Teaching Nationalism, Imperialism and Romance Philology

Forum TEACHING NATIONALISM, IMPERIALISM AND ROMANCE PHILOLOGY David Rojinsky University of Toronto Ifwe acknowledge that Romance Philology emerged as a discipline during the nineteenth century -the century of Herder's Romantic nationalism, of Hegel's ideological historiography, and of orientalist discourses ofdebased or exoticized alteriLy in the works offoundational Indo-European philologisls like Sir William Jones- how does one conlinue Lo leach or wrile a history of the language without perpetuating such discourses, especially now when these linear master narratives have supposedly become discrediled?1 As a polenliai solution, perhaps we should lake heed ofMaria Rosa Menocal's observations in the light of her reading of Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht's history of both the Romance and national philological traditions. Menocal suggests that, far from being a nationalist or imperialist discipline, Romance Philology might be better understood as the discipline of the outsider, of the exile, entranced "with the fragmentation, the loveliness and merits of the scattering of the longlost empire" (109). Founded in Germany by Friedrich Diez, a Prussian, and hence a non-native Romance speaker, at a time when Germany did not even yet exist as a nation, Diez dwelt on Provençal poetry in languedoc and therefore on a language notcorrelatedwith any national boundaries, and in fact a tongue destined for destruction to allow for the emergence of France as a linguistically unified polity. According to Menocal, if later nationalistic philological institutions of individual 1 These remarks were prepared for a session "In Honor ofJerry Craddock. The Language of Conquest and Exploration" during the 42nd International Congress on Medieval Studies, 10-13 May, 2007, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo. ZvI corónica 35.2 (Spring, 2007): 293-301 294ForumLa corónica 35.2, 2007 powerful cultures "bound by a specific and particular language" (109) stood in contrast to this love of diasporic fragmentation and languages without homes, then Romance Philology, in its preoccupation with an essentially atemporal Romania "written in all languages and at all times", presupposes that for its practitioners -most notably Erich Auerbachthe "philological home is the earth: it can no longer be die nation" (110). Menocal's ultimate aim appears to be to create a certain equivalency between contemporary concerns with crossing frontiers, diasporic migrations, the writing of history from exile, the rejection of cultural nationalism and die practice ofRomance philology in its broadest sense. While attractive, and certainly oppositional to the ethos of national philologies, there remains the danger, it seems to me, that this conception ofa "diasporic" or even "transnational" Romance philology, might, in its obsession with crossing frontiers at will, unwittingly serve as a metaphor for contemporary7 economic (neo-liberal) deregulation and hence, reflect the market mentality inherent to new7 forms of colonialism (Hamilton 1999: 169). Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, however great its obsession with the fragments of empire and languages without "national homes", there is no escaping an association between Romance Philology and nostalgia for the restitution of imperial origins. On the other hand, even ifwe accept Menocal's conception ofthe opposition beUveen a universal Romance Philology7 and the chauvinistic limitations of national literatures and languages, w7e cannot overlook the fact that both traditions are predicated on and linked by a methodological excavation oforigins. And diis sort ofscholarly exercise returns us, quite naturally, to die teleological and positivistic conceptions of history as continuity rather than fragmentation and rupture. This search for origins is of course revealed at its most basic level, and stripped dow7n to a microcosmic template in the art of neogrammarian historical linguistics: applying phonetic laws to a single in some cases reconstructed- Latin word (the 'mother' language) allowed the philologist to trace, plot and predict the corresponding modern Romance word (the 'offspring') in a sleight ofhand which underscored a perfectly explicable and linear relationship beUveen past and present, and by extension an affirmation ofthe beliefin an identifiable continuity between origin and outcome. Apart from August Schleicher's tree diagrams of language genealogies, the etymologizing of Romance w7ords serves as perhaps the best metaphor for the intellectual activity of a century preoccupied with continuity and origins. And in the case of the language histories ofindividual nations, the art of etymologizing Forum295 isolated Romance words constituted an allegorical affirmation of...