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Prologue: ἀ e Chatter Box frederick luis aldama: These three laissez-faire conversations, plus the prologue and an epilogue, are an exercise in improvisation. The purpose is to ponder as we meander through the elusive terrain of popular culture. Let us start with the category: Latino, instead of Hispanic , serves as identifier in the subtitle of the book. Will this cause an uproar? ilan stavans: Uproar? Nah . . . At this point, people are exhausted of the name wars, don’t you think? What to call ourselves? Who cares! Frankly, finding a solution is less interesting to me than acknowledging that years, decades, centuries have been wasted in finding the impossible word that best suits us. Impossible because words are transient, inaccurate . . . light as smoke. fa: I like the idea of an impossible word. is: Ludwig Wittgenstein persuasively argued that the confines of our world are also the confines of our language. That which can’t be said does not exist . . . fa: Or perhaps, that which can’t be said can be thought and eventually said—as per Chomsky, meaning that our language faculty works primarily to give shape to thought and secondarily as a communication device. Either way we shake it, the use of our language faculty sets in motion all variety of mental faculties associated with goal setting and action: our dialogue made public. is: The act of naming plays a stunning role in the Genesis. In the first couple of chapters, Adam is established as the centripetal force of the universe. His use of language suggests arbitrariness. He names the tree tree without having a singular reason for it. And in doing the naming, he appropriates the objects, placing them at his service, so to speak. Human language as a tool of control. fa: Along those lines, already in the nineteenth century, there was a big debate—a quarrel, really—over how to name everything south of the Rio Grande. You’ve written about this game in The Hispanic Condition (1995) and elsewhere. Some people argued that you can’t call it Hispanic America, that is, Hispanoamérica. There is a huge territory called Brazil that did not fit what the name was supposed to enclose. [2]¡Muy Pop! Unfortunately for the advocates of Hispanic America, Brazilians do not speak Spanish, but a variant of Latin called Portuguese. is: A variant that is one of the Romance languages. fa: Let me go on . . . Many islands in the Caribbean were colonized by the French, British, and Dutch, and no Spanish is spoken there either. So some said, calling ourselves Hispanic America excludes too much land and too many peoples. We should choose some other name. is: A semantic conundrum. fa: But the naming of this part of the whole continent was not just a semantic discussion among linguists, historians, and scholars of one sort or another. In fact, from the beginning it was a deeply political discussion. is: Semantics, as I see it, is a branch of political science. fa: The nineteenth century, particularly in its second half, saw the continuing expansion of the United States (it annexed Texas in 1845 and then up to half of Mexican territory in 1848) and of France, Britain , Belgium, and Holland, which were fighting among each other in the dividing up of the world-pie: Africa, Middle East, and, of course, Latin America. This is also the time when, in 1823, President Monroe proclaimed—urbi et orbi—the Western Hemisphere no longer a place suitable for European colonization. Yet a few years later, this became the policy of “America for the Americans,” a strategy whereby Latin America became America’s backyard. is: Do you mean North America swallowed South America whole? fa: In a sense, yes. This is why the discussion about how to name ourselves south of the U.S./Mexico border became as ferocious as the political consequences of the eventual choice. is: Are you a proponent of Hispanic? fa: Hispanic dangerously evokes Spain, a European country. is: I knew you wouldn’t endorse it. fa: Indeed, at one point many preferred Ibero-America (Iberoamérica, in Spanish) since it made direct reference to the peninsula as a whole, which included Spain and Portugal. It seemed more capacious , therefore, to include the main concern, the huge territory of Brazil. Yet there was still the problem of the Caribbean islands where French was spoken, in particular Haiti, Guadeloupe, and Martinique. So some thought, with respect to Hispanic America, Ibero-America to be an...

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