Wanderl[O]St: Lost Identities and Losing Place in the New World (Dis)Order

Wanderl[o]st: Lost Identities and Losing Place in the New World (Dis)Order BY Kendall A. Whitney Submitted to the graduate degree program in Spanish and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ____________________ Chairperson Committee members ____________________ ____________________ ____________________ ____________________ Date defended: ______________ 2 The Dissertation Committee for Kendall A. Whitney certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Wanderl[o]st: Lost Identities and Losing Place in the New World (Dis)Order Committee: ________________________________ Chairperson ________________________________ ________________________________ ________________________________ ________________________________ Date approved: __________________ 3 Through the investigation of works by contemporary Spanish and Spanish-American writers—Roberto Bolaño, Abilio Estévez, Lucía Etxebarria, Ray Loriga, and Antonio José Ponte—this project explores subjects that get lost due to shifts toward totalizing economic and/or political systems. Through close textual analysis, it examines who these lost subjects are, why they get lost, and what the ramifications of being lost are for their respective societies and the world at large. The time period that the plots of these works cover (1968 to present) is one marked by socio-economic shifts, responsible for spurring the alienation of the subjects of these texts. In Chile, Pinochet’s coup shattered ideals for a new generation; in Cuba, the collapse of the Soviet Union left the island isolated; while in Spain, Spaniards come to grips with the disturbing memories of schism provoked by the Civil War and isolation induced by the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. 4 Acknowledgements Special thanks to my committee, especially Stuart Day for the many, many hours spent helping me complete this project. Warm thanks to Kirsten, James, Lupe, Marcos, and Grandpa Lutosky for ideas, inspiration, and making life more interesting and worthwhile. Thanks to the teachers in the world, who make our lives richer: Sr. Kaska, Mr. Fuchs, Mr. I, Ms. Hewitt, Ms. Devoto, Ms. Krumbein, Frank Mora, Ted Minnis, Paco Layna, Camacho, Dr. Weller, Jorge Pérez, Vicky Unruh, Gerardo De Sousa, Yajaira Padilla, and all the other teachers who put their energies into making the world a better place. Without all of you, this project would not have happened. Most importantly, thanks to my parents for their unending support. 5 Table of Contents: Introduction: The Loser Manifesto: Lost in Space, Lost in Time Within the New World (Dis)Order (6) Chapter One: Lost Poets and the Decade of Broken Dreams: Roberto Bolaño’s Estrella distante and Los detectives salvajes (36) Chapter Two: An Empire of Lost Souls in the Purgatory of Havana: The City’s Parallel Dimensions Represented in Abilio Estévez’s Los palacios distantes and the Stories of Antonio José Ponte (99) Chapter Three: Lost Love at the Millennium: Memory and Forgetting in Beatriz y los cuerpos celestes and Tokio ya no nos quiere (164) Conclusion: The End of an Era of Losing? (242) Notes: (262) Works Cited: (276) 6 Introduction The Loser Manifesto: Lost in Space, Lost in Time Within the New World (Dis)Order History is told from the point of view of those who win. Yet during dark times, the stories of the defeated surface to explain the failures and recount the nuances of history that were ignored by those who vanquished. The works that I analyze in this project tell tales of Latin American and Spanish subjects who have been marginalized and rendered lost by totalizing political/economic systems and broader shifts toward these systems. Due to their circumstances, these “lost subjects” experience a sense of loss, which compels them to wander. This wanderl[o]st is an inventive coping mechanism that I theorize as the lost subjects’ transgressive project of resisting the constraints society has imposed upon them. In this sense, the lost subjects in the works that I analyze roam vast distances across various continents or through parallel dimensions and alternate realities evoked by art and imagination in an effort to “get lost” and escape the respective systems that contain them. This introduction seeks to define these lost subjects by delving into the common traits and general “loser” aesthetic that all of these subjects share. Being lost has a fundamental relationship with place, while wanderl[o]st uses art to transgress space and time in a way that redefines the sense of who we are, much like the experience of an exile that can alter someone’s ties to their lands. The lost subjects are a continuation and variation on the concept of exile so I draw upon analyses of exile to define the lost subject, which I see as a representative of a more global era. To give a brief history of 7 lost subjects in order to account for the their appearance in present times, I consider their antecedents such as Don Quixote, who I see as the archetypical lost subject because he is one of the first and most famous characters in modern literature to be compelled to wander due to major shifts taking place within the sociohistoric context that he lives. Like my contemporary lost subjects, Don Quixote bravely fights for his ideals against circumstances that mark him as doomed to fail. In their quixotic projects, the lost subjects that I analyze transgress previous conceptions of identity in order to re-shape their respective contexts. Although lost subjects share many aspects, each chapter portrays different facets of being lost at the turn of the millennium. My discussion of the lost subjects’ depiction in fictional texts begins in my first chapter with what I propose as the prototypes of “lost subjects” and “losing,” the wandering Latin American poets with shattered revolutionary ideals that feature prominently in two of Chilean-born author Roberto Bolaño’s novels, Estrella distante (1996) and Los detectives salvajes (1998). In its look at two novels that give a broad definition of being a lost Latin American poet during an era of failed revolutions, the first chapter illustrates being lost at an international level among losers who wander Latin America, Europe, and parts of Africa. In my second chapter, I explore the many ways that Cuban artist-subjects seek parallel dimensions as alternate realities to survive shifts in post-Soviet Cuba. These street-wandering artistic subjects appear as the Cuban versions of flâneur in Abilio Estévez’s novel, Los palacios distantes (2002), and as skitalietz , a term that has both positive (wanderer) and negative (vagabond, hobo) connotations, in Antonio José 8 Ponte’s stories, “Un arte de hacer ruinas” and “El corazón de skitalietz.” 1 This chapter considers the personal scale of being lost, analyzing the ways subjects become lost at a “street level” in its look at wanderl[o]st subjects who are trapped and losing within a much smaller context, the city of Havana. In my final chapter, I study Bea and a nameless protagonist-narrator that I refer to as Él in two novels from Spanish-born authors, Lucía Etxebarria’s Beatriz y los cuerpos celestes (1998) and Ray Loriga’s Tokio ya no nos quiere (1999), respectively. The wanderl[o]st of these subjects is marked by attempts to get over lost love in a way analogous to enduring a troubling historical memory and a collective amnesia, which is the case for countries like Spain that experienced a lengthy dictatorship and a history of violence. This chapter reflects on being lost during an age of transnational capitalism marked by the emergence of a post-Maastricht Europe and the growing economic relevance of other parts of the world, particularly Asia. 2 What connects the different chapters, which represent disparate geographic areas, is a sensation of hope within chaos, a scramble to find a firmer definition of identity in a time of extreme flux, an attempt to make beautiful a dark situation, and an approach to a freewheeling lifestyle not only as a way of life but as an art. The chapters and the texts that are analyzed in them are further linked by the level of agency involved in losing. The losers have noble intentions and seek out quixotic quests while knowingly undertaking doomed enterprises. They are not necessarily forced into “loserdom” by circumstances beyond their control even if such circumstances might exist. Although the wanderl[o]st subjects in all of these 9 texts consciously take part in activities destined to fail, part of what prompts them to embark on their respective wanderings is a common “lostness” brought on by the changes of the world. The lost subjects, in this way, are symptoms of the ills of society. While not categorically a part of determining a lost subject, class does become an important aspect in creating lost subjects. Most of the lost subjects are educated and have the capacity for something greater yet are hindered by their respective situations. Lost subjects are not what we would call poor per se. The conditions of the world’s poor are much more desperate. Nor are they rich because the world’s wealthy class are shielded from problems created by the economic shifts that hamper the lost subjects. Therefore, it is more “average” citizens, like the lost subjects, that find themselves out of place when society experiences change. In this sense, coming from a loosely defined middle class, the lost subjects’ apparent failures and losses seem to strike harder . My overriding argument is that struggles regarding the transitions to totalizing political/economic systems produce these losers and lost subjects who, in turn, use art and/or creative wanderings as ways to find their place. Shifts to totalizing political/economic systems like capitalism have put “everything in its right place,” as the lyrics of a Radiohead song of the same name insinuate in an ironic fashion.

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