University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Open Access Dissertations 2-2011 Con-Scripting the Masses: False Documents and Historical Revisionism in the Americas Frans Weiser University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/open_access_dissertations Part of the Comparative Literature Commons Recommended Citation Weiser, Frans, "Con-Scripting the Masses: False Documents and Historical Revisionism in the Americas" (2011). Open Access Dissertations. 347. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/open_access_dissertations/347 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CON-SCRIPTING THE MASSES: FALSE DOCUMENTS AND HISTORICAL REVISIONISM IN THE AMERICAS A Dissertation Presented by FRANS-STEPHEN WEISER Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment Of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY February 2011 Program of Comparative Literature © Copyright 2011 by Frans-Stephen Weiser All Rights Reserved CON-SCRIPTING THE MASSES: FALSE DOCUMENTS AND HISTORICAL REVISIONISM IN THE AMERICAS A Dissertation Presented by FRANS-STEPHEN WEISER Approved as to style and content by: _______________________________________________ David Lenson, Chair _______________________________________________ William Moebius, Co-Chair _______________________________________________ Daphne Patai, Member _______________________________________________ Luis Marentes, Member _______________________________________________ William Moebius, Chair Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures _______________________________________________ David Lenson, Program Director Comparative Literature Program Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures DEDICATION To Stephen, who taught me the value of finishing, and to Hermine, who taught me the value of time. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my advisors in Comparative Literature, Professors David Lenson and Bill Moebius, for their guidance along the path that led to the creation of this project. Their combination of support and practical vision has been vital to its completion. I also thank Professor Daphne Patai for her revisions and constructive criticisms, and Professor Luis Marentes for his advice regarding the comparative context that undergirds the entire project. v ABSTRACT CONSCRIPTING THE MASSES: FALSE DOCUMENTS AND HISTORICAL REVISIONISM IN THE AMERICAS FEBRUARY 2011 FRANS WEISER, B.A., LINFIELD COLLEGE M.A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor David Lenson Dominick LaCapra argues that historians continue to interpret legal documents in a hierarchical fashion that marginalizes intellectual history, as fiction is perceived to be less important. This dissertation analyzes contemporary literary texts in the Americas that exploit such a narrow reading of documents in order to interrogate the way official history is constructed by introducing false forms of documents into their narratives. This type of literary text, or what I label ―con-script,‖ is not only historical fiction, but also historicized fiction that problematizes its own historical construction. Many critics propose that the new historical novel revises historical interpretation, but there exists a gap between theory and textual practice. Adapted from E.L. Doctorow‘s notion of ―false documents,‖ the con-script acts as an alternative that purposefully confuses fiction and nonfiction, providing tools to critically examine the authority maintained by official narratives. By revealing the fictive nature of these constructions, the con-script alerts readers to the manipulation of documents to maintain political authority and to misrepresent or silence marginalized groups. vi The recent revision of American Studies to include a hemispheric or Inter- American scope provides a context for applying such political claims within a transcultural framework. I compare texts from English, Spanish, and Portuguese America in order to identify shared strategies. After a survey of the historical novel‘s development across the Americas and a critical theory overview, I analyze three types of con-script. ―The Art of Con-Fessing‖ juxtaposes texts from the three languages via Jay Cantor‘s The Death of Che Guevara, Augusto Roa Basto‘s Yo el Supremo, and Silviano Santiago‘s Em Liberdade. These false documents present themselves as apocryphal diaries written by revolutionary leaders or activists. The authors demythologize untouchable public figures through the gaps in their ―own‖ personal writing. ―Mediations of Media‖ features Ivan Ângelo‘s A Festa, Tomás Eloy Martínez‘s La novela de Perón, and Ishmael Reed‘s Mumbo Jumbo. These journalists interrogate the role of media and political corruption within the construction of national identity; the false documents appear as newspaper clippings, magazine articles and media images. Finally, the subjective process of archiving is examined in ―Con-Centering the Archive‖ via Aguinaldo Silva‘s No País das Sombras, Francisco Simón‘s El informe Mancini, and Susan Daitch‘s L.C. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. v ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................... vi CHAPTER PART I: INTRODUCTION AND PRE-SCRIPTION 1. DEFINING THE CON-SCRIPT IN HISTORICIZED FICTION ...........................2 2. HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF INTER-AMERICAN HISTORICAL FICTION .32 3. A DIDACTIC GENRE?: CRITICAL THEORY OVERVIEW AND THE POWER OF THE PAST ........................................................................................57 PART II: THE ART OF CON-FESSING: DEMYTHOLOGIZING THE REVOLUTIONARY ICON 4. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................80 5. WRITING CHE WRITING: GUEVARA‘S APOCRYPHAL DIARIES DECONSTRUCT THE REVOLUTIONARY MYTH ..........................................94 6. TAKING (BACK) LIBERTIES: THE CASE OF SANTIAGO‘S EM LIBERDADE ........................................................................................................111 7. WHOLLY SCRIPTURE: ROA BASTOS AND THE PROFANITY OF CON- FESSING .............................................................................................................132 PART III MEDIATIONS OF MEDIA 8. INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................156 9. MARTÍNEZ AND THE MEDIA: HYBRID MEMOIRS AND COUNTER- MEMORIES ........................................................................................................172 10. REBELLION IN THE HEADLINES: CUNHA, ÂNGELO, AND THE INTERTEXTUAL CAMPAIGN .........................................................................208 11. AGAINST NEW JOURNALISM: MUMBO-JUMBO AND ―NOVEL‖ HISTORY ............................................................................................................249 PART IV CON-FOUNDING THE ARCHIVE: THE REWRITING OF AUTHORITY viii 12. INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................280 13. GOING DAITCH: SPLITTING LITERARY HEIRS .........................................291 14. IN THE SHADOW OF GIANTS: SILVA‘S SELF-REFLEXIVE ROMANCE- REPORTAGEM ..................................................................................................317 15. TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT: SIMÓN RIVAS‘ REVISIONS TO CHILE‘S NATIONAL REPORT.........................................................................................339 16. CONCLUSION AND POST-SCRIPT ................................................................361 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................369 ix PART I INTRODUCTION AND PRE-SCRIPTION CHAPTER 1 DEFINING THE CON-SCRIPT IN HISTORICIZED FICTION By the sixteenth century fiction, whether in poetry or prose, was unequivocally called lying…The poetic mode, since it was expressly designed for this pleasant lying, at least deceived no one. Prose, however, the vehicle for legal documents, for sermons, for history, was considered to have been abused by those who made it carry the falsehood of fiction. The dangers contained in fictional prose were greater. How was the reader of prose to know when the historian, or story-teller, was telling a truth or a lie? A reader is more easily misled when the safeguards of convention have been removed. —Bruce W. Wardropper, ―Don Quixote: Story or History?‖ It was the French Revolution, the revolutionary wars and the rise and fall of Napoleon, which for the first time made history a mass experience…the French Republic was compelled to create mass armies. The qualitative difference between mercenary and mass armies is precisely a question of their relations with the mass of the population. If in place of the recruitment or pressing into professional service of small contingents of the declassed, a mass army is to be created, then the content and purpose of the war must be made clear to the masses by means of propaganda. —Georg Lukács, The Historical Novel The Con-Script within Con-Text In the second epigraph above,