Iberian Modalities: A Relational Approach to the Study of Culture in the Iberian Peninsula ed. by Joan Ramon Resina (review)

How can Iberian studies, an emerging academic discipline and field of research, gain currency among scholars who are used to naturally embrace Hispanism? And is Iberian studies a refreshing alternative to century old, often fossilized, departments of Spanish and Portuguese? For the contributors to Iberian modalities. A Relational Approach to the Study of Culture in the Iberian Peninsula, such questions do in no way point to an academic utopia; rather, they set a new agenda for studying the languages and cultures of the Iberian Peninsula. Iberian studies aims to discover and analyze connections between cultures whose relationality was previously either played down or simply ignored. For Resina, the innovative driving force behind Iberian studies as an emerging discipline is “its intrinsic relationality and its reorganization of monolingual fields based on nation-states and their postcolonial extensions into a peninsular plurality of cultures and languages pre-existing and coexisting with the official cultures of the state” (vii). Contrary to what the reader might expect, the book neither does seek to do away with Hispanism, nor does it indulge in pure speculation about Iberian studies’ future. Instead, the book makes a firm stance for a paradigmatic shift from the monolingual field of Hispanism to the interconnected field of Iberian studies.

This volume consists of four parts, thematically organized, all of which follow a logical order. The first two parts engage with laying out a conceptual and theoretical framework, while the last two sections are more practical, consisting of case studies of Iberian studies. In the extensive introductory chapter, which can also be read as a manifesto in defense of Iberian Studies, Resina explains well the theoretical and etymological background as well as the uses of the term modalities, and why this term can be used to describe the multiplicity of relations between Iberian cultures. To Hispanism’s cult of monolingualism and endless reproduction of a Spanish-centered model which keeps the other Iberian cultures at the margins, Iberian Studies offers, he argues, a challenging alternative: the Iberian cultural system can be rethought as a set of modalities which “suggests different ways of relating to the historical and cultural content of whatever can be said in and about Iberia” (16).

Such a call for dislocating Hispanism’s position on the academic map—a position which until today has largely gone unchallenged—inevitably comes with its opponents, as suggested by the title of Dominic Keown’s essay, “Dine with the Opposition? ¡No gracias! Hispanism versus Iberian Studies in Great Britain and Ireland.” Both Keown and Luisa Elena Delgado discuss the problems of implementation of the field in the Anglosaxon sphere. Delgado focuses on the US academic context, where Hispanism emerged in the early nineteenth century as a discipline serving geopolitical interests (as a result of the Longfellow Law); she warns that Iberian studies will not have an easy ride in expanding the field, and in creating consciousness among both researchers and students, given Spanish’s unstoppable growth in the United States. The authors of the first and second sections also address key methodological challenges. An interesting thesis, forwarded by Mario Santana, is that it does not suffice to compare, say, a Catalan, a Portuguese and a Basque writer; it is mandatory to rethink the very methodology of comparative literary analysis. Iberian studies, he reminds us, is not a mere expansion of hispanismo, hence it is not just a matter of applying some sort of methodological patch to existing academic programs. Among the many practical problems related to this issue, the current lack of resources is among the most critical and most ignored one; especially human resources, for where do we find the scholars competent in different languages and literatures?

The essays in the third and fourth part cover a wide range of topics, going from Jewishness in Catalan literature to bullfighting, and spanning different historical periods, from...