Cervantes and His Postmodern Constituencies (review)

290 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies de algunos de los personajes, y la diversidad de anécdotas y aventuras, hacen de esta obra una amenidad para el lector. Antonio Sobejano-Morán Binghamton University Cervantes and His Postmodern Constituencies Garland, 1998 Edited by Anne J. Cruz and Carroll B. Johnson. The literary text seems more and more to be an obscure object of desire. The farther we move forward—critically, theoretically , ideologically, inter-disciplinarily—the greater the distance that we create between the object under scrutiny and the interpreting subject. We are figurative beasts before the beauties of texts, clawing our way toward elusive, impenetrable meanings. Some of us agonize over this situation, while others relish it as a sign of continuity, of a guaranteed future. We pretend to want answers when what we really want are intriguing, engaging, and brilliandy complex questions. The enterprise of destabilization often associated with postmodernism has its rewards and its burdens. When we shake foundations , there is much to be explored anew, but we also must confront the rubble, and many of us do so in high spirits. Literary scholars, with some exceptions, love to read, to meditate, to debate concepts and categories , to operate in defensive and offensive modes, and to change views over time, in short, to practice criticism. Groups and "schools" tend to be important as much for their differences as for their points of contact . The fine group of Hispanists who operate here under the rubric of Cervantes's "postmodern constituencies" are admirably iconoclastic and often reflect polar dispositions . They include, in order of appearance, Carroll B. Johnson, Anthony J. Close, Anthony J. Cascardi, Diana de Armas Wilson, John J. Allen, Charles D. Presberg, Pablo Jauralde Pou, Ellen Lokos, Anne J. Cruz, Adrienne L. MartÃ-n, Nicolás Wey-Gómez, George Mariscal, Alison Parks Weber, James Iffland, David Castillo, and Nicholas Spadaccini. Because they define, each in his or her own manner, the parameters and the analytical negotiations of postmodernism, they exemplify the problem (in the best sense ofthe term) rather than the solution. They could be accused of talking around— as opposed to about—Cervantes, but this type of deferral is the stuff that insights and polemics are made of. The collection is divided into three parts: "Cervantismo and the Crisis of Hispanism," "Revisioning Cervantes Studies " and "The Future of Cervantes Studies." Parts 1 and 3 explore topics related to the state of Cervantes criticism and to the state ofthe profession, most notably with respect to the so-called theory wars. Part 2 deals primarily with the application of particular models—including those provided by psychoanalysis and gender studies—to Cervantes 's texts. The introduction by Johnson and the afterword by Castillo and Spadaccini create a frame, appropriately (meta)metatheorical , for the essays. Close, Allen, Mariscal, Weber, Iffland, Cruz, andjauralde Pou offer a rich background, as well as their unreserved opinions, on trends and conflicts within literary scholarship. A common denominator in these essays is history. Close, for example, laments the blatant antihistoricism that he finds in many recent commentaries on Cervantes. He cautions against the indiscriminate use of interpretive grids, with negligible attention to the time, place, and circumstances of composition. Mariscal Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 291 projects a similar argument in conspicuously different dress, and, like Iffland, he hopes for a synthesis of ideology and social action. Allen and Weber contribute lively and insightful cautionary tales, the first about reconciliation among generations of critics and the need to guard against extremes , and the second about the desiderata of a postmodern liberalism. Cruz speaks of the estimable and autonomous Marcela of Don Quijote, Part 1, but the protagonist of her essay on postmodern feminism, the male-dominated academy, and their links to the characterization of women in Cervantes is the ground-breaking scholar Ruth El Saffar. Jauralde Pou, of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, attacks his compatriots from within the trenches by suggesting that Spanish scholars have tended to ignore the outside world and that Quijote studies have prospered beyond their natural center. History likewise mediates the essays that look more closely at Cervantes the artist , at the internal structure of his writings...