggesting I include Os sertões in my project. I also greatly appreciate Sara Spurgueon’s expertise and help regarding Blood Meridian. And many thanks to Julián Pérez, a man well-versed in everything gaucho. I owe a special thanks to Lynne Fallwell for tirelessly helping me during the application process of all those fellowships. Without her input and help with proposals, this project would not have become what it is. To my friends in Brazil and Argentina, I cannot express my gratitude enough. First to Décio Torres from UFBA, I am grateful for all the help navigating Salvador and the libraries. I will never forget the trip out to the sertão. You are always welcome in West Texas. To Gloria Chicote, who so graciously received me in La Plata and made sure I had access to any sources needed. And finally, a highly deserved thank you to the Wallau family in Santana do Livramento: to Marcelo and Carlos, as well as to Rodrigo and the most gaucha of them all, Ana, and to grandfather Carlos Huberto Wallau, who entertained me with wonderful stories about Rio Grande do Sul from his home in Porto Alegre. I thank “y’all” for taking me into your fazenda and letting me see how real gauchos get work done. ii Texas Tech University, Heath Wing, August 2015 I would like to also thank Professors Carmen Pereiera, Sara Guengerich, Idoia Elola, and Curtis Bauer, who in some way or another, during my studies at Texas Tech, helped shape my education: whether it meant a tough class that demanded excellence, very useful advice, or attending my first academic presentation, your efforts certainly did not go unnoticed or unappreciated. Last but certainly not least, I am grateful to my parents and family, who have provided nothing but support and love in every harebrained thing I do. iii Texas Tech University, Heath Wing, August 2015 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................... II ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................... VI INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER I CORMAC MCCARTHY’S BLOOD MERIDIAN: STATE RACISM, STATE OF EXCEPTION, AND THE SOVEREIGN FOOL .................................................................... 27 1.1 On Violence ........................................................................................................ 29 1.2 US Frontier Myth ............................................................................................... 37 1.3 Captain White and State Racism ........................................................................ 43 1.4 Secularized Theology ......................................................................................... 55 1.5 The Sovereign Exception ................................................................................... 60 1.6 Creaturely Life ................................................................................................... 72 1.7 The Sovereign Fool and Iustitium ...................................................................... 84 1.8 Leviathan’s Body of Corpses ........................................................................... 103 CHAPTER II STALKED BY THE WOLF: BANDITRY, THE CAMP, AND CREATURELY SHAME IN JOSÉ HERNÁNDEZ’ MARTÍN FIERRO ........................................................ 110 2.1 Voice and Body ................................................................................................ 118 2.2 People and people ............................................................................................ 128 2.3 The Levas as the Exception .............................................................................. 140 2.4 The Fortín as the Camp ................................................................................... 152 2.5 Creaturely Shame ............................................................................................. 164 2.6 The Wolfman Bandit ........................................................................................ 175 CHAPTER III BRAZIL’S STRUGGLE FOR A BODY: EUCLIDES DA CUNHA’S OS SERTÕES AND GRIEVABLE LIFE ................................................................................ 187 3.1 Background ...................................................................................................... 200 3.2 Conselheiro and the Threefold Struggle for the Body ..................................... 206 3.3 Anthropology, Colonialism, and Eugenics ...................................................... 227 3.4 Governmentality and State of Exception ......................................................... 247 iv Texas Tech University, Heath Wing, August 2015 3.5 Grievable Life .................................................................................................. 259 3.6 The Original Banditry of War .......................................................................... 272 CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................. 288 NOTES ........................................................................................................................ 291 WORKS CITED ............................................................................................................ 309 v Texas Tech University, Heath Wing, August 2015 ABSTRACT The primary focus of my research is in Comparative Literature. Through an analysis of landmark literary and journalistic works from an English, Spanish, and Portuguese context, my dissertation focuses on frontier studies, biopolitics, state racism, and human rights. This project is concerned with nation-building in the Americas and the processes by which the bodies of a population are sifted out, some integrated into the nation-state while others are made the exception, disposed of their rights and often violently excluded. The geographical scope of my dissertation project is inter-American, and concerned with nineteenth century state violence on American frontier spaces as represented in national literatures from Argentina, Brazil, and the United States. To give context to my comparative reading of Martín Fierro (1872, José Hernández), Os Sertões (1902, Euclides da Cunha), and Blood Meridian (1984, Cormac McCarthy), I interpret the nineteenth century frontier spaces in these works as border regions not just between civilization and so called “barbarism” (or between sovereign law and natural law), but also as thresholds that mark the transition from colonial methods of violence to those of the new and emerging American nation-states of modernity. During their period of expansion, these three nation-states rationalized the extirpation of certain ethnic and social groups through discourses based on exceptionalist and positivist ideologies: in the United States, “Manifest Destiny” argued democracy’s divine purpose to “civilize the savage,” whereas in South America, “civilization and vi Texas Tech University, Heath Wing, August 2015 barbarism” was the political discourse that endorsed civilization's “rightful” dominion over barbarism. Relying on what has been observed by scholars such as Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, Achille Mbembe, Roberto Esposito, and Judith Butler, I acknowledge that colonial practices of violence would, at the cusp of modernity, be integrated into the process of nation-building on the basis of anthropological and biological discourses of exclusion, often determined by race. In the Americas, nowhere was this more evident than on nineteenth century frontiers, where new nation-states endeavored to complete the colonial project of the European empires from which they had become independent. In search of national identity, such efforts of conquest would mean certain bodies would be included in the nation- building project, while others would be excluded from citizenry. Whether the government orchestrated gaucho and Indian conflicts portrayed in Martín Fierro, the military massacre of the Canudos village in Os Sertões, or the legalized scalp-hunting of Apaches in Blood Meridian, my comparative reading of these works highlights the couplet between the life of marginalized frontier subjects and sovereign violence. Ultimately, I conclude that this relationship is one of exception, where excluded political life is caught up in a space of suspended law imposed by the sovereign. Frontiers in these three works are thus portrayed as spaces of legalized