Read Machado Saéz's complete article in Latino Studies.
Machado Saéz, Elena. "Reconquista: Ilan Stavans and multiculturalist Latino/a discourse."Latino Studies. 7 (2009): 410–434.
Abstract
Ilan Stavans constructs a multiculturalist framework for understanding the US Latino/a experience. By reading The Hispanic Condition (1995) alongside Stavans’ discussions of the Latino/a literary canon in the introductions to his anthologies, New World (1997) and Lengua Fresca (Augenbraum and Stavans, 2006), and his articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education, I argue that this multiculturalist approach is based on an equation of culture with language. Through this linguistic formulation of Latinidad with the Spanish language as its defining facet, Stavans privileges a colonialist rendering of Latino/a history, tracing the ancestral lineage of Latino/as in terms of solely Western European culture. By valorizing Spanish colonization, Stavans glosses over sites of violence in order to highlight a linguistic inheritance and formulates
US Latino/a identity in opposition to American indigenous cultures. Uncovering the way in which Ilan Stavans positions the indigenous as Other in his multiculturalist approach to Latinidad is essential to understanding the colonialist and conservative underpinnings of how Stavans structures the Latino/a literary canon. I will consequently address how Latino/a Studies critics have wrestled with Stavans’ influence on the field and the ways in which Stavans’ vision of US Latino/a Studies resembles or reflects its institutional orientation and disciplinary locations.
About the Author
Elena Machado Saéz is Associate Professor in the Department of English at Florida Atlantic University. She is the coauthor of The Latino/a Canon and the Emergence of Post-Sixties Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). Machado Saéz has also published articles on Caribbean and US Latino/a literatures in journals such as Anthurium, MELUS, Phoebe, Sargasso and Small Axe. Her current book project focuses on contemporary historical fiction by Caribbean diasporic writers, including Julia Alvarez, Junot Dıáz, Cristina Garcia and Ana Menéndez.
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I would like to first thank Elena for doing the hard work and formulating Ilan Stavans’ agenda. I have read him off-and-on and found his writings some what problematic. It seemed that something was missing, and just dismissed his texts, as they never formed part of my way of reading a text. I tend to read mostly through the lens of Post-Colonial studies, largely due to the majority of my academic training in India, and finding myself in the midst a Spanish program, which promotes literature in Spanish only. I am not blaming my colleagues for it, rather they have tried to break away from the mold and hired someone, in this case me, to teach US Latino literature and culture. It is a common practice, as Elena points out in her article that we draw linguistic lines in academic fields, and thus marginalizing a whole set of area of study. It will simply take more critics like us to help break through this mold.
ReplyDeleteI see Stavan’s growth as a dominant figure, due to various reasons. First of course as pointed out in the article, because of his privileged position, he has had access to promote his agenda. Secondly it is also the Publishing World, which is the primary method of circulation in our printed-text society. The publisher has successfully marketed Ilan Stavans to be what he is. Thirdly, which is my latest agenda, the lack of a central pan-ethnic/Latino forum that can engage in such discourse, and monitor what is being put out there as Latinidad etc. It is absolutely important that journals, and conferences that dedicate solely to this purpose have a stronger presence. It is important that not only histories be separated, and thus Chicano Studies and Puerto Rican Studies be promoted; but it is also imperative to foster a space without hierarchies to allow the study of US Latino texts, with the pan-ethnic/Latino vision.
I look forward to reading other comments and engaging in this conversation.
Hello everyone. I would like to begin thanking Amrita for putting this group and forum together and for taking the time to send us the article and reminders. I think, at least in my case, this forum will help me a lot and I can assure that since with the first article I have already written down references to texts I would like to read later. I did not know about Ilan Stavans’ work prior reading Elena’s article. I knew he was the editor of the upcoming Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, but did not know much about him. However, I have read Debra Castillo, Juan Flores and George Yudice, Gustavo Pérez Firmat, and I’m know willing to learn more about Stavans and his Hispanic Condition.
ReplyDeleteBesides that, and since it seems to be very important to Stavans, I would like to discuss the issue of language and the concept of Spanglish. As I said, I have not read Stavans’ work, but his willing to “shape a volume in which the language used by Latino/as –Spanglish, in all its potentials, the lingua franca- serves as the protagonist” seems problematic to me. He is assuming all Latinos use Spanglish, as Elena pointed out, and therefore all Latino writers use it too. It is true that Latino writers are influenced by their bilingualism and/or biculturalism but I think he needs to identify what Spanglish is. First, there are several conceptions of what Spanglish is and that is related to the fact that there several linguistic phenomena that take place when two languages encounter (code switching, calques, phonetic transcriptions, cognate use, etc.). In addition, each Latino community would have their own way to manipulating the language to adapt it to its own reality; therefore the “Spanglish” from Miami would not be the same as the “Spanglish” from the Bronx or El Paso. Also, there are Latinos who do not speak English (even many who are born in the country) and who can live like that because their communities’ environment supports them. Finally, there are Latino writers who only write in Spanish, Uva de Aragón for example, not only writes only in Spanish, but also wants to be considered part of the Cuban literary tradition. In sum there are many issues to take into account when discussing the use of language in Latino literature/studies. As Elena said, it seems that “Stavans then also equates multilingualism with multiculturalism” and therefore he is ignoring other factors that play a role. For that reason, it would very interesting to see what texts Stavans includes in the Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, which I believe will start being part of the required texts of Latino Literature classes.