Affective Intellectuals and the Space of Catastrophe in the Americas
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GLOBAL LATIN/O AMERICAS Frederick Luis Aldama and Lourdes Torres, Series Editors Affective Intellectuals and the Space of Catastrophe in the Americas JUDITH SIERRA-RIVERA THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS | COLUMBUS This edition licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical- NoDerivs License. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Control Number: 2018014530 Cover design by Susan Zucker Text design by Juliet Williams Type set in Adobe Minion Pro The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1992. For Marco and Tatú CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix INTRODUCTION Emotional Intellectual Interventions and the Politics of Collective Enunciation in the Neoliberal Space of Catastrophe 1 CHAPTER 1 No sin nosotros: Monsiváis’s Emergent, Moving, and Cruel Optimism 22 CHAPTER 2 For the Believers: Francisco Goldman’s Moro Hybrid Place as a Bridge for the Agents of Hope 61 CHAPTER 3 Pedro Lemebel’s Queer Intellectual Discourse or la loca’s Angry, Enamored, and Melancholic Call 93 CHAPTER 4 Angry Brotherly Love: U.S. Militarized Puerto Rican Bodies and Josean Ramos’s filin 133 CHAPTER 5 Afro-Cuban Cyberfeminism: Love/Sexual Revolution in Sandra Álvarez Ramírez’s Blogging 169 EPILOGUE Intimacies of a “We,” Commonalities, and Intellectual Discourses 189 Works Cited 193 Index 209 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS THIS BOOK was made possible thanks to the funding of the Penfield Research Fellowship (administered by the University of Pennsylvania [Penn]), the Depart- ment of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese at the Pennsylvania State University (Penn State), and the Center for Global Studies at Penn State. Brief versions of my conceptualizations of social space, space of catastrophe, and archi-textures apperared in “Carlos Mérida’s ‘Goce Emocional’: An Aesthetics Proposal Cir- cumventing the Space of Catastrophe of Mexican Nationalism,” published in The Comparatist (vol. 41, 2017, pp. 41–59). I also presented early ideas on the relationship between friendship, Puerto Rican soldiers, and U.S. wars in “The Affective Politics of Friendship in Puerto Rican War Stories,” which appeared in Latino Studies (vol. 13, no. 2, 2015, pp. 207–26). Latin American Research Review (vol. 53, no. 2, 2018) published an early version of chapter 5. This book is also the product of a very long journey, filled with many brilliant and generous interlocutors. My initial reflections developed in close dialogue with Malena Rodríguez Castro and Juan G. Gelpí at the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), where they first introduced me to the literary contexts of Mexico and Chile, to the com- plexity of cultural studies, and to Carlos Monsiváis’s and Pedro Lemebel’s urban chronicles. My years at UPR were also marked by continuous conver- sations with Ángel (Chuco) Quintero Rivera and Carmen Rita Rabell. Both of them contributed to my research training. This academic scenario could not ix x • Acknowledgments be completely understood without the figure of Arcadio Díaz Quiñones, who, as an invited professor, taught a seminar that changed my focus toward the examination of intellectual discourses in relation to the catastrophe of war. At Penn, Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel challenged every single one of my ideas, helping me achieve a stronger argument. Thanks to her critical readings, I complicated my analysis by integrating categories related to body politics (race, gender, and sexuality) to my study on the history of ideas and intel- lectual history. At Penn, too, I learned very much from Sara Nadal-Melsió, Román de la Campa, Michael Solomon, and Jorge Salessi. In particular, Jorge taught me how to trace traditions that operate against the grain, or more pre- cisely, how to read a contrapelo what seemed to be a static tradition, to make it talk in a new language. Jorge was also the person who gave me intellectual and emotional support at critical moments during those years. To Ben Sifuentes- Jáuregui, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, and Ignacio Sánchez Prado, too, I am eternally thankful for their rigorous readings of my work and for their support throughout my career. My year at Middlebury College has probably been the most challenging and rewarding one in my career. I learned so much that my brain hurt! I appreciate how I grew as a scholar thanks to what my colleagues there practice on a daily basis: let your teaching guide your research. Patricia Saldarriaga, Fernando Rocha, Marcos Rohena-Madrazo, Enrique García, Luis H. Casta- ñeda, Irina Feldman, Roberto Pareja, and Juana Gamero de Coca taught me how to be a better teacher and researcher. To all of them I am grateful for the long conversations about my work. At Penn State, I have been fortunate to count with the support of all my colleagues: William R. Blue, Sherry Roush, Paola (Giuli) Dussias, John Lip- ski, Rena Torres Cacoullos, John Ochoa, Nicolás Fenández Medina, Matthew J. Marr, Maria Truglio, Mary Barnard, Julia Cuervo-Hewitt, Karen Miller, Mat- thew Carlson, Marianna Nadeu Rota, Krista Brune, and Sarah J. Townsend. I must extend especial gratitude to my Latinoamericanist colleagues—John, Julia, Krista, and Sarah—for their critical readings of different parts of this manuscript. At Penn State, too, Hoda El Shakry and Shaoling Ma were gener- ous enough to read an early version of chapter 4 and provided me with feed- back that, thanks to their research on other contexts of war and on emotions, contributed a richer bibliography to my study. To my graduate students, I owe much needed reflection and bibliography; especially to Joshua R. Deckman, who was my research assistant and who has become a key interlocutor for my work in Caribbean and Latinx Studies. Inside and outside of these and other institutional contexts, I have been engaged in an ongoing conversation with many friends. To Laura Torres- Acknowledgments • xi Rodríguez, I owe key questions that have informed my study, but most sig- nificantly, I owe her my sanity at times of saturation. Matthew Goldmark, Ana Sabau, and Daylet Domínguez shifted, in different manners, my way of thinking about specific phenomena analyzed in this book. Sandra Casanova- Vizcaíno, Gerardo Pignatiello, Oscar Montoya, and Selma Feliciano-Arroyo have helped me to navigate the long and complex literary tradition of the Caribbean and Latin America. I am also indebted in many ways to my ongo- ing conversations with Felipe Cala, Carl Fischer, Enea Zaramella, Laura Gan- dolfi, Alejandra Josiowicz, and Elena Valdés. This book is also possible thanks to the support I received at Penn from Lidia León-Blázquez, Larissa Brewer- García, Andrea Cote Botero, Nelson Cárdenas, Anna Cox, Raquel Albarrán, and Luis Moreno-Caballud. I have written this book in a language that has always been foreign to me. Linda Grabner translated from Spanish to English early versions of chapters 1, 3, and 4 (including the quotes from literary and critical texts in Spanish). Robin Myers and Joanna Zuckermann Bernstein copyedited the introduction, chapter 2, and chapter 5. Finally, Marianna Nadeu Rota proofread the whole manuscript after the many changes it went through over the years. Marianna’s incommensurable knowledge of language and attention to detail guaranteed the clarity in discourse throughout the book. Also, Marianna’s comments and ques- tions helped the development of the argument. Finally, as my friend, our long- distance conversations made me at ease with writing in this foreign language. At the Ohio State University Press, Kristen A. Elias Rowley has been the light to guide me gently in every step of this difficult process that is publish- ing the first book. I could not have asked for a more dedicated and passionate editor. I am also thankful to the editors of the Global Latin/o Americas book series, Lourdes Torres and Frederick Luis Aldama, for their confidence in this project. I am excited to be part of this transdisciplinary and transcontinental series. I am grateful to the two anonymous readers for their invaluable feed- back, which has made this book’s argument stronger. Finally, words cannot even begin to express all my debt to my intellectual interlocutor, husband, and accomplice, Marco A. Martínez Sánchez, and my late kitty, Tatú. They nourished me with food and love in every step of the way. Our little family resides within this book’s pages. I am also grateful to my mother, Cándida Rivera Díaz, and the whole matriarchal clan of the Rivera Díaz family in Puerto Rico and the diaspora. Now more than ever, when we survive a catastrophe that threatens to aniquilate our existence in the island, seremos siempre montones. INTRODUCTION Emotional Intellectual Interventions and the Politics of Collective Enunciation in the Neoliberal Space of Catastrophe IN 1956, Nilita Vientós Gastón, a Puerto Rican intellectual who wrote a weekly column in the widely circulated newspaper El Mundo,1 vowed to keep creating malestar [discomfort] in her audience with respect to the island’s colonial sta- tus and urged other Puerto Ricans to cultivate this feeling as well. Her dire call to embrace malestar, a Spanish word that expresses physical and emotional pain (malaise, uneasiness, and unrest), sought to challenge an essay by Univer- sity of Chicago professor Daniel J. Boorstin, published that same year in The Yale Review.2 Boorstin’s “Self-Discovery in Puerto Rico” established that the writing of the Constitution and the creation of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (Estado Libre Asociado or ELA) had ended U.S. colonialism on the island back in 1952; hence, Puerto Rican intellectuals should abandon their public interventions and agitation against the United States. More precisely, Boorstin asserted, Puerto Rican intellectuals should work strictly within academia and focus on advancing theories that truly corresponded to the island’s new politi- cal reality. For Vientós Gastón, however, “ese malestar tiene un ‘objetivo,’ sacu- dir la rutina, mantener el espíritu alerta, no dejar adormecer la conciencia” 1.