Representations of Race, Gender, and Disease in Nineteenth Century Cuban Fiction
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Narratives of Contamination: Representations of Race, Gender, and Disease in Nineteenth Century Cuban Fiction by Jessica Selene Zander A dissertation submitted in partial satisfatction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Romance Languages and Literatures in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Emeritus Julio Ramos, Co-chair Professor Michael Iarocci, Co-chair Professor Emilie Bergmann Professor Soraya Tlatli Fall 2012 Narratives of Contamination: Representations of Race, Gender, and Disease in Nineteenth Century Cuban Fiction © 2012 by Jessica Selene Zander Abstract Narratives of Contamination: Representations of Race, Gender, and Disease in Nineteenth Century Cuban Fiction by Jessica Selene Zander Doctor of Philosophy in Romance Languages and Literatures University of California, Berkeley Professors Julio Ramos and Michael Iarocci, Co-Chairs This dissertation correlates the evolution of biomedical discourse and prose fiction in nineteenth century Havana, Cuba. Both, I argue, function as narratives that shape collective consciousness in that era. Beginning with the cholera epidemic of 1833, medical language increasingly insinuates itself into the constructions of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Cholera gives rise to medical fictions that invade or “contaminate” many domains of Cuban life. In effect, the disease blurred the distinctions between the concepts of contagion, race, and sin; the physical and the moral were thereby collapsed into one category. The city—understood to be a biological extension of the individual—was threatened by barbaric racial “outsiders.” Their intrusive presence corrupted the entire Cuban social body. In the end, the cholera epidemic led to a symbolic, if not a physical, cleansing of the colonial city. The early Cuban novel functions as a laboratory or taller in which theories of purity and disease develop and mature. The individual subject, a microcosm of the larger Cuban social body, becomes the locus of the desire to see and to know enigmatic disease. As the “clinical eye” of the medicalized viewer searches the body for signs of contagion, it defines the hygienic Cuban subject against its impure, racialized Other. However, the novel itself is an agent of contagion, since writing, as Derrida’s pharmakon, exacerbates the problem it meant to solve. I argue that the Cuban novel not only unmasked the fiction of stable identities; it also anticipated fin-de-siècle European narratives of degeneration and decline. 1 For Janet and Max. i Table of Contents Acknowledgements iv Introduction v Chapter One, “Contagious Invasions” Introduction: Outbreak in the City 1 Historical Backdrop 3 Socio-Racial Deviance 5 The Appearance of Progress 7 Epidemic Catastrophe 9 Soiled upon Contact 12 Disaster as Opportunity 13 A Sick City 15 Somatic Integrity 18 The Modernization of the Social Body 20 Conclusion: The Long Half-Life of Disease 23 Chapter Two, “Disease Represented” Introduction: Fictional Truths 28 Cholera, Contact, and Deviant Desire 29 The Control of the Imaginary 31 Controlling Subjects 33 Appearance versus Essence 35 Embodied Deviance 36 The Physical and the Moral 38 Writing Deviance 40 Deviant Desire 42 Disease Dissected 44 A Sanitized Society 47 Conclusion: Tentative Meliorism 50 Chapter Three, “Remedying Disease” Introduction: Margin and Center 52 Nation and the Novel 54 Dance, Music, and Masks 56 ii Narrative Passion 62 Native Delights 65 Knowing “Woman” 70 Duplicitous Fictions 72 Conclusion: Social Reform 75 Chapter Four, “The Early Cecilias” Introduction: The “Cecilia Valdés” of La Siempreviva (1839) 78 The Science of Woman 81 The Centrality of Cuidado 82 Vagrancy and the Street 83 Pessimistic Foresight 88 The Cecilia Valdés of the Imprenta Literaria de Lino Valdés (1839) 90 A Faulty Upbringing 93 The Feria: In the Midst of the Madding Crowd 94 Conclusion: Room for Improvement 99 Epilogue 101 Bibliography 109 iii Acknowledgements The process of writing a dissertation can be intensely lonely. However solitary one may feel while struggling to complete this seemingly endless assignment, the end product is never the sole creation of one individual. I am grateful to Julio Ramos, who spent painstaking hours batting about the craziest of ideas and reading over the roughest of drafts; to Michael Iarocci, who graciously admitted me into his bloated circle of advisees; to Emilie Bergmann, who read every version of every paper I ever sent her; and to Soraya Tlatli, who willingly remained on my committee even after I dropped the French component of my proposed project. I would also like to thank Julia Chang, who has faithfully Skyped with me nearly every week since both of us left Berkeley for greener or greyer or better-remunerated pastures; to Carrie LeFeber Schneider, who willed me onward with her persistent upbeat faith even when completion felt impossible; to Luis Pascual Cordero Sánchez, who motivated me through my darkest moments with equally dark humor; to Maya Márquez, my cheerleader in Pasadena; and of course to Verónica López, who answered the phone every time I called her in despair and (nearly) always succeeded at making me laugh. Last but not least, I want to thank little Marigold, whose sweetness got me through the stress of the last week or so before the filing deadline. I am deeply obliged to all of you. The Department of Spanish and Portuguese, the Center for Latin American Studies, and the Center for Race and Gender, all at UC Berkeley, offered material support when I was most in need. Thanks also to the Tinker Foundation, to Middlebury College, and to the UC Cuba Academic Initiative, who generously granted me summer funding. Most of all, thanks to the great state of California for supporting my scholarship for nearly eight(!) years. I feel truly privileged. Although I left the Berkeley campus too early to make full use of the community of scholars there, I have stayed in touch with many colleagues over the last few years. I am grateful for the digital equipment that melts away so many of the communication barriers that would have created frustrating chasms between us even as little as a decade ago. And despite their lack of digitalization, the Biblioteca Nacional and the National Archives in Havana, Cuba, were instrumental in shaping my ideas for my project. Last but not least, sincere gratitude to Barbara Danzie León and her family for their friendship and support. I would not be where I am today without my devoted parents and loving grandparents. My thanks to them for always encouraging me to continue my education, no matter how practical (or not) it turned out to be. Thank you to Leslie for being the best auntie ever, and for being constantly there for me during and after my time at Berkeley. Most of all, I am truly lucky to have Janet in my life, and thank my good fortune every day for her steady and unswerving presence. iv Introduction Preface to the Introduction This dissertation explores the stories of contagion, disease, and hygiene that arose after the 1833 cholera epidemic in Havana, Cuba. Cholera, though not an unexpected epidemic in those days, terrified the entire population. Not only did it throw a monkey wrench into the economic and political gears of a thriving New World port city. At a psychological level, it also greatly disturbed the Habanese population, from city leaders, government representatives, and health officials to everyday citizens, doctors, and writers. As an “equal opportunity” disease, cholera did not discriminate between rich and poor, black and white. Rather, it attacked the pious and the hedonistic, the slaves and the free with seemingly equal vigor. At the end of a three- month period, it had killed nearly one-tenth of the city’s population. In the struggle to make sense of this monstrous epidemic, powerful mechanisms of interpretation quickly sprung into action. While fear can be a paralyzing force, it can also act as a catalyst for reform or even revolution. Here, in the brief window of time before chaos broke loose, diffuse but powerful webs of discourse spread themselves out in all directions, affecting nearly all dimensions of urban life. Julio Ramos sums it up nicely: “As it traced the movement of cholera, power reconfigured its strategies of domination” (“Citizen” 180). The newly shaped “cartography of power” that arose in cholera’s wake is the subject of my dissertation. This introduction will briefly outline the relationship between power and some of the most important social concerns of the time. During and after the cholera epidemic, socio- economic and racial oppression acquired a uniquely modern Cuban tinge. Thus I will use the first section, below, to discuss what made Cuba “modern” at this time. Domination began to reconfigure itself through race, gender, and sexuality. I will use another section of this Introduction to explore the way that racialization worked in 1800s Cuba. And the growing field of the social sciences helped to solidify these modern categories. In the last section, I will comment on the power of science to shape modern thought. Modernity The several months during and after the epidemic witnessed a fierce competition by institutions and writers to place meaning on the inexplicable catastrophe. Newspapers, journals, magazines, and books attempted to steer the course of public debate. Illness was alternatively blamed on slaves, the poor, blacks or people of color, vagrants, or anyone who did not fill the fictitious category of a (hetero)normative modern Cuban. The imaginary ideal Cuban citizen practiced perfect moral and physical “hygiene,” an elusive term extending over nearly all of public and private life. Hygiene not only signified sanitation and cleanliness, but it also implied the absence of race, gender, or even sexuality. This mandate seems impossible to fulfill, and it was, but those who were white, male, and heterosexual had at least some chance of being considered proper citizens.