The Limits of the Letter: The Politics of Representation and Margins in Latin American Vanguard Writings of the 1950s and 60s by Adam Joseph Shellhorse A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Hispanic Languages and Literatures in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Ana Maria Mão-de-Ferro Martinho, Chair Professor Richard Rosa Professor Ivonne del Valle Professor Laura E. Pérez Fall 2010 The Limits of the Letter: The Politics of Representation and Margins in Latin American Vanguard Writings of the 1950s and 60s Copyright 2010 by Adam Joseph Shellhorse Abstract The Limits of the Letter: The Politics of Representation and Margins in Latin American Vanguard Writings of the 1950s and 60s by Adam Joseph Shellhorse Doctor of Philosophy in Hispanic Languages and Literatures University of California, Berkeley Professor Ana Maria Mão-de-Ferro Martinho, Chair Throughout this study, I theorize and explore the consequences of the self-reflexive text in the literary writings of João Cabral de Melo Neto, Osman Lins, and David Viñas. I argue that what unites these writers is not solely the context of neocolonialism and underdevelopment in the 1950s and 60s in Brazil and Argentina but the properly vanguard problem and gesture of mediating the present and politics, as I trace in their theoretical writings, letters and literary texts their shared concern with making literature relevant, functional and dynamic in a public sphere in crisis. If I contextualize these writers in their historical moments and provide close readings of their works, I also localize and extract from their projects concrete problems and formulations that I deem productive for the study of literature today, and in order to place these historically engaged and dynamic literary projects in dialogue with some of the more pressing debates in the field of contemporary Latin American Studies such as the crisis of literature, the politics of aesthetics, the rise of the neoliberal city, the legacy of the Boom and literary vanguardism, the Neo-Baroque, and the ongoing problems of subalternity, Eurocentrism, and representation. In dialogue with the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group and thinkers such as José Rabasa, Alberto Moreiras, Severo Sarduy, Jacques Rancière, Gilles Deleuze, and Alain Badiou, my study links the Subaltern Studies Group to a different line of theoretical questioning and examines how the writings of Cabral, Lins, and Viñas ultimately articulate self-reflexive and challenging proposals concerning the vanguard functions of literature and literature’s difficult relationship to subalternity and the political field in a neocolonial context. 1 For Tomomi For Mother For the memory of Father, (1945-2008) i TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract Acknowledgments INTRODUCTION 1 The Limits of the Letter: The Politics of Representation and Margins in Latin American Vanguard Writings of the 1950s and 60s CHAPTER 1 12 The Explosion of the Letter: The Politics and Crisis of Margins in João Cabral de Melo Neto’s Morte e Vida Severina: auto de Natal pernambucano CHAPTER 2 49 Writing Violence From an Aesthetic of Ornaments in Osman Lins’s O Retábulo de Santa Joana Carolina CHAPTER 3 81 Literature and Finitude: On the Neo-Baroque in Osman Lins and Latin American Studies Today CHAPTER 4 104 The Letter’s Limit: Writing Violence and Margins in David Viñas and Jean-Paul Sartre WORKS CITED 130 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In researching this subject, I have been drawn to several pressing theoretical currents in the field: the problem of addressing the Latin American Subaltern Studies project and linking the aesthetic to the political by reconsidering the legacy and critical force of Latin American vanguard writings in the 1950s and 60s. My interdisciplinary committee and colleagues at Berkeley have clearly helped me elaborate and configure the problems that underwrite this discussion. Accordingly, I want to wholeheartedly thank every colleague, professor, and friend who has taken the precious time to share their thoughts with me on my project, whether in seminar, office meetings, or through correspondence. I wish first to thank the members of my brilliant and supporting committee who have provided me with many careful and clear readings, insights across disciplines, and who have shown much enthusiasm for the texts under study: Ana Maria Mão-de-Ferro Martinho, Richard Rosa, Ivonne del Valle, and Laura Elisa Pérez. I am also especially grateful to José Luis Gómez-Martínez and Carmen Chaves Tesser for illuminating readings of my drafts, and for their stalwart encouragement. To all of you, thank you for your care and example as outstanding and creative professors who are committed to making a difference in scholarship and in the lives of students. In addition to my committee, numerous professors and seminars at Berkeley have been instrumental in the conception of this project, and I would like to thank them all for assisting me on this path: a heartfelt thanks to Dru Dougherty for guiding me as a teacher of literature and for our stimulating conversations on the avant-garde and poetry. Special thanks to José Rabasa for our dialogue and for challenging me to think through the horizons of subalternity and postcolonial theory. I am grateful to Pheng Cheah for taking the time to read Derrida and postcolonial theory with me, and for our seminar on textual relations and theory. I wish to thank Ignacio Navarrete for his continued support, guidance and encouragement in discussing my project and Concrete Poetry. Seminars with Candace Slater and José Luiz Passos on Brazilian literature and the matter of violence proved very fruitful and changed the direction of my research. I would like to thank Francine Masiello for our inspiring seminar on el Sur, for steady encouragement, and for steering me in the direction of David Viñas and Contorno . I would also like to thank Tony Cascardi for sharing theoretical insights and for the impacting seminar on aesthetic theory. Additionally, I wish to thank Michael Iarocci for discussions on literature and theory, the problem of commitment, and metafiction in the context of the Post- dictatorial/Postmodern Spanish Novel. Estelle Tarica’s seminar on the Latin American novel and Natalia Brizuela’s course on Borges and Arlt provided many insights. I wish to thank Julio Ramos for inspiring me from the very beginning of my research and writing. Indeed, to all the faculty members of the Department, I would like to extend my heartfelt gratitude for your assistance, wisdom, and example. Thanks to the generous support of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Center for Latin American Studies at UC Berkeley, a number of visits to Brazil and Argentina have provided me with the opportunity to consult and gather hard to access primary sources. Just as important, these research trips have enabled me to contact leading writers and poets of the 1950s and 60s in Brazil and Argentina. In Argentina, I would like to thank David Viñas and Noé Jitrik for agreeing to meet with me on several occasions to discuss their projects. Special thanks to Gabriela García Cedro for arranging the meetings with Viñas and for the conversations on the Argentine vanguards. I also wish to thank Emilio Bernini and Guillermo Korn for their assistance at the Instituto de Literatura iii Argentina “Ricardo Rojas.” In Brazil, I wish to thank Frederico Barbosa for inviting me to participate in the seminar on Concrete Poetry in 2009 at the Casa das Rosas in São Paulo, for providing assistance in my research on Cabral, and for facilitating my interview with Augusto de Campos. I wish to thank Augusto de Campos, Affonso Romano de Sant’Anna, and Ferreira Gullar for our illuminating conversations on Latin American vanguardism and Concrete Poetry in Brazil. I am also grateful to the Academia Brasileira de Letras, especially to chief librarian Luiz Antônio, for assistance in copying rare documents and for setting up the interview with Antonio Carlos Secchin. Special thanks to Sandra Nitrini for the informative dialogue on the works of Osman Lins at the University of São Paulo, and to Antonio Carlos Secchin for our conversation on Cabral. I would like to thank Letícia Lins for granting permission to photograph original typescripts, letter correspondences and rare documents by Osman Lins at his archive sites located in Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa in Rio de Janeiro, and at the Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros in São Paulo. Additionally, I wish to thank the family of Alfredo César Melo for most graciously putting me up in Recife, and to Ermelinda Ferreir, Adria Frizzi, and Leonardo Cunha for their assistance in my research on Osman Lins. In writing this project, I count myself fortunate to have had many conversations and class sections with extremely bright students at Berkeley who became fast interested in Brazilian, Argentine and Spanish American literature and in the many ways one can examine literature. I wish to thank them all for their contagious creativity, broad imaginations, enthusiasm, and hard work that motivated me in my research. I also wish to thank the Department’s outstanding staff that I consider to be family: Verónica López, Mari Mordecai, and Cathy Jones. While I cannot be exhaustive, it gives me great pleasure to acknowledge some of the friends and colleagues that have provided me with intellectual companionship, assistance, and good cheer over the course of this project: Nelson Ramírez, León Salvatierra, Mónica González García, Maya Márquez, Mayra Bottaro, Vlad and Mara Popescu, Arturo Dávila, Alfredo César Melo, Allove Wiser, Betty Salum, Allison de Laveaga, Vernon Thornsberry, Janet Sovin, Caroline Cohen, Ronnie Boynton, Jeremias Zunguze, Matt Losada, Aurélie Vialette, Eduardo Ruiz, Dena Marie, Victor Goldgel Carballo, Sarah Wells, Heather McMichael, Sarah Schoellkopf, Seth Kimmel, Ana E.