Whose West is it anyway?

David Wacks

Associate Professor of Spanish

Department of Romance Languages

What is the role of religion in ‘Europeanness’?

• Modern assessment of medieval authors

• Us vs. Them

• Implications for current thorny religious pluralism in Europe

Edward Said, Orientalism (1979)

“a style of thought based upon ontological and epistemological distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and (most of the time) ‘the Occident.’”

Orientalism

“The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of Europe's greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other.”

Orientalism

“the Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience.”

Spanish Orientalism

Spanish Orientalism is an internal process which involves the celebration of the ‘other’ within the historiography of Spanish national culture and identity....In this manner, this new process could be called an 'internal-Orientalism.' (45)

Who is European? The case of Spain

• Official Catholicism

• No freedom of religion 1500-1978

• Inquisition 1478-1832

• Freedom of religion and Disestablishment 1978

Spain: Modern critics and medieval authors

• 14th century Castile (not yet ‘Spain’)

• Shem Tov de Carrión

• Juan Ruiz

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Iberian Peninsula 14th c

Shem Tov de Carrión (14th century)

• Rabbi

• Author– The Book of Moral Proverbs (Castilian)

– Debate between the Pen and the Scissors (Hebrew)

Modern criticism of Shem Tov de Carrión:

•Is he “Spanish?”

•Jewish =US or THEM?

José Amador de los Ríos (1863)

Shem Tov’s voice was “a moral beacon amidst the bloody darkness that caused Castilians to fight brother against brother”

Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo (1893)

“It is difficult to believe that this book, so profoundly semitic, so bare of any classical and Christian influence, was written in [Castile]”

Juan Hurtado y Jiménez de la Serna (1921)

“an exotic character with an Oriental flavor”

Romero Navarra (1928)

“a Genuine product of the authentic Castilian spirit”

Américo Castro (1952)

“Sancho Panza-like”

(‘sancho-pancezco’)

Juan Ruiz, Libro de buen amor ‘Book of Good Love’ (ca. 1335)

‘Orientalism’ in Libro de buen amor criticism

• Parts look more like Spain’s Hebrew and Arabic literature (ie. Maqamat) than its Latin/Romance literature

The Libro de buen amor 1

“The structure of the Libro de buen amor can be explained by the multiple Western literary traditions without need to resort to the maqamat”

Alberto Blecua in his introduction to his edition of Juan Ruiz’s Libro de buen amor (ca. 1330) (xxiv)

The Libro de buen amor 2

“a more reasonable approach” is to stay “within the context of European tradition”

Dayle Seidenspinner-Núñez, in Parodic Perspectivism in the Libro de Buen Amor (31)

The Libro de buen amor 3

“my conclusions…must remain tentative until…a full study of the Arabic and, more especially, the Hispano-Hebraic maqamat…is available to scholars working in the Western tradition”

Louise Haywood, in “Juan Ruiz and the Libro de buen amor: Contexts and milieu” (31)

Western —sort of— no, really

• Qualified westernness “occidentalidad matizada” (Goytisolo)

• Bloom: “anxiety of influence”

• Ambivalent, bivalent: 60s toursim slogan “Spain is Different” cuts both ways

“Europe begins at the Pyrenees” (Dumas)

• “Europeanness” contingent on Christianness

• possibly on Jewishness (eventually invited back)

• but not Muslim-ness (not invited back)

What does ‘West’ mean, anyway?

• Maghrib = ‘West’ is the name for Morocco

• Historically, maghrib = Spain (al-Andalus) and Morocco

• The ‘far west’ or California of the Muslim world

The ‘Other’ Place

• 1300 = Maghrib defined by its “Christianness”

• 1900 = Spain defined by its “Moorishness”

• 2000 = Carl Jubran: “internal orientalism”

Spain - Morocco - Europe

• “Morocco was for Spain her last chance to keep her position in Europe” – Conde de Romanones

• Europeanness predicated on relationship with N. Africa

• Modernness predicated on colonial possessions (cf. Said et al)

Santiago Matamoros (St. James the Muslim Killer)

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Santiago

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Church of Santiago, Almería, Spain http://www.flickr.com/photos/paco_net/3048418240/

• If you are not a Matamoros, you are• a European country invaded by France

Mixed legacy cuts both ways:

• Black Legend: leyenda negra

• Hybridization = raza superior

• Latinos regardless of Islamic period

or Islam was an ‘interruption’

• ‘(Re)conquista’ (Reconquest)• Christian conquest of al-Andalus• Today: ‘The Return of the Moor’ (Daniela

Flesler)• New, domestic relevance to the Islam

question• To an already problematic ‘European’ identity