The Magellan Fallacy: Globalization and the Emergence of Asian and African Literature in Spanish by Adam Lifshey (review)

The boundaries of Spanish studies in the twenty-first century clearly surpass those of the peninsula itself. The move toward a transatlantic conception of our field, which took as its focus the complex relationships between Spain and its former colonies in the Americas, provided a good starting point for a study of what Brad Epps and Luis Fernández Cifuentes called “Spain beyond Spain” (Spain Beyond Spain: Modernity, Literary History, and National Identity [Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 2005]). This approach was fundamental in establishing a global context for Spanish studies, which was further expanded by studies on Spanish-language production in Africa. Marvin A. Lewis’s Introduction to the Literature of Equatorial Guinea: Between Colonialism and Dictatorship (Columbia: U Missouri P, 2007), Susan Martín-Márquez’s Dis/orientations: Spanish Colonialism in Africa and the Performance of Identity (New Haven: Yale UP, 2008), and Michael Ugarte’s Africans in Europe: The Culture of Exile and Emigration from Equatorial Guinea to Spain (Urbana: U Illinois P, 2010) stand out as landmark studies in the move toward a wider conception of cultural production relevant to Spain, one whose transatlantic gaze is turned south of the Strait of Gibraltar rather than toward the Americas. Adam Lifshey’s The Magellan Fallacy is another such study, in that it moves our field further away from the geographical confines of the Iberian peninsula and towards a global notion of what constitutes Spain and the Spanish, to encompass not only the former colonies in the Americas and Equatorial Guinea, but also the Philippines.

The “Magellan Fallacy,” as Lifshey defines it, is “the conviction that captains can control the consequences of globalization” (1). This trope, which the author returns to throughout the book, refers to the narrative of Magellan’s planned voyage around the world, which Magellan himself never saw to fruition. Magellan, in fact, died in a battle with the indigenous leader Lapu-Lapu on the shore of the Philippine island of Mactan, just a month after his arrival in the Archipelago. The narration of the circumnavigation was left to one of the few survivors of the global expedition, Antonio Pigafetta. Lifshey takes this narrative as emblematic of modern global realities. In fact, his claim goes considerably further: “[t]he death of Magellan marks the birth of modernity, for it is his voyage … that intertwines provincial and planetary powers into an irreducibility that is the definitive hallmark of the world today” (1).

Lifshey shows a predilection toward intriguingly strong claims such as this one. He also states, for example, that “[m]odernity did not bypass Africa; modernity produced it” (212); and that “the consequences of globalization are uncontrollable, regardless [sic] the powers of those who presume to put the whirls of the world in order by pen and sword” (155). These claims serve to remind the reader of the breadth of Lifshey’s intended scope in this book. However, they are difficult claims to support with the rigor that would one expect in such a pioneering study. A firm grounding in theoretical writings on the nature of modernity and globalization would have helped to provide the scholarly grounding necessary for such ambitious claims.

While the author’s tendency toward grand statements is not always matched by theoretical rigor, this stylistic quirk is offset by the occasional adoption of a jaunty, colloquial tone, which many readers will find refreshing (“There is no getting around the fact that the fictions by Paterno are awful by almost any measure” [28].) Both of these stylistic choices are part and parcel of the book’s impact, and are apparently intended to reflect the author’s belief that “[a]ll narrative, including and especially those [sic] about the arts, is play, and this book hopes to entertain its reader even as it mourns the postmagellanic pummelings of the world over” (23).

Because Lifshey is making a claim about the importance of understanding what is thought...