The forum for inter-american research was established by the American Studies Section of the English Department at Bielefeld University in order to foster, promote and publicize current topics in the studies of the Americas. fiar is the official journal of the International Association of Inter-American Studies (IAS) General Editor: Wilfried Raussert Editors: Yolanda Campos Stephen Joyce Marius Littschwager Luisa Raquel Lagos Ellermeier Paula Prescod Wilfried Raussert Susana Rocha Teixeira Brian Rozema Assistant Editor: Anne Lappert Editorial Board: Prof. Mita Banerjee, Mainz University, Germany Prof. William Boelhower, Louisiana State University, USA Prof. Nuala Finnegan, University College Cork, Ireland Prof. Emerita Lise Gauvin, Université de Montréal, Canada Prof. Maryemma Graham, University of Kansas, USA Dr. Jean-Louis Joachim, Université des Antilles, Martinique Prof. Djelal Kadir, Penn State University, USA Dr. Luz Angélica Kirschner, South Dakota State University, USA Prof. John Ochoa, Pennsylvania State University, USA Prof. John Carlos Rowe, University of Southern California, USA Prof. David Ryan, University College Cork, Ireland Prof. Sebastian Thies, University of Tübingen, Germany Dr. Cécile Vigouroux, Simon Fraser University, Canada Design: Alina Muñoz Knudsen Contact: [email protected] [49] 521-106-3641 www.interamerica.de (European Standard Time) Postfach 100131 D-33501 Bielefeld The association seeks to promote the interdisciplinary study of the Americas, focusing in particular on inter-connections between North, Central, and South American culture, literatu- re, media, language, history, society, politics, and economics. www.interamericanstudies.net Guest Editors of Vol. 12.1: Wilfried Raussert (Bielefeld University) Susana Rocha Teixeira (Bielefeld University) Olaf Kaltmeier (Bielefeld University) Pablo Campos (Bielefeld University) ____________________________________________________________________________ www.interamerica.de Vol. 12 No. 1 (Jun. 2019): Doing and Undoing Comparisons: Practices of Comparing in the Americas Introduction: Doing and Undoing Comparisons in the Americas from the Colonial Times to the Present 6 Susana Rocha Teixeira (Bielefeld University) ‘We Wear the Mask’: Modern ‘Masks,’ Reflexivity, and Black Practices of Comparing in the Harlem Renaissance 12 Wilfried Raussert (Bielefeld University) Contesting Inequality. Joseph Anténor Firmin’s De l’égalité des races humaines, 133 years on 21 Gudrun Rath (University of Art and Design, Linz) Invidious Comparison and the New Global Leisure Class: On the Refeudalization of Consumption in the Old and New Gilded Age �����������������������������������������������29 Olaf Kaltmeier (Bielefeld University) Narcos and the Promotion of an US (Informal) Cultural Empire Based on Processes of Stereotyping and Comparison 43 Claudia Hachenberger (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg) How (Not) to Compare White Poverty: Class Issues, Socioeconomic Suffering, Literature 56 Carsten Schinko (University of Stuttgart/HU Berlin) Placing Prospero’s Island: (Post)Colonial Practices of Comparing in the Academic Reception of Shakespeare’s The Tempest 73 Marcus Hartner (Bielefeld University) Gilberto Freyre entre duas Américas Latinas: a lusitana e a hispana. Análise da transformação da interpretação do Autor com relação a influência espanhola e portuguesa em América �������������������������������������������������������������������������86 Yago Quiñones Triana (Universidade de Brasília) Declensions: Conceptual Migrations across Empires 101 Elena Furlanetto (University of Duisburg-Essen) ‘Early’ and ‘Modern’ indigenist Practices – A Comparative Analysis of the Ecuadorian and the Mexican cases 116 Pablo Campos (Bielefeld University) Book Review Section 126 Weird American Music, by Dorothea Gail. (Book Review) 127 Kensedeobong Blessed Okosun (Bielefeld University) FORUM FOR INTER-AMERICAN RESEARCH (FIAR) VOL. 12.1 (JUN. 2019) 6-11 ISSN: 1867-1519 © forum for inter-american research Introduction: Doing and Undoing Comparisons in the Americas from the Colonial Times to the Present SUSANA ROCHA TEIXEIRA (BIELEFELD UNIVERSITY) Currently, comparisons seem to be ubiquitous. developed countries, races, or cultures. In this Anything and anyone – be it universities, sports context, comparing as globalized practice was teams, countries, restaurants, or physicians perceived as practice of modern dominance, a – can and seem to be compared in order to tool of power, which perpetuates rated relations identify, for example, the ‘best,’ ‘performance’ or of hegemony and subordination, center and the most ‘diversity.’[1] Nevertheless, comparing periphery, sameness and difference. In a similar is hardly a novel phenomenon. Critics maintain vein, tertia, the aspects, which are compared that ‘modernity’ (and in particular the eighteenth (as, e.g., ‘progress’), were revealed to be not and nineteenth centuries) gave rise to new ‘given’, but as always being constructed and led ways of seeing, measuring and ordering the by particular interests and ideologies.[4] world as well as to new practices of comparing; Despite or perhaps due to the aforementioned and that during that same period, comparing issues, scholars such as Angelika Epple and was increasingly established as a seemingly Walter Erhart are interested in analyzing objective and scientific method, a fact that led comparisons and practices of comparing to the establishment of a number of academic themselves, which they find essential in areas and (sub-) disciplines such as comparative establishing relations between different units, literature.[2] ordering the world, reducing complexity and It is a well-established notion within academia propelling intellectual and historical change that juxtapositions and comparisons have played (Epple and Erhart, “Welt beobachten” 18; a central role in the creation of geopolitical Epple, “Doing Comparisons” 174). In “Doing imaginaries with regard to the Americas – be Comparisons – Ein praxeologischer Zugang zur they Eurocentric or Creolist – and that they have Geschichte der Globalisierung/en,“ Epple points fueled images, clichés, and stereotypes about out that comparing is a complex practice that is various region(s) and their peoples. It similarly malleable and in which at least two comparata holds true for the making and remaking of the are put in relation to a tertium by at least one north-south divide within the Americas, whether actor, who is situated in a particular context. real or imagined, in regard to relations between Depending on various factors such as time, countries, regions and on a hemispheric scale. place, culture, and who is comparing, what is [3] compared (i.e. the comparata) differs and so However, in the course of the twentieth do the functions and effects of comparing. The century, for example, with the rise of postcolonial comparata are not ‘given’ but ‘produced’ by the and decolonial studies, critics increasingly actors by choosing a tertium. Comparisons are explored and criticized not only the seemingly’ therefore, seemingly, the result of numerous ‘objective’ comparative disciplines within activities, decisions, and choices that are academia but also the practice of comparing themselves based on a number of assumptions itself. Postcolonial and anti-colonial intellectuals and negotiations, e.g. regarding sameness or criticized European perspectives, the standards difference of the comparata, and consequential involved in the practices of comparing, and their choices regarding inclusion and exclusion being influenced by assumptions, prejudices, of certain aspects. These factors influence and biases. Comparisons and practices of decisions about such central questions as: which comparing were rejected for creating hierarchies comparata and tertia should be chosen and on between presumably ‘more’ and ‘less’ which basis (e.g. similarity or difference)? This 7 S. ROCHA TEIXEIRA: INTRODUCTION complex process gives room for innovations, the context of subaltern, countercultural and deviations, transformations, production of (new) avant-garde movements, have the potential knowledge, and negotiating issues of sameness to challenge and re-negotiate old or to create and difference (Epple, “Doing Comparisons” new categories and to undermine or destabilize 162-163, 193-194). [5] Similarly, Johannes particular power structures/relations. This also Grave highlights the importance of practices applies to the field of identity politics where, and routines involved in (un-)doing comparisons for example, indigenous and afro-descendent which can create new forms of acting and groups have drawn upon global comparisons, comparing while curbing others. Grave’s imagined transnational and translocal relations, praxeological approach allows for the exploration and focused on similarities between people of of decisions and assumptions regarding the African ‘descent’ in the Americas and beyond, choice, perception, and evaluation of comparata thus creating global ‘indigenous’ or ‘black’ and tertia, the creation and prioritization of communities with ‘shared’ characteristics. particular categories, and implied values