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3. Agi Morato's Garden as Heterotopian Place in Cervantes's Los banos de Argel
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43 u 3 Agi Morato’s Garden as Heterotopian Place in Cervantes’s Los baños de Argel Moisés R. Castillo Human places are sites of competing memories linked to physical and symbolic systems of spatialization. Even the most intimately familiar sense of the here and there is dependent on a complex network of symbolic recognition that cannot be divorced from the dynamics of power (Lefebvre). I take these notions as my starting point as I examine Cervantes’s countercultural (re)construction of the Algerian landscape as heterotopian place in Los baños de Argel (The Bagnios of Algiers/The Dungeons of Algiers). I focus on the symbolic value of the theatrical space of Agi Morato’s garden as an alternative space of human interaction that stands beyond the familiar distinctions between self and other, us and them. Positioning himself against the exclusionary logic of the official ideology of religious and cultural purity (la ideología de la sangre), Miguel de Cervantes projects in Los baños de Argel a syncretic ideal of freedom , compassion and human brotherhood over the landscape of the African Other. There are not many studies that inquire into the significance of landscape in the theater of Cervantes, and even fewer researching the role of Agi Morato’s garden in Los baños de Argel.1 Among them, there is the essay by Maryrica Ortiz Lottman, titled “The Call of the Natural World in Los baños de Argel.” She 44 MOISÉS R. CASTILLO notes that in this work “Cervantes explores the city’s landscape, and especially its gardens, in order to present nature as a beneficent force that offers the possibility of freedom” (363). Following in the wake of Ortiz Lottman’s work, this essay will examine the symbolic function of Agi Morato’s garden in light of the theory of heterotopian spaces developed by Foucault in his 1967 talk “Des Espaces Autres.” Surprisingly, literary criticism has not paid much attention to the dramatic landscape of Agi Morato’s garden, or has underplayed its importance, despite the garden’s centrality during climactic moments of the second and third acts, and the emphatic reference to it that marks the end of the play. While the play does not include a physical description of the garden, there is little doubt that this “unseen space” is of enormous importance in terms of not just the play’s actions but their symbolic significance. Whence, then, the emphasis that Cervantes puts on this garden? What does this site represent in Los baños? One might think that Agi Morato’s garden is a utopia understood as “no place,” that is, a truly non-existing place, an unreachable space, a longing of the captive protagonists of the comedia, rather than a concrete site—hence the muting of its physical details in favor of its symbolic meaning. However, it is obvious that the garden does exist in the context of the play insofar as the characters interact with it or “inhabit” it. Agi Morato’s garden is the destination of the captives during the second and third acts of the play, appearing as a locus amoenus, an escapist site of sensorial enjoyment that can be connected with the captives’ dreams of liberation, as Ortiz Lottman and Edward Friedman (“Introducción”) have recently suggested. This is why it seems useful to think of this utopian space not in the most common or better-known meaning of the term “utopia” (no-place) but in the sense of a “place without limits.” This variant is also suggested by the etymology of the word outopos. As I will try to show in the following pages, the notion of the place without limits, as incorporated and reworked by Cervantes, comes remarkably close to the Foucauldian concept of heterotopia.2 Foucault speaks of different heterotopian models, including hetero topias of crisis, deviation, illusion and compensation. What interests me here, beyond classificatory tags that might prove problematic in practice, is the critical potential of heterotopian symbols, their demystifying power. Hence, I propose a reworking of the notion of heterotopian space for literary analysis distinguishing it not only from escapist and compensatory utopias (such as those of chivalric and pastoral romances) but also from literary dystopias. In the sense I use it here, the concept of heterotopia has something in common with Maravall’s understanding of Don Quixote as “counter-utopian” writing [52.23.203.254] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 10:14 GMT) AGI MORATO’S GARDEN...