Post-Nationalist American Studies (review)

250 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies sion. Summerhill and Williams argue in Chapter 7, theit "Conclusion," that the events and nonevents of 1992 mark a paradigmatic shift, "our postmodern shift from personality to process" (193) and, further, drat " [p] rocessual hisrory is a history without heroes—orvillains." (194) Thus: Columbus praising or bashing is [...] vestigial. It is left ovet from the days of seeing history as a record of human purposes, as a kind of socieral balance sheet for toting up credir and blame. (194) No tehs, no credit, no blame. Very well, but this is history in the porno funhouse—no consequences . And in history, as the authors readily acknowledge, there are always life and death consequences . The idea of the century as a period, a discrete unit of historical existence and knowledge, is a fairly recent one. Its general acceptance as an aid to writing "civil history," that is, the sort of history that was written not in the service of throne or altar but from the perspective of civil society, dates from the Enlightenment. Consequently, mere was no bearing of drums or clashing of cymbals on the first or second centennial of Columbus's initial voyage. In Spain, the centenary was noted in 1792, and, as the authors poinr out, it was given some real attention in the fledgling United States because Columbus furnished us with a "national origin myth that stressed America's separateness from Europe and the expansive future that seemed open to the 'new and rising empire' of the United States"(9), but the first major celebrations came one hundred years later, with the Exposition of 1892 in Madrid and the Chicago Worlds Fair of 1992-93. Chicago was a muscular trumpeting of Ametica's manifest destiny. Madrid celebrared Spain's "civilizing mission," which was prodaimed with the triumphalistic language that simultaneously belied and inflated Spain's role as a bit playet in the drama of imperialism that characterized the roughly forty years prior to the Great War. In 1992, the language was considerably softened . Spain's politicians (and they were nor alone) bloviated about cultural encounters rather than discovery and its impetial sequel, the serious work of civilizing the savages, converring the heathen and generating capital. All in all, there was probably less mendacity and bad faith in Cánovas's and Sagasta's day than in Felipe Gonzalez's, and the book should have made a sustained comparison of the two commemorations, as it did quite revealingly for the U.S. But that is a quibble. Sinking Columbus invites us to rethink these events and their historical meanings, and it does so knowledgeably and on occasion charmingly—the pages (28seq) on special events schlockmeisters are worth the ptice of admission—making fot both an interesting piece of scholarship and a genuinely engaging read. Edward Baker edbaker@euroseek.com Post-Nationalist American Studies University of California Press, 2000 Editado por John Carlos Rowe Este libro consta de vatios ensayos que se escribieron entre 1996 y 1997. En realidad esta colección es un producto de un "grupo de investigaci ón residente" (residential research group) que comenzó en 1996 en la Universidad de California en Irvine. La meta de este grupo era desarrollar un programa de análisis nuevo en el campo de los estudios americanos. Los miembros de este conjunto usaban el tétmino "post-nacionalista" pata describir su punto de vista y su plan de estudios. Para facilitar este proyecto, cada capÃ-tulo se dedica a un tema único e incluye un Ã-ndice de clase. Estos esquemas se proporcionan para que las ideas presenradas puedan ser aplicadas a la pedagogÃ-a. No obstante el término post-nacionalista no puede ser definido fácilmente. Lo que estos escritores tienen en mente es una imagen nueva del mundo que no tenga ya su centro en los Estados Unidos. Su punto clave es que el resto del mundo no deberÃ-a vivir a la sombra de este paÃ-s. Este concepto es semejante al que adelantaban los defensores de Afrocentrismo. Lo más importante es la decentralización del poder económico y polÃ-tico, y Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 251...