Pirate Novels. Fictions of Nation Building in Spanish America (review)

Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 313 shall comment briefly on two of them: Chaptei 3, "Our Rigoberta? /, Rigoberta Menchú, Cultural Authority, and the Problem of Subaltern Agency," and Chaptei 6, "Teiritofiality, Multiculturalism and Hegemony: The Question ofthe Nation." In Chapter 3, Beverley faces the almost impossibly difficult question of who speaks, who speaks for and about, all of this in the context of the politics of metropolitan academic discourse and its points of encounter with subaltemity. In the case of Rigoberta Menchú there are the inevitable questions of authority and authorship. What is the extent of her authorship and, therefore, her authority to speak? Does Menchú speak by and for herself or is she a representation of hei high-culture Venezuelan editor, Elisabeth Burgos and of her metropolitan readers? If she does speak for herself why then does very neaily everyone call her "Rigoberta" rather than Menchú, as we would do with Sartre, Tolstoy, Beverley? (Here I think that Beverley misses some ofthe multivalent sinuosity of hispanophone foims of addiess, but is certainly right about the overtones ofthat usage in the metropolitan academy.) He comments, upon David Stoll's case against the North American reception of I Rigoberta Menchú, observing that it is, at bottom "a way of resubalternizing narrative that aspired to (and achieved) hegemony," (67) and concluding that Menchú's testimony ultimately "resists simply being the minor that reflects our narcissistic assumptions about what it should be." (69) The nation-state, such a recent invention, seems forever with us. In Chapter 6, "Territoriality , Multiculturalism, and Hegemony: The Question ofthe Nation," Beveriey poses pethaps the most difficult question diat surfaces in a book that overflows with difficult questions: Does the subalternist critique ofthe nation-form and nationalism, which is based on an awareness of the incommensurability of the subaltern and the nation-state, necessarily preclude it from contributing to a redefinition ofthe nation-state and its functions . (135) The limitations of a brief review prevent both a thorough description and analysis of this essay, much less a ieasoned presentation of disagreements . I shall consign just one to these pages. Beverley remarks that peasant rebellions have always remained subaltern: in the very act of contesting domination because they could not emcompass (or create) the nation. That is because , as Giamsci understood, the nation is (or has been) die foim of territoriality that corresponds to hegemony [...]. (135) But this is to abandon historical dialectics. European early modern seigneurial monarchies developed extremely complex, integrated forms of teiritofiality and hegemony which were indispensable to the foimation of contemporary nationstates . These were not improvised or pulled out of a hat, or even, as Ernest Gellner would have it, simply the projection of nationalism; they are historical deteiminations that are appreciably more faceted than what Beverley accounts for in rhis chapter. It is impossible to convey the richness and complexity of this book, or even my disagreements with it, in so brief a review. I urge everyone interested in cultural politics and political culture at the dawn ofthe millennium to read it without delay. Edward Baker edbaker@euroseek.com Pirate NoveL·. Fictions of Nation Building in Spankh America Duke University Press, 1999 By Nina Gerassi-Navarro Pirate NoveL· is part of a growing body of academic literature engaged in the task of "mapping " the various "founding metaphors" that substantiate Latin American writing, and of assessing dieii changing political-representational value and 314 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies function in specific contexts. From Josefina Ludmer's recent Elcuerpo deldelito (1999), to Doris Sommers Foundational Fictions (1991), through the current debate around "Caliban" as a metaphor for colonial / postcolonial identities in Latin America, this reflection "in progress" has a variety and scope difficult to encompass in a single effort. Pirate NoveL· studies the ways in which the pirate as a fictional character became "a metaphoi foi the brural struggles ofthe collective imaginings of a nation" (188) in nineteenth-century Spanish American Literature. Gerassi-Navairo maintains that: during [the] period of national reorganization [a war-ridden period in most countries], a number of pirate novels were published, but rather than piesenting an idealized vision, they cast the pit ate simultaneously in two different and contrasting images...