LITERATURE FROM A TRANSNATIONAL AND TRANSCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

Lecturers: Anke Gilleir, Nadie Lie, Pieter Vermeulen.

- Borges
Short stories, short novels. Essay explains what he thinks about national identity. No
transnationalism in his novels. Kind of recent that term. “Doesn’t seem to be
concerning him”.

- Carlos Fuentes
- Lina Meruane (chilenean living in the United States)
How she connects the topic of the body in the transnational debate.

- Behrouz Boochani
- Joseph Roth
- W. G. Sebald

What is Transnationalism?
A new paradigm. Hot topic nowadays.
Complicated the “nationalist” paradigm.
Productions that take place in the liminal spaces between real and imagined borders.
3 formative moments:
- 1970s: origins of the word; political science; transnational versus international.
International term had to do with wards, conflicts, declarations. NGO (Non
Govermmental Organization). The meeting of artists without states minding their
business was transnationalism (maybe pre-transnationalism). International is when
the states are incorporated.
- 1990s: globalization. People travel around the country more. The Berlin War
disappears (1989) - symbolic. Globalization started earlier (as a historial-economic
phenomenon - in the 16th century). In the 90s the phenomenon accelerates.
Often related with globalization: “Transnationalism is a condition in which, despite
great distances and notwithstanding the presence of international borders (and all the
laws, regulations and national narratives they represent), certain kinds of
relationships have been globally intensified and now take place paradoxically in a
planet-spanning yet common –however virtual- arena of activity”.
Globalization culturally: decentering (centers are disolving, where are they really?).
Flow: human flows, cultural flows, flows of images. National borders are artificial.
This different flows are disjunct (no parallel, they do not flow in the same direction
from the same point to another point).
- 2000s: postnational/transnational. Felling that we would be one planets and borders
will disappear. Me may be in a time where nationalism is appearing again (Cataluña,
Mexico border with the United States).
Transnationalism as an analytical perspective. As an object of study. A phenomenon going
on in society. As a perspective: re-reading, re-interpreting works from a transnational
perspective.
Keywords: relational - constructed - no binarism.
Example: el nuevo cine argentino siendo bancado por fondos internacionales. Permitió un
nuevo cine argentino que no hubiera sido posible.
The Blaze - Territory. Migrand goes home.
Transnationalism examines units both greater and smaller than the nation-state
(neighborhoods).
Challenges postcolonialism, in favor of more dynamic world views, with several centres.
Challenges comparatism: interrogates the entities of comparison.

IS BORGES FOR OR AGAINST NATIONAL IDENTITIES?

THE ARGENTINE WRITER AND TRADITION

Borges talks about how the Martin Fierro is not to be considered like a Bible for argentinian
writers. It’s not more “argentinian” than other books. It does have an argentinian landscape,
ways of speaking, but other books like La urna have argentinian ways of thinking and
mentions the difficulty of intimacy argentinians have. Arbitrary the idea that writers have to
look for topics to write from their own country. AGAINST NATIONAL IDENTITIES.
The argentinian cult to look for local colour is an european cult they are absorving = so they
should actually reject it.
Don Segundo Sombra = accepts it’s influences. Doesn’t mean it’s less of an argentinian
book. Nationalists = tend to limit writers topic, don’t let them talk about the universe.
Spanish literature as a tradition is an adquired taste, proof of argentine versatility more than
an actual tradition. Talks about how some people critize them and say that there has been a
cut in the history, and that argentinian writers now are linked with european tradition,
forgetting about it’s history. That they should try to stay away from it, not writing about their
topics but finding other ones more “argentinians”.
Artistic creation has the universe as it’s topic.
The presence of Argentina in it’s abscense. Doesn’t needs to have this elements, but a
certain feeling.
“National literature” he thinks it’s an irrelevant question. It’s gonna be typical either case (if
he writes about Arg, or not). Determinism (he mocks about it).
Jewish and Irish (he talks about them, like they are not insert in the country they are).
It matters your position and where you write (perhaps not the nation, but maybe your barrio).
Why an argentinian writer is more entitled to the western tradition than a french one? They
have a better view, double position (they belong to different cultures?). Precisely because
you are outside, you can innovate.
YOU CAN’T CREATE ANYTHING NEW IF YOU ARE ALWAYS IN THE SAME BOX.
He’s in a fight with people who think that it isn’t enough to be born in a place in order to
make your literature that nationality, you have to prove it with the topics and your words.
As he claims argentines don’t have a tradition, the whole universe is its tradition.

Pierre Menard = pedantic. Borges isn’t that way.

Irrespective side. Irreverence to a “masterpiece”.
Unreliable? He is very serious, wants to defend the memory of this great author.
Reading is the act of creation. “Writer who left a visible and an invisible ouvre”. He
enumerates the visible one, and talks later about the invisible.
What he enumerates = avatar of Borges.
It’s actually funny. How you can create something new out of something completely identical.
It’s signed in Nimb (France). This anonymous is French? Why is he writing in spanish then?
He can imagine the world without the Quijote existing, way of denying importance.
Irreverence.
It’s about the invisible reader. How he interprets things.
Nationality is in the eye of the beholder, it helps you in this game of attributing meaning.
Nationality works as the level of interpretation. Makes you give other meanings to it.
Quijote in the prologue invents an author. Literature is made of lies. You can lie. It’s all about
artificiality in Q.

South = reality-dreams. Tension between tension and reality. At certain moment you start
realizing things got stranger. It is not true, at the end. Like in a “realistic” manner, plays with
the perception of the text. Plays with fiction.
The character chooses to be argentine, leaving the germanic side. The argentinian side is
much more romantic. It connects with this “heroic past”. Nationality is there indeed in this
text.
South is about a travel, includes the past.
We can assume he knows he is going to die. Prefers to die in a heroic way.
At the end there’s a sudden change. The time changes. He was using the past tense, and
then at the last paragraph he uses the present. The eternity of the present. Death as
eternity. The present of eternity. Eternity of the instant.
Hallucination: he thinks he recognizes someone at the store that he reminds seeing them at
the hospital, and the owner of the store talks to him like he knew the main character.
Borges survived the operation, but he dies in this writing.
Nationality here: all this stereotypes are turned into fiction. Plays with his past. This
character doesn’t really becomes a gaucho.

BORGES AND TRANSNATIONALISM

Borges wrote in a magazine “South”. He comes from Palermo.
Event where he is between life-death. He writes both stories according to this. Pierre-
Menard he wrote it because he wanted to try something new, in his condition doing the same
and bad would be his intellectual dead. And South is “about the fevers and hallucinations” he
had.

Literature as a game
- not the author, but the player.
In games we don’t care about who invented them. It’s about engaging with the text.
About the reader.
- not the result, but the activity.
Like the travel, not the destination.
It’s about the hide and seek.
- difficulty, unpredictability (net in tennis, dices).
- autonomy. Rules and endless variations (no need for originality).
Game of its own, own rules.
- serious side to it: playground for philosofical ideas (what if? speculative fictions).
- ANTI-REALISM and UNIVERSALISM.
26.2
CARLOS FUENTES
Identity in difference with snow, everything is different and the same.
Links between imagination and reality.
It’s snowing right now here in Leuven.
Talking about Mexico.
Rich people live in Mexico (allusion to that in the story, those names never appear).
Internal migration the biggest one.
Conquest.
Aztecs, Maya: natives civilizations. Mexican identity comes from this civ. Apart from this
vestiges of this civ, nothing remains of that culture. This past was destroyed in a way.
La Malinche was a translator who was Cortés mistress and had a child with him. Born out of
the encounter of the pre-colombian world and this new world. Mediating figure. She was a
native who was “contacts” with different tribes and already knew the languages of the region.
Other names: Malinal, Marina, Malintzin, Malinche.
“Mestizo” : biological and cultural hybridity.
Mexican Revolution (1910): 1st revolution of the 20th century. To give back the land to the
peasents, to achieve a more equal society.
Thesis of Mexican “exceptionalism”: Democracy (only 1 party: PRI); political stbility; leftist
ideology (heaven for exiled people and refugees - from LA, Spain).
Problems: corruption, authoritatism; turn to right (neolberalism); 1994 north-american free
trade agreement; 200 end of hegemony of PRI.

Carlos Fuentes
1928 Panama - 2012 Mexico City.
Bilingual, childhood in US.
Writer/diplomat/intellectual.
Breakthrough with The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962). Experimental, political.
Spokersman of a group of Latin-American writers: The New Spanish-American Novel - boom
1969.
Influenced by Borges: Anti-realism; tradition the universe. Difference: identity is an important
topic (what’s a mexican, what’s a latinamerican); nationalism is not an option anyway. More
political.
- mestizaje
- link with Spain (novel/baroque), He believes the baroque is still actual today, an art
form specially suited for Latam. There’s always room to put something else.
Cuestions what reality is.
- difference with US - influence of Octavio Paz.
Mexican as different from US: loneliness and melancholy.
Origin: hatred of father (Cortés) and mother (Malinche - she betrayed her people?).
Mexicans: hijos de la chingada - sons of the screwed mother.
Transnationalism as perspective but also present in the society: nafta: a new transnational
commmunity is being created: no more antagonism Mexico-US.

Movie: BORDERTOWN from Gregory Navas with Jennifer Lopez and Antonio Banderas.
MALINTZIN DE LAS MAQUILAS
Marina also related with Malintzin. She becomes progressively aware that his Rolando has
other woman. Rolando is in fact another poor guy pretending to be rich. She needs to close
her eyes a little bit, not to see the full reality. Desire to see the ocean = immediate
connection with the name, gives attention to it. She is considerate with Rolando, she doesn’t
want to bother him, she walks alone.
Dinorah: she is not a bad woman. Chains her son to the chair. Kind of pride with that. She
says she doesn’t need a man. She feels shame of doing that. She could have been
ashamed because the incident happened when she was in her night out.
This woman come from traditional societies. New situation to be a working woman.
In this clubs combination of tradition and modernity. Pride to go out but shame that she can’t
take care of her child. Streapers related to America and the mexican fantasy of marriage and
role of the woman.
Does Fuentes shows 2 versions of the NAFTA agreement? Becoming emancipating but at
the same time in poor conditions? Is it a tragic story or mixed? Is it a pessimistic take?
They are moving from one factory to another, no possibility to ascend.
All their efforts to emancipate are part of the industry: like when she runs in the grass, she is
being used in the powerful favours (they are seeing her); when she gets undressed for the
supervisor (thinks she is in charge, but has to let him watch her, still being abused).
Dancing as a way of resilience. Woman can’t see who controls.
Cristal frontier: makes visible who controls (they see them), a thin but thick line.
Marina here, contrary to Malintzin, is betrayed by MEXICANS. Rolando betrays her. Rolando
looks important, has technology (as Cortés, horses/guns) - here is the fake cellphone;
pathetic. Betraying her with a North-American woman.
The idea that she won’t see the sea.
You are not screwed by the conqueror, but by your own people that want to become those
conquerors, that aspire them. What made Rolando so important was the cellphone, in-
between figure, symbol of the bridge of the in-between, and it’s fake.
Didn’t feel bonding in the woman, rivalry. They don’t tell everything that’s happening in their
lifes, they auto-censure, not talk about the inside-things, yes about the outside-things.

THE CRYSTAL FRONTIER

Leonardo liberal - optimistic
The other characters don’t seem to have control about their life.
Michelina: also anagram from Malintzin. Woman that has been used (not a victim of a rape,
not a whore, but more like a traitor). Her family has no money; she is beautiful. She accepts
something that degradates her (not a happy business for her, sleeping with the father of her
husband).
Lisandro Chavez - used to go to a good private school. Met Michelina in one of this parties.
Representative to what happened in Mexico (middle class - who is affected in this crisis).
“No tengo derecho a nada” - tengo que olvidar mis ilusiones, hacer lo que me humille
menos. Proudly-humiliated. Related to Octavio Paz, mexican nation different.
She makes a bond by putting the window dirty and he is going to be the one who cleans it.
He doesn’t give his name - assemetrical relationship that cannot be. He doesn’t feel equal.
Tragic realization with the “mexican” that he is indeed equal to the other mexicans, he felt
like he stills sees himself as not equivalent.
Can it all be an imagination of Audrey?
2 solitary people can for a community, despite their differences.

GRINGO
JITOMATE
MAQUILA
CHAMARRA
JARASEROS
KIDNEAPABLE
KLINEX
PINCHE
SANTURRON