Lund

Barbarian Theorizing and the Limits of Latin American ExceptionalismAuthor(s): Joshua LundSource: Cultural Critique, No. 47 (Winter, 2001), pp. 54-90Published by: University of Minnesota PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1354581 .

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BARBARIAN THEORIZING AND THE LIMITS OF LATIN AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

Joshua Lund

Two important concepts for Latin American(ist) cultural criti- cism1 define the focus of this essay: exceptionalism and Eurocentrism. The objective of my critique is to interrogate the limits of Latin American exceptionalism by placing it in dialectical tension with Eurocentrism. I aim to signal the ways in which exceptionalism as a mode of theorizing Latin American singularity-while ultimately a critical endeavor-tends to overlook its own symptomatic relation-

ship with Eurocentrism, and thereby succumbs to the same problems that it identifies in Eurocentric discourse. Exceptionalism, I propose, is not simply a reaction to or result of external factors, such as Latin America's marginalization from the construction of Western knowl-

edge. It is also a symptom of the tenacity of Eurocentrism within Latin American(ist) criticism. Just as Eurocentrism elides the intellectual contribution of peripheral or subaltern cultures to the epistemological constitution of the so-called West, so does exceptionalism reach its limits by focusing attention upon this very issue. Left aside is the engagement with epistemologies uncommonly, if ever, taken

seriously in the rarefied discourses of Western knowledge production. At stake then is the role of the Latin American(ist) intellectual as complicit in the erasure of the epistemological plurality of Latin America.

The vehicles that will allow me to advance this critique include two critical methods put forth in recent years by Walter Mignolo: colonial semiosis2 and barbarian theorizing.3 After a brief discussion of the main tenets behind these ideas, I will then place Mignolo in

dialogue with three other cultural theorists, whose works belong to

Cultural Critique 47-Winter 2001-Copyright 2001 Regents of the University of Minnesota



BARBARIAN THEORIZING | 55

an earlier critical moment: sociologist Fernando Ortiz's Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azucar (1940); anthropologist Bronislaw Mali- nowski's introduction (1940) to Ortiz's text; and literary theorist and sociocritic Antonio Candido's "Literatura e cultura de 1900 a 1945"

(1950). Through Mignolo and his predecessors, I will show both the critical possibilities and problematic limits of exceptionalist discourse for the study of the object called "Latin America." However, in order to realize such a critique, the key terminology that I employ will require some unpacking. Thus, explication of what I mean by exceptionalism and Eurocentrism seems warranted.

Exceptionalism

Two postulates, in dialectical tension, constitute Latin American

exceptionalism. These assumptions cannot be proposed as sociocul-

tural, empirical facts, even problematically. In other words, they can only be understood as critical tendencies that stem from a history of discursive effects whose primary causes, in the last instance, will

always defy satisfactory disentanglement. Thus what I offer here is neither an endorsement nor a disavowal, but rather a statement of the

component parts of the Latin American(ist) discourse that I am call-

ing "exceptionalism":4 (1) Latin America is perceived to be a space where so-called universal theories of culture or society "don't fit." This position is well-known, and we could trace its clearly articulated form as far back as Sim6n Bolivar. (2) While "universal" theory so often finds itself poorly placed in Latin America, Latin America becomes a (geographical and discursive) space from which "universal" theories do not emerge.6 Given that the universalization of a

theory is simply a euphemism for its canonization in patently local Western academia, the implication here is that, in the relevant parts of the world from which knowledge is produced, ideas emanating from Latin America are typically misunderstood, ignored, or erased.7 This side of Latin American exceptionalism is far more difficult to

pin down, and yet more important to the commentary that follows.

Perhaps a quick story can help clarify the operations of this set of critical assumptions. In his introduction to Fernando Ortiz's monu- mental study of cultural transformation in Cuba-Contrapunteo cubano-Bronislaw Malinowski makes a promise. He reports that



56 | JOSHUA LUND

upon learning of Ortiz's now-famous neologism, "transculturation," his "instant response" was one of "enthusiastic acceptance." So eager is Malinowski's reception of the novel term that he happily provides the following confession to the reader: "I promised its author that I would appropriate the new expression for my own use, acknowl-

edging its paternity, and use it constantly and loyally whenever I had occasion to do so" (lviii).8 Years later, in Transculturacion narrativa en America Latina (1982), Angel Rama reminds us of this encomium,

characterizing it as an apparent act of bad faith: never again, we are

told, did Malinowski apply the term "transculturation" in his own work.9

This brief tracing of the reception of an idea as it moves from south to north, and then back again, speaks to both sides of Latin American exceptionalism. The first proposition ([1], above) plays out in Ortiz's theoretical breakthrough itself: transculturation is proposed as a corrective to the dominant ("universal") model of acculturation, a functionalist notion that for Ortiz was incapable of effectively ana-

lyzing cultural change in Cuba. Exceptionalism, then, shows itself as a positive force, through which original and potentially improved hermeneutic tools arise.

The second proposition ([2], above) introduces the problematic question of intentions, but it is not reducible to that concern. Rama's role in the anecdote speaks loudly here. Typically a careful and wide reader of anthropology, Rama is uncharacteristically hasty in citing Malinowski's forgetfulness. In another introduction to Cuban Coun-

terpoint (1995), Fernando Coronil confirms that Malinowski does in fact invoke transculturation in two later sources, once even fulfilling his promise by "acknowledging its paternity." While twice is slightly less satisfying than "constantly and loyally," it must be mentioned that Ortiz does not introduce transculturation until 1940, and that Malinowski dies only two years later. Rama's disappointment with

Malinowski, in short, seems paranoid. Intentions, however, cannot be completely discarded, as replacing "Malinowski" with a term such as "metropolitan anthropology" brings new legitimacy to Rama's claim. While perhaps letting Malinowski off the hook by unearthing his uses of transculturation, Coronil substantiates the

spirit of Rama's misplaced comment by documenting the literal and

apparently active sublation of Ortiz in widely distributed literature



BARBARIAN THEORIZING 1 57

of metropolitan anthropology.10 Exceptionalism, then, would seem to stem from a complex matrix of factors, including but not limited to

intentionality. With or without intentions, however, the feeling of exclusion is there, representing what we might call the negative side of Latin American exceptionalism, what Garcia Marquez has so rig- orously and eloquently theorized as the solitude of Latin America, or what Schwarz calls a critical malaise.11

As stated, my primary interest is not to explain an external cause of Latin American exceptionalism, i.e., how Western discursive practices (metropolitan anthropology, etc.) marginalize Latin American intellectual production; nor will I focus upon why a figure like Rama would invoke an exceptionalist argument (the reasons being, at some

level, rather obvious). While both of these questions will necessarily fold into my critique, the real interest lies in what exceptionalist discourse means for the study of Latin America. Therefore, I will center

my attention on the exceptionalist conversation itself, within Latin

American(ist) discourse, and explore its critical limits through its dialectical relationship with Eurocentrism.

Walter Mignolo is an active, contemporary participant in this

long-standing, exceptionalist conversation.12 While the following is

heavily indebted to Mignolo, it is not a paper strictly about his work. I propose to read with and against Mignolo, situating his critique under the rubric of some pertinent conversations that have come

before, namely the aforementioned Ortiz, Candido, and Malinow- ski. While Mignolo makes some remarkable and welcome moves toward the theorization of interpreting cultural contact, I contend that his "barbarian theorizing," especially when read through some of the prescriptions put forth in his own earlier work, exemplifies the limits of Latin American exceptionalism as a viable response to Eurocentrism. A brief discussion of Eurocentrism, then, and its rela-

tionship to barbarism (as in barbarian theorizing), will provide the transition from exceptionalism to the contemporary interventions of

Mignolo.

Eurocentrism, Civilization, Barbarism

Eurocentrism is one of those unwieldy concepts whose force we all feel, yet which resists any facile definition, and whose theoretical



58 | JOSHUA LUND

dissemination should perhaps require us to speak of various Euro- centrisms. The key formulation of Eurocentrism that I invoke throughout this paper stems from the work of liberation philosopher Enrique Dussel.l3 In proposing his two paradigms of modernity, Dussel

simultaneously theorizes two readings of Eurocentrism. The first, which we could perhaps call an endogenous model, is the standard

object of critique in anti-Eurocentric discourse and is based on the

argument that "Europe had exceptional internal characteristics that allowed it to supersede, through its rationality, all other cultures"

("Beyond Eurocentrism," 3). This version of Eurocentrism is well known and needs no rehearsal here.

The other, more suggestive reading, posits a historical model that

places Europe as a geopolitical and economic (and only later epistemological) center of what Dussel, following Immanuel Wallerstein, calls the "first world-system" (4).14 This world-system can only be initiated when "Europe"15 integrates the so-called New World into a global economic circuit. It is precisely the management of this inte-

gration that "will give Europe the determining comparative advantage over the Ottoman-Muslim world, India, and China" (5). Europe's centrality, then, is not due to an intrinsic superiority (in any cultural

category, for Dussel), but rather to the politico-economic hegemony that it gains by finding, invading, and conquering the Americas,

allowing it to yank the center westward, from the spice routes of India to the eventual consolidation of the North Atlantic trade circuit. The endogenous version of Eurocentrism-that would later

"impose ... itself not only in Europe and the United States, but in the entire intellectual realm of the world periphery" (3-4) and that would "allow Europe to transform itself in [sic] something like the 'reflexive consciousness' (modern philosophy) of world history" (5)-is thus the effect, and not the cause, of Europe as world "center." This Americocentric critique of Eurocentrism then, while rejecting all notions of intrinsic European superiority, maintains Europe's cen-

trality, no longer as philosopher-king, but now as manager of a

world-system. Dussel's relatively simple inversion of Eurocentrism (from cause

to effect) is theoretically important because it forces us to engage Eurocentrism not as a fact of life that simply exists, but as something that must be produced. The rhetorical elements of this production




rely upon Europe's ability to convincingly posit and promote the transformation of a constellation of potential centers and peripheries into a single, stable antinomy, in which it alone becomes central, the rest of the world peripheral: in the sixteenth century, "for the first

time, with the discovery of the fourth part of the world, America,

Europe declares itself as the center. The other three parts-America, Africa, and Asia-commence their history as the periphery" (Inven- tion, 134). The following centuries would witness Europe's great epistemological coup, as the once contestable and relative assort- ment of civilizations and barbarisms (China vis-a-vis Europe, Mus- lim Arabia vis-a-vis Christian Europe, Spain vis-a-vis New Spain, etc.) are transformed and reified into one civilized center (Christian,

capitalist, European) in confrontation with a flattened heterogeneity of cultures assigned the role of one barbarous periphery (i.e., the civilizations of the non-European world, oft-summarized as the so-called Third World).16 While the center/periphery model for ana-

lyzing culture has legions of critics,17 Dussel's recuperation of it

helps us understand Eurocentrism as a discourse that is produced locally, and then, with the ample assistance of ascendant European economic, political, and military power, installs itself (whether

exported or imported is irrelevant here; again, I would like to avoid

questions of intention if possible) far outside the geographical con- fines of Europe proper.

The most implacable Latin American appropriation of Euro- centrism is a center/periphery discourse known as civilization and barbarism (civilizacidn y barbarie). Often associated with Domingo F. Sarmiento's nineteenth-century formulation of centralized and ex-

pansive state power (vis-a-vis the gaucho and indigenous inhabitants of the Argentine pampa), most forcefully articulated in his aptly titled Facundo: Civilizacion y barbarie (1845),18 the discourse has a his-

tory as durable and malleable as Eurocentrism itself.19 Solely for the

purposes of this essay, I wish to make an important semantic distinction between the Eurocentric models of center/periphery and civi-

lization/barbarism. While both can apply, with greater or lesser effi-

cacy, to a limitless number of sociocultural situations, in colonial moments the border dividing center from periphery is usually syn- onymous with that dividing the colonizing culture from the colo-

nized culture; in neo- or postcolonial moments, the border may be



60 | JOSHUA LUND

rearticulated as falling between First and Third World. The discourse of civilization and barbarism represents the installation of Euro- centrism within Latin America, reproducing its binary ossification of cultures and epistemologies in a process of internal colonialism:

specifically, Latin American, metropolitan centers of modernizing ("civilized") political power vis-a-vis the marginalized ("barbarous") communities largely denied access to national forms of political agency.20 The cultural implications behind the hegemony of these models-the central/civilized defines the cultural "standard"; the

peripheral/barbarous can only make feeble attempts at imitation- are a driving force behind the exceptionalist angst in Latin America.

Mignolo's work represents important attempts to grapple with, and undo, these legacies of Eurocentrism. His colonial semiosis offers

suggestive strategies for pursuing such a task. It urges us to take

seriously the plurality of epistemologies that produce the originary formulations of and resistances to European colonial expansion (pri- marily in fifteenth- through seventeenth-century Spain and Amer-

ica). Building upon this work in order to transport his insights from the interpretation of that historical moment to a contemporary, postcolonial context, has proven to be more problematic. While recogniz- ing the importance of dismantling Sarmiento's binary, Mignolo's recent endorsement of what he calls barbarian theorizing quickly runs into the detritus of Eurocentrism, leading only to another

reassembled-yet still relatively stable and, hence, unsatisfying- binary. In short, I argue that Mignolo fails to see the ways in which Eurocentrism itself, with its constant slippage toward static binaries, is frustrating his recent attempts to reinscribe a multiplicity of ways of knowing into current conversations of both academic and social

urgency. The remainder of this section will simply rehearse the basic tenets of colonial semiosis and barbarian theorizing, and I will hold

my analysis and critique until the following sections.

From Colonial Semiosis to Barbarian Theorizing

"Colonial semiosis" is Mignolo's contribution to the varied attempts to break down and decenter the imperialist logic that insistently translates the center/periphery of world systems into the studier/ studied or theorizer/theorized of scholarly discourse.21 He seeks to




dissolve the binary that maintains Third World spatialities as know- able objects by reinscribing the marginal languages of modernity (Spanish, Quechua, etc.) as knowledge-producing languages. He thus affirms a plurality of epistemological communities as productive "loci of enunciation" (and their inhabitants as knowing subjects) for the formulation of cultural and social critique. A key prescription of

Mignolo's colonial semiosis is his call for a pluritopic hermeneutics, which, despite the intimidating vocabulary, basically asserts the productivity of reading critical and historical moments across cultures from the perspective of various epistemological traditions.22 Explicit in such a practice is the historicization of all possible "loci of enunciation" (the epistemological space from where one speaks), including the self-reflexive recognition of one's own locus of enunciation. This

multiperspectivist gesture is neither radical nor particularly new.23

Mignolo's real contribution lies elsewhere: in his importation of this

prescription to colonial studies in order to interrogate the critical limits of "discourse" (privileging alphabetic writing), leading to his "semiosis" (a plurality of sign-systems), which strives toward new

ways of understanding the colonial encounter in the Americas.24 "Barbarian theorizing" transports Mignolo's privileging of space

and the historicization of subjective positionality from the coeval discourses of a colonial context, to the contemporary arena of postcolonial critique. As its name implies, it can best be summarized as a practice, what Mignolo describes as "theorizing from/of the third world (the expression used metaphorically here) for the ... entire

planet" ("Globalization," 51). In this schema, operating within the

binary framework of "civilization and barbarism," the barbarian is not finally overcome by civilization, but rather appropriates and

supersedes civilizing tools of knowledge production (45), assuming a theoretical legitimacy that demands admittance into global conversa-

tions, i.e., relevance "for the entire planet" (51). Thus a figure such as

Darcy Ribeiro (Mignolo's example), although trained as a Western

anthropologist and steeped in the social and academic privilege of

dominating several languages of colonial power, can be posited as one

who practices barbarian theorizing by virtue of his lived experience "in communities that have been precisely subalternized and placed in the margins by the very concept and expansion of European civi-

lization" (50). Like Caliban learning to curse, Ribeiro appropriates



62 | JOSHUA LUND

the hegemonic tools of Eurocentrism (in this case, academic training) in order to provide a forceful critique of "the civilizing process." For Mignolo, then, Ribeiro's Brazilian perspective, his identification as a "Third World theoretician," combined with his desire to

speak from the margin, but for and to two worlds, are the factors that

place him at the border: "border as threshold and liminality, as two sides connected by a bridge, as a geographical and epistemological location" (50).25

From this rough sketch emerges an entire genealogy of barbarian theorists in Latin America. The "Third World theoreticians"-the Cuban Ortiz and the Brazilian Candido-that structure the following discussion can be understood as two examples. The figure of Mali- nowski will loom large as a First World counterpoint to the "barbarian theorizing" carried out by Ortiz and Candido. As mentioned, I

hope to read their "conversation" through the prescriptions contained within colonial semiosis and barbarian theorizing in order to

probe the critical limits of Latin American exceptionalism. "Conver- sation" here receives the postmodern, quotation-mark treatment, because many dialogues surrounding the topic of Latin American

exceptionalism are much more "real" than the one that I have con- trived here.26 However, Ortiz's and Candido's primary roles as pro- fessional intellectuals (as opposed to artists or poets), and their more

straightforward attempts to theorize Latin American cultural processes, allow me to maintain a certain consistency with Mignolo's aforementioned example of barbarian theorizing found in Ribeiro. Framed as barbarian theorists, what can these thinkers tell us about the productivity and limits of Latin American exceptionalism?

ORTIZ, CANDIDO, AND MALINOWSKI

None of the thinkers engaged here offers a viable exit from the problem of exceptionalism in Latin American(ist) critical discourse.

Indeed, the two Latin American contributions to cultural criticism that I introduce at this point--Ortiz's transculturation, and Can- dido's valorization of the Brazilian essay-are premised on exceptionalist concerns, both positive and negative.27 The principal aim of




the following commentary on Ortiz, Candido, and Malinowski is not to criticize them as such, but rather to construct a frame through which to discuss Latin American exceptionalism and the way in which it inflects Mignolo's attempts to destabilize Eurocentrism.

Thus, while Mignolo will momentarily fade from the immediate field of vision, his ideas will inform the reading that follows.

As we saw in the previous section, Mignolo's most methodical

application of colonial semiosis is aimed-appropriately-at a colonial context. Its premises, however, have transhistorical implications also relevant to the analysis of contemporary interpretative struggles: "understanding and constructing colonial semiosis (the dialectic between official stories and suppressed voices, between signs from different cultural traditions) implies a plurality of conflictive and coexisting worlds and requires a multidimensional hermeneutic"

("Colonial and Postcolonial," 129). Whether the performance to be understood is colonial or postcolonial, the productive understanding of it depends upon a "pluritopic hermeneutics" or the construction of various "centers" from which to posit interpretation, as well as the self-conscious recognition of the center from which one enunciates.

Whereas colonial semiosis allows Mignolo to rethink the rela-

tionship between the conquest and the European Renaissance, the cultural moment that will be at issue here is postcolonial, academic, and far more specific in nature: the interpretation of Ortiz's best- known work, Contrapunteo cubano. The relevance and effect of engaging this work pluritopically-in the spirit of colonial semiosis-will be displayed by reading it through two distinct loci of enunciation: Malinowski's essay that introduces the work and Candido's critical intervention in Latin American literary theory. In short, while cer-

tainly giving rise to new problems of its own, Candido's exceptionalist essay offers us a way of reading Ortiz that leads to conclusions about the value of his work that differ strikingly from the reading by Malinowski. However, despite the critically and politically important distinctions that pluritopic interpretation of Ortiz suggests, the

attempt to expand the prescriptions of colonial semiosis to a truly

plural set of epistemological communities stumbles with the intro-

duction of barbarian theorizing, defusing the possibility of a radical

interpretive impact contained therein. In the end, barbarian theorizing



64 I JOSHUA LUND

takes us no further than the exceptionalism invoked by Candido fifty years ago. A more thorough elaboration of this problem will stem from the following discussion of Ortiz, Malinowski, and Candido.

Ortiz through Malinowski

Ortiz's Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azucar is an analysis of cultural change in Cuba. It is frequently cited in Latin American literary and cultural studies, almost exclusively for its status as the source of the term "transculturation." A full account of the work and the

theory would require a book-length study.28 However, some brief comments regarding the famous and even fashionable theory are useful in terms of orientation.

The critical impulse of Ortiz's transculturation is the contrapuntal "toma y daca" [give and take] that defines cultural contact: not

only does a "weaker" (peripheral) culture take on the traits of a

"stronger" (central) one, but the reverse is true as well.29 At its best, transculturation endows marginalized cultures (and later, especially with Rama's appropriation of the term, individual subjects) with a cultural and historical agency that holds an obvious attraction for

postcolonial scholarship. At its worst, transculturation becomes a

theory that too quickly elides questions of power and has consis-

tently ignored its own hypermasculine gendering.30 The term has been nuanced and reworked in Latin American(ist) theory and criticism far beyond its original social anthropological context, and while its basic assertion seems slightly banal by today's standards, it has been celebrated as something of a theoretical coup for its time. Its

exceptionalist intentions were literally just such an attempted usur-

pation, as it was very consciously proposed as a Cuban (peripheral) improvement upon (and thus replacement of) "acculturation," a

widely invoked metropolitan (central) theory of cultural change.31 In Mignolo's theoretical parlance, Ortiz's critical audacity would amount to barbarian theorizing. Given that transculturation was self-

consciously positioned against acculturation, how was it received in the metropole?

For the most part, it wasn't. Coronil has pointed out the paucity of metropolitan anthropological literature that adopts the term, and




shows how its acceptance is most visible in Latin American cultural

theory, arriving to the "center" (again) not through the social sciences per se, but through Latin American literary studies (xxxvi).32 As we have already seen, however, an immediate and weighty endorsement of the term comes from Malinowski in his introduction to the first editions (in both Spanish and English) of Contrapunteo cubano. Aside from his extraordinary approbation (and subsequent containment) of transculturation as a productive anthropological theory (Coronil, xxxii-v), the other issue that dominates Malin- woski's attention is what strikes him as the rather curious and

irregular form of Contrapunteo cubano itself. When commenting specifically upon Ortiz's work, critics typi-

cally make some note of its, for lack of a better term, literariness. Coronil links this typical problematization of Ortiz's literature qua social science to its refusal to enter the conversation regarding what

path Latin American modernization should take, given the either/or choice between socialism and capitalism: "Ortiz's book did not quite fit the terms of this polarized debate. It was unconventional in form and content ... and it proposed neither unambiguous solutions nor a

blueprint for the future. Rather than straightforwardly offering an

argument, it worked tangentially through poetic allusion, brief theoretical comments, and a detailed historical interpretation" (xi-ii). Coronil's summary of the formal workings of Contrapunteo cubano is

beautifully articulated and accurate. The accompanying suggestion that it has remained somewhat obscured from view due to its resistance to political polarization, however, could be more nuanced. For

one, Ortiz's highly rhetorical and ambiguous style is not unique, but rather belongs to a tradition of scholarly writing in Latin America that predates him and that has remained relevant until today (see the

following section on Candido). Second, any implication that Ortiz and transculturation have ever disappeared from the Latin Ameri-

can(ist) scene is false.33 Finally, a certain First World bemusement over Ortiz's literariness was apparent before the polarization wrought by the Cold War was established, as I am about to demonstrate through Malinowski. Thus, rather than read Ortiz's rhetorical style as clash-

ing with the political narratives of contemporary modernity (which it perhaps does), it seems to me more productive to understand its



66 | JOSHUA LUND

formal elements as problematic for the more broadly construed instrumental rationality privileged by Eurocentric ways of know-

ing and the subsequent U.S. imperialism that these epistemologies legitimize.

Notable in Malinowski's aforementioned praise for the work is the way in which he goes about selling his endorsement. After

authenticating Ortiz as a first-rate contributor to sociology, ethnog- raphy, and related practices, Malinowski feels compelled to account for the rhetorical nature of the essay by insisting upon its analytical rigor:

The intelligent reader will take account of the wealth of sober scientific labor and social analysis underlying the brilliant outward form of the

essay, the fascinating play of words and the ingenious setting forth of contrasts and differences in this Counterpoint. In clear and vivid language, employing documentation as sound as it is unpedantic, Dr. Ortiz gives us first the initial definition of what he means by "counterpoint." ... Then he sets about translating his brilliant phrases into concrete and descriptive information. (lxi; my emphases)

Malinowski here offers a contrapuntal analysis of his own: for every mention of Ortiz's "fascinating" prose, there is a hurried assurance of the work's "concrete" value. The incessant seepage of the literary into the scientific (or Ortiz's refusal of objective distance)

presents a problem for Malinowski. On the one hand, he sees the clear benefits to his legacy of incorporating a prominent intellectual of the periphery into his functionalist school of thought (Coronil, xxxi). On the other hand, Ortiz's form of analysis defies the hegemony of scientism that marks their historical moment. Thus the almost apologetic tone creeping around Malinowski's words of

praise: he is intent on convincing us that the foregoing essay really is solid work, deserving of serious attention from his colleagues, in spite of its poetic way with words. While the lyricism lends the work an

"unpedantic" aura attractive to the layman, it is something to be

simply tolerated by the expert. In a word, a flaw; so much tropical underbrush to be cut down by First World objective analysis, eventu-

ally yielding the spoils of "concrete and descriptive information." Coronil notes that "Malinowski saw himself as no ordinary

anthropologist, but as one who combined literary sensitivity with




theoretical ambitions" (xxxv). This adds a perplexing dimension to Malinowski's difficulty with and eventual misreading of Ortiz's rhetorical style. First, as Coronil perceives, he forecloses the highly political and metaphorical aspects of transculturation. Malinowski

proposes it as a term whose value is found more in its etymological innovation (lviii) and practical applicability (lxiv) than in its critical thrust. Later, in concluding his essay, he perverts the politics of transculturation by asserting the need for academic collaboration between the United States and Cuba, which "as in every phase or phenome- non of transculturation, the influences and understanding would be

mutual, as would the benefits" (lxiv). This imperial harmony seems beside Ortiz's point, especially when we observe that his primary examples of transculturation involve the relationship between Euro-

peans (creolized or not) and indigenous Americans or African slaves. In the prologue that buffers Ortiz from Malinowski's paternalism, historian Herminio Portell Vila pointedly notes that hiding behind the "whimsical title" of Contrapunteo cubano is nothing less than the condemnation of a neocolonial economy that offers an alliance of transnational capitalists and Cuban elites all the promises of "exploitation, unfair privilege, and protectionism" (lxvi).34

However, neither an unbridgeable cultural gulf nor modernizing political considerations are enough to explain away Malinowski's

misreading of Ortiz. It was not that Malinowski couldn't understand

(grammatically or politically) what Ortiz was saying; in fact, along with Coronil, I would argue that his reaction signals that, if nothing else, he sensed the critical aspects of Ortiz's work (xlvi-vii). Instead, what Malinowski fails to account for is the way in which his own locus of enunciation interferes with his representation of Ortiz. Rather than theorize his positionality and rethink what counts as

knowledge in the metropole, Malinowski attempts the wholesale

incorporation of Ortiz into the dominant discursive fold. His is a

power move that evades a serious consideration of the power at play in the intellectual exchange between centers and peripheries. His

implicit apology for Contrapunteo cubano's "problematic" form can

perhaps be read as a good faith attempt to introduce Ortiz into the

theoretical debates of the center. The politics of this move, however, are unsavory. For Malinowski, Contrapunteo cubano does not rise to

the level of deserving engagement on its own anti-imperialistic



68 1 JOSHUA LUND

terms. Rather, it is positive proof of the potential for serious scholar-

ship emerging from the Third World. In Malinowski's world, how-

ever, it is not so much the Cuban that speaks to and for the West (as in

Mignolo's barbarian theorizing), but rather the North American

academy that will swoop in and refine the rough-hewn edges of

admirably handled-if a little awkwardly so-received instruments of knowledge (anthropology, functionalism, "science," etc.). Mali- nowski concludes by proposing the establishment-in Cuba-of a

"clearing house of information, ideas, influences and cultural move- ments" under the auspices of "great North American institutions of

teaching and investigation" (lxiv). He does not propose such a Cuban endeavor in New York or Washington.

Ortiz through Candido

I have found no source in which Candido comments directly upon Ortiz, although his wide-ranging erudition in Latin American letters almost assures that he knew his work. Moreover, Candido's essay that I will juxtapose with Malinowski's reading of Ortiz is specifically an assessment of Brazilian cultural production. Given that we

routinely impose the universal value of the local theorizations of

Marx, Freud, Gramsci, and Derrida (or, for that matter, "God") upon far-flung epistemological communities, the apparent spatial discon- nect between Candido and Ortiz should not be terribly abrasive.35

However, Mignolo's emphasis upon loci of enunciation forces us to be up-front about these issues. I do not posit a theory from Latin America, such as that provided by Candido, as necessary for the productive engagement with Ortiz. At the same time, the change in perspective provided by reading "Cuba" from "Brazil" offers a means for reevaluating Contrapunteo cubano. In other words, shifting the locus of enunciation from the academic center embodied by Mali- nowski to the academic periphery and Candido's theorization of the Brazilian essay brings new insights to the value of Ortiz's work.

In "Literatura e cultura de 1900 a 1945," Candido enunciated what many Brazilians had perhaps already intuited, albeit without succinct elaboration: "the best expressions of thought and feeling have

always assumed, in Brazil, literary form" (152).36 At first glance, this thesis may strike one as anything from meaningless to pedestrian.




Properly contextualized against the hegemonic scientism of the time, however, the critical nature of Candido's assessment surfaces: where Eurocentric positive philosophy and science had failed to adequately engage Brazilian society, literature had, at some level, succeeded. The sociohistorical specificity of Brazil leads Candido to diagnose a social situation that has made virtually impossible the formation of

"researchers, technicians, philosophers" (154).37 Into this epistemic vacuum rush the literary and the mythical, the rhetorical and the sub-

jective, which conspire to commandeer the vacant seat of Cartesian reason as the dominant legitimizing discourse in Brazil. Thus literature not only provides the "feeling and national consciousness ... [of]

pride and the overcoming of sensed inferiorities" (154), but also

attains, through Candido, a scientific luster that allows Brazil to know and categorize itself through the ethnographic and sociological function appropriated by Brazilian literary discourse.

Candido then turns around and completes the dialectic by asserting that "the powerful magnet of literature interfered with the

sociological tendency" (153). In Brazil, just as novelists are transformed into sociologists, so social scientists cannot resist the pull of novelistic discourse. Brazil's intellectual expression, then, is histori-

cally marked as a distinctively hybrid and interdisciplinary field of

knowledge production, "giving rise to that mixed genre of essay, con- structed in the confluence of history and economics, of philosophy or

art, which is a truly Brazilian form of investigation" (153). Candido's exceptionalist revindication of Brazilian intellectual

production does not, of course, liberate us from a host of problems. In

fact, it introduces new ones. Whereas he seems to see instrumental

positivism as a total theory whose idealism falls apart in Brazil, his move simply overturns a discourse that values the empirical in favor of one that values the literary. He thereby introduces a new total the-

ory of academic hybridity for the production of knowledge in Brazil, in the end asserting yet another form of idealism.38 Brushing aside this apparent cul-de-sac that frustrates clean epistemological solu-

tions, I would assert that Candido's contribution to reading Latin American theory contains elements both perceptive and critical. He is perceptive in that he understands the fact that the rules of positive scientism become a litmus test for what counts as scholarship. He is critical because by emphasizing the literary aspects of social science,



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he implicitly recognizes the rhetorical nature of all scientific endeavors. Moreover, he also understands that the locus of enunciation of the rules of positive scientism is not Brazil, nor some free-floating, universally objective "space," but rather a local institution of knowl-

edge known as "the West," epistemologically located at the intersec- tion of London, Paris, and New York. What Candido offers us is a modified set of rules, still placed firmly within a Western genealogy, but which challenges the hegemony of instrumental rationality. The Latin American theorists that follow these alternative rules offer

us, at some level, a way to rethink what counts as knowledge, implying a plurality of (Western) ways of knowing. Framed around Ortiz's

Contrapunteo cubano, the lucid nature of Candido's assessment of Brazilian (and, I would argue, Latin American) intellectual production emerges.

Candido's theory of Brazilian intellectual production as academ-

ically hybrid and fundamentally rhetorical readily encompasses the Cuban Ortiz. The lyrical style of Contrapunteo cubano embraces the

literary without remorse;39 sweeping conclusions are drawn from an

openly subjective observation and lived experience40 alongside what we might today call an archaeological method of empirical research; the narrative continually shifts from pensive to argumentative in defense of Ortiz's various theses regarding the dialectic between the economic stimulants of cultural change and the cultural stimulants of economic expansion. Like Gilberto Freyre's Casa-grande e senzala

(1933) (Candido's quintessential Brazilian example), Contrapunteo cubano is a product of "that line of essay-in which imagination and

observation, science and art, are combined with greater or lesser

felicity-[which] constitutes the most characteristic and original aspect of our thought" (Candido, 153). Candido's invocation of the national "our," then, could potentially be expanded to include much, if not all, of Latin America in his identification of a barbarous theo-

rizing that promiscuously intermingles the subjective and the objective, the scientific and the literary.41

Located somewhere between the inspiration of the muse and the

rigor of the scientific method, the work of Ortiz defies the turn toward disciplinary specialization and notions of canonicity. Now, this difference could imply an extreme kind of exceptionalism, impene- trable by the "West" as represented in a figure like Malinowski.




Given Ortiz and Candido's "Westernness," however, I would reply that, rather than excuse Eurocentrism by positing ex-centric voices as so exceptional as to be unintelligible, it more reasonably implies the need for rethinking standards of epistemological valuation regarding who and what counts as producers of "universal" knowledge. Can-

dido, then, as barbarian theorist, implies Ortizian-style work as precisely Latin America's potentially great contribution to theory and criticism: a proto-interdisciplinary effort that not only has relevance for a local reality, but also speaks volumes from that reality and for- if not the entire world-at least the entire Western academy. Whereas

reading Ortiz through Malinowski implies an analytical discourse in need of refinement, reading him through Candido implies a real contribution in need of engagement on its own terms.

Malinowksi, even though his own work regarding cultural transformation may be regarded as approaching an important level of

relativism, still operates from a perspective that assumes a civiliz-

ing process in which his culture exemplifies the realization of the advanced stage of objective analysis. An assessment of his own open- mindedness and respect for other cultures is not the issue here. What the pluritopic hermeneutics required by colonial semiosis helps us locate-as seen in the above analysis of his introduction-is a gaze that insists upon assessing Ortiz's critical value by the standards of the understanding subject's own culturally specific locus of enun-

ciation; one implying a dominant center toward which culturally peripheral societies should be progressing; one from which he may talk a good cultural exchange game, but that in the end only proffers the palliative of "helping" the periphery through the dissemination of neocolonial institutions of higher learning.

By the same token, colonial semiosis forces us to engage the positionality of "the other" as embodied by Ortiz and Candido. While Malinowski's gaze emanates from an ascendant (economically, politically, militarily) center,42 Ortiz's own locus of enunciation can be understood as a center within a periphery. It is precisely this status as an ambivalent center (Cuba as colonial center, imperial periphery; Caribbean center, American periphery) that lends itself so well to the agency of colonized communities that transculturation theorizes. Based on my above review, Candido can be said to make a move similar to Ortiz's. Operating from a peripheral center, Candido's



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perspective leads him to read transculturally the intellectual history of Brazil. Pluritopic interpretation helps us see how shifting the locus of enunciation from which we theorize Cuba or Brazil's greatest discursive projects can transform them from substandard (inauthentic, imitative, problematic) attempts into cultural interventions capable of standing on their own. Centered in Brazil, Candido thus applies the same corrective decentering to the hegemony of positive scientism and the vexed question of canonicity that Ortiz exerts upon anthropological discourse. Centered in Cuba, Ortiz provides a dis-

tinctly postcolonial corrective by decentering the doctrine of acculturation and its problematic insinuations of assimilation as the hallmark of the cultural transformations fomented by the colonial process.

RECENTERING THE BARBARIAN

I highlight this decentering project, facilitated by the detailing of Ortiz's and Candido's basic insights, with the aim of drawing a parallel between these thinkers and Mignolo's exemplary barbarian the-

orist, the aforementioned Brazilian anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro. Like the authors featured in my own construction, Ribeiro takes on a decentering function vis-a-vis a central legitimizing discourse of the West-the civilizing process.43 Specifically, Mignolo aptly shows how Ribeiro's major works on the civilizing process problematize Norbert Elias's canonical work regarding the same: "whereas Elias focuses on the civilizing process, which is at the same time the consolidation of (Western) Europe as a world hegemonic power, Ribeiro looks at Europe as a recent outcome of human civilizing processes that were preceded by previous hegemonic power[s] and will also be transformed and dissolved." ("Globalization," 49; cf. Dussel, in the

"Eurocentrism, Civilization, Barbarism" section above). In Ribeiro's view from the margin, Europe's centrality is relativized (decentered) within a global context. Similarly, by engaging the peripheral (from one perspective) loci of enunciation of Ortiz and Candido, we see how they take on the sometimes polemical task of carving out their own centers from which to enunciate. The above-mentioned "correc- tives," applied to dominant Western discursive tunnel vision, are what give their work its Calibanesque flavor. They have the capacity




to participate in and appropriate the tools of "civilized theorizing" (i.e., their Western academic training) from the position of "communities that have been precisely subalternized and placed in the mar-

gins" (50). It is this gesture combined with a positionality that obliges them to speak from (geographically and epistemologically) a mar-

ginal, border space that makes a theoretician barbarous. In Mignolo's schema, Ribeiro-as much as Ortiz or Candido-is identifiable as "someone who was trained as [a Western academic] ... and at the same time was part of the 'other"' (50).

A logical query at this point might lead us to ask in what context we can posit these writers as "other." While the question of the other has long since been problematized beyond any simple binary reduc-

tion, Mignolo's particular othering of our barbarian theorists is indeed reducible to such a model: they are other when subsumed into their national communities, identified from the external perspective of a hegemonic center that marks them as "Cuban," "Brazilian,"

"peripheral," "ex-centric," other. But it is precisely at this point that we run up against the limits of exceptionalism, and where Mignolo's barbarian theorizing fails to realize the fundamental prescription to

interpret pluritopically contained in his colonial semiosis. Read through a pluritopic hermeneutics that foregrounds multiple

interpretations and relations of power, one of the defining features of our three barbarian theorists (along with the distinctly nonbarbarous

Malinowski) becomes their reliance upon the discourse of a civilizing process, a characteristic that Mignolo acknowledges in his own bar-

barian theorist when he states that "both Elias and Ribeiro are still

prisoners of the temporal arrangement of human histories implanted in modernity" ("Globalization," 49).44 This Hegelian notion of cul-

tural difference, which denies the coeval in favor of an evolutionary model based "in a time frame having the European idea of civil-

ization ... as a point of arrival" ("Globalization," 36), is an assumption that clearly imprisons the discourses of Ortiz and Candido as

well.45 Thus, as much as these barbarian theorists decenter dominant

discourses, it can be argued that they equally recenter the same

discourses to include their own voices. This is in part an important and even necessary project for any intellectual who wants to be

"heard." However, when Mignolo asserts that what barbarian theo-

rizing achieves is "the self-appropriation of all the good qualities that



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were denied to the barbarians" ("Globalization," 46), one of the obvi-

ous, so-called good qualities that we must include is precisely that

which the barbarian theorist is construed as fighting against: the

privileges conferred by demarcating a center. Through their asser-

tions of cultural and academic legitimacy, within the Western grammar

of the civilizing process, this is precisely what Ortiz and Candido-like

all Western academics46 do: carve out centers from which to enunci-

ate their discourse. And, it is worth noting, not merely innocent or

liberating centers as loci of enunciation, but centers from which to

civilize. Given their identification as local intellectuals with global con-

nections, possessors of the accoutrements of knowledge-power both

in their own societies and abroad,47 our barbarian theorists can only be deemed barbarous through the return to a binary model that a

pluritopic hermeneutics would at least problematize, if not reject: the

static dichotomy of center and periphery. As I have been arguing here, the real contribution of colonial semiosis is in its pluritopic

interpretation that leads us to theorize as "relational and movable"

not only the center, but also the periphery; its calling into question of

not only the object to be understood, but also the understanding subject (Darker, 12). That the notion of barbarian theorizing only lives up to

one-half of this task can be seen through its failure to articulate a

truly pluritopic analysis of power, a political and ethical dimension

fundamental to colonial semiosis:

The ethical problem arises when the ideal relativism ... overlook[s] the fact that coexistence of perspective does not always take place without a display of power relations and sometimes violence. Thus, if the epistemological and ontological aspects of a pluritopic understanding could be dealt with in terms of relativism, its ethical dimension invites one to look at the configuration of power. (Darker, 15)

By looking pluritopically at the configuration of power packed into the decentering/recentering impulse of our barbarian theorists

(vis-a-vis the discourses of the First World), we can clearly discern the operational center-periphery tension. Equally clear, however, becomes the tension between centers. In other words, while the aforementioned construction of alternative or expanded centers (movable,




relational, contingent) on the part of Ortiz, Candido, and Ribeiro

may be considered a radical (barbarous) gesture from the perspective of a colonizing gaze, this same construction simply reaffirms an

already dominant locus of enunciation if gazed upon (pluritopically) from the periphery of the periphery's center. Seen from this oblique, and generally silenced, angle, our barbarian theorists become equal parts civilizers: heirs to the ciudad letrada made up of the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking elites of their respective societies. Indeed, based on the ramifications of their rhetoric-which delineate stages of barbarism (Ortiz), or an endgame of recognition in the Western lit-

erary canon (Candido)-they forthrightly posit themselves as such.48

Mignolo productively exploits the philological imperative of colonial semiosis by recalling the etymological roots of "text" and its relation to weaving and textiles, which suggests a much broader semiotic notion of the textual that transcends the limits of alphabetic writing ("Colonial or Postcolonial," 126; Darker, 8). A similar treatment with "barbarian," however, does not help the case for a barbarian theorizing when we recall the well-known semantic history behind the word and its intimate etymological relationship to lan-

guage. Once a broad term referring to "outsiders" not versed in the

dominant language of a particular region, "the barbarian" as de-

ployed in the colonial, national, and modernizing projects of Latin America has gone through various permutations but has tended to

maintain its connection to and conflation of language and savagery (i.e., lack of the outward markers of European "civilization"). This

history is far too complex to develop here (see above for cursory treatment). The bottom line, however, is that the criollo and/or mes-

tizo middle- and upper-classes from which our alleged barbarian

theorists emerge were never the object of the term "barbarian," espe-

cially not within their own societies. While Spanish and Portuguese

may indeed be peripheral languages in terms of today's global divi-

sion of academic labor, they only become barbarous when linked to a

semantic of power (the discourse of civilization and barbarism) that

implies inferiority based on race, gender, and perhaps most impor-

tantly, social class.49 This type of local marginalization is something from which Ortiz, Candido, and Ribeiro are patently exempt.50 And

yet the structural and institutional silencing-based on often explicit social categories-of vast sectors of "barbarous" voices in Latin



76 1 JOSHUA LUND

America is the urgent problem facing the hemisphere, far outpacing the cosmopolitan intellectual who confronts the discrimination

imposed by an increasingly English-only international scholarship. Seen from the perspective of the peripheral and growing numbers of Latin America's culturally and materially marginalized, our barbarian theorists become active participants in a privileged, transnational discussion of cultural influence, in other words, participants in nothing less than the construction of knowledge effected by the Western academy. Thus positioned, from the view of the truly mar-

ginalized they are only as barbarous as any other purveyor of West- ern "civilization."

Several pages ago, I suggested that it was something immanent to the very nature of the recurrent conversation around exceptionalism that foments analytical problematics such as barbarian theorizing. That these conversations can yield real creativity and productivity is

undoubtable, as I hope to have shown in my treatment of Ortiz, Mali-

nowksi, and Candido. In the end, however, the incessant focus on the slippery frontier between worlds-First and Third, central and

peripheral-seems to efface the real border, or at least an important one: the equally slippery line marking the boundaries of internal colonialism. This problem is clearly spelled out in Alberto Moreiras's

critique (1996) of Candido's influential "Literature and Underdevel-

opment" (1970):51

Only when superregionalism [Latin America's active participation in cultural discourse on a global scale] triumphs in its efforts toward cultural integration does it become immediately clear that superregionalist integration is merely self-integration-and it becomes obvious to what extent this integration is exclusive of so many subaltern, cultural for- mations in Latin America. In other words, with superregionalism only the superregionalist segment of Latin American culture and society achieves what Candido calls interdependency. (881; my translation).52

This, finally, brings us back to the symptomatic relationship between exceptionalism and Eurocentrism. One feature that seems to link all of the Latin American intellectuals engaged here is an

implicit desire for inclusion, either within or alongside, the Eurocen- tric discourses that presuppose a certain privileging of Western

knowledge and culture. In other words, as Eurocentrism posits itself




as the final proof of legitimate knowledge, a real and important concern of Latin American intellectuals is participation in the construction and/or deconstruction of that knowledge: to participate in the "universal" conversation, interdependently as it were.53 Thus

Mignolo intervenes by creating a privileged figure through the resemantization of the "barbarian."54 In so doing, however, he can only legitimize on one level (internationally, vis-a-vis the "center") the discourses already legitimate (academically speaking) in the periphery. With their direct access to local institutions of knowledge and

power, and indirect access to the same at the international level

(through multilingualism, travel, correspondence, publication, translation of their works, etc.), not to mention their formation in cos-

mopolitan schools of thought and privileged sectors of society, the

only thing that makes the theorizing of these "barbarians" barbarous is their nationality and their politics. As members of social classes that have always had the right to choose in such matters, however,

assuming the tag of barbarian is something that they can slip out of as easily as changing their linguistic, political, or cultural register, this choice is not afforded to those who lack the cultural capital to

reject the imposition of barbarism by the elite classes. Thus the incessant scholarly attention directed toward the border between First and Third World misses the real, more urgent border concerning academia: the one between privileged institutional knowledge legitimation (Ortiz, Candido, Ribeiro, Malinowski) and the vast sectors of

society that are fenced off from any chance at participating in such a

dialogue. In my assessment, this exclusive seat at the table of Western

knowledge production is as far as the exceptionalist conversation can

take us.

Several lines of argumentation and analysis constitute this essay, with the end result perhaps revealing little more than an aporia that

has dogged many schools of thought-from feminism (see Haraway) to subaltern studies (see Moreiras)-in recent decades. On the one

hand, for those interested in effecting a real disintegration of the var-

ious derivations of Eurocentrism, the benefits of incorporating a

multiplicity of voices, from all the world's various loci of enuncia-

tion, appear undeniable. On the other, once these exmarginal voices

are indeed "privileged" (a loaded term, usually translatable to



78 | JOSHUA LUND

"allowed to be heard" or "introduced into the classroom"), they inev-

itably provoke or are confronted with the status of the exceptional. Again, on the one hand, teasing out the innovations of thinkers such as those analyzed here and then linking those innovations to their emergence from Third World loci of enunciation are perhaps both politically pragmatic and, at some level, epistemologically sound endeavors. On the other, the strategic essentialism that often arises from such attempts at revindication elides the basic fact that the intellectuals that we claim as representative of their societies' contributions to theories of culture are typically representative of the

only sector of their society that could ever dream of such contribution: the most Westernized sector.

What I hope that this paper does in the context of such problematics is to indicate some more and less successful ways of approaching cultural theories emanating from spaces that tend to be con- structed as Third World peripheries. By reading Latin American(ist)

critiques of cultural imperialism through and against each other-

transculturally and pluritopically-we not only come to glimpse the workings of their symptomatic, and perhaps even necessary, exceptionalism vis-a-vis the Eurocentrisms of the First World, but we also are confronted with their simultaneous and contradictory inter- nalization of Eurocentric discourses.

Perhaps the figure of Borges's troglodyte-cum-Homer in "El inmortal" (1949) proves emblematic in this regard. One reading of the story could find the quintessential barbarian's conversion into Homer indicative of the author's oft-alleged Eurocentrism: the stak-

ing of his claim to Argentina's European patrimony by linking his own ontological, authorial, and cultural roots to a discursive foundation of the West. An alternative, sympathetically postcolonial reading, however, could signal quite the opposite. A particular moment marks the transformation of the barbarian-troglodyte into the civilized Homer: his decision to speak to his Western interloc- utor. Neither overcome by the civilizing efforts of the imperial explorer nor appropriating the explorer's theoretical tools for his own use, the troglodyte's "conversion" from barbarous to civilized is

purely the effect of the altered gaze of "the other." The true nature of the barbarian's barbarism is thus revealed as nothing more than the result of the monotopic hermeneutics of the understanding subject.




In the context of a cultural analysis of the troglodyte-Homer, the

category of barbarism-whether imposed or embraced-can only tell us where he stands in relation to his story's explorer-narrator. A

pluritopic hermeneutics would likely lead us to a more nuanced and

multiple reading of the contestatory discourses at play in the construction of this one of many possible foundational figures for Latin America: Borges's Homer, Third World theoretician.

Notes

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the interdisciplinary MacArthur Consortium Colloquium, "In the Wake of Eurocentrism" (University of Min-

nesota, 1999), during the workshop entitled "Eurocentrism in the Americas." I thank John Mowitt and Karen Brown Thompson for their kind invitation, and all of the participants for the productive dialogue and community building that defined the event. Many other individuals were patient enough to read drafts of this paper. Especially helpful were the often highly critical readings by Fernando

Arenas, Keya Ganguly, Ulf Peter Hallberg, Juliet Lynd, Malcolm McNee, and

Bradley Nelson. All of the paper's problems or offenses are the result of the good advice that I opted not to follow, and can be attributed only to me.

1. Throughout this paper I will occasionally indulge in tagging the paren- thetical suffix "-ist" onto "Latin American." I do so when I want to emphasize that I am not talking about cultural criticism that necessarily emerges from the

geographical space known as "Latin America" or that is articulated by critics that

might identify themselves as "Latin Americans." Rather, I refer to what Roman de la Campa calls a "transnational discursive community" (1) that contextualizes its

scholarly production through the object of study called "Latin America." While most of the thinkers that frame this essay are indeed Latin Americans working in Latin America, Latin Americanist cultural criticism indicates a broader profes- sional and interdisciplinary notion of thinking critically about Latin America. I realize that this conflation creates the danger of effacing inherent differences between practicing Latin Americanism "here" and "there." While I will strive to be vigilant against such dangers, a better consideration of their stakes can be found in de la Campa's Latin Americanism (1999, especially 1-30).

2. See "Colonial and Postcolonial Discourse: Cultural Critique or Acade- mic Colonialism?" (1991); and the introduction to The Darker Side of The Renais- sance: Literacy, Territoriality, and Colonization (1995).

3. See "Globalization, Civilization Processes, and the Relocation of Lan-

guages and Cultures" (1998). 4. Latin American exceptionalism stands in a tense relationship with

American exceptionalism, although they differ in important ways. American



80 I JOSHUA LUND

exceptionalism is a concept with a long and fraught history in the social and human sciences, surrounded by an especially rich body of work in political philosophy, labor history, and American studies. American exceptionalism is

typically invoked in its triumphalist, messianic inflection (the oft-repeated notion of the United States as a unique exemplar of progress and democracy), or as an

explanation of American singularity vis-a-vis Europe, in both identitarian (Amer- ican difference) and social questions (e.g., labor's general conservatism in the United States). It is also widely problematized as a discursive underpinning for the erasure of U.S. ethnocultural multiplicity (see the special issue of Cultural

Critique on "The Futures of American Studies" [Wiegman, 1998], whose contrib- utors tend to effect such a critique of exceptionalism). Whether embraced,

rejected, or problematized, however, American exceptionalism is always at some level attached to the notion of the United States as unique, as a special, exceptional case. The Latin American exceptionalism that I introduce here does not draw upon an ample bibliographic genealogy similar to that of American exceptionalism. As I describe below, Latin American exceptionalism speaks to the notion of uniqueness (sometimes with the messianism of American exceptionalism, but usually less forcefully stated), but it simultaneously inscribes a negative connotation often absent from American (U.S.) exceptionalism by implying a

feeling or state of exclusion. Latin America, in other words, is not only exceptional, but also excepted. Exceptionalism shares important critical ground with

alterity, and while problems such as "radical alterity" are certainly germane to the topic at hand, they are too closely tied to ontological questions of identity for

my purposes here, which are more interested in discursive tendencies. Two good, sophisticated reviews of exceptionalism in the U.S. context include Dorothy Ross's The Origins of American Social Science (1991) and Larry Gerber's "Shifting Perspectives on American Exceptionalism: Recent Literature on American Labor Relations and Labor Politics" (1997). Lisa Disch was very generous in bringing Ross's book to my attention and in fleshing out for me many of the nuances of American exceptionalism.

5. In his speech at Angostura (1819), Bolivar implores the first congress of Venezuela to resist the temptation of imposing the political models of North America or Europe upon the sociohistorically specific needs of their nascent

republic (84-85). Generations of Latin American intellectuals have offered more or less critical variations on this theme. See, for example, Jose Marti, Nuestra America (1891); Jorge Luis Borges, "El escritor argentino y la tradici6n" (1955); Roberto Fernandez Retamar, Caliban: Apuntes sobre la cultura en nuestra America (1972); Roberto Schwarz, "Misplaced Ideas" (1992); Gabriel Garcia Marquez, "La soledad de America Latina" (Nobel speech) (1982). This line of argumentation continues today in many of the debates surrounding the efficacy of concepts such as the postmodern in Latin America (see Beverly and Oviedo).

6. If by "universal theory" we mean reflexive ways of thinking critically about cultures and societies, and the subsequent legitimation of these critical tools

through their influence in the Western academy, then Latin American exceptionality




as an accurate category would be unsustainable. Liberation theology, dependency theory, or magical realism are only three obvious examples of influential intellectual contributions that owe their provenance to Latin America and yet have

successfully traveled outside of the region. Thus I speak of exceptionalism as a discursive tendency or assumption, as opposed to exceptionality as a clearly identifiable state. I should thank Hernan Vidal for pushing me to make this distinction.

7. Perhaps the most successful literary thematization of this problem can be found in Garcia Marquez's Cien afios de soledad (1967) and the poignant treatment of Jose Arcadio Buendia's many frustrated attempts to participate in the universal creation of knowledge through his tardy scientific discoveries. Schwarz theorizes the question through a critique of the obsessive preoccupation with imitation and belatedness ("no Brazilian could have had the idea nor the strength to be, let us say, the Kant of favour, giving universality to this social form" [23]) in "Misplaced Ideas" (originally published as "As ideias for de lugar" in 1973); and "Nacional por subtracao" (1989). This issue is larger than Latin Americanist criticism, and my treatment of it is informed by a general, ongoing discussion

regarding both academic knowledge produced in the Third World and the position imposed upon (and/or assumed by) the ambiguously defined "Third World academic" working in the Western academy. The bibliography regarding this

topic is extensive. Three key formulations include Edward Said's "Representing the Colonized: Anthropology's Interlocutors" (1989); Uma Narayan's Dislocating Cultures (1997, 121-57); and Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s "Critical Fanonism" (1991), which provides a good, critical summary of a particularly lively thread of this debate. Finally, my ironic reference to the "relevant parts of the world" stems from Walter Mignolo's consideration of the links between language, academia, and imperialism, which statistically detail Pletsch's thesis regarding the

extremely limited regions of the world (i.e., "the First World") that produce "scholarship" (see "Globalization," 35-43).

8. All citations of Contrapunteo cubano, including Malinowski's introduction, are from the Duke University Press edition of Cuban Counterpoint (1995). All citations have been cross-referenced for accuracy using the Ayacucho, 1978 edition, of Contrapunteo.

9. Rama relies upon Ralph Beals as the source on Malinowski's forgetting and/or abandonment of transculturation (Transculturaci6n, 33). Silvia Spitta repeats the assertion in Between Two Waters (1995, 3).

10. Coronil cites Phyllis Kaberry as noting Ortiz's transculturation in her introduction to the first edition of Malinowski's The Dynamics of Culture Change. But then: "It is remarkable that in her introduction to the second edition of Mali- nowski's book, published a decade and a half later, she modified this section. Her reference to Fernando Ortiz is dropped without explanation, and together with it the reference to Malinowski's article in which he had used Ortiz's transculturation" (xxxvii). At least Mary Louise Pratt recognizes Ortiz, in the opening pages of her influential Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (1992), even

though his relegation to footnote status is curious in a work premised on his



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terminology. More predictable is my empirical observation that nearly every time I mention transculturation in a North American institutional context, my inter- locutor invariably responds with some version of "oh, yes, like in Pratt." This comment is not meant as a criticism of Pratt's methods (academic work would be even more cumbersome if we all developed our concepts from their primary source) or her success, but rather as a sort of confirmation that just as the exceptionalist angst cannot be reduced to First World intentionality, neither is it reducible to Third World paranoia.

11. See Garcia Marquez, "La soledad de America Latina"; Schwarz, "Nacional por subtracao."

12. Mignolo states his own exceptionalist preoccupations obliquely, yet unmistakably: "It would be misleading to assume ... that postcolonial theories could only emerge from the legacies of the British Empire or be postulated as

monological and theoretical models to describe the particularities and diversity of colonial experiences; it would be misleading to assume, also, that only the theoretical legacies of the languages of modernity (French, German, English) are the ones with scientific legitimacy" (Darker, ix). One of his stated goals, then, is to "reinscribe" the languages and discourses of Latin America into the on going dia-

logue surrounding the postcolonial, a project that I would classify as invoking Latin America's exceptionalism vis-a-vis postcolonial criticism, which, paradoxi- cally, one might intuit as its natural domain of critique. I have not researched, and have no intention of weighing in on, the accuracy of this insinuation. Mignolo has some convincing things to say on the topic, in terms of the shifting authority of

languages in the modern period (see Darker and "Globalization"). 13. See "Beyond Eurocentrism: The World-System and the Limits of Moder-

nity" (1998) and The Invention of the Americas (1995). Mignolo increasingly adopts the work of Dussel in his most recent book, Local Histories/Global Designs (2000). Incidentally, that work was released during the final revisions of this essay, and

unfortunately I was thus unable to incorporate it in any kind of thorough fashion. 14. For an early formulation of world-systems theory, see Wallerstein's The

Modern World System (1974). 15. For a summary of the historical production of the concept "Europe," see

Dussel's Invention, 133-35. 16. Dussel cites Hegel as offering the clearest articulation of this move

("Beyond Eurocentrism," 3). 17. The deconstruction of the center/periphery model as a tool for compre-

hending cultural influence, on the basis of its totalizing thrust, Eurocentrism, and

explanatory insufficiency, has been cited as a key aim of postcolonial theory to date (Ashcroft, 37). Models of center/periphery tend to run into problems when

confronting the reality of "peripheral" cultures located within the "center." See the introduction to Mignolo's Local Histories/Global Designs.

18. The original title was Civilizacion y barbarie: Vida de Juan Facundo Quiroga y aspecto ffsico, costumbres y hdbitos de la Repiblica Argentina (Gonzalez Echevarria, 98).

19. Beyond the nineteenth-century debates regarding everything from the




purging of the South American pampa of its indigenous inhabitants to perceived crises of linguistic purity (Bello, 1850), the grammar of civilization and barbarism can be traced back to the originary moments of the conquest (e.g., Columbus

declaring that he will bring to Castilia a half-dozen Taino captives "so that they may learn to speak") and forward to contemporary debates surrounding indigenous rights and land reform.

20. I am of course speaking in extremely broad strokes here. Theoretical relations of center/periphery always fail as real-life reflections of a global reality. Meanwhile, the discourse of civilization and barbarism has a multiplicity of nuances that far transcend a simple urban/rural dichotomy. Issues of race, eth-

nicity, gender, social class, poverty, nation, citizenship, human rights, language, literacy, etc., have all, at various moments, been plugged into the discourse. Rama addresses the tension between the local and the national through the cultural field in Transculturacidn and La ciudad letrada (1984); Fernandez Retamar discusses the ramifications of "civilization and barbarism" in various sources, including his well-known Caliban.

21. Mignolo does not always clarify precisely what colonial semiosis is, and he alternatively refers to it as a "field of study" ("Colonial and Postcolonial," 126), the impetus behind a set of questions (126), a "network of processes" (128), and a "dialectic" (129). The best summary of colonial semiosis in Mignolo's own words is found in Local Histories/Global Designs (14-16).

22. Mignolo develops the "pluritopic hermeneutics" that grounds the inter-

pretative character of colonial semiosis from the work of Raimundo Pannikar

(Darker, 11-16). 23. For parallel endeavors, see Ella Shohat and Robert Stam's "polycentric

multiculturalism" in Unthinking Eurocentrism (1994); and Donna Haraway's notion of situated knowledges in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women (1991).

24. Colonial semiosis, with its turn toward a plurality of sign-systems, is

proposed as an improvement upon "colonial discourse," transcending the focus on alphabetic writing that dominates the latter (see "Colonial and Postcolonial"). Peter Hulme, a pioneer in the formulation of colonial discourse, is one of several critics who have pointed out the curiously "cursory attention" that Mignolo gives the "indigenous tradition" in The Darker Side of the Renaissance (Hulme, 223). While the spaces opened up by colonial semiosis are invigorating, Mignolo himself has tended to focus upon what could more accurately be called (Eurocentric) "discourse," with indigenous semiotic difference serving as the occasional philological counterpoint.

25. Cf. Schwarz, who negatively theorizes this process as a tendency toward belatedness and superficiality ("Nacional por substracao"). Barbarian theorizing contributes to the current interdisciplinary enthusiasm for border studies and related notions of liminality. From Borges's orillas to Anzaldua's borderlands, the border as epistemological space for critique has a tradition in Latin America too extensive to document here. Indeed, in his new book, Mignolo extensively develops his notions of "border thinking" and "border gnosis." It is difficult to



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tease out the difference between these concepts and "barbarian theorizing," and, in fact, the three seem to conflate (see Local Histories, 308).

26. For example, it is well known that the use of an aesthetics of antropofagia that reemerged during the Tropicdlia movement of the 1960s and 1970s, as exem-

plified in works like Helio Oiticica's manifesto "Tropicalia" (1968) and Nelson Pereira dos Santos's film Como era gostoso o meu frances (1971), was a direct

reworking of the antropofagia movement spearheaded by Oswald de Andrade and his Manifesto antropdfago (1928) during the Brazilian modernism of the 1920s and 1930s. Both the modernist and tropicalist interventions in Brazil-though distinct in their political thrust (see Arantes, 31-40)-rehearse the dialectic of exceptionalism and Eurocentrism and would provide a productive field for the analysis that I propose here.

27. Positive in that they both use Eurocentric, misplaced ideas as a sounding board for their own critical interventions. Negative because they imply Latin American intellectual and cultural production as marginalized or unrecognized in the "universal" creation of knowledge.

28. The best recent treatment of Contrapunteo cubano in English is Coronil's introduction to the Duke University Press edition. Spitta discusses Ortiz at some

length, and gives a good general overview of the Latin American(ist) evolution of transculturation in the introduction of her book. De la Campa reviews Ortiz in the light of contemporary theorists such as Rama, Nestor Garcia Canclini, Homi Bhabha, and Judith Butler (Latin Americanism, 57-84). The bibliography in Span- ish is too vast to review here, but one could do worse than start with Julio Le Riverend's "Ortiz y sus contrapunteos" (1978).

29. "[Cuba's social history] is an intense, complex, unbroken process of transculturation of human groups, all in a state of transition" (103; my emphasis).

30. Both Spitta and de la Campa note the problematic relationship between transculturation and feminism, with Spitta developing the insight slightly (neither, however, take it very far). The critique that Ortiz elides questions of power (see Spitta) seems to me a misreading of his work (see Coronil). That other scholars are guilty of this elision of power in the subsequent development of transculturation is more sustainable (see Sergio Luiz Prado Bellei's "Brazilian Anthro-

pophagy Revisited" [1998]). 31. The spirit of "acculturation" was an attempt to explain the cultural

change in colonial situations as experienced by both colonizing and colonized culture. What Ortiz perceptively notes is that its practical usage consistently honored the English etymology of "acquiring" culture, specifically on the part of the colonized group. Transculturation is introduced as a dialectical process, in which each half of the equation goes through gain, loss, and eventually the production of new and original cultural forms (102-3). As Coronil notes, Ortiz's transculturation had a critically historicizing edge that recognized conflict, in contrast with Malinowski's more taxonomic concerns (see Coronil, xxxi-iv).

32. While the border between literary and anthropological (especially




ethnographic) production has been under assault in the North American acad-

emy for some time, I would say that the border between literature and anthro-

pology has always been far more openly ambiguous in Latin America, as a figure like Peruvian novelist-anthropologist Jos6 Maria Arguedas exemplifies.

33. See Spitta for a limited introduction to transculturation's genealogy. What Coronil wants to emphasize here is not that transculturation ever went

away, but that its critique seems more relevant to a decentering world, as

opposed to one dominated by polarized metanarratives (xii). 34. Portell Vila's prologue is mysteriously absent from the Ayacucho edi-

tion of Contrapunteo (1978). It appears in all other editions, including the original (Coronil).

35. If anything, I would propose more interregional comparison between Cuba and Brazil, especially considering Antonio Benitez-Rojo's radical amplifica- tion of the Caribbean (La isla que se repite [1989]), where he asserts that the Brazil- ian northeast "might be taken simply as another Caribbean island" (1992, 72). While the aesthetics of such comparisons are appealing, I realize that I am tread-

ing on thin ice, and do not mean to essentialize the vast sociocultural differences between Cuba and Brazil. At the same time, by following Benitez-Rojo and dis-

carding relatively arbitrary geopolitical or linguistic zones in favor of more fluid standards of cultural traits and material histories, I think that much fruitful com-

parative work between these two countries remains to be done. 36. All translations of "Literatura e cultura" are mine. 37. Throughout Candido's writings dealt with here, terms such as "philoso-

pher" or "literature" are generally meant in their Eurocentric sense, and left

largely unproblematized. It is also important to recognize that Candido does not offer an assessment of the "Brazilian character," but speaks more specifically about social conditions averse to the establishment in Brazil of institutions of Western science.

38. It should be emphasized that Candido is specifically seeking a schema for assessing past Brazilian intellectual production and is not offering prescriptions as to how contemporary scholarship should be carried out. While his own pro- fessional biography passes through a number of disciplines (Becker, xvii), this

may be more than anything an effect of the particular letrado academic tradition that differentiates Latin American from North American academia. In other words, I do not want to characterize Candido as making a pointed attack upon disciplinary boundaries, anachronistically placing him in a discursive flow toward postmodern antidisciplinary textuality, a project that I doubt he would embrace. This is not, however, a question whose ramifications I have seriously attempted to disentangle.

39. "Sugar comes into the world without a last name, like a slave" (42) is a

typical opening phrase of a chapter section. Literary references seem to outnum- ber scholarly and range from the opening invocation of the Libro de buen amor to

Jose Marti, from Francisco de Quevedo to George Sand.



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40. "[A]1l I can do is set down, in drab prose, the amazing contrasts I have observed in the two agricultural products on which the economic history of Cuba rests" (3).

41. It should be emphasized that it is not simply the exploitation of literary tropes that characterizes these essays, but their insistent disintegration of the border between subjective and objective analysis. Clearly, it is problematic to crown Latin America as the exclusive site of this practice. While, as Candido shows, the form fulfilled a certain expressive lacuna in Latin American cultural production, creative thinkers in other parts of the world seem to carry out a similar practice.

42. The Malinowski that I am dealing with throughout this paper is understood exclusively via his introduction to Ortiz's Contrapunteo, and I do not pre- tend to provide him a fair hearing in the context of his life's work. Issues such as the implications of his remarkable Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term (1967) could

obviously provide assessments of his legacy contradictory to those put forth here. For a more nuanced reading of Malinowski in terms of transculturation, see Coronil.

43. See O processo civilizatorio (1968) and As Americas e a civilizacao: Processo de formaqao e causas do desenvolvimento desigual dos povos americanos (1970).

44. An unfortunate side effect of my rhetoric is that so much superficial attention is drawn to Ribeiro, whose actual work is not in any way at issue in this

essay. I want to emphasize that he appears here only as a rhetorical figure invoked

by Mignolo, whose barbarian theorizing is the actual object of critique. Ribeiro- like all of the writers engaged here-is a truly remarkable individual, whose work as an anthropologist, poet, novelist, senator, champion of the left, and activist for the marginalized is not in any way to be downplayed by my commen-

tary. See Rama's Transculturacidn narrativa for an analysis of Ribeiro's extraordi-

narily collaborative anthropological work in Brazil. 45. Ortiz sees the social history of Cuba as an intermingling of distinct

human groups at different stages of development: the "paleolithic culture" of the

Ciboneys, the neolithic Tainos, and the fully civilized Europeans (99-100); imported African cultures range from the "primitive," to a "state of advanced barbarism," to "intermediate cultures between the Taino and the Aztec, with metals, but as yet without writing" (101; my emphasis). Likewise, Candido's assessment of Latin American cultural production posits a course of development that, while maintaining its specificity, can only reach its full potential when

"interdependent" with European production: "the majority of our countries [sic] large masses [are] immersed in a folkloric stage of oral communication" ("Litera- ture and Underdevelopment" 123, trans. Becker).

46. In labeling all of the thinkers here "Western," I am following Dussel, who, through Edmundo O'Gorman, notes: "The North American ideological notion of the occidental hemisphere nevertheless excludes the South-namely, Africa and Latin America-which geographically pertain to that hemisphere ... [However,] occidental culture [what I am calling "Western"] could encompass Latin America or at least its elites, whether criollo or mestizo" (Invention, 134). Of




course, what is meant by the Westernness of Latin American intellectuals is a

problem that we could pursue and complicate to great lengths, especially when

thinking about issues of race, ethnicity, and community. I do not choose to do so

here, and I feel that the question is to some extent folded into my critique of

exceptionalism. 47. Ortiz's Contrapunteo cubano was translated into English within a decade

of its publication, and he received attention from influential figures such as Levi- Strauss (Barnet, 5-6). Candido has been a prominent intellectual on the Brazilian scene since at least the 1950s (see Becker). Ribeiro has not only had several of his works widely translated, but has also held high-ranking posts in Brazilian gov- ernmental institutions.

48. I am of course not rejecting any place for Said's notion of "constitutive otherness." In other words, I do not intend to efface Latin American difference, but rather to complicate it; following Gates, to "try to distinguish more sharply between the notions of cultural resistance [or critique], on the one hand, and of cultural alterity, on the other" (466). Indeed, I am partly inspired by Said's call "to see Others not as ontologically given but as historically constituted ... [and thus] erode the exclusivist biases we so often ascribe to cultures, our own not least" (225). To question the barbarism of Latin American intellectuals working in Latin America is not to erase the problematic power dynamics contained within the question of where one practices Latin Americanism (see de la Campa, especially 1-30), as I hope my dual reading of Ortiz has demonstrated.

49. The list could be continued to great lengths, and would shift depending upon regional politics: immigration status, literacy, sexuality, etc.

50. What I am highlighting is their eventual incorporation into the academic establishment. Local political power struggles that may entail attempted marginalization (Ribeiro's exile during the 1960s, Ortiz's early lack of institutional sup- port) are not at issue here.

51. Like "Literatura e cultura de 1900 a 1945," "Literature and Underdevel-

opment" is a panoramic consideration of the interplay between literature and

society; however, in this case, the area of analysis is expanded to greater Latin America.

52. The "interdependency" that Candido delineates refers to the mutual cultural influence between center and periphery, the production of "works of a mature and original tone, which will slowly be assimilated by other peoples, including those of the metropolitan and imperialist countries" (133). An example that he draws upon is Rub6n Dario's poetic influence in Spain (131). Moreiras's

critique echoes a similar commentary by Schwarz, regarding imitation and

authenticity in "Nacional por subtracao" (1986): "Through its logic, the debate

[around imitation] hides the essential, since it concentrates on the relation between elite and copy, when the decisive point is in the segregation of the poor, excluded from the universal, contemporary culture" (47; my translation).

53. I, as with any academic positioned in a Western (epistemologically speaking) university, am of course a victim of this same desire, even though I do



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not write from Latin America, but rather about it. It should go without saying at this point that the object of my intervention is the exceptionalist construction of the barbarian theorist, and not the attempt, in and of itself, by Latin American intellectuals to reach the widest audience possible. If Dussel's world-system model still holds, then, like so many European attempts to reach a center located in India, perhaps today's critical voyages have no choice but to travel via a center

epistemologically located in "Europe." Hopefully creative thinking, and not an accident equivalent to the "discovery" of a New World, will effect the unseating of this center. Mignolo is one of many who see new promise for the decentering of the West through globalization (see "Globalization").

54. An often effective move, but not a new one. Jose Marti, for example, carries out a similar strategy of reversal in Nuestra America. Borges provides an

exceptionally powerful resemantization of the barbarian in "El inmortal" (1949), an image with which I close the essay.

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