Border Literary Histories, Globalization, and Critical Regionalism

Abstract

We are all, of course, only too familiar with “globalization” understood as a multinational corporate/economic world phenomenon, or more specifically, as Robert Eric Livingston reminds us, as “economic discourses commonly termed neoliberal embodied and administered by institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.” But, Livingston continues, “ethical and political discourses … likewise aspire to global significance” (145). Today, such is also the case for critical discourses in American literary studies, which, in another time, were almost fully grounded and bounded within the US. Such a critical globalization in American literary studies is in the same universe as “the transnational,” “the post-national,” and “border theory”—interpretive tendencies that while discrete, nevertheless share the same basic impulse and mission of decentering American literary studies away from a nation–state focus and identity. The purpose of this essay is to critique this tendency with some cautionary observations and with a focus on literary histories that speak to the US-Mexico border area, principally the respective works of José David Saldívar and Ramón Saldívar. As a specific academic formation, the globalization of American literary history has its arguable beginnings in Carolyn Porter's 1994 review essay, “What We Know that We Don't Know: Remapping American Literary Studies.” Approximately the first two-thirds of her review, however, are only a run-up to the question of globalization. In this first part, she reviews critiques of American literary history focused on contemporary American critical works which still take the US as their central focus (albeit now at some considerable critical distance from that older tradition variously identified as the consensus school, American exceptionalism, myth and symbol, etc.) even as they also critically try to account for the post-1960s “new” American studies and its espousal of race, ethnic, and gender reconfigurations. However, these first studies seem unsatisfactory to her as articulations of a globalized American literary criticism, and so she concludes her review by examining a book that, for her, is far more germane, namely José David Saldívar's The Dialectics of Our America: Genealogy, Cultural Critique, and Literary History (1991); in a very real sense, Porter is positioning Saldívar as an early and perhaps first example of how American literary histories should be done in the global moment. Saldívar's work also offers another feature of a globalized American literary history, namely its clear orientation toward Latin America and the Caribbean including the demographic extensions of these areas in the US, an orientation not lost on Porter, who, while noting other world linkages, particularly Asia, also lends emphasis to the Americas. For Saldívar, the globalizing path to Latin America also passes through Mexican America as he links what he calls “Chicano Border Narratives as Cultural Critique” (49) to writers in Latin America and the Caribbean such as Alejo Carpentier and Ntozake Shange, all under the umbrella of José Martí's rubric of “nuestra America” (5), and thus in critical opposition to the US. The rubric of opposition or “resistance” to the US, often construed as the American empire, has also become a feature of critical globalization, such that we can now add this second layer of definition to the “critical” in critical globalization by including a correlated attack on American exceptionalism.1 Such a linking and critical outlook also characterizes José Saldívar's second and very influential book, Border Matters: Remapping American Cultural Studies (1997). Here he brings together a great variety of mostly Chicano and Chicana writers and artists under the rubric of a dynamic US-Mexico border, that is now also understood as another way to critically globalize or remap American studies: “the invocation of the US–Mexico border as a paradigm of crossing, resistance and circulation … that has contributed to the ‘wordling’ of American Studies and further helped to instill a new transnational literacy in the US academy” (xiii). After these initial works, the globalization of American literary history has massively proliferated both in conceptual statements and substantive studies, with a large and influential number of such discussions in the pages of American Literary History and American Quarterly, with a high point in Shelley Fisher Fishkin's breathless, well-catalogued affirmation of the “transnational turn in American Studies” in 2005, but possibly further climaxing with the 2006 special issue of American Literary History, “Hemispheric American Literary History,” edited by Caroline Levander and Robert Levine, a collection that once again lends emphasis to Latin America. We must also note the earlier appearance of a collection edited by Paula Moya and Ramón Saldívar whose essays are examples of a “transnational imaginary” and study “distinct discourses that refer to the US in relation to a variety of national entities” (1). “Transnational imaginary” is also carried over into the subtitle of Ramón Saldívar's recent study of the distinguished Mexican-American writer, Américo Paredes, a primary subject later in these pages. Against critical globalization, we can also note some minimal critical dissent and some alternative ways of envisioning the global project of American studies. From Germany, Heinz Iscktadt offers two broad critical observations. He suggests that such globalizing often acts as so much sociology, bypassing the literary character of its chosen texts as he reminds us, quoting Sacvan Bercovitch, that a “literary text is more than the sum of the explanations, solutions, probabilities, and abstractions that it accumulates as it travels across time and space” (558). In short, Iscktadt is inviting us into closer, if not close, readings of our texts even while operating within a global context. But he also notes that while the globalization of American studies, “certainly opens up new perspectives and new areas of study, it ignores that between the local and the global there is still the ‘national’ as a category requiring continual analysis.” Rather than “abandon the concept of the nation together with that of America in order to extricate the discipline from its ideological foundations … the United States must be studied as a distinctive collective entity (however heterogeneous or divided it may perceive itself to be) within a network of global or transnational interrelatedness” (551). Departing from these cautionary observations, I turn to the work of José Saldívar. We are somewhat preceded in this critique by Jeff Karem's own critical engagement with José Saldívar. His critique is focused on Saldívar's use of postcolonial theory to understand the literary texts of the Americas, but much of what he says is also pertinent to the perils of globalizing readings since postcolonial theory and critical globalization often overlap. Karem is particularly vexed by the manner in which Saldívar misreads his chosen texts while also putting them into unwarranted conjunctions in support of his binary theory of US hegemony versus pan-Latin American textual resistance and opposition. In his much more nuanced readings, Karem shows how Saldívar fails to grasp the full textual complexity of Gabriel García Márquez's work, which cannot be understood as simply “oppositional.” Saldívar wholly misreads the character of Aureliano in One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) and then wholly overlooks the novel's conclusion, both of which have “complex sources and implications that elude a binarizing postcolonial model such as Saldívar's” (99). Saldívar then creates another kind of internal binary by reading Jorge Luis Borges as a retrograde conservative writer in contrast to the resistive García Márquez. Yet according to Karem, Saldívar seems hesitant “to enter Borges's text” (99). Were he fully to do so, he might discover that “there are subversive aspects of his work that elude the stark divisions of postcolonial binarizing models” (100). Saldívar also addresses texts from his own native region of the lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas (hereafter, the Valley), and, once again, he argues for their univocal opposition to US hegemony, placing them in alliance and alignment with García Márquez and Martí's nuestra America. Once again, for Karem, the effort is misguided in two broad respects. Saldívar lends great—indeed exclusive—emphasis to South Texas novelist Rolando Hinojosa's representation of the violent Anglo domination of the Valley beginning in 1846, but largely overlooks Hinojosa's rendering of the complex Mexican Anglo hybridity of the area and of the internal class divisions and exploitations within the Mexican-origin “community” (Karem 105–06). Once again, Saldívar's simple binary of “colonizer” and “colonized” misses too much even as it distorts another facet of Hinojosa's fiction, namely its much greater affinity with and to than García which between writers from “nuestra America” that American this and (Karem Karem that is in how to their and but the to very from In thus Karem us to that what is his critique of Saldívar's postcolonial globalization is Saldívar's to region in its as by Karem's critical also us to that Hinojosa's from Saldívar's binary postcolonial model is a of a globalization of a text that is with a specific local over In his minimal reading of Hinojosa's Saldívar not full on the complexity of this largely in critical engagement with a still Anglo an engagement in a complexity of ways and not by Texas In his second book, Border Saldívar another of “border with its at toward a more specific But as in much such work, it is only a we the other of the border Saldívar of his time with texts largely by Chicano and Chicana on this In his of such texts he to once again, a of “resistance” up and a border, and he all manner of texts and in a and Once again, in so much and in his with he misreads and overlooks the of the local and and the complexity of their with the more than García Márquez's specific of the border may be almost as from another as they are from is not a that Américo Paredes, in the very first of His in His Border and its his area of Rio Grande Border is the area the from its to the two the two than from the of the Rio Grande with other of the border Rolando is from Border but he is as a from the Valley by Américo and his very large and in the Valley from to World a of Anglo and is a that the but political of the who, as of his through the with the as an he it to is much on in this but the critical to be in with a on the novel's In the of novel's … seems to be that is … For there is way of this according to this novel's of For Saldívar, however, all of work is critique of the of US a to the discourses of US in which the the and the of a under Saldívar to and and but they are his own and he resistive principally within the central character of and he much of specific of As a and he away to and to his and is into a Mexican-American class that to often identified as the Mexican-American class and is a that Saldívar as of In this Saldívar his class by to the local of South He Here that, for is with a In of he shows how his in the with his local class … In the a political by local by and by the of and a to of José Saldívar misreads this which wholly that is not a resistive local identity. a to his once he for the more reading of the that the the to the I and must he to as another has as further a more reading of this that “the class of which of but only that and also overlooks the at the the class a to must … but I that in his he he to were his the real he His them He and on the He he He Saldívar's is the manner in which a globalizing reading of this complex not the full of a engagement with the He of as of the of but both he and might take note of the class that to this in this region and that are by In the it is Américo is this not as a point of but of of in the of to the that have identified as of I have of the and as of an alternative to critical globalization as it is with to the US-Mexico such bounded have not much into these discussions as a and such as in to the in Yet we cannot to older that such as and to for is so in the world is too much with to such if they for that may up on the for as has the local can also its way to the the concept of critical a case seems to be for a of not in sense, but within in with globalization. the concept of critical a case seems to be for a of not in sense, but within in with globalization. first the concept of critical in relation to literary studies in The of but at we to have only two and of this concept to from the of and a critical is a and for but also linking and as these in if also with globalization. Such local however, are not they often do their and over a globalizing Such a a by an toward globalizing and but with a critical to their toward the local and its often in such a globalized a simple and older kind of for a opposition than that for some of relation that by However, a bounded her case but also is not a for her, and global are the to a critical for studies is the of at a on the “to and on the other “to local from and that while a of critical in the of the region As a rubric for such and of and the “to a variously of from that history has … that and other of and as I take local and both and which or more their critical but also their engagement with the global Literary and are the the but in in a As through criticism, the and a or of local … the new model of region that I In great for a but of at the toward the of a more heterogeneous and We thus have in this concept an and for and rendering of the complexity of local in to in the while that all are in but critical with the I is an alternative way to literary at the US-Mexico border, a in not by the work of José Saldívar. in his new work on Américo Paredes, Ramón Saldívar take us in this as he a and for two The of Américo Paredes, now as the Mexican-American writer of our time, has fully by Ramón Saldívar in an study, which is but also an conceptual into a transnational American studies. there is even an to critical it is as if Ramón Saldívar has such a study, as he links the lower US-Mexico border with through and with the US its as the and of a After a as a in South Américo into the US but by the time his the to a close, and he up in the He his for the US and and on a of and large in this also to as he done in South Texas the After his in to work for the in and thus some time in and the the between and As time he also his literary In he to and by he in the US to his studies at the of Texas at he his and all in too he the of that same he a distinguished focused on the of the Mexican-origin of the lower border of of work for the part, a critique of the project in Mexican-American South Texas as as an account of a variety of resistive within the critical project by way of his South Texas for Saldívar, of course, offers an on as it but is not to it His study of also a clear example of a globalizing American literary history through what Saldívar calls “transnational a and of and Saldívar argues for and between critical of the in his native South Texas Mexican and in to their respective The political and domination of South Texas Mexican is thus to the of but particularly World As much as I this work and it to be a example of critical I there may be a very question the of these two as of Saldívar's reading has within it an of the in its to a in which a critical As critical work and the focused on in South However, perhaps the also Asia, if in his work from that the with its point later in the and some of his high are with two are the of to South Texas in the earlier of the and were the of a … a and were much by all their … not the same as the much more … The a the of the and the and with and that the were a very almost very to the the both in and political In and to be on in … I it still a But what the of of the … the of the us we the that were and the recent in the Saldívar the between Mexican and were also on as he how the … the in of the of our an of and than the he their and with have them to for Mexican are also a central of a to Saldívar, in and feature the as it from the of to and to the American The as the Paredes, has become a between and a Mexican a on to American and Saldívar then on to from feature but also from another that for the Mexican Saldívar then to this conclusion, which I with which Saldívar seems to The of this of and in the of the of can be from the of the of and of the of to their under of these us the of global of from the that the of the to take their first into the of in these their as they also a great political and including the of with such as as of of the with the US, but also as a primary including as a and later as of of the in the that and in the The of of a is to of principally by the in its of As Saldívar a with that to be in of a full it says much of what of and his of the great and a to as much as he under the … I for I that he of that in by both Saldívar of is then further by what Saldívar calls and under the of with his of and the in all of its to is even more by his of also and in from but such for the is than is by how he has to to Saldívar in to his on In he note of the and of of the in to by while other even in and they all to the Saldívar is to be in more his for of only of a with and of a the in the do have and the of of the of As with however, of but only in a to with a her the with all at with in their and into this she and not the the that a in an with his The to their from across the Saldívar I by the and character of on in to but also by his and Saldívar's to the question of and in as to both seem to In such effort is in of his and even in the US if their are are to be his over another of the the US Saldívar that “the of with other and that in of the transnational of but Saldívar then this of to to in under the by a of and as of and of the of Saldívar again to this of to and to understand the of a by and much on are also thus by and from we to the of the as a on which new and were and to from the it seem that it is the new American that, in is and a now in a However, the this The of the were as they an in the from a that focused from or Saldívar. it is often in of the which to focus on the in the I refer to the the that beginning with an initial and from to but massively and on from to than the with the US. other in this a of and and than the as “the of which for book, the The of by and on In another book, of the The and of the and are also on this as is the work of The of The of World (1997). with in their the in as the a attack on the new of After the with on both the real to as the order of a kind they first The were to the to and from the to the and of and to in the and The also and of the as a such that “the number of to a that the for the at and all over a of to and this but … from to become the to a as of and of the … the first were on the the an a that in the first two and “the they of the that must have with to within The In that even the fails to us, not only of the as but of the manner of the and often that the these In time, there were other of a has to this to that her the of such were … One can only at the and that they the of a … a that were their own by into the I that such as this at with and to both under some it be that of nation versus the in to the these we are at some considerable distance from the of the and the As a to her he at with in their and the the that a in an with his We can only if they might have In contrast to his Américo with and its of also of how can the of with the and for which the are greater than Paredes, she also suggests these two are in the of the with and its also reminds us that he of the and of the and a in the in the of in and in that

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