reflexions at midpoint (SPAN490)

Like the class, hate the books. The hardest thing about this class is actually having to read the books, though in the end it's worth it for the discussion they provoke. For example, last week I read Felisberto Hernandez and Laura Esquivel and my immediate reaction was that the first was brilliant and the second crap without being able to say exactly why. The class encourages one to ponder the grounds for one's subjective evaluations and what seems self-evident and in this sense is similar to an aesthetics class in that it explores the rational basis of taste and the possibility of standards in art. It has also made me aware of my own snobbishness (which, despite it all, remains intact) and gender bias. Regarding the latter, I recently discovered that almost every author in my bookshelf is a man and that I don't think I've ever actually read a female novelist--despite having started but never finished novels by Jeanette Winterson, Margaret Atwood and Toni Morrison, and Virginia Wolfe not withstanding, whose Mrs. Dalloway I had to read for a first-year liberal arts course and which literally put me to sleep. A course on bad literature is necessarily a course about canon formation, a pantheon that has largely, for better or worse, been determined by men.

reflexions at midpoint (SPAN365)

I am thoroughly enjoying SPAN365. I have found each text, apart from Cumandá (which for me lacks literary merit and reinforces my distaste of nationalism, literary or otherwise), to be a gem. From the tropical warmth of Mamá Blanca and the cold winds of Piedra callada to the brilliantly depicted perverion and madness of Hortensias (a deceptive title if there ever was one), my only regret is having to pass through them so quickly. Regarding the Uruguayan pianist, he is about to be admitted into my own private canon of personal faves and I am keen to read everything he has written.

Regarding span365´s hilo conductor--representations of la familia--I'm not sure I really get it. Sure, we've seen a normatively catholic family (Cumanda), a bourgeois family (Memorias), a dysfunctional family (Piedra) and a psychotic pseudo-family (Hortensias), but I still don't have the sense that family is the dominant theme in these texts. Each seems to stand alone and demand treatment respecting its singularity. I admit this attitude may have something to do with my own prejudices: I spent much of my twenties calling decrying the heteronormative family (though age and the recent legalization of same-sex marriage has softened my attitude somewhat), the over-determination of the latter (and the homophobia that goes with it) in Latin America being for me one of that region's least appealing characteristics. My preference would have been for a course structured chronologically around geographic region and genre.

Cute

Of the three novels we have read so far, Como agua para chocolate leaves me the most indifferent. In fact, this is the third time I've started this blog, following two aborted attempts at wracking my brain for something clever to say (I thought of posting an entry called Las tetas de Tita on the importance of Tita's breasts, but my better judgement prevailed). I've never spent much time in the kitchen, and Sor Juana Iñes' affirmation that cooking lends itself to philosophical speculations falls on my deaf ears. Nor have I ever actually read a book, besides Eva Luna, that some might place in the 'chick lit' category. In both cases, I'm surprised at how much sex there is. So far, almost nothing 'sticks' with me (apart from the rather appealing image of a naked Gertrude on horseback), and I tend to forget the chapters (recipes) as soon as I read them. This has not been the case for the other two novels we have read. Eva Luna's narrative structure was irritating though the novel did pique my interest with political references, some revolutionary action and a subplot regarding transsexual liberation. I hated The Alchemist as anti-Enlightenment neo-spiritualist nonsense, though if provoking a reaction is one of literature's aims, then on that level it succeeded. In both cases I questioned their authors' good faith: were these novels not conceived of as vaches à alaiter, that is, as cows to be milked for monetary worth, as means of padding bank accounts? I don't get that feeling with Esquivel. She seems sincere and her book is pleasant enough. Located somewhere between good and bad, high and lowbrow, it is totally unoffensive, lacking anything really controversial for me to grasp on to. The word cute comes to mind.

Anger (mis)management or how not to raise children

In Piedra callada anger reveals itself as a Janus-like figure, one of whose faces is passive (represented by Eufrasia) the other active (represented by Bernabe). Anger propels the narrative forward, intensifying at each step until only one conclusion becomes possible: the splitting of the two heads, or, which comes to the same, their integration.

Although Eufrasia, like her son-in-law, beats her daughter, this is not the dominant expression of her ire. The latter expresses itself silently, as an "hosco silencio" that makes her rigid and methodical, cold and indifferent, progressively "más dura, más recondita, más ahicada". It reveals itself in the pressure with which she squeezes her lips and the obsessiveness with which she works. She repeats the phrase "que sufra si es que tiene que sufrir" mechanically as if to subdue the rancour and resentment gnawing at her innards, corroding her from within. Only occasionally does she lash out verbally. But her anger can only be contained for so long. Remaining silent and torturing birds as a means of releasing tension ("desahogaba su mal humor en los párajos...tocados siempre por la piedra de su honda) no longer suffices. Hatred must be channelled from within to without in a single act of revenge.

Bernabé represents the active, aggressive face of anger. His is that of a brute: externalized and unmediated by judgment. It flows directly from his chest "como algo vivo que le anduviera en la sangre", poisons his brain "con su corrosivo veneno" and migrates into his hands, with which he slams doors and beats his children "de costumbre", indiscriminately, arbitrarily, "por cualquier cosa...por nada". Anger compels him to action ("remecer el rancho...destruirlo, agarrar a la vieja...echarla a la laguna") and overwhelms his already limited intellect. His eyes are "apenas lucientes" and his mental functioning "lerdo". One presumes the latter to have been compromised during the thrashings he undoubtedly received as a boy. His anger becomes persistent, generalized ("odiaba a la vieja. Odiaba a los hijos. Odiaba al patrón. Odiaba a la Esperanza"), transforming him into a pathological despot ready to starve his children on a whim.

Eufrasia and Bernabé are two faces of the same coin. Both are submissive to their employers and authoritarian to their children. Both treat the latter as possessions, blaming them for their misfortune and using them as receptacles for their rage, be it passive-aggressively in Eufrasia´s case or physically violent in Bernabé´s. Both are "corroded" by unprocessed rage originating, presumably, in their own destroyed childhoods. By murdering Bernabé, Eufrasia integrates the other side of anger and becomes its perfect expression.

Teresa de la Parra impresionista

Las memorias de Mama Blanca is impressionistic like the painting on its cover. The latter's visible brush strokes of green, yellow and white create a portrait--one imagines the woman Blanca Nieves will become--that is static, delicate and feminine, qualities of the novel itself. Like the works of impressionist composers, who used short thematically autonomous forms such as nocturnes and arabesques, Las memorias is tableau of independent impressions or atmospheric fragments whose formal coherance is as rigourous as a string of hazy memories. It is static in the same way that memories are static, as mental images contradicting the passage of time. It is delicate in the same way that a Debussy prelude is delicate, where mood and colour predominate over action and strong emotion. And it is feminine in that its narrative impusle lacks the forward thrust of an idea whose inner logic demands, insists on being developped. Here being is more important than becoming.

SPAN490 and the Transference Dyad

Darja's blog brings to light students' 'tendency' 'to subscribe to the opinion of their professors. I believe this tendency is unconscious and may be related to the transference phenomenon, whereby individuals 'transfer' or redirect desire unconsciously retained from childhood toward a new object. In this sense, Darja's interesting observation that we students tend to modify our comments in accordance with Jon's lectures, instead of expressing a lack of critical insight or independent thought, would refer to our unconscious desires for approval from a prof posited as a paternal substitute. Far from being neurotic or dysfunctional, I suspect this dynamic to be a normal part of classroom interaction and beneficial to learning. Darja is right is stressing the importance of independent and critical thought--without which we would be little different than the sheep in Santiago's flock--but I also think it is important to recognize that critical thinking is something developped intersubjectively and not individually given and that there are unconscious and affective elements implicated in its formation. Recognizing them is, in my view, part of what being self-aware and self-critical is all about.

But back to The Alchemist. What I find most offensive about this novel is not its message--that realizing our dreams is a necessary condition of our being happy--but rather its claim that this message is universally applicable. It seems to me that there is a whole series of material and psychological conditions (like comfortable economic circumstances and sound mental health) that need to be in place before we can even contemplate realizing our 'God-given' potential and that these conditions are available to a minority of people. As someone who was out during the height of the AIDS crisis in the 1990s, I saw many a gay brother die the most horrific of deaths without ever being given the possibility of exploiting their talents as human beings. It seems utterly tasteless to speak of 'personal legends' in this context. If all that was written, it was so in the sickest of books.