WRITING THE EARTH, WRITING THE NATION: LATIN AMERICAN NARRATIVE AND THE LANGUAGE OF GEOGRAPHY by Aarti Madan B.A., Birmingham-Southern College, 2004 M.A., University of Pittsburgh, 2007 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2010 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Aarti Madan It was defended on April 8, 2010 and approved by Dr. Susan Andrade, Associate Professor, English Dr. Bobby Chamberlain, Associate Professor, Hispanic Languages & Literatures Dr. Juan Duchesne-Winter, Professor, Hispanic Languages & Literatures Dissertation Advisor: Dr. Joshua K. Lund, Associate Professor, Hispanic Languages & Literatures ii Copyright © by Aarti Madan 2010 iii WRITING THE EARTH, WRITING THE NATION: LATIN AMERICAN NARRATIVE AND THE LANGUAGE OF GEOGRAPHY Aarti Madan, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2010 This dissertation examines the relationship between literary writing and geographical discourse in Domingo Faustino Sarmiento’s Facundo: Civilización y barbarie (Argentina, 1845), Euclides da Cunha’s Os Sertões (Brazil, 1902), and Rómulo Gallegos’s Doña Bárbara (Venezuela, 1929). These narratives are often read as locating their authority in the discourse of science or within the didactic lessons of the national allegory. I contend that both readings simplify the legacies of these works and elide the significance behind the form coupled with their content. To fully understand the politics of these mixed forms, we must move from the general (empiricist science) to the particular (geographical discourse). I defend this move by demonstrating that Sarmiento, Cunha, and Gallegos emerge as literary figures alongside, and even participate in, the formation of politically oriented geographical institutions; between 1833 and 1910 over fifty geographical societies appear across the Americas, first in Mexico and later in Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela. This simultaneity—between literary writing and institutional formation—points to an understudied alignment between literature, geography, and politics in Latin America. I illustrate that, through a host of literary devices (e.g. metaphor, anaphora, alliteration, etc.), these writers give form to a consolidated nation-state by constructing a unified—or potentially unify- able—geographic space. By tracing how their narratives are informed by and in dialogue with previous non-Latin American land treatises (by, for example, Alexander von Humboldt, Henry Thomas Buckle, and Agustín Codazzi), I argue for the centrality of geographical discourse in literary, cultural, and social analysis. This project contributes to several conversations in the field, iv including the discourse of Eurocentrism, the issue of Amerindian versus Occidental epistemology, and the interconnectedness of race, inequality, and land distribution. v TABLE OF CONTENTS 1.0 THE SCIENCE OF STATECRAFT: DISCIPLINARY GEOGRAPHY AND THE POLITICS OF LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE .............................................................. 1 1.1 INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................... 1 1.2 THE POLITICAL AESTHETICS OF GEOGRAPHY: STRABO .......................... 6 1.3 AESTHETICIZED GEOGRAPHICAL DISCOURSE IN PRACTICE: ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT ................................................................................. 10 1.4 INDEPENDENCE, IMPERIALISM, AND TERRITORIAL KNOWLEDGE . 18 1.5 THE ACCIDENTAL MISREADING ..................................................................... 21 1.6 LAND TO LANGUAGE, LANGUAGE TO LAND: MEDIATION .................... 25 1.7 METAPHOR AND THE PRIMITIVE: VICO’S POETIC LOGIC ..................... 30 1.8 SARMIENTO’S REVISION, CUNHA’S RECTIFICATION, AND GALLEGOS’S REJECTION ............................................................................................. 33 2.0 SARMIENTO THE GEOGRAPHER: UNEARTHING THE LITERARY IN FACUNDO .................................................................................................................................. 36 2.1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 36 2.2 THE GEOGRAPHICAL ROOTS............................................................................. 40 2.3 ARGENTINA’S INSTITUTIONS: FROM SCIENCE TO GEOGRAPHY AND THE CONFLATIONS IN BETWEEN .......................................................................... 48 vi 2.4 THE ARGENTINE TOCQUEVILLE: A DIDACTIC GEOGRAPHY ................ 61 2.5 THE IMMIGRANT’S BROCHURE: A MARKETABLE GEOGRAPHY ............ 73 2.6 THE FIRST PAGE OF ARGENTINE GEOGRAPHY .......................................... 85 2.7 EXPLAINING THE “UNKNOWN” THROUGH METAPHOR ........................ 93 2.8 ALONGSIDE AND AGAINST ................................................................................ 101 3.0 EUCLIDES DA CUNHA’S LITERARY MAP, OR UNDOING BANISHMENT TO THE BACKLANDS IN OS SERTÕES .................................................................................. 103 3.1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................. 103 3.2 “THE BASTARD CHILD OF ENLIGHTENMENT THOUGHT”: EXTRACTING GEOGRAPHY FROM POSITIVISM ................................................. 111 3.3 MAN AND LAND: INCLUSION THROUGH INSTITUTIONALIZATION 122 3.4 CUNHA’S CORRECTIVES, OR THE ILLUSION OF CONSOLIDATION ... 129 3.5 ZOOM OUT, ZOOM IN: FROM THE GENERAL TO THE PARTICULAR . 134 3.6 RE-APPROPRIATING BY RECTIFYING ........................................................... 139 3.7 THE NORTH VERSUS THE SOUTH: INTRA-GEOGRAPHIC DIALOGUE WITH HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE ............................................................................ 145 3.8 HEGEL AND HUMBOLDT: FROM THE LOCAL TO THE GLOBAL.......... 160 3.9 O VÍNCULO: OVERCOMING DIVISION ........................................................... 170 4.0 FENCING IN OR FENCING OUT BARBARISM? : GALLEGOS’S IDEOLOGICAL PATH TO CONSOLIDATION IN DOÑA BÁRBARA ....................................................... 176 4.1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................. 176 4.2 A DISCIPLINARY GENEALOGY: GEOGRAPHY IN VENEZUELA ............. 186 vii 4.3 RÓMULO GALLEGOS, OR THE VENEZUELAN MOVE FROM EXPLOITATION TO CONSERVATION.................................................................... 199 4.4 GEOGRAPHY AS NATURAL DISCOVERY, OR THE ROUNDED CURVES OF BARBARISM .............................................................................................................. 210 4.5 THE CONVERGENCE OF SPACE AND TIME: HOPE IN THE HORIZON ............................................................................................................................ 217 4.6 GEOGRAPHY AS CULTURAL PRODUCTION, OR THE STRAIGHT EDGES OF CIVILIZATION ......................................................................................................... 226 4.7 THE VENEZUELAN HANDBOOK FOR MODERNITY ................................ 235 5.0 CONCLUSIONS: TOWARD AN ECOCRITICAL READING OF GEOGRAPHICAL DISCOURSE ............................................................................................................................. 237 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 245 viii PREFACE My pull to Latin American literary and cultural studies often surprises me. How did a child born of traditional Indian parents and raised in Tennessee become so infatuated with the language of Cervantes and the literature of Sarmiento? I can only find an answer in what I long ago recognized as an identity crisis. Debbie Truhan, our Graduate Administrator in Hispanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pittsburgh, remembers well: in the Fall of 2005, as a wee first-semester doctoral student, I told her I’d finally “found myself” amidst a variety pack of Latin Americans and Latin Americanists—from Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Argentina, Puerto Rico, Peru, Guatemala, Mexico, the United States. With age, and with the culturally sensitive and praising environs and readings of graduate school, I discovered that a hodgepodge identity defines us all. I finally found a wealth of terms to articulate my sensation of residing on a border. And the geographical and literary treatment of such arbitrary lines—which determine the fates of so many—became my primary research interest. I am grateful to the many voices that harmoniously came together to help me produce this work. My dissertation benefitted from two FLAS Fellowships to study Portuguese, a CLAS Summer Research Grant to conduct archival research in Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro, and an Andrew Mellon Pre-doctoral Fellowship. I thank these organizations for their support. I also thank Hispanic Languages and Literatures, in particular Debbie, Connie, and Lucy. My inimitable adviser and friend, Dr. Joshua K. Lund, has seen me through the entire process, from the moment I stepped in his office and eagerly took notes about Fuquo (Foucault), through endless drafts of fellowship applications and cover letters, and to the grand finale: signing my contract with Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where I begin employment in Fall 2010. Josh’s vast stores of energy, wit, balance, logic, and smarts have shaped who I am today, and I am honored to have worked with such a fine