Entrevista A Beverley

Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
ABOUT THE SUBALTERN AND OTHER THINGS. A CONVERSATION WITH JOHN BEVERLEY Author(s): Fernando Gmez and JOHN BEVERLEY Reviewed work(s): Source: Dispositio, Vol. 25, No. 52 (2005), pp. 343-372 Published by: Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41491802 . Accessed: 06/12/2012 17:20
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52, vol XXV 343- 372 Dispositio/n 2005Department ofRomance andLiteratures, ofMichigan Languages University
INTERVIEW ABOUT THE SUBALTERN WITH AND JOHN OTHER A CONVERSATION THINGS. * BEVERLEY
Fernando Gmez Department of Spanish and Portuguese, StanfordUniversity.
Making Sense of Gongora and Menchu Inside The Global Postmodernist Matrix of Intelligibility or Convergence. Fernando Gmez: I mightbe temptedto say thatthereare two historical momentsyou lean on, the Baroque moment( Siglo de Oro) and the twentieth century (modernismor avant-garde).In a sense, I see you walking on two legs, Spanish (Iberian) and Latin American literature, but also the moment of culture and the "low" or Baroque high (Gngora) abject popular dimension(Mench or SubalternStudies). Is thisfair? John Beverley: Yes, I thinkthat'sfair.We have to take up here what postmodernism meant forme. When the postmodernist stuff startedcirculating I immediatelytook to it, almost instinctively. I feltvery sympathetic to it all, totallyuncritical[at first]:Tom Wolfe, Frank Gehry,Blue Velvet , Peewee Herman's Playhouse, postmodern dance, minimalistmusic, Philip Glass- no problemat all. And I was brought aesthetic. up witha modernist * [Thisinterview tookplace attheUniversity ofPittsburgh on May 8-12, 2002. Whatfollows is a selection from thecomplete interview forthe on Subaltern Studies. The fullversion of specialissue ofDispositio/n the interview will be includedin a forthcoming book of interviews with LatinAmericanists titled Sensibilities Foreign ]
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is in any case just a perversionof highmodernBut maybe postmodernism ism, in theway Lyotardargued.Jamesonsuggeststhattoo. My window on was, of course, Jameson.But Jameson's own relationship postmodernism seems to me veryvexed because I know he loves all that to postmodernism stuff he writesabout, but he thinksit's bad because it is a symptomof late capitalism.But he likes it. is not Jameson's.. . FG: But yourgeneration removed. JB: I am one generation FG: That is basically how I see Jamesontoo. Trained in high modernism .. and thenengagingwithpostmodernism. JB: From a postureof distance and abjection.. . FG: An Adorniankind of take.
FG: And you would be a more Marcusean take,maybe, since, at the sensi.. bilitylevel, you confessedto likingthe stuff. that JB: As to Marcuse, yes and no. I loved it. And I immediately thought the The to define how I would is that, ability say myself. postmodernism you are way these Gestalts sometimeshappen... it is like a paradigmshift, are all these aroundand different, contradictory things happenfloundering intoa new, is like moment But the zooming you say "postmodernism" ing. that forme. what it did that was I think framework and completelydifferent It allowed me to rethink my leftismin a new way. I still considermyselfa about I have a very different but Marxist in some ways, way of thinking thanI did before.A better way, I hope, more Marxism,theLeft,and history Above voluntaristic. less all, postmodernism democratic,less authoritarian, in popular culture.I feltsplit allowed me to get hold of my own investment and a Marxistpolitical combetweenhaving a new criticalliterary training mitment;Jameson allowed me to put these two things togetherif only I have a heavy investBut like everybodyin my generation, momentarily. mentin American culture.We are, afterall, the first generationof humankind raised by television;I watch a lot of television.The same thingcould be said about Americanpopular music, film,and so on. This was all partof School take on popular culturewas one that The Frankfurt my formation.
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but in realityit did notcorrespondat all withwhat we accepted in principle, we were living,which was thatAmerican popular culturewas one of the enablingconditionsforthe emergenceof theradicalismof theNew Left,as opposed to somethingblocking it. Marcuse's vision was thatthe popular culturewas consumerismthat hegemonized the working class back into capitalist consensus. Whereas in our experience popular culturehad this deep popular-democratic,desublimated dimension to it, and that was allowed me to get some of that. enabling.And postmodernism School take on popular culturestrikeyou as someFG: Did the Frankfurt less accordingto your Californiaexperienceand meaningful thingmore or those San Diego years? I am asking because this readingthatyou are now givingto me is like a new thinglaterin life or you always feltthatway. . . School and JB: No, I was splitand partof thesplitwas due to theFrankfurt modernist ideology thatwas hostileto popular culture;but at the same time I was a consumerof popular culturein an enthusiastic way. And, as I was allowed me to reconcilethose two things.In Subalsaying,postmodernism and Representation (Duke, 1999), I make a defense of the Popular ternity thatthe Popular Frontwas the real basis Front(pp. 88-96). I say in effect the Left has been able to reconnectwiththe forCulturalStudies, and that School Popular Front throughCultural Studies, whereas the Frankfurt modwere the modernist model, model, like the Soviet model or in general From a different els of top-downculturalprotagonism. positionthanthatof formsof cul"correct" the masses or the "people," "we" will produce the ture,whereas the Popular Frontposition was to see in American popular formsof histoalternative of virtuesof class resistance, culturea repository The U.S. is and multiplicity. and notions of culturalheterogeneity ricity, would want to many cultures not just one whereas most avant-gardists make it one! E pluribusunum; cubistcollage insteadof pastiche. [Walter]Benjamin would be a [possible] hingebetweenmodernism/ and theBaroque. You could say- I actuallymake thisargupostmodernism - that the logic of the Baroque is not all that different ment somewhere rehabilso it is notaccidentalthatmodernism fromthelogic of modernism, itatesthe Baroque as an aestheticcategoryafterthe anti-Baroque position which says thatthe Baroque is basically reactionary. of liberalism,
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FG: What can you do withthe notion of the Baroque today in a U.S. contextin theearlytwenty first century? JB: One of thethingsthatthinking about theBaroque allows you to do is to - or culturallogic, as Jamethinkin generalabout how a culturalformation son would say is created and what its internalformis. It is a kind of a Hegelian question: what is the relationbetween a culturalformand its historicalform?And certainly withtheBaroque one kindof has a hold on that, witha given social formation, the culturallogic thatcorrespondsto it, and that is not irrelevant for thinking the question of the present.If you can make the equation between the Baroque and modernismthat used to be fashionable,thenthereis also an equivalent fashionable,or perhapstrivial, about the Baroque and postmodernism. Even I have comway of thinking mittedthe sin of talkingabout a PostmodernBaroque, proliferation, pastiche,etcetera. FG: This would be the Gruzinskitake, and I use thisname but manyother people are doing thiskind of thing. JB: Exactly.But if thatis true,thenthinking the Baroque is anotherway of about the in a it thinking present way always was, right? History is in some sense about the present.The question of the presentis for always me U.S. culture.I would say thatthis is the unsolved elementin my work: what is my relationship to U.S. culture?Because fora series of reasons having spentmost of my childhood in Latin America, Third World issues insteadof havinga lot of prestigein the 1960s, going intoSpanish literature or I American literature have never come to terms with English really U.S. culture.I can speak more comfortably and polemically about issues in Latin American culture,even Spanish culture,than I can about issues in Americanculture.And somehow thatseems a problem. FG: It also seems a bit odd. JB: And thatproblemseems to be aggravatedby thefactthat, as you know, thecriticism thatI have been getting or that the Subaltern Studpersonally, ies Group has been getting,is that we export metropolitan theoryto the Of I I what called the "neo-Arielism" of periphery. course, argued against that critique. But at the same time I recognize an element of truthin it, which is, thatif SubalternStudies is going to have any effective power in Latin America,it has to be there.It has in one way or anotherto reorganize
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the way historians,literarycritics and culturalpeople in Latin America think of whattheydo in new kindsof ways and notjust be something thatis in the U.S. The U.S./Latin America happeningin five or six departments I is not as it as used to be. But one of theconsequences binary, realize, rigid of thatcriticismis to impel me to thinkmore and more about shifting my attention from Latin America and closer to the And I U.S. have tried away to do so by teachingon and offU.S. Latino literature, withoutclaiming to be be an expertor even especially knowledgeable in the field. But this I understand as an intermediary position,and maybe I need to do something more dramaticthanthat.At the same timeI findit hardto disconnectcompletelyfromSpanish and Latin Americanthings.
Clarifying a Few Things About Subalternity and Latin American Studies. FG: Let me ask you fora few clarifications in relationto youridea of Latin American SubalternStudies. When you talk about the rhetorical figureof substitution and metalepsis in relationto subalternstudies, what do you mean by thatin what sounds like a thinking strategy? JB: That's a reference to Spivak's discussion of agency in "Deconstructing She Historiography." says thatthereis a problemin thework of the SubalternStudies historians.Ranajit Guha, forexample, says thatthe aim of his workis againstthe whole historicaltradition thatdenies political agency to forexample of Eric Hobsbwan's peasant rebels and bandits.He is thinking of peasant insurgenciesas pre-political.Spivak says that characterization thisis a good goal, politically, but thatit runsafoul of theotherdirection of Subaltern Studies, which is to deconstructthe discourses that constitute subjects as subalternin the first place. In otherwords,thereis a difference between claiming agency for subaltern subjects and deconstructing discourses of history, in terms of which the subaltern is denied culture, power of cause foreffect or vice versa. I agency.The metalepsisis thesubstitution will tryto inventa metalepsis foryou: The subalternis an effect of certain hence and the of the Subaltern Studies histodiscourses, metalepticgesture rians is to make somethingthatis the effectof discursive construction of difference thecause of political action.
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dimenFG: Fine. But what does thatmean? On the one hand the subaltern and put sion is thought about in termsof what is and cannotbe represented what the official or at on display gracefully invitingly level, you say cannot be put safely inside Universitycircles. So, o.k., if this is how we think about it,whatdoes it mean to make it a "cause"? In youressay in The Latin of Politics: Subalternity, American Studies Reader ("The Im/possibility "a write about metalepsis ...that nevModernity, Hegemony,"47-63), you erthelessinescapably characterizes[the subalternsubject], since its alterity and exploitationthatcannot to formsof subordination is bound structurally be "unfixed"[sic] except by a radical change in social relations"(52). JB: That was intendedto critique Spivak's position. Deconstructionand subalternstudies seem to come togetheraround certain issues. In some correlative of as the theoretical ways you can even imagine deconstruction subaltern studies. That is certainly Spivak's gesture and perhaps also AlbertoMoreiras's. In my own articulation, however,thereis a momentin and subalternstudies move away fromeach other. which deconstruction and do with a recognitionof the limitsof criticalthinking And this has to I thinkone of thekey issues thatbrought thelimitsof intellectuals. together a sense of the Studies was Group initiallythe Latin American Subaltern limitationsof intellectualsas agents of historyand hegemony.And that of our own sense of agency as litersense took the formof a self-criticism movementsin ary intellectualsin relationto Latin American revolutionary the 1970s and 1980s. So, since we were mainly literaryintellectuals,it The notionthata kindof proinvolvednecessarilythe critiqueof literature. such as the one literature, gressive, modernist,democratic,left-oriented produced by the Boom or people like ErnestoCardenal, Roque Dalton, or of the Retamartype,and the Calibanesque role of the intelCuban writers lectual, came into crisis for us. I would say this was a stronganimating as themain agents idea: thatsomehow we should no longersee intellectuals That is why we decenteredliterature, of hegemony, consciousness, history. of Boom the vanguardist literary ideology. It seemed to us, at assumptions colothatliterature least accordingto Rama's argument, simplyreinscribed means not was in societies where nial culturalstratifications by any literacy to be it was ever not clear And it was generalized. going generalized. "we don't want FG: And thatis what your studentstell you at Pittsburgh: us do let literature. We don't need literature. somethingelse." Bye, bye, What figurewould you propose insteadof Caliban?
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JB: That was the image we wanted to critiquebecause we were the Calibans in one way or another. We stillhad theidea thatthemodel forwhatwe were doing in culturaltheory, criticismand literature and the model was Retamar's Caliban, the post-colonial intellectual, Fanon or even someone like Edward Said. And thatwas whatwe wantedto critique.In otherwords, we startedfroma position thatcoincided withRetamarand Said, but then moved intoa critiqueof theadequacy of theliterary intellectual who wishes to reworkthe canon in the name of postcoloniality. We wanted to displace towards a broader In that Cultural Studies was implisense, agency subject. in cated our conceptionof SubalternStudies,because CulturalStudies was is no longer already takingthe step of saying that hermeneutic authority located in theplace of the traditional the letrado,the humanisintellectual, tic intellectual, but is now displaced to a multiform popular subject thatis literallyungraspable because it is too large. It is millions, statistically speaking. FG: If you let me insist,whatwould thenew image be? JB: The subaltern. FG: In trying to imagine the subalternI can only come up withsomething like a faceless multitude. JB: That is one way of imaginingit. There is bothcoincidence and discrepas it gets articulatedby people ancy between the notion of the multitude, like Paolo Virno and Antonio Negri, and the notion of the subaltern.But could be seen in thisway. I suppose one difference would yes, thesubaltern be thatthe subalternis always concretelysituatedin culturaldynamicsthat constitute him or her as subaltern, whether thesehave to do withclass, race, or the like. Whereas the multitude is a more amorphous gender,language, It a kind of excess or thatlate capitalconcept. designates supplementarity ism supposedly produces in populations that are no longer bound to national frames,ethnic frames,or [orthodox] forms of identity, and so to over and radicalize in certain Another to begin spill ways. way putthis - is thatone pointof what mighthave been anotherdiscussion anticipating difference with Hardt and Negri is thatI see thembasically articulating a - Wallersteinfitsthis too- in the sense that Menshevik argument theysay thatthe fruition of capitalism is a preconditionforthe creationof revolutionary, anti-capitalist subjects; and now capitalismis coming intofullfrui-
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- the living situation is one that transcendsthe interregnum of the tion So now thatwe tied to the nation-state. and formsof identity nation-state to that seek have diasporic semi-proletarian escape theframeof populations we have also thepossibility formsof community, the nationand traditional That's in of radical negationof capitalism. any case how Virno and Negri see it.
Many Roads, One (Modern) Rome? Or Many Roads, Many Romes? Or About the Unfittingness of Indian (Subaltern) Testimonio Inside a Singularizing Modernizing Capitalist Frame. FG: Do you see all these three authors,Hardt, Negri and Wallerstein, essentiallysayingthatall roads lead to Rome, while you will say something like thereare manyroads and manyRomes. . . is in some way implicatedin this predilection JB: Yes. I thinktestimonio model. hermeneutic forthe displacementof agency. It suggests a different In the case of Rigoberta Mench, what constitutesthe subjectivitythat which I am of the multitude, Hardt and Negri want to call the subjectivity sure theymean to include Mench or people like her involved in struggles in Guatemala, Chiapas, Palestine, etcetera?This is in part a subjectivity formsof capitalism,but also by resistanceto definedby new, transnational debate about what was called the "Indian these new forms.The traditional a debate about how Indians would become in America was question" Latin available to theLeft as political subjects. And the orthodoxMarxistanswer was as Indians become proletarianized and acculturated, they would become available to the Left. So the Left should supportpolicies of indusculturalmestizaje thatwould bring modernization, trialization, agricultural in which the discourse of modernity Indians into the historicalframework of Marxist or populist parties would become relevantto them. What we became aware of, in taking up the "Indian question" froma subalternist perspective, is that the radical potential of Indian movements in Latin America was preciselypredicatedon the resistanceto becoming incorpoIf the model you are proposingin Guateratedinto capitalistframeworks. mala, forexample, is the CommunistPartymodel of drawingIndians into as Indibecoming a ladino or mestizolabor forceand losing theiridentity the with ans, then Indians in general would not participatein or identify
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Left.Whereas whathappens in Guatemala in the 1970s is preciselythatthe Leftchanges its perceptionof the "Indian question" away froma paradigm of modernization, in which the Left is going to create a modernsociety in which the Indians will be transformed into modern,Spanish-speakingsubthemadequately, jects, in a supposedly democraticstate thatwill represent unlike the existingoligarchicregimethatsimplybeats themover the head. In fact,economic modernity is seen as the pre-condition of acculturation of Indians. But Indian demands are radical to the extentthattheyconstitute demands that cannot be met by the forces of capitalist modernization, because theyinvolve formsof community, land tenure,education, and so on that do not fitinto a modernizingmodel. And it is to that extentthat Indians are potentiallyrevolutionary subjects. What is drivingagency, at least on thepartof Indians,then,is a resistanceto formaland real subsumption under capitalistrelationsof production:as global capitalism increasaware of their ingly impacts on theirlives, theyalso become increasingly destructive effects it has on theirlives. The historicaldynamicof the Left in Latin America always seemed to be tied to a telos of modernization: the bourgeoisie was unable to create modernsocieties because of its contradictions, dependencytheorytold us. But the goal was stillmodernity, connectedwiththemarchof history movinto the creationof national identities thatwould also be moding forward ern and relatively homogeneous, whereas colonialism and dependent capitalismleftus withthese nationsthatare not reallyhomogenousor sovereign. The Sandinistas had that modernizingvision for example in the desire of incorporating the Atlanticcoast, because it had never been cominto the restof Nicaragua by the oligarchies.The Subalpletelyintegrated ternist and opening perspectivewas questioningthattelos of modernization sections of the population could have different up a sense that different that could not goals necessarilybe summedup by some image of modernity thatwe inherited fromEuropean cultureor classical Marxism. This has to do with the displacement of intellectualswe were talking about earlier, because the intellectualsare the engineersof the project of modernity. The who is a politician,an artist, a writer, an architect Calibanesque intellectual form a of and transculturation that is producing modernity adequate, or so s/hethinks, to creatinga more modern,democratic, stateand representative in Latin America. society
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FG: You talk in your essay in The Latin American Subaltern Studies as "the subject that'interrupts' Reader about thesubaltern [sic in quotation fromfeudalism marksin theoriginal]themodernnarrative of thetransition to capitalism,therise of thenation-state. . You talkabout theself-recognitionon thepartof intellectuals of their verylimitedand limiting power.You near thecategoryof the"abject" (51). . . also locate the subaltern thinkabout the subalternis thatthe subalJB: I think the way intellectuals the subaltern thinksof itselfas abject. ternis abject. I don't think FG: It is always a bit difficult to "grasp" the subaltern.It is as thoughthe often in the subaltern, neutral-gender, third-person singularabstractform, were some kind of starout there.I see you in thisessay stillclingingto the notion of the impossibilityof representation. Why don't you just throw or would thisbe throwing out away the notionof representation altogether, thebaby withthebathwater? JB: I thought I had thrown it away actually.I thought Spivak paradoxically If you read "Deconstructing Hisstillclings to thenotionof representation. avant la lettre in a it is a to the response position the toriography," way Latin AmericanSubalternStudies Group took,and thatI myselftook in my workon testimonio. comes out in 1987 in essay first My earliesttestimonio Revista de Crtica Literaria Latinoamericana (25, pp. 7-17), and then in English in 1989 in a special issue of Modern Fiction Studies (39, pp. 1128). Spivak's "Can the Subaltern Speak?" essay is published around that time,althoughit was produced much earlierin 1983 at the Illinois Conference thatled to the collection in which it appeared ( Marxismand theInterof Illinois Press, 1988]). So there pretationof Culture [Urbana: University is a temporaldifference. But you can read "Can the SubalternSpeak?" also as a critiqueof my testimonioessay. Because I seem to be saying there,in thatI agree withDeleuze, Guattari, Foucault et als., thatthereis no effect, need to represent thepoor or anything like thatanymore.It is embarrassing for intellectualsto say they representthe poor. The poor can speak for themselves.Testimoniois an example of the poor or the subaltern speaking forthemselves.The intellectualgets out of the way and gives up the function of "speaking for." The intellectual is just the interlocutor through becomes available. Testimonioallows the whom the testimonialnarrative by entryof the subalternvoice into "culture." And Spivak's articulation, a notionof repreto construct contrast withall that,is verycarefulin trying
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sentation and agencywheretheintellectual stillhas a necessaryrole. This is bound up with her definitionof subalternity, because subalternity is that which is by definition not heard,not paid attention canto, so the subaltern not speak and the claims fortestimonial voice are fake claims: the intellectual still has the job of representing. It is only throughthe work of the intellectual thatwhat is at stake in thatsilence, or silencing, of the subaltern can be made audible or visible. FG: Don't you think thatthe centeris only too happythatyou are bringing the marginsto it? So when JohnBeverley keeps himselfbusy in the hope that a few thingswill have to change accordingly,if only in relation to frames of referentiality, and all that,central managers will intelligibility fakethefunkand stillfindthestrength to say that"Life is beautiful," or that "nobody's perfect." JB: Exactly.That is preciselySpivak's pointin "Can the SubalternSpeak?" to theextentthatI agree withit. But I would say thatI am ambiguous about thatessay now,because it straddlestwo possible models of agency.There is the Lacanian/Derridean about representation thatSpivak is basiargument cally endorsing.And there is the other Deleuzian, Spinozian model that And thissecond model would say,thereis thisforcein Spivak is critiquing. the world, which is the multitudeor the subaltern, and it presses forward and fromits forceit gives rise to otherthings.So themediationof the intellectual is at best secondary.This forceconstructs thingsout of its own livnew forms of essence, culture,consciousness, and community ing creating thatdisplace the representational function of the intellectual. FG: When I hear that,I fail to see thebig revelation.Isn't thisthe everyday cup of tea? But it seems to me thatyou are stillperhaps fatallyhooked on that loss of culturalcapital. To me this is as normal as taking any quick walk any day on Main StreetU.S.A. JB: That's probably rightbecause my own intellectualheritage,like Spiand post-structuralism. But I [still]thinktheposition vak's, is structuralism - but I would I arriveat- I'm not going to say it's more radical thanhers I would say thatthereis more skepticismin itabout therole of intellectuals. that deconstruction is still an of intellectuals that is text-censay ideology tered,still essentiallyframedby the legacy of European Humanism,in the sense of creatinga way to read texts to educate an elite no longer ade-
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quatelyeducated in principlesthatderive fromtheologyand scholasticism. Rhetoricand aestheticsthenbecome centralcategoriesforthe education of A.A. Parkerstudied elites. This is not unrelatedto the Baroque distinction in Grecian between "agudeza de artificio"and "agudeza de perspicacia", where the first produces pertainsto the sortof wit or knowledge literature as in Kant's disor historicalknowledge, and the second to scientific truth, tinction between aestheticjudgmentand teleological judgment.There is a in Renaissance Humanismforreadingsecular textsand specificoperativity in them.I do not see deconstruction talkingabout or even "deconstructing" deconstruction becomes So in effect essence movingout of thatframework. itself at a momentwhen the literary forme the new ideology of the literary has come into crisis. Deconstructionoffersitself as a way of saving the criticismand therefore essential impulse in literary redeemingthe role of intellectuals.
The Academic Project of Subaltern Studies or the Production of a Radical Negativity Within Academic Disciplinarity. and solipsistic, FG: What would you say if the charges of text-centrism which about social things, nominalistic or even scholasticways of thinking were also thrownby some can be heard in relation to deconstruction, Devil's advocate at The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader and at your essay in it? Isn't it truethatyour textproductionessentiallyengages to pinpointa notion withothertexts?Isn't it also truethatit is a bit difficult are thingsbeing done here? How differentially such as referentiality? we reached an impasse in the SubalternStudies Group. And this JB: I think with the conditionsof knowledge productionin the University, has to do It is and again thistakes us back to the question of the role of intellectuals. d'tre is Its raison is an academic that Subaltern Studies clear project. only being in, on, of and aroundtheacademy. FG: And thereis no need to apologize in thisregard.That is finewithme. JB: Althoughmany of the people involved in SubalternStudies, in Latin America and elsewhere come to the academy fromother formsof militancy.
INTERVIEW FG: And thatis good. Exactly.
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JB: In the case of the South-Asians,manyof themwere identified withthe Communistmovementin India. The Naxalite rebellion,a kind of Maoist referencefor some of peasant insurgencyin Bengal, was an important them,as Sandinismo was for some of us. But [Latin American Subaltern it has somethingto do with Studies] is an academic project and therefore the and the notion of "studies" as a space for understanding University intervention. As withtheearlieroptimismabout thepolitical effects of Cultural Studies, the idea is that SubalternStudies would, by reorienting the and literarycriticism,history, cultural way people thinkabout literature have a effect on etcetera, anthropology, radicalizing knowledgeproduction. When our interventions were criticalor even nihilistic, we thought thatwe were transferring to theacademic spherepartof theagency of thesubaltern. of thesubaltern is negaIf,in Ranajit Guha's account,thekey characteristic then our work was one of tion, essentially puttinga radical negativity withinacademic disciplinarity. FG: And thatradical negativity would be what? JB: Pointingout the limits of academic constructions of knowledge, but also how academic constructions of knowledge are in and of themselves in relations of social inequalityto the extentthat the implicated creating construction of the subalternis a culturalconstruction, and not simply a matter of economic, political or legal disenfranchisement. We saw education itselfas radically implicatedin subalternity, and so therewas always thistensionin our work,which you have seen in theReader,betweencreating new formsof knowledge thatsomehow bringthe subalternmore into a criview, access it,and thisother[important] thingwhich is to constitute tique of academic knowledge as such, to show thatacademic knowledge is itselfimplicatedin thatwhich itpretends to studyobjectivelyor dispassiona negativity in relationto academic knowledge, ately.We were constituting in essence by puttingon the costume of the subaltern position and putting what we do in the academy undererasure.Take my own formula"against literature." That is a gesture of simple negation, because I am not here into somethingricherin the speaking of dialecticallysublatingthe literary sense of literature the in plus non-literary fusing some kind of highersynthesis.No, the"against literature" a way of precipitating posturewas rather a crisisthatwas alreadylatentin thefieldof literature and literary criticism.
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FG: But how should one understand thepreposition I can "against"? I think see what you are saying. When you tell me thatUniversity in settings this also not entirely countryare oppressive,repressiveand intenselylimiting, for of intellectual I would [thegrowth] thriving spaces creativity, say,"sure, we kind of have known this all along." I guess I am asking what follows fromthe gestureof erasure? A different kind of scholarship?A different kindof pedagogy? JB: Yes, but go ahead. FG: I guess I am also sayingthatI do not quite understand oppositionality, in the sense thatthe centerwill say,"sure, bringto the house of knowledge whateveryou want to bring,be as outrageous as you can be, just make noise, keep thisthingalive, the sky is the limit..." JB: This would be quite close to Jameson's anti-multicultural formula, which says thatglobal difference is global capital. FG: I am remindedof a recent performance-talk by Guillermo GmezPea at StanfordUniversityin which he was saying thatwhen his performances were gettingreally outrageous,he would cautiouslyapproach the televisioncrew thatwas therefilming to see if it was o.k.; he says he was to in that the more surprised get response outrageousand weird,the better. So I guess I am saying,what is oppositionalin all this?Perhapsthestudents who are sayingto a department of literature thattheydo notwantliterature. JB: Well, yes, that's right.If theydo in factsay that- because, to tell the most literature studentsdon't: theystill "believe in" literature. And truth, even if theydo, theyare not exactly expressinga subaltern position in that What are is a desire to achieve some kind of rejection. they expressing social entitlement thatno longerpasses through the traditional institutions of the humanities,including literature, because theyare considered to be now obsolete in some way or another.The relationbetween the University and social mobilityhas changed too. And maybe the discourse about the is more skepticalthese days. I thinkit would be trueto say that University in all capitalistcountries, and probablyin theformer socialist countriestoo, in the "long cycle" of economic growththatgoes fromthe end of the Second World War throughthe early 1970s, the Universitywas very closely tied to the welfarestate and to the promise of social mobilityforworking class people, as in theRedbrickCollege systemin England, or theNational
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will creof Mexico. The notionis thatan expandingUniversity University to susin one or that are social forms of ate new tied, way another, mobility or a peasant,yourkids will go tainedeconomic growth.You were a farmer criticsor nuclear and become to Moscow University engineersor literary whatever.You were a steelworker, your kids will go to the Universityof and become lawyers or doctors. I thinkthat model is clearly Pittsburgh over. In the neoliberal model, there is no longer that kind of sustained downor at least the rewards of growthare no longer distributed growth, wards. The Universityis now reproducingthe way the society is constirecent tuted.It is no longer a formof social mobility.Quite the contrary, not attain a a whole will as studies tend to show thatUniversity graduates class statushigherthanthatof theirparents.They may actually in termsof salaryfall below theirparents.So it is easier to be skepticalabout the UniBut I think the skepticismwe are talkingabout here is more radical versity. than thatkind of skepticism.It has to do with a kind of suspicion about whatit is one does. FG: PersonallyI feel the need to enrichthe "against," "counter-"or whateveryou may wantto call it. But I just don't know ifwe are not fallinginto, theparallel singingvoice of the"counteralmostusing a musical metaphor, tenor,"which ultimatelyenrichesthe main melody or orthodoxysung by the tenor.To harp on somethingsaid before: the centeris silent,it has no it is thereby virtueof keeping thingsunder control,but is not argument, articulating any kind of coherentnarrativeitself.So the more knowledge the centergets. Perhaps this is also you give to it, the more nourishment The invocationof the poor in the subaltern. notion of with the happening in thatthe neglected the Reader remindsme a bit of secular Christianity of Learning,probain the new Cathedral the cornerstone will become stone I see among people in century. bly in theearlyyears of thenew twenty-first make the the need to still "against" move. And I am not your generation claimingI have any answers. JB: I know the momentthingscame into crisis forthe SubalternStudies group. This happened at a Duke Universityconferencein 1998. And it is not incidentalthatit happened at Duke. Our own positions in the academy had been somewhat marginal.I mean none of us, at least in the original We all group,taughtat thetime in prestigiousIvy-League typeinstitutions. thatthreatened our careers,we were too political or had checkeredhistories whatever. We did nothave a lot of prestige.And thatwas good in a way. We
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from the were a littlebit at themarginsand we were makingan intervention margins. There were famous post-colonialists like Spivak, or Rolena Adorno and WalterMignolo who circulatedin Ivy-League places, but we were not partof that.And thatwas good because it allowed us to be francotiradores [snipers]in a sense. We had nothingto lose. We were a group of more or less twelve,like the Apostles. Nobody wantedto give us fellowships. We applied to the RockefellerFoundationand nothing.JeanFranco did not like the idea. So we felta bit embattledand thatwas good. And that in the profession relative subalternity position of our own manufactured Then we startedto catch I the work of the initial group. energized, think, on. Mignolo and AlbertoMoreirasjoined. And Duke comes intothepicture withits greatresources,and thereis thisbig conference.Lots of money.Big names. MLA-style. Whereas our previous meetingshad been very informal, low-budgetaffairs.We would sit down for a wekend at someone's campus and talk like you and I are doing now. Nobody gave papers. Audilike that.So theDuke thingwas ences were not invitedto come or anything much more dramaticand ambitious. I attendedas a graduatestudent. FG: Yes, I recall the setting, JB: But we also had the aim of projectingourselves into institutionality. And then your formerDean of Humanities,Cathy Davidson, says at the conferencesomethinglike "Subaltern Studies will be the model for the Humanitiesat Duke University." about it ("The Dilemma of SubalternStudies at FG: Yes, you have written Duke," Nepantla, 2000, 1-1, pp. 33-44). This was the Dean's recognition thateagerly welcomed you to the house of knowledge. And thenyou get so. nervous,understandably because in a sense we took seriouslythat JB: We did not wantto resistthat, wanted to SubalternStudies hegemonize the fieldby providinga new paradigm. Because it was a political project.We did not want to be abject and humble. FG: So when theDean says, John, you say to please bringme thesubaltern, hold on a second, what am I doing here? (laughter). yourself, JB: Because thereis a problembuiltinto that.That is why the idea of Subin some ways. alternStudies is oxymoronicor catachretic
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definition FG: The dictionary speaks of the use of the wrongword forthe or theuse of a forcedand paradoxical figureof speech, as in "blind context, in Reverse: On mouth."To echo what you just said, you claim (in "Writing the Project of the Latin American SubalternStudies Group," Dispositio/n. SubalternStudies in theAmericas, Vol. XIX, 46. 1994/1996; pp. 271-288) and catachresis [are] built intothe very idea of "studythat"contradiction because I suppose ing" thesubaltern"(p. 277). Again, what does thismean, level? I am wonderyou do not merelywish to lingerthereat the rhetorical moves (metalepsis,oxymoron, catachresis)entail ing what these rhetorical foryourthinking practice? JB: I am not sure now if catachresisworks well here,because it is a slipWhat I am saying is thatSubaltern pery word thatpeople use differently. Studies is catachreticin the same kind of way "blind mouth" is, because to of you are applyingsomethingthatbelongs to one category experience but also in a way opposed to that. somethingthat is not only different "Studies" is about the academy, Duke, privilege and power based on made the knowledge; the subalternis the otherside of that. Spivak once whole the enterprise, point that Cultural Studies was a bad name for of notion Arnoldian kind of "culture," a because "cultural"already implies of culture. role and place Maybe withitsembedded ideas about theprimary Studies. it Anti-"Cultural" call to correct more thenit would be FG: What follows afterdeclaringsomethingobsolete or wantingto move notions oJ away fromsomething?SomethingI see happening is thatthe "subaltern,""culture," the multitude,etceterabecome really diffuseand inside academic circles. There is forintervention perhapsthis is a strategy about all these debates, and you have emphasized earone way of thinking lier the polemical natureof these debates, which I will put this crudely: room of twelve people, using the movie analogy 12 AngryMen, talkingtc each otherad nauseam about the devaluation of intellectuallabor in th( American academy. And I can see thatand I can respectthat.There is nc need, as faras I am concerned,to apologize foracademic work. But I an th< wonderingwhathappens when thiskindof knowledgegoes out therein rhetorica We are talkingabout figuresof speech hopefully wanting streets.
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precision . We are also talking about conceptual panoramas. Isn't this almost like nominalism and that's it? And in the meantimewe make all those self-validating gestures,well, there is the poor, the Indian, I come fromthatforeignplace, or I have visited thatforeignplace, or the like. I of thishappening. should say I see something studiesis nominalism, JB: Well, subaltern plus Foucault, plus Marxismand feminismmaybe, because thereis the concern with power and inequality. That is the essential issue: how what we do in our own work is bound up with creating relations of power and inequality.That is the paradox of "studyingthe subaltern,"because, again, studies refersto an academic of knowledge,and subalternity and hegemonicconstructions field,mastery refersto thatwhich is precisely denied agency, or authority, by virtueof thatwhich is constructed as studies. So therefore the project is catachretic, word is. oxymoronic, paradoxical or aporetic.. . I don't know whattheright studiesis an accuYou would have to imagine,forexample thatif subaltern mulationof culturalcapital to theadvantageof theUniversity and academic and if in one or another academic knowledge is implicated knowledge, way in theconstruction then of formsof hierarchy, privilegeand discrimination, would have to "anti-Subaltern almost by definition, the concretesubaltern Studies." Because SubalternStudies would be seen and resentedas someof the concretesubaltern.Some of thatis to the interests thingantithetical involved in theverytense and hostileLatin Americanreactionto Subaltern Studies I referred to earlier.There is a sense thathere is a formof intellecIt is tual agency essentiallyconnectedto U.S. academy and U.S. hegemony. thatit is a reactionto the U.S. academy and not the European interesting Latin American intellectualsrarelycomplain about the intellecacademy. But the minutewe start or structuralism. tual imperialismof existentialism and postcolonialism,theyraise thechargeof talkingabout multiculturalism cultural Anglo-American imperialism. FG: One could rehearse somethingof Moreiras' reading of some of your of workagainstthe looming shadow of Gonzlez-Echevarrain thevicinity thethemeof the Baroque. And one could perhapsrepeatyour own reading in Gonzlez-Echevarra's understanding of tacitclass and racial affiliations of the Baroque in relation to the rosterof people included in The Latin all by Duke University AmericanSubalternStudies Reader, published after kind of reading?Noncome with this Press. What do you thinkwould up Ivy League? Sixties generation?I am not questioningthe genuinecommit-
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thereis a serious conmentof you all to progressivepolitics. But I do think comes to the fore that is also the academic here. But there cern game sometimeswhen you ask people what theymean by a term,say "culture," in relationto theirwork,and some people behave like theyare holdingthe secretpassword or some kind of secretkey,almost like itwere a shibboleth. thananything I guess thismightbe more a strategy else, almost like raising inside whichsome people operlittleterritories flagsand signs and marking ate with a few allies. So, the academic landscape looks a bit like a little with a littlelogo side by side anotherlittleimaginary imaginaryterritory witha different logo and we have some dialogue witheach other, territory but mainly to produce a book, fostersome career inside an exceeedingly much it. Latin small groupof people in the U.S. academy and thatis pretty criticsinside Spanish DepartAmericanSubalternStudies is mostlyliterary will notdevote fiveminutesto this. ments,and mosthistorians also feel theneed Florencia Mallon and others, JB: True,butthehistorians, subaltern studies. version of have their own to FG: There is no dialogue or bridges between this kind of work in Latin Americancontextsand, let us say,AmericanStudies. JB: Well, look, thereis some connection. FG: And maybe thereis no need forit. inside a U.S. Americanframeis what the subalternist JB: Putting argument Because and Representation. to do at the end of Subalternity I was trying the U.S. is also a postcolonial society. SubalternStudies is not something that applies only "out there,"in the Third World, Latin America... You I fall intothe same trapJamesonfalls intoin essenasked me once whether as some kind of ThirdWorldabject thatwe bringhome tializingtestimonio fora littlewhile untiltheyget a litor Pittsburgh to scare people at Stanford I would say thatno, my position handle it. and theycan tle deconstruction is thatthe U.S. is not outside the subaltern paradigm.The U.S. is veryrich I remember as a kid in all that different. it ain't but culturally and powerful, Latin America but [as] a kid witha U.S. identity thinking, "well, things in the U.S." And I to live will be greatwhen finallyget coming to theU.S. in 1954-5, and driving throughthe South... For some reason, I don't remember exactlywhy,we had to drive fromFlorida to New York, where as I looked out the window,this is thinking my dad had a job. I remember
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fromwhere I just came from,which was concretely not all that different Colombia. So, what's the big deal? Where is it? And this was partly because I had imagined the U.S. as modernism,futuristic architecture, mixed Latin American than those funny, clean streets, different Baroque, be modand Lima. would cities thatI had lived in like Bogota Everything ern in theU.S. and of course it wasn't. So, thenotionthatyou should put SubalternStudies in an U.S. frame is a good one. The point of subalternstudies is not to articulatesome kind of radical othernessthatthencan be broughtinto in the classrooms in the came mannerof a scarecrow.A lot of my models fortestimonialnarrative fromLatin America. But people haven't noticedthatsome of these models, The drug came fromdrugnarratives. besides Mench and guerrillafighters, narrativewas a key genre of American Beat writing.William Burroughs has a famous first novel called Junkie,which I consider a model of a flat, "I am just going to neo-testimonial uninflected, non-literary, unpretentious, writeabout what it is to be a drugaddict." And thereare lots of books like it. JohnRechy's early novel about homosexual cruising,The Cityof Night, for example, has a kind of testimonialdimension. So I thoughtthatthere in U.S. There are plentyof testimonios was a U.S. element in testimonio. which have the same role thattheydo in Latin American literaliterature, ture,and it mighthave been more productivepedagogically if testimonio insteadof had come intotheNorthAmerican academy witha U.S. referent a RigobertaMench one, because thentherewould be less the question of - ah Guatemala! Most North-Americansdo not even radical otherness know whereGuatemala is, and theIndian woman in Guatemala, even more mysterious, right?But if it had been, say, Rigoberta Mench, an Indian woman in El Paso, Texas or Minneapolis. . . But thenit probablywould not fortheacademy. have been as interesting increasFG: In trying to enrichthe notionof the "subaltern,"I am getting are called upon to roles thatforeigners inglynervousof therepresentational U.S. is a kind inside the of] "yes, sure,you bringin here a littlebit [It play of your (foreign) culture,and tell me a littlebit about that international dimension,but not fortoo long and not in a way thatis going to disrupt whatwe alreadyhave here in place, right?" world JB: Exactly. That's the Stanfordmodel. We live in an international to culturaldifference. and globalizationobliges us to pay attention My Uni-
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culturerequirement forundergraduates, three versityhas an international courses... FG: Human realitysplits into the domestic and the international dimensions, and the lattermost ofteninside the foreignaffairsmodel of engagementwiththeworld. JB: Here's an interesting footnote to that.We just had a debate at my uniabout curriculum and it was generallyconceded that versity requirements therewere too many.There was a groupthatwantedto introduce a "cultural that would be U.S. centered in relation to how race, diversity" requirement class and gender get talked about here. And in order to do that,without it was proposed to substitute thatcourse for expanding the requirements, one international requirement.This, I thinkvery good, idea was voted down by thefaculty, however,because a lot of us, history, political science, theforeign culturerequirement. languages, had a stake in thatinternational And so at the Universityof Pittsburgh we do not have a requirement for "culturaldiversity in the U.S.," but we do have a requirement forinternationalculturaldiversity courses.
About the Potential Politics of Multiculturalism. FG: Do you wantto add anything to whatyou say in yourpiece in theSubalternStudiesReader in relationto multiculturalism? In thisessay,and also at theend of Subalternity and Representation, you cling to multiculturalism and identity politics and you will not let thesenotionsgo. Anothernotionis which is "non-white,""non-mainstream," and that is the little diversity, house we have to go to, if only occasionally. JB: Multiculturalismand diversityare the key concepts. Exactly. But remember thatI am Gramscian,so whatI mean by "identity politics" is also workingclass politics. I do not consider workingclass politics anything otherthanidentity politics. Like Laclau, I am not a believer in theclassical Marxian idea thatwhatworkingclass politics expressestransparently is the economic is a feawage-labor/capital relationship. Obviously exploitation tureof the contradiction between labor and capital, but Lenin already said in 1905, that the contradiction between labor and capital expressed, for in the and over thelengthof theworkingday thatis at the example, struggle
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core of volume one of Capital, was not necessarilya radical contradiction in the sense that it was generally handled throughtrade union struggle. it seems to me, are the generalclaims thatcapWhat is more contradictory, - in a italism makes on classes, peoples, resources, populations, genders - to bend themselvesto its will. Lenin was already saying word "identities the at thetimeof the FirstWorldWar thatwithwhathe called Imperialism, in capitalism had shiftedfromcapital-laborcontradicmain contradiction tion in individual countriessuch as France, England, or Japan,to the contradiction between dominatingand dominated nations, so that now there Since capitalism in capitalistcontradictions. was a dimensionof "identity" in its monopoly phase required that certainnations are dominated,extinguished, reorganized or whatever,"national identity,"or better yet the became operativeas a formof revolunational identity, struggleto affirm Marxism has absorbed theradicalismof I am not sure that tionary struggle. about thenationalquestion.Zizek, who is skepticalabout Lenin's argument in the same way you are, has no clue and multiculturalism identity politics to revive Lenin, forexample. He goes on talking about thisin his attempts to as thoughLenin were some kind of enlightenedJacobinand he forgets to Marxism in his time mentionthatLenin's main theoreticalcontribution was saying thatthe subject of the revolutionary activitywas no longerthe about the vanguard nationalworkingclass but oppressed nations.The stuff or centralist is not original to be democratic and whether it should Party Lenin and in any case led, as we all know,to Stalinism,thatis, to a dead end. Gramsci understoodthisverywell. Zizek doesn't because he sees the and as bad and reactionary whole issue of nationalismand ethnicidentity like you, in any case assimilable to capitalism,"the ideal formof multinational capitalism,"to cite his own phrase. Capitalism would say, "oh yeah, is great,give us more difference..." diversity and go ethnicas much as FG: Contradictions are fine,bringyour identity you want,that'sfine. JB: My wager,and thereis a wager here,is thatpressed to a limit,multicul- and remember thatI see workingclass demands as cultural turaldemands
demands in some way, notjust demands forwages, but demands fordiffer- involve somethinglike what Lenin was saying about ent ways of living becomes a primary thenationalcontradiction If in imperialism imperialism. the formin which liberation become of national and wars contradiction, revolutionary struggletakes place, thenone could say thatthe question of
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national identityis the repressed dimension of capitalist modernity. The of multiculturalism likewsie a limit of radical question may perhapsexpress or post-Fordism.Therefore, to press forthe construction of postmodernity multicultural where multiculturalism is fed from societies, essentially positions thathave been subalternizedin one way or anotherby the formsof is politically enabling and could potentiallybe the capitalist modernity, basis fornew formsof popular hegemony. FG: Correctme if I am wrong,but thisis the apple in the eye of JohnBeverley.You wantto join whateverpotentialfordemocraticimpulse you may perceive to be out there,whateverthatmightbe, inside academic circles and also outside. JB: That is what I sense thepointof SubalternStudies to be: potentialpolithe contics. I mean, if the "subaltern,"as Guha and Gramsci in inventing cept say, expresses subordinationsthat are not only purely economic in nature,but thatalso have to do with culturalhierarchiesthatare relatedto economic hierarchies but aren'tlimitedto them,and if it also has to do with different historicalteleologies, so thatwe are not condemnedto the narrative of capital, so we can imagine thattheremighthave been momentsin which humanscould have developed in different ways, thenit seems to me thereis clearly a potentialpolitics here. It goes withoutsaying thatI think multiculturalism is veryrelevantto Latin America,but what I am thinking as a banner of the about now is the Rainbow Coalition, multiculturalism Left and liberal communitiesin the U.S., and how to radicalize it,whether it is possible fora political-cultural majorityin the U.S. to rallyaroundthe issue of multiculturalism. My assumptionis thatmulticulturalism expresses in one way or anotherthe living situationof the majorityof the population in theU.S. FG: Which would be leftout. JB: Which is left out. Subalternity is always relative. I mean, any given person,you, I, anyone,will have dominantand subalternelementsin their of our position in the make-up. I spoke before of the relative subalternity U.S. academy as one of the enabling devices of the group. I thinkif we all had been at prestigiousIvy League institutions and had been getting grants from theRockefellerFoundation,our workwould nothave thekindof consequences that it had. It would have been perceived as yet anotherhigh-
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level academic project with littleforcebehind it otherthan careerism.So you can say there was an element of subalternity operative in our own I not to project. am trying make any special claim to political correctness here.We were all college-educated,middle-class,etcetera.But thereis relative subalternity and relativeresentment. We say to ourselves "how come theyare gettingall the grants?O.k. Fuck them. We are going to do our thing,we are going to do it differently, collectively.We are not into academic ego-trips, will nobody presentpapers,we are going to be more like a sixties-style affinity group." So thatis what multiculturalism would do because multiculturalism would also flow from subalternity,right? If what multiculturalism expresses is a political will thatis essentiallyfoundedon notionsof cultural thenit can be radicalized because it is connectedto strucdiscrimination, tural inequality.And if our goal is, in one way or another,an egalitarian society,those culturalissues are the thingswe will have to work through. So, yes, thereis a defense of identity politics in my work,not in the sense thatI believe in identity as if identity were now in the place of religionor Marxism. I don't thinkidentity politics expresses necessarilya belief in an if as that had been decided on in advance of the struggle.It identity, instead a sense of being wounded, or hurtin some kindof way by expresses the existingarrangement of things, and a desire fora different arrangement of things.
About Breaking With the Notion of History As Univocal Teleological Modernity (or "Shit"), and the Pleasure Potential In The Narrative of a De-Centered Subject. FG: And this is the notionof history thatI see articulatedin the Subaltern Studies Group. The notionthathistory is just shit.We don't wantto do this. We do not want it. Are we going to do something else? Or do we just want to shoot it down? JB: Yes, I like that.We do want to shoot it down and in thatway you are about expressingan anxietyon thepartof manycriticsof Subalquite right ternStudies on the Left,thatSubalternStudies may be complicitwithneoliberalismand reactionary because we critiquemodernity, fundamentalism,
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and some could say,"oh well and so does Osama bin Laden and right-wing in India." But we also want to say thatthereis a Hindu fundamentalism and thatproductivity is allowin breakingwith thatnarrative productivity were of all those that for the defeated,subvoices, positions expression ing So thereis a alternized,marginalizedby what usually gets called history. thenhas to pass into momentof negativity but this momentof negativity of a subject . . of what? It would have to be now a narrative theconstruction. in de-centered. The way I thatis de-centeredand thatfindspleasure being express itin thetitleof a recentessay is: Can thenationbe gay? ("Puede ser Revista de Modernidad/Multiculturalismo," gay la nacin: Subalternidad/ CrticaLiteraria Latinoamericana, XXV11/53, pp. 153-163). Eve Sedgwick talks about "homosexual panic:" people think"Oh, Jesus, what if I am gay," and thenyou discover you are gay,you know,and big deal, is it such a big deal thatyou or othersare gay? Does this destabilize the order of No big deal. history. things?In any case, people have been gay all through But there are people around, both in relationshipto theirown or others' sexuality,forwhom the notion of being gay is some sortof radical otherness that is going to deconstruct themselves,the subject, the everything: all thiswill be the nation,culture, biological reproduction, morality, family, put intocrisis. But, as Freud showed, thereis no clear dividingline in sexual object choice. And the anxietyabout thatis what is expressed by Sedgwick's idea of "homosexual panic." But once we get over thepanic, it is clear that we, and otherpeople, can be gay or not and nothingis pretty going to change all thatmuch. So can thenationbe gay too? In otherwords, can the nationbe otherthan this totalizingmechanism?Can it have other as a it has now but somehow stillhave an identity thanthe identity identity is posing. Can we nation? That is , I think,the question multiculturalism live in a society which is organized around many different principlesthan economic princithe ones it is organized around now, includingdifferent ethnicgenocide, the clash of civiples, withoutthingsfallingintoanarchy, lizations? And I would say yes: multicultural egalitarianismwould be a thatyou can imagine formof thatpossibility. But I don't think fundamental an egalitariansocietyin theU.S. or anywhereelse in which Duke and Stanfordand the Ivy League continueto be what theyare now. They will have to change in some way, or be changed. And if this is true,thenyou would have to say thatthe whole world of knowledge has to change too. I don't mean to say that literature, twelve-tonemusic or particle deconstruction, thataccompanies physics should go away. But the powerfulhierachization
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thosethingsin termsof privilege,access to resourcesand culturalauthority, be questioned,so my model would be, yes, literyes, thatshould definitely as "one among the discourses," as Wlad Godzich put it ature,but literature once.
About an Enduring Visceral Postmodernity. FG: Let us move on to thepostmodernism debate in Latin America. I have in mind the special issue of Boundary 2 (20/3, Fall 1993), edited by you and Jos Oviedo, thatI have used oftenin my teaching.And I do not know if you want to make any connectionsbetween the work done in thatmonographic volume and the very recent conferenceentitled"Fronterasde la Modernidad/Borders of Modernity" put togetherby Mabel Moraa and HermannHerlinghausin the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literaturesat Pittsburgh in March, 2002. Why am I sayingthis?Because I sense a certainretreat fromthe very label of postmodernism and now, it seems, we are back intomodernity withor withoutits limitsand boundaries.. . So, what do we do withthatpostmodernism debate? Still keep it alive? I sense a contraction but I may be wrongabout it. JB: As I said at the start, I like postmodernism. The "limitsof modernity" it seems to are which in me, people, articulating somethinga bit different, Latin America is like this:They are saying"our modernity consistsin being This is Brunner 's I And think postmodern." position. Herlinghaus has 's position; we need to complete our modernity in Latin essentiallyBrunner America but since we are the kind of societies we are modernity looks like whatyou call postmodernity. This is not a Habermasian modernity but it is stillmodernity, thebordersand edges of modernity, ifyou will. Some of the SubalternStudies people, Dipesh Chakrabarty forexample, thinkthatway too. They are concerned with residual formationswithin modernity. has a long essay in Provincializing Europe (Princeton UP, Chakrabarty called "Adda" in whichthenotionof "adda" is something like a liter2000) at that point, ary tertulia." I begin to lose connection with Chakrabarty as I was in Latin American Subaltern Studies we had because, saying, worked ourselves to a position that was radically critical about literature whereas here Chakrabarty has a kind of "Arielista" position,recyclingthe "tertulia"as a non-capitalist formof modernity. You know fromyour own workthatthereis a powerfuldiscourse in Latin America about the Baroque
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I am thinkingof the as an alternativeto Protestantcapitalist modernity. Chilean criticPedro Morand. There are elements of this too in Lezama Lima, who if he were willing to visit us fromthe land of the dead, would his positionas somethinglike: "we are modern,but we are modarticulate ern in a different capitalistProtestant Europeans, way fromyou Northern which is actuallya we have our own Hispano-Americanformof modernity, thanyours." And I thinkthis idea more pregnant withthe future modernity in the historical was already latent Baroque in ways we talked about. I do "Latin" formof take seriouslythe idea of the Baroque as a non-capitalist, of over-determined by the rise capitalismobviously,but a form modernity, ifyou will. Postmoderan "obsolete modernity" of modernity nevertheless, different. When I to me on theotherhand,indicates something slightly nity, art and the postmodernist said I identifiedviscerally with postmodernist a break thatrepresented I was identifying withsomething I thought posture, There was an elementof break in it.Now thatbreak withsomething, right? rather than or a perversionof modernism could just be a misunderstanding sense. NeverthelessI experiencedthe a genuinecoupure in the structuralist a different sense of historical perversionand the break, which instituted time,pleasure, hermeneutics, subjects,pedagogy, politics. The hypothesis The question is is thatdevelopmentand equality go together. of modernity whetherwe can have an egalitariansociety. There is a funnyparadox in are egalitarformsof humanity Marxism in thatregard:early or primitive commuthis is the idea of of them and are, ian, or at least some primitive to get nism; but thenhow is it thatwe have to wait untilthe end of history back to the possibilityof an egalitariansociety again? Well, because the forcesof productionhave to develop and new sensibilitieshave to be creSo somehow,capitalismis necessaryto create ated,and so on and so forth. the possibilities for equality. The postmodernist disposition in me would because we say,"well, whydo we have to wait?" We are always postponing thinkwe are trapped in some kind of march of history.And we are all and everyonehas a pre-assignedrole. and everything marching FG: Like a trainin therailroadtracks. or thetracks.Postallowed me to get offthetrain, IB: Yes, postmodernism comes withthewaning of the Cold War where both sides were modernism What they were fighting essentially committedto a telos of modernity. but theydid not fight able to produce modernity, about was who was better about modernityitself. About that, they were in complete agreement.
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bureaucratizedsocieties, technocratic, Modernitymeant secular, scientific, or "backward" positions, industrialacculturationof people in traditional of und so weiter.The only questhe destruction ization, peasant agriculture, economies would do a better tionwas whether freemarketor state-directed in or faster job producingmodernity.
About Divorces Already In the Past and the Anticipation of the Next Marriage (But Not Quite Yet). FG: Where do you see yourself going? I have so farseen you going to Cultural Studies and Subaltern Studies, and showing some disappointment later.What follows fromthere?You have called yourselfnon-systematic, and perhaps you would not hesitateto call yourselfa polemicist,and I do not necessarily see this as a bad thing. You are also talking about the are not tremenimpasse in the humanities,perhaps the last twenty-years moments.So, what follows the sniperstrategy? dously energetic JB: I was tellingyou before the storyabout my friendwho always had a woman lined up before he divorced the woman he was with,because his anxietywas being alone. He always had a next wife preparedand, in some beforehe divorcedthe cases, he had alreadybeen livingwithhis wife-to-be wife he was withat thetime. And thishas been somewhattrueof my work up to now. Before I could always see the germ of the next project,even if direction.I mean, how the next project was moving in a very different could I move fromGngora to Sandinismo? That's a big jump, right?But that somehow had the seed of therewas somethingin the Gngora stuff in it,even thoughtherewas a divorce,a divorce Sandinismoand testimonio fromHispanism in thatcase. But I don't feel thisto be thecase now. I don't new in me now. have the seed of anything particularly FG: Do you thinkthatis a good, productivefeeling?I mean, are you look"yeah, I am going to take a good ing at the abyss while sayingto yourself, jump!, who cares?" JB: No, I don't thinkit's good. FG: You don't see it as an intellectually productivemoment? JB: It mightbe.
INTERVIEW FG: But notright now?
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or melancholyabout JB: No, I don't feel it to be. Maybe it is stillmourning thatit the collapse of the SubalternStudies project,althoughI understand had reacheda limit.I am notnostalgicabout it. I am sad about it,but I don't we hita wall there.On theotherhand,it was a wantto go back to it. I think tremendous project.IntellectuallySubalternStudies was the most exciting and powerfulexperiencethatI have ever had in theacademy. Amazing. FG: Now, everybodyis doing it.. . JB: Or at least thinking about it. So, it is a kindof like "wow, we were part of creatingthat!" And thatis exciting.But at the same time,like withCultural Studies in the nineties,I was moving on to otherthingswhen other folkswerejust moving in. I foundthenI had to be carefulwithwhat I said therewas a radical because I did not want to discourage people: I thought in Cultural Studies and that it was to move towardsit. But at good impulse the same time I was moving beyond it. I guess I would say the same thing about subaltern studiesnow.
372
FERNANDO GMEZ
BIOGRAPHIES: JohnBeverley ofCalifornia at San Diego), Professor of Spanish (PhD, University and LatinAmerican Literature and Cultural Studiesat theUniversity of His books include:(ed.) FromCuba (2002); (ed.) La voz del Pittsburgh. otro:Testimonio , subaltemidad y verdadnarrativa (new edition; 2002): and Representation . Arguments in CulturalTheory Subaltemity (1999); Una modernidad obsoleta:Estudiossobre el barroco(1998); (ed.) The Postmodernism Debate in LatinAmerica; andAgainst Literature (1993). He was a founding member of theGraduate in Cultural Studies Program at theUniversity ofPittsburgh andoftheLatinAmerican Subaltern Studies Group.He is theco-editor of thenew Univ.of Pittsburgh Pressbook seriesIlluminations: Cultural oftheAmericas. Formations FernandoGmez (Ph.D., Duke University) is an assistant oftransatlanprofessor tic literature in theDepartment of Spanishand Portuguese, Divisionof Culturesand Languagesat Stanford He is the Literatures, University. author of GoodPlaces andNon-Placesin ColonialMexico : TheFigureof Vascode Quiroga(1470-1565)andis currently on working three projects: a bookof interviews withleadingcritics in Hispanicand LatinAmerican in theU.S. environment, titled Sensistudies, mostly originally "Foreign insidewhichthisversionof thisinterview will be included, a bilities," collection of essaystentatively titled "The EarlyModern of HisAtlantic and a majorbook project, Law panic Letters," "Agoniesof Historicity: andLiterature in theHispanicAtlantic."

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Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Fernando Gmez Department of Spanish and Portuguese, StanfordUniversity.

INTERVIEW FG: And thatis good. Exactly.

INTERVIEW FG: But notright now?

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