Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms
Sage Publications, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Latin
American Perspectives
This content downloaded from 134.100.17.78 on Thu, 20 Oct 2016 09:24:29 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
George Yudice
positions and as the subordinated and oppressed feel more enabled to opt to
speak for themselves in the wake of the new social movements, Liberation
Theology, and other consciousness-raising grass-roots movements, there is
less of a social and cultural imperative for concerned writers to heroically
assume the grievances and demands of the oppressed, as in Pablo Neruda's
"Alturas de Macchu Picchu" ([1946] 1955) "From across the earth bring
In contrast, the testimonialista gives his or her personal testimony "directly," addressing a specific interlocutor. As in the works of Elvia Alvarado
15
This content downloaded from 134.100.17.78 on Thu, 20 Oct 2016 09:24:29 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
many years of struggle in Bolivia and thus contribute a tiny grain of sand to
the hope that our experience will contribute in some way to the new generation.
markedly with Georg Lukatcs's idea that the professional writer who attempts
to represent the "whole people" - he has the historical novelist Walter Scott
in mind - is the best spokesperson for the popular. The true "popular potrayer
of history" is not a person of the people but rather a mediator who "bring[s]
to life those objective poetic principles which really underlie the poetry of
popular life and history" (Lukacs, 1983: 56). Although it is true that the
French Revolution made history a "mass" experience -with the creation, for
example, of mass armies - in the period Lukaics writes about, neither the
novelists nor Lukacs could conceive of the popular elements themselves as
the enunciators of history. No doubt, such a rejection stems from the accep-
'below' and 'above,' between the immediacy of reaction to events and the
highest possible consciousness" (1983: 288). This mediator is the "worldhistorical individual" who guides the historical novel through its representation of "the complex, capillary factors of development of the whole
society" such that "the significant features of the 'world-historical individual'
not only grow organically out of this development, but at the same time explain
it, give it consciousness and raise it to a higher level" (Lukaics 1983: 127).
In effect, what Lukaics defines as the "world-historical individual" is the
novelistic device which is also employed by poets like Neruda by means of
which the gap - the Hegelian alienation - between consciousness and materiality, conceived here as the popular, is bridged, thus providing the grounds
pation. Testimonial writing, in this respect, coincides with one of the funda-
This content downloaded from 134.100.17.78 on Thu, 20 Oct 2016 09:24:29 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
for universal truth but, rather, as seeking emancipation and survival within
specific and local circumstances. Following the studies of Barnet (1969,
1981), Fornet (1977), Gonzailez Echevarria (1980), and Casas (1981), testimonial writing may be defined as an authentic narrative, told by a witness
who is moved to narrate by the urgency of a situation (e.g., war, oppression,
The reason for this is that many texts do not really abandon the forms of
subjectivity inscribed in certain master discourses.
Cabezas's La montana es algo mas que una inmensa estepa verde, for
example, easily accommodates the subjective structures provided by patriarchy. Cabezas's "new man," which some critics-for example, Duchesne
(1986)-describe as a "new subject," repeats patriarchal privilege in the
guise of a Sandinista uniform. The epic hero of the narrative is empowered
and legitimized to embody the authority to govern by means of a series of
paternal figures who relay that authority from the original revolutionary,
Augusto Sandino.
When don Leandro speaks to me in that way . .. giving me his sons and
don Leandro are the fathers of the fatherland. Never before have I felt more a
son of Sandinismo . . . I found my history through him, my tradition, the
essence of Nicaragua, my genesis, my forefathers (Cabezas, 1983: 252-253).
This content downloaded from 134.100.17.78 on Thu, 20 Oct 2016 09:24:29 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
against the external enemy and its internal accomplices. Rather than aggrandized heroes, we see everyday people - militiamen, jet pilots, soldiers,
civilians, among others -expressing their experiences at Giron. They constitute a "people" in the populist sense of the word.
This constitution of the "people" by rallying against a common enemy has
even found residence in a museum, a "testimonial museum." The marielitos
who first gathered at the Peruvian Embassy in Miramar can now be seen
in floor-to-ceiling size photographs. They are described as escoria "scum."
people to whom I have the honor to belong" (Hernandez Perez, 1983: 20).
But rather than a testimonial process generated from the bottom up by
ing legitimacy and take a subordinate position within the struggle for survival
man) but a practice involved in the construction of such an entity. That is,
This content downloaded from 134.100.17.78 on Thu, 20 Oct 2016 09:24:29 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
through the aesthetic), though that aesthetic does not usually correspond to
the definitions of the literary as legitimized by dominant educational, publishing, and professional institutions.
It could be said, of course, that we are not comparing equivalent types of
discourse, that the work of the historical novelist or the heroic poet is literary
and that of the testimonialista is something else, a form of oral history, "new"
writer and theorist of the testimonial in its early period (1960s and 1970s),
eventually rejected the label testimonio for his own work because he did not
significant because it indicates that there is a shift taking place in the very
notion of the literary. Not only are nonprofessionals - testimonialistas -
becoming writers (and here we should include the participants in the Nica-
and literature. In the United States, for example, testimonial writing is taught
in literature as well as anthropology, sociology, and political science courses,
Testimonial writing thus fits into and contributes to the ongoing challenge
cultural activity conditioned by social and political factors. While the generic
norms to which any text conforms are still regarded as "relatively autono-
This content downloaded from 134.100.17.78 on Thu, 20 Oct 2016 09:24:29 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
mous" - that is, they hold across diverse contexts - they are now also under-
stood to have a social and political function which ranges from the reproduction of hegemony to pragmatic intervention in the organization of society.
The modem institution of literature has traditionally functioned as a
gatekeeper, permitting certain classes of individuals to establish standards of
taste within the public sphere and excluding others. This explains why
contestatory writers like Neruda or Gabriel Garcia Marquez, trained within
the institution, have had no trouble performing in the literary sphere and why
the expression of those deemed nonliterary -by the standards of that same
institution - has been assigned to the genres of other disciplines - oral his-
Who writes when and where and by what means is never determined
unilaterally by any one class or group and much less the individual. The
expression is monitored.
I use the concept aesthetic independently of the particular acceptation
given to it in bourgeois modernity, that is, the freedom inherent in form, the
"lawfulness without a law," which Kant (1952: 86) describes in his Critique
here, but it will suffice to make two important points. In the first place, the
This content downloaded from 134.100.17.78 on Thu, 20 Oct 2016 09:24:29 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
countermovement which has sought to reunite art (which had been institutionally severed from life practices), aesthetics, and life. This latter tendency
takes at least two forms: on the one hand, the attempt to aestheticize life, as
in the avant-garde arts of the early part of the twentieth century, which
continued to laud the practice of vocationally dedicated artists. This explains
why even contestatory artists and writers continually reproduced the institutional constraints of the artistic and literary systems, which, by defining what
the aesthetic is, determine who has access to aesthetic "capital." On the other
tation and marginality. Even though one of the projects of certain postmodem
texts is to dismantle the classics of Western tradition, their purview remains,
unsurprisingly, Western.
This content downloaded from 134.100.17.78 on Thu, 20 Oct 2016 09:24:29 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Deconstructionists' (for example, Jacques Derrida's) attempts to demonstrate that supposed supplements (writing as supplement to speaking, culture
as supplement to nature, foreplay or masturbation as supplements to procreative sex, etc.) and marginalized elements (the savage as foil to the civilized,
the female as backdrop against which models of justice and right are
constructed, figurative language as necessary evil in philosophical enterprises to establish objective models for determining truth, and so on) are the
condition of possibility for the constitution of prevailing frameworks of
conduct, sociality, thought, explanation, and so on (see Derrida, 1976, 1980).
These attempts, however, do not provide the marginalized elements with their
own specificity outside of hegemonic discourse; they exist as the hidden fuel
on which that discourse reproduces itself.
The task of the deconstructionists has not been to vindicate or emancipate
the marginalized elements but rather to detect the traces left behind as they
are consumed in the projection of "natural," "rational," and "logical" states
of affairs. They delight in the contradictory exposure of what their own
culture attempts to conceal. In contemporary postmodern discourse, these
with respect to the subject of discourse - the is not: (Western) Man, the
subject of hegemonic discourse, is not woman.
As Gayatri Spivak (1983: 174) explains, the "female element" (or more
generally the "other" or marginalized element) does not signify "female
person" (or "other person"). Thus not only does hegemonic discourse displace the other or marginalized element but, more importantly for the
comparison and contrast of testimonial writing and "hegemonic" postmodernism, deconstruction only recuperates the other as absence, the is not
against which the subject of discourse is.
One major reason why neither traditional hegemonic discourse nor postmodern discourse can "take the place of the other" is that, in the terms of one
is "that absence in the interior from which the work paradoxically erects
This content downloaded from 134.100.17.78 on Thu, 20 Oct 2016 09:24:29 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
itself' (Foucault, 1977: 66), it does not exist. On this view, the aesthetic is
the experience of this generalized limit which takes on the guise of woman,
for an 'object' that has always already been lost" (Kristeva, 1982: 15). In our
electronic, postindustrial order in which "the real has been supplanted by the
signs of the real" (Baudrillard, 1978: 7), resulting in the waning of affect,
psychic fragmentation, the displacement of anxiety as psychic warrant, the
random oscillation between euphoric highs and lows, the supersession of the
ecriture, a writing which "feeds off' the otherness that resides at the limits
does not mean, however, that she is interested in violence done to marginalized persons.
It is this same aesthetic which makes possible postmodern texts like Joan
dor, the experience of limits has nothing whatsoever to do with any empathy
with the marginalized persons to whom violence is done. El Salvador-"terror is the given of the place" (Didion, 1983: 14)-is Didion's "heart of
darkness," as one jacket blurb acknowledges.
In this place the identityless corpses of utmost abjection proliferate with
a hallucinatory, anaesthetic reproducibility.
These bodies . .. are often broken into unnatural positions, and the faces to
which the bodies are attached (when they are attached) are equally unnatural,
sometimes unrecognizable as human faces, obliterated by acid or beaten to a
mash of misplaced ears and teeth or slashed ear to ear and invaded by insects
This content downloaded from 134.100.17.78 on Thu, 20 Oct 2016 09:24:29 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
other (an experience which Kristeva might celebrate) without registering any
affect whatsoever. On the contrary, in a parody of touristic advertising
language, which may not be ironic (for then she would concede its meaningfulness and human relevance), she describes body dumps as "visitors' mustdo, difficult but worth the detour" (Didion, 1983: 20). Indeed, she comments
on her own alienation by rejecting the irony of the existence of a futuristic
shopping mall in the midst of this "place [which] brings everything into
question" (which deconstructs everything?):
I wrote it down dutifully, this being the kind of "color" I knew how to interpret,
the kind of inductive irony, the detail that was supposed to illuminate the story.
As I wrote it down I realized that I was no longer much interested in this kind
of irony, that this was a story that would not be illuminated by such details,
that this was a story that would perhaps not be illuminated at all, that this was
perhaps even less a "story" than a true noche obscura (Didion, 1983: 36).
back, and I walked straight ahead, not wanting to see anything at all (Didion,
1983: 36).
Indeed, she is quick to see "cultural impotence" but not one single coun-
This content downloaded from 134.100.17.78 on Thu, 20 Oct 2016 09:24:29 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
project because they are marginal and such marginalized elements appear in
hegemonic postmodern texts only as the horror which excites the writer. With
the "other" thus neutralized, it becomes indistinguishable from the oppressors; both, according to Didion, wield the same reality-defying strategies, the
same "problem solving" name-changes which make it impossible to know
what is what. The renaming of the "Human Rights Commission" of the
Archdiocese, virtually indistinguishable by name from the government's
"cultural impotence." On the one hand, all that is important is the horror that
extinguishes the reality which the hegemonic postmodern artist finds boring.
On the other hand, the "natives" are truly unimportant because, as real
persons, they are part of what is found to be boring. Had Didion been able to
empathize with and chronicle the "natives"' own interpretations, she might
have encountered a different account of reality; their "impoverished" cultural
performances might have been seen as a refusal to embody the types that
governmental, educational, and church institutions forced on them.
their struggle for hegemony in the public sphere from which they were
hitherto excluded or forced to represent stereotypes by the reigning elites.
During the 1960s social changes were taking place, such as Paulo Freire's
brought into the literary sphere. It is not until after the creation of a literary
This content downloaded from 134.100.17.78 on Thu, 20 Oct 2016 09:24:29 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
las Americas, that the genre, with its attendant emphasis on the marginal
the popular, is recognized as such. It is significant, as regards global hegemonic struggles, that the prize was instituted after the break with liberal Latin
American intellectuals over the "hardening" of the Soviet line of the Cuban
government. This was clearly a contestatory and a positive move on the part
of the Cubans, for with it they helped erode the "boom" canon, which
struggle against oppression from oligarchy, military, and transnational capital. Like the Christian Base Communities - grassroots movements in which
popular (i.e., exploited) sectors reread the gospel as the "good news" of the
coming of the Kingdom of God here on earth - testimonial writing also
emphasizes a rereading of culture as lived history and a profession of faith
in the struggles of the oppressed. Indeed, the two come together in Ernesto
Cardenal's Christian community in Solentiname, where he led Bible discus-
sions - rereadings, reinterpretations - and recorded the peasants applications of their interpretations to their own lives both in a three volume "popular
trehtise" on the Gospel and in the poetry workshops conducted by Mayra
Jimenez (see Cardenal, 1978; Jimenez, 1980).
Christian Base Communities, like Liberation Theology, operate in accordance with an amalgam of Marxism and Christianity. The former offers a
power (see Scannone, 1979). Liberated consciousness is free of such elitism, according to Menchu's testimonial narrative, to which I now turn.
My name is Rigoberta Menchui. I am twenty three years old. I would like to
give this living testimony which I have not learned in a book nor by myself,
for all of this I have learned with my people. . . . My personal situation
encompasses the entire reality of a people (Menchu, 1983).
brother were murdered or disappeared; she herself had to flee her Indian
community in order to stay alive. Throughout her life in Guatemala, however,
This content downloaded from 134.100.17.78 on Thu, 20 Oct 2016 09:24:29 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
she learned who she was by participating in a collective struggle for material
and cultural survival. She identifies herself as one of the "people," meaning
by this all who are exploited.
I can say that I had no formal education for my political formation but that I
attempted to turn my own experience into the general situation of the people.
I was happiest when I realized that my problem was not only mine. That my
anxieties were ... also the anxiet[ies] of all who face a bitter life (Menchu,
1983: 144).
travel the world over testifying for human rights organizations and solidarity
groups. Popular culture is thus constituted, not as the persistence of timeless
customs, but as the adaptation to historical circumstances in order to survive
and prosper. She begins her narrative with an account of her family, their
customs and cultural practices.
intimately connected to the body, in which the body itself bears the mark of
Again, in contrast with the hegemonic postmodern text, in which the "I"
is expelled as vomit, in which the body transforms into vomit, that which is
expelled, separating it from nature (mother and father), thus making dialogue
impossible - "I abject myselfwithin the same motion through which 'I' claim
to establish myself' (Kristeva, 1982: 3)- Menchu's text is, rather, a testimonial of incorporation, embodiment.
Rcpresentation for Menchu, then, is something quite different from classical political representation or the aesthetic reflective mimesis of nineteenth-
This content downloaded from 134.100.17.78 on Thu, 20 Oct 2016 09:24:29 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
in early Christian lore, whose significance also lies in the body, that is,
Christ's embodiment of love. This is precisely the sense in which Menchu's
community fuses Christianity with its own rituals in a syncretic body of
practices for survival.
Their first contacts with Christianity had been through the conservative
and orthodox Catholicism of Accion Catolica, which, dispensed like a
"soporific," only made it easier for the ruling class of large landowners to
exploit them (Menchu, 1983: 148). Thus, Indians came to distrust those
priests who, like other ladino (Westernized mestizo) denigrators of the indige-
nous population, lived apart, rejecting Indian customs (Menchui, 1983: 160).
Religion, like other cultural practices, is a form of social reproduction.
Thus when Menchu argues that the objective of Christianity is to create God's
kingdom here on earth she means that it "will exist only when we all have
enough to eat" (Menchu, 1983: 160). It is precisely in that practical use of
religion that Catholicism is reconcilable with traditional Indian practices.
The significance of all Indian expression is to embody the image of the earth
sustenance but also embody Dios Mundo (earth god) -must not be owned
or exploited instrumentally. The child undergoes certain rites to purify his
hands so that he may never rob (i.e., take from the community, the social
body) nor "abuse nature" (i.e., the natural body; Menchui, 1983: 32). The
Indian analysis of existential and social strife, then, begins with the condem-
CONCLUSION
This content downloaded from 134.100.17.78 on Thu, 20 Oct 2016 09:24:29 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
She is not an elite speaking for or representing the "people." Her discourse
is not at all about representation or about deconstructing representation by
the violence to the marginal. Instead, it is a practice, a part of the struggle for
hegemony. In embracing Christ as the symbol of revolutionary consciousness
and conscience, Menchu's community also embraces him as the most important of a panoply of "popular weapons" (Menchu, 1983: 160), which include
both Christianity and Marxism, two master discourses which in the struggle
for survival are made to yield their overriding authority. It is the practical
aesthetics of community-building, of solidarity, that determines how and to
what extent such master discourses are brought into the service of recognition
and valuation of the marginalized.
In the revolutionary process we have to defend ourselves against the enemy
but we also have to defend our faith as Christians, and we also have to think
ahead to after victory when we'll have many great tasks before us as Christians
to bring about change . . . Together we can build a popular Church, a real
church, not a hierarchy nor a building, but a change for us as persons. I have
taken that option as a contribution to the popular war of the people. And I know
and I am confident that the people are the only ones capable ... of transforming
society. And that's not a theory (Menchu, 1983: 270).
REFERENCES
Aguirre, Mirta, Angel Augier, Roberto Femrnndez and Onelio Jorge Cardoso
1987 Don't Be Afraid, Gringo. A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart. Translated and
edited by Medea Benjamin. New York: Harper & Row.
Barnet, Miguel
1977 "Si mepermiten hablar... " Testimonio de Domitila, una mujer de las minas de Bolivia.
Mexico City: Siglo XXI.
Baudrillard, Jean
This content downloaded from 134.100.17.78 on Thu, 20 Oct 2016 09:24:29 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Cabezas, Omar
1983 La montana es algo mds que una inmensa estepa verde. Managua: Editorial Nueva
Nicaragua.
Cardenal, Ernesto
1980 TheArcheology of the Frivolous: Reading Condillac. Translated by John P. Leavy, Jr.
Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.
Didion, Joan
1986 "Las narraciones guerrilleras. Configuraci6n de un sujeto epico de nuevo tipo," pp. 85137 in Rene Jara and Heman Vidal (eds.), Testimonioy literatura. Minneapolis, MN: Institute
for the Study of Ideologies and Literature, Monographic Series of the Society for the Study
1977 "El ajuste de cuentas: del panfleto autonomista a la literatura de campafia." Casa de
lasAme'ricas 146 (enero-febrero): 49-57.
Foster, David William
1984 "Latin American documentary narrative." PMLA 99: 41-55.
Foucault, Michel
1977 "Language to infinity," pp. 53-67 in Donald F. Bouchard (ed.), Language, CounterMemory, Practice. Selected Essays and Interviews. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Galvan, Manuel de Jesus
1976 Enriquillo. Mexico City: PorrGa.
Gonzalez Echevarria, Roberto
1980 "Biografia de un cimarr6n and the novel of the Cuban Revolution." Novel 13 (Spring):
249-263.
1983 "Viaje a las entranias de la escoria," pp. 11-21 in La leyenda de lo cotidiano. Ed. Jesus
Hernhndez Perez. Havana: Letras Cubanas.
Jameson, Fredric
1984a "Postmodemism, or the cultural logic of late capitalism." New Left Review 146
(July/August): 53-92.
1 984b "Foreword," pp. vii-xxi in Jean-Frangois Lyotard (ed.), The Postmodern Condition:
A Report on Knowledge. Translated by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Minneapolis,
University of Minnesota Press.
Literature, Monographic Series of the Society for the Study of Contemporary Hispanic and
Lusophone Revolutionary Literatures (3).
This content downloaded from 134.100.17.78 on Thu, 20 Oct 2016 09:24:29 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Kristeva, Julia
1982 Powers of Horror. An Essay on Abjection. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez. New York:
Columbia University Press.
Lacan, Jacques and the ecole freudienne
1983 Feminine Sexuality. Edited by Juliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose. New York: Norton.
Lukacs, Georg
1983 The Historical Novel. Translated by Hannah Mitchel and Stanley Mitchell. Preface by
Fredric Jameson. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Lyotard, Jean-Frangois
1984 Thie Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Translated by Geoff Bennington
and Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Marmol, Jose
1971 Amalia. Mexico City: Porrua.
Menchu, Rigoberta
1983 "Mayra Jimenez and the rise of Nicaraguan 'Poesia de Taller'," in Lloyd King (ed.),
La mujer en la literatura del Caribe. Trinidad: University of the West Indies.
Sarduy, Severo
1972 Cobra. Bueno Aires: Sudamericana
America. Translated by John Drury. Edited by Rosino Gibellini. Maryknoll: Orbis Books.
Sommer, Doris
1989 "Foundational fictions: when history was romance in Latin America." Salmagundi
82-83: 111-141.
This content downloaded from 134.100.17.78 on Thu, 20 Oct 2016 09:24:29 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms