Hispanism, Transatlantic Studies, and the Problem of Cultural History

Sebastiaan Faber

Oberlin College

Is it possible to narrate the cultural history of nineteenth-century Spain as if Latin America did not exist? Absolutely. Cecilio Alonso's recent history of Spanish literature from 1800 to 1900, which constitutes the fifth volume of the monumental Historia de la literatura española coordinated by José-Carlos Mainer and published with much fanfare by Crítica between 2008 and 2012, manages to dedicate eight hundred pages to the nineteenth century without once mentioning the work of José Martí, Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera, or Rubén Darío. To be sure, this may be more shocking to some than to others. What can sound unbelievable to someone working in transatlantic or Latin American studies in the United States may well seem entirely appropriate to a Peninsularist working in Spain. In fact, these different levels of potential shock are what I am interested in exploring. They point, I would contend, to fundamentally diverging notions of the relationship between disciplinary boundaries and the nature and scope of cultural history.

It is safe to assume that to most of the contributors to the present volume, the absence of Latin Americans from nineteenth-century Spanish cultural history is well-nigh inconceivable. After all, the transatlantic nature of this very collection — its focus on the circuits of intellectual and cultural exchange between Spain and its former colonies — implicitly posits the central importance of these circuits for understanding the cultural history of Latin America and Spain between 1800 and 1900. If the contributors gathered here can agree on anything, it is that Latin American political independence did not mark a break in transatlantic relations; rather, these relations continued to play an instrumental role in the development of both regions. Studying nineteenth-century Spain as if Latin America did not exist may well be possible, but to most of us it would make very little sense indeed. Why, then, do leading scholars of Spanish literary historiography continue to do exactly that?

The wider concerns that drive this chapter are not limited to literary history. Still, I want to approach the problematic from that angle, asking three basic questions: What explains the chronic exclusion of the Latin American dimension from mainstream peninsular Hispanism? What are the alternatives? And what needs to happen for those alternatives to take institutional hold? In this context I particularly want to revisit the uneven rise, lukewarm acceptance, and problematic features of transatlantic Hispanic studies as a proper academic field. As we know, its proponents have welcomed transatlantic studies as a much-needed bridge between, and necessary renovation of, the estranged two branches of Hispanic studies: Peninsularism and Latin Americanism. Critics, on the other hand, have dismissed transatlantic studies as, at best, an ephemeral fad with an inadequately articulated critical methodology (Trigo) or, at worst, a reinvented Hispanist wolf in sheep's clothing (Resina). What role, if any, can transatlantic studies play in solving the persistent sense of crisis in Hispanic studies?

Although I am ultimately interested in questions of ideology — that is, the ways in which meaning, in this case the configuration of scholarly fields, reflects and is put at the service of structures of domination — I want to begin this discussion by thinking more practically about the problem of "fit" between disciplinary framework and object of study or, to put it differently, the relationship between the materiality of cultural history and the institutionality of academic work. Ideology and institutions are of course closely intertwined. It is no coincidence, for example, that Hispanism, as a term, refers to both an academic field and an ideology. The field — as an institutional reality — has long been the embodiment and vehicle of the (Pan-)Hispanist ideology that constructs the cultural history of the Spanish-speaking world through a Castilian- and Spain-centered lens (Faber, "Hora"; Resina). Within the academic field of Spanish and Latin American cultural history, in fact, Hispanist ideologies have manifested themselves in different ways: as a blanket assimilation of Latin America into the Spanish fold — a negation of difference based on an alleged "spiritual unity" of former colonizer and colonized (Pérez Montfort 10; see also Pike; Van Aken; Valle and Gabriel-Stheeman) — or, as we just saw, as an outright exclusion of Latin America from Spanish cultural history.

Many critics working on the wider Spanish-speaking world within institutions located outside of Spain have come to see the Hispanist paradigm as an obstacle to any full and true understanding of the cultural history of Spain and its former colonies. And yet, although over the past couple of decades critiques of Hispanism as a field of knowledge have been extensive, ruthless, and seemingly lethal (Resina; Morana), its institutional presence remains remarkably strong. More importantly, critics of Hispanism have, as of yet, been less than successful in rethinking, let alone reforming, scholarly practices dealing with the Spanish-speaking world at all institutional levels, including not just research but also more recalcitrant structures such as departments and curriculum. This relative lack of success even affects the most promising alternative at hand, transatlantic studies.

That the process of reform has been slow and uneven is due to several challenges, of which I would highlight three. First, inasmuch as all institutional structures embody an ideology and all disciplinary structures work through mechanisms of delimitation...