The epic Novel in Latin America

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The "Epic Novel": Charismatic Nationalism and the Avant-Gardein Latin America

Ricardo Roque-Baldovinos

Cultural Critique, 49, Fall 2001, pp. 58-83 (Article)

Published by University of Minnesota Press

DOI: 10.1353/cul.2001.0015

For additional information about this article

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Modernity in Latin America does not lead us into a Weberianiron cage. So to what sense can we thus attribute its modern experi-ence? One necessary step I will take here toward theorizing thisexperience will involve understanding the regions peculiar temporalconcreteness. And to think time in such concrete terms demands anexplanation of the ways in which temporality is narratively config-ured, for it is through narrative that time becomes most tangible. Thisleads me to an investigation of the novel, as it comprises our mostcomplex narrative form. It is not fortuitous that the novel form had to

be reinvented in Latin America during the twentieth century andthat this resulted in a literary device that is at once imitated and orig-inal. It simply could not logically be otherwise, since the novel

embodies an experience of time that gives rise to this paradoxicalquality of simultaneous repetition and difference.

This essay attempts to understand the twentieth-century LatinAmerican novel by taking into account the entangled relationships

between contemporary political and aesthetic currents. The mostinnovative novel production results from the search for a form ade-quate to Latin Americas experience of modernity. It yields formal

innovations, such as space-time, or chronotope, and narrativeperspective. This chronotope objectifies the simultaneity of heteroge-neous space-time, a characteristic of Latin American social forma-tions, while narrative perspective, in its turn, inaugurates a newmodel of literary authority. Instead of an implied author legitimized

by rational knowledge, characterist ic of the bourgeois novel of thenineteenth century, here we encounter an epic authority that

Cultural Critique 49Fall 2001Copyright 2001 Regents of the University of Minnesota

THE EPIC NOVELCHARISMATIC NATIONALISM AND THE AVANT-GARDE

IN LATIN AMERICA

Ricardo Roque-Baldovinos


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implies a new intersubjectivity: one of a charismatic kind. I intend todemonstrate that the originality of this literary form lies in its ability

to contain a crit ique of rationalization, an analysis that continues andsurpasses the critique of modernity usually credited to the historicAvant-Garde.

At this point, it becomes necessary to warn that I do not intend tostudy the whole novelistic production of Latin America during thetwentieth century. Notably, I leave aside urban novels. These novelsproliferated in the Southern Cone and dealt with an experience of

anonymity and alienation similar to that found in the modernist nov-els in Europe and North America. Rather, the kind of novel produc-tion in which I am interested focuses its attention on the re-creationof a wider social space that registers and integrates a spectrum oftemporalities. Traditionally, this kind of novel is gathered under thelabel Magical Realism, though we should note that this quite inac-curate appellation has become a misleading label disseminated bythe publishing industry. In this sense, the category of Magical Real-ism has dissolved in a new topos of the culture industry, one thatdesignates a cultural merchandise that feeds its disenchanted reader-ships insatiable appetite for authentic experience.

This degradation actually betrays the rich connotations thatCarpentier intended when he coined a related expression, the real-marvelous, in his prologue to El reino de este mundo, a novelpublished in 1949. The real-marvelous exemplifies an effort to rec-

oncile Avant-Garde aesthetics, especially Surrealism, with a moretraditional function of the novel form, namely, that of representingsociety as a complex totality. Notwithstanding the fact that the termreal-marvelous is historically more accurate than what I propose, Iprefer to use a new oxymoron for this novel form, the epic novel.1

I intend to demonstrate that one of the aims of this new form isto break the truce that the novel had previously established with

modern experience.To this end, I will undertake the task of studying the Latin Amer-

ican epic novel in the confluence of twentieth-century nationalismand the reception of Avant-Garde aesthetics, especially of Surrealism.This coincidence of both artistic and political concerns will becomeclearer if we stay aware of the fact that the renewal of literary formsis not an exclusively aesthetic issue. This renewal takes place at a

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moment in which the exhaustion of the liberal imaginary is morethan visible, and since this imaginary had shaped the national pro-

jects of the region, it became urgent that such a renewal emplot newhorizons of sense. It is also understandable that many authors wouldsee affinities between the Avant-Gardes critique of modernity andtheir own desires for this national renovation.

In that sense, the careers of those authors who became active inthe 1920s are revealing, especially if we consider two novelists whowere protagonists in the renewal of the novel form: Miguel ngel

Asturias (18991975) and Alejo Carpentier (19041980). Both wereeither witnesses or active participants of the Parisian Avant-Gardeand the birth and expansion of the Surrealist cultural revolution.However, their immersion in the Avant-Garde tide was not only aresponse to the imperative of being modern. A new form of national-ism also animated this generation, and it was precisely this impulsethat made possible the coincidence of artistic and political concerns.Through both literary writing and cultural journalism, this genera-tion laid the foundations of the epic novel and of a new LatinAmerican aesthetics. Therefore, what these authors achieved was not

just the importation of a new trend or a paradigm substitution, buta true cultural cannibalism, as imagined by Oswald de Andrade inhis celebrated Manifesto Antropofgico. It is important, however,to underline that the aim of this cannibalism was the renovation ofsociety by the means of art, and that the virtual space of the novel

was supposed to be the locus of this experiment.

CHARISMATIC NATIONALISM

To understand the kind of nationalism that influenced the sensibili-ties of the first third of the twentieth century, it is necessary to have

in mind the crisis of the liberal republic, both in its external formsand in its imaginary referents. This crisis resulted from material andideological factors, including the neocolonial status of the LatinAmerican societies in the international stage, the suspicion of theUnited States increasing imperial power, the perversion of liberaldemocracy by new forms of authoritarianism, and the deepening ofsocial and regional inequalities. Antnio Cndido indicates that this

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situation led to an important shift in the consciousness of LatinAmerica, which went from a sense of being a new country to one

of belatedness.2 In this way, the problematic character of the mod-ern condition becomes visible as it grows increasingly evident amongthe intelligentsia that there is a contradiction between ideas and real-ities. The new century starts with a sense of the bankruptcy of liberaland enlightened ideals: individualism, the market economy, secular-ization, faith in the emancipating power of science and technology,and the rest.

This new national conscience is usually designated as anti-imperialism.3 To be sure, it developed at least partly from a reactionto the neocolonial relationships, which by the end of the nineteenthcentury had become quite apparent. One decisive historical event inthis context was the Spanish-American War of 1898, which wasfirmly denounced by Rubn Daro and Jos Enrique Rod. However,it is important to notice that this new national sensibility is not onlyreactive in nature. It proposes a new cultural identity that unifies thewhole spectrum of former colonies of Spain in the Americas. In thisvein, the most important feature of the new spirit is the redefining ofthe national subject. For the liberal imagination, it was quite clearthat the choice of civilization required a rational polity composed offree and autonomous individuals, and the writings of some of themost important ideologists of liberalismsuch as Simn Bolvar,Andrs Bello, and Domingo Faustino Sarmientoaimed toward that

goal. Just a few generations later, however, the panorama hadchanged dramatically. Instead of a Romantic nationalism, in conso-nance with the liberal imagination, a charismatic nationalism erupts.In the whole ideological spectrum, formerly despised ideas gainednew legitimacy. Almost everyone seems comfortable with notionslike community, tradition, primacy of the instinctual, and especiallywith a celebration of the barbarian as the authentic core of Latin

American culture. Gradually, the rational utopia is replaced by theideal of a charismatic community, by the return to the tribe, in otherwords, by a utopia that integrates the primit ive.

Russell A. Berman, an American Germanist, has elaborated thenotion of charismatic community in order to explain the culturalprocess of European societies at the turn of the twentieth century.4

Developing his ideas from the thought of Max Weber, Berman

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explains that religious beliefs, in their character as guides of mun-dane practice, can be effective generators of social transformations.

Weber borrows the term charisma from the Protestant theologicaldebate of his country. In this religious tradition, the hierarchic appa-ratus was identified with Roman Catholicism and contrasted witha different form of religious organization, one that dated back to thefirst Christians and that had inspired the Reform. Primitive Chris-tianism was more spontaneous and dependent upon personal com-mitment before the excessive institutionalization of the Church, as

the inheritor of the Roman Empires bureaucracy, perverted thisspirit.In this effort to recover the relationship between faith and orga-

nization, Rudolf Sohm, a theologian, used the term charisma in asense close to that of Max Weber. Sohm insisted on the incompatibil-ity between any form of hierarchy and rational legality and theessence of Christianity; he claimed charisma as the only appropri-ate mode of Christian relationship, for the original apostolic churchwas a charismatic community, that is, a social group without

bureaucratic administration or legislative restriction and character-ized by a collective participation in a shared meaning, the newfaith.5 This community was characterized by the total absence oflegislation and the rejection of any division of labor that did notreflect the authentic vocation of individual members. Law had noplace in a charismatic community, for spirit and not legal formality

was the principle of organization.6This conception of an alternative collective, or the charismatic

community, appeared as the possible solution to the bankruptcy ofthe enlightened ideal of a rational society. It presented itself as aglimpse of a form of sociality in which the modern crisis of meaningcould be overcome and thus leave the way open for cohesive solidar-ities. It is obvious that this notion was doomed to encourage the over-

flow of the religious milieu into the political, ideological, and artisticdomains, and it follows that this concept would emerge in severalmanifestations, each offering a new mystique that would counteractmodern paralysis.

The spell of the charismatic community reached Latin Americathrough the aesthetic domain.7 The sources of this are diverse, butmost lead us to several European thinkers who were critical of



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modernity, which Revista de Occidente, founded and directed by JosOrtega y Gasset, disseminated through its pages.8 Despite the scar-

city of Latin American collaborators, the impact of this publicationin the cultural life of the region was determinant.9 Through transla-tions by Gaos, Garca Morente, and Ortega himself, Spanish andLatin American readerships were kept up-to-date with the ideasof thinkers like Oswald Spengler, Max Scheller, Georg Simmel, andSigmund Freud.

From this mass of ideas, it is important to underline those that

stressed the decadence of European culture and the necessity of a cri-tique of Eurocentrism. One book read with special attention wasDecline of the West, by Oswald Spengler.10 In this text, Spenglerhomologated civilizations with biological organisms and positedthat each must experience a similar cycle of birth, growth, decadence,and death. Each civilization, according to Spengler, is a single andnoncommunicating entity, and consequently, the succession of anycivilization by a new one is akin to the substitution of an old organ-ism by a younger form. The demise of a civilization implies the era-sure of its entire bequest, and there is no hope that the emerging onescan recover it. It is important to notice that this cycle of youth anddecrepitude appears to be completely irrational. In contrast withother philosophies of history, such as those of Giambattista Vico orComte, for Spengler reflexivity was not a sign of maturity but ofsickness and imminent death. On the other hand, faith and spontane-

ity, such as those found in charismatic communities, was a sign ofyouthful vigor.

It is not difficult to realize the seductive power of these ideas.Latin American intellectuals were eager to distinguish themselvesfrom a European continent that proved intimidating because of thesplendor of its cultural tradition. The First World War would lendcredibility to these ideas of cultural renewal as well. For many Euro-

peans and non-Europeans alike, the war was a clear sign of thedecrepitude of the Old World and a call for a new civilization. SomeLatin Americans would take up that challenge by rediscoveringthe signs of a cultural alterity neglected, until then, as a sign of

barbarism.Thus, charismatic nationalism became one of the referents of the

Latin American intelligentsia of the twentieth century. It reinvigorated

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its mission of renewal. This antimodern sensibility was also presentin the spirit of the art istic Avant-Garde where it was especially influ-

ential, because the intellectuals that mediated the reception of Euro-pean antimodern thought were mostly writers and artists. For thisreason, it might be of help to review the dialogue with the Avant-Garde in which some of them were engaged.

SURREALISM AND CHARISMATIC RENEWAL

It is impossible to appraise the significance of Surrealism in LatinAmerican literary culture if it is reduced to a mere artistic move-ment, to one Avant-Garde movement among the rest. Surrealism withall its extravagances represents an ambitious critique of bourgeoisculture, albeit one in a direction different from the one sought later

by Latin American writers.From Surrealism came the notion of the marvelous. The term

was first coined by Breton and borrowed later by Carpentier in hisown formula of the real-marvelous. For Breton and the Surrealists,the world as presented to the reflective gaze of Western conscious-ness is an illusion. Behind those appearances lies a much more fun-damental reality: instincts, desires, libidinal forces, and so on. It isimportant to underline here one fundamental difference betweenSurrealism and psychoanalysis. Both recognize the agency of desire

and of the irrational in life, but for psychoanalysis the goal is toextend the domain of the ego. In other words, psychoanalysis privi-leges the rational capacities, although by acknowledging the exis-tence of the instinctual and avoiding an excess of repression. ForSurrealism, the goal is to destroy the ego, to expose the falseness ofrationality. To that end, Surrealist artistic techniquessuch as col-lage, the free association of words, and intoxicationpropose the

destruction both of language and of artistic organic form. It isthrough this destruction that a more fundamental reality, one that isformless and magmatic, would emerge.

Surrealism thus embodies a frontal attack to Western rationaliza-tion. For Surrealism, emancipation is synonymous with the unleash-ing of instincts from any conscious will and with the destruction ofthe rational agencies that have imprisoned the modern subject in the



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Weberian iron cage. To a world where meaning has evaporated, Sur-realism preaches its recovery by the destruction of culture, or at least

the destruction of one that functions through repressing desire.This uncompromising radical thrust is, however, the symptom ofthe Avant-Gardes marginal condition.11 In face of the impossibility ofa politically viable path for transformation of the asphyxiating socialmachines, the aesthetic elite survives in marginal spaces of culturalresistance. This retreat, and the assimilation of Surrealisms contes-tarian agenda into the cultural industry, would mark the limits of its

acceptance by Latin American writers who feel somewhat optimisticabout the prospects of cultural renovation.12

For this reason, it is not easy to assimilate the Latin AmericanAvant-Garde to its European counterpart. There is an important dif-ference regarding the locus of the artist in society. The writer of theSouth would have the opportunity for an active social protagonismthat has no parallels in the North. This is due to a higher degree ofsocial differentiation in the latter case, in which more autonomy ispossible, but only at the price of increased isolation.

Now, let us direct some attention to the careers of two strategicmediators of the Avant-Garde in Europe and Latin America. Literaryscholarship documents in abundance the links of Miguel ngelAsturias and Alejo Carpentier to Surrealism.13 Both spent severalyears in Paris and closely followed its artistic developments. Carpen-tier, for example, was very close to some of the Surrealists, especially

a group that became dissident after one of the frequent schisms thatcharacterized the movement. Carpentier was a friend of RobertDesnos, Michel Leiris, and Henri Michaux. He also published somearticles in one of the circles publications, and collaborated in a musi-cal spectacle organized by Edgar Varse, as well as in a film directed

by Man Ray.Besides this activity, both Asturias and Carpentier developed

their intense work in cultural journalism. They were in charge of fol-lowing French artistic activity on behalf of the readers back in theircountries.14 This peculiar relationship is transparent in Asturiassrather positive remarks about Surrealism:

For us, surrealism represented (and this is the first time I say it, butI believe I have to say it) the encounter within ourselves, not the

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European part, but the Indigenous and American ones; for it came fromthe Freudian school and it acted upon the unconscious and not theconscious. We had the unconscious very well hidden under a Westernconsciousness. But when everyone started to inspect inside, everyonefound the Indian unconscious, that which endowed us with the possi-

bility of writing.15

And he continues:

What I am trying to say is that the surrealist school, which exerts a greatinfluence in all literature, is a revolutionary school of great poets; ithelps us to write ourselves. Following the theory of automatic writing,we made experiments of writing without the vigilance of the intelli-gence. Surrealism, for Latin American writers and especially for me,was a great possibility of independence from Western models. Surreal-ism awoke in us the feeling. It favored our tendency to feel thingsinstead of thinking them out.16

The most appealing element of these lines is the rereading of thetopography of the Freudian subject through nationalist clues. Here,Mayan ancestral culture is the unconscious, whereas the rationalagency is Western rationalism. If Surrealism privileges the irrational,thus legitimizing the vernacular, it simultaneously contributes tothe task of strengthening the notion of charismatic community byunderlining the instinctual, or primary, links over those of rationalorganization.

Asturias does not feel urged to critically examine his relation-ship with Surrealism. Carpentier feels compelled to elaborate insome depth. His critiques revolve around two issues. First, hedenounces the banalization of Surrealism. By not being able to tran-scend the politics of scandal, of pater le bourgeois, the iconoclasticpotential of Surrealism is wasted. Even more, the culture industryends up domesticating its most subversive impulse. Carpentier

makes this complaint to a Venezuelan newspaper in the forties:

You have to notice that the techniques of surrealism, transformed intocommon currency, are now common in advertising, in posters, in showwindows of department stores. The fantasies that women nowadaysuse to make them up take infinite advantage of the findings of surreal-ist visual arts. Surrealism is now devoid of all its polemical potentialand, for that very reason, is dead as an artistic movement.17



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The second critique consists of pointing out the inadequacy ofSurrealist techniques to elicit the marvelous in Latin America. That

leads Carpentier to devise a new form of artistic praxis, one in whichthe marvelous is understood not as a hidden dimension of reality, butas an effective force in a world civilized just on its surface. The mar-velous is invisible only to the deluded consciousness of an elite,which stubbornly denies its barbarian half. These are Carpentierswords:

In [Latin] America, surrealism is a part of the habits of everyday life; itis tamed, felt, in the simple proliferation of mushrooms.... This notioncertainly led me to conclude that narrating the ceremonies, traditionsand legends of certain Black cabildos in Cuba would be more interestingthan searching, like Lautremont wanted, the beauty of the fortuitousencounter of an umbrella and a sewing machine on a dissection table.. . . I want to stress that I dont want to dismiss the surrealist movement.I believe it is a matter of positive interest and has had a role of undeni-able importance. But I prefer living matter, the scream, the pure cre-

ation given to us by our natural world.18

For the recognition of this dimension of reality, it does not sufficeto produce shock effects, as in Surrealism: it demands an intensiveendeavor of historic research:

And suddenly I discovered that it was, in all this, a marvelous historic-

ity that was what in my opinion surrealism lacked.... In surrealism, thefantastic element was usually arbitrary, beautiful but totally arbitraryor oneirical. But I found myself in South America and in Haiti beforepeople with the power to transform into animals, with unbelievablekings, before characters la Lautremont, and all this in a context of anage and in the context of historical veracity.19

Of the two critiques of Carpentier, the first one stems from a

comfortable and retrospective vantage point. It is, therefore, anachro-nistic and unfair in its appraisal of Surrealism in its heroic stage.Much more interesting is the second critique. There his political andaesthetic concerns come together. In other words, we can find at thatsite a clear intent to derive a politics from his aesthetics. This conflu-ence relies on charismatic nationalism and the role it assigns to aes-thetic culture in the refoundation of Latin American societies.

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In a series of Carpentiers travel chronicles in the Venezuelanhinterland, we find a passage that is quite revealing of the impor-

tance of the ideal of charismatic community. It expresses an aestheti-cization of the primitive: namely, of the marvelous as an effectiveforce in Latin American reality.20 One chronicle narrates the authorsencounter with a Spanish adventurer who has settled in a remotecorner of the Venezuelan jungle:

Maybe what he looked for in the grandiose solitude of the Great Savan-nah, this little Valencian pharmacist, was, precisely, a country withoutgovernment, in order to rule himself wisely and rightfully. This adven-turer who came walking in search of the legend of El Dorado left behindhim, more than twenty years ago, a despicable reality of dungeons, adu-lations, and fetid odors in order to found, in this Santa Elena de Uairn,under a leaf roof, beside the woman of Genesis, a utopia that fitted hismysterious vocation, his deepest dreams. Only those who do not profitof the obtained gold will be able to find the secret of the transmutationof the metals, says one of the fundamental laws of alchemya law that

probably hides the true great secret of El Dorado.21

Up to this point, I have demonstrated how the dissemination ofthe charismatic community informs the sensibility of many LatinAmerican intellectuals. It is the concrete embodiment of the antilib-eralism of the first half of the century. This process, I maintain, was ofparamount importance in this peculiar dialogue with Surrealism.

Nevertheless, the originality of authors like Carpentier or Asturiasdoes not consist only in making explicit the peculiar dynamicsof time and space that prove necessary for the effective expression ofthe charismatic ideal. They also devise a literary artifact capable ofproducing this insight in its intended readers. To explain the emer-gence of this effect, which amounts to a reinvention of the novelform, it is necessary to follow two steps. First, I must account for the

strategic importance of the novel form and its renovation amongLatin American writers. By doing this, I can explain in more detailthe epic novel and its implications. Second, I will outline theevolution of this form by examining some relevant cases of epicnovels.



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THE NOVEL FORM

To understand the centrality of the novel form in the emergence ofa new Latin American self-consciousness, we have to bear in mindthat novels are neither whimsical creatures of human fantasy norinert reproductions of social life. The text of the novel is a config-uration constructed from social languages and symbols that offersits intended readers a new horizon of the real, arrived at throughaesthetic experience.22 Through its narrative perspective, the novelpresents its readers with a model of perception; through its plot, itproposes a model of action. It also presents a codification of space byfilling its spaces with meaning and organization. However, the novelis mainly a temporal organization. It endows time with meaning byconnecting individual experience, the lives of characters, with thehistory of a collective.

Most of the discussion around this genre revolves around thebourgeois novel of the nineteenth century, whose paramount expres-

sion is realism. Evidently, the realist novel is neither a transparentartifact nor just a set of conventions intended to produce a realityeffect. As any cultural artifact is a system of communication, a devicethat allows its readers to interpret their life world through a certainlight, the language game of realism is much subtler than either itsdefenders or detractors usually recognize.23 Russell A. Berman pro-poses to understand realism as a literary system whose aim is to pro-

duce a specific kind of reader. The implied reader of realism would beone capable of reading the appearances of the world as if it were arealist novel. As Berman explains, The social function of realist lit-erary production is thus the production of the reader as realist, as aspecifically formed agent of perception and judgement, integratednot only into literary life but also into the particular vision of mid-nineteenth-century bourgeois society.24 This is the pragmatics of

realism. We have to bear this in mind in order to understand the evo-lution that the genre experienced in the twentieth century.

Within the complex architecture of this literary form, I wouldlike to pay close attention to two elements that will characterize theepic novel: the codification of time and space, and the narrative

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perspective. To explain the first aspect I will use the concept ofchronotope as proposed by Mikhail Bakhtin. In its turn, I will not

regard the narrative perspective just as a formal issue but as an indexof the kind of literary authority instituted within the specific textualconfiguration.

To Bakhtin, literary genres are modes of thinking the world.25

The novel, for instance, relates intimately to the intuitions of timeand space and their relations with human praxis. Bakhtin termed thiscodification of time and space as the chronotope, an expression he

borrowed from Einsteins physics. In contrast to Kantian philosophy,for which time and space are a priori of experience, to Bakhtin theyare prefigurations of the concrete historical and social situations ofthe subjects. The chronotope would then be the form of codifyingthese aspects of experience in a narrative genre.

Bakhtin attempts to examine the different chronotopes in thehistory of the novel genre since its Hellenistic prehistory. Unfortu-nately this project remained incomplete; his famous essay on the

topic barely reaches the modern age. Besides, his analysis tended toprivilege time as the most evident dynamizer of the plot and over-looks space, which remains in his analysis mostly a background tothe narrated events. It becomes necessary then to define the chrono-tope of the bourgeois novel: the contrast point of most twentieth-century experiments. Nineteenth-century realisms effectiveness reliesupon making the space-time of the novel coextensive with the expe-

riential coordinates of its reader. However, the prefiguration of therealist novel is the experience of the abstract and interchangeabletime and space of capitalist society. This quantifiable world becomesmeaningful when the hero acquires a coherent personality by beingable to decipher the world through his rational faculties. The worldthen becomes familiar: a codification of places organizes space interms of the public and the private. In addition, the logic of the pri-

vate is extended to public places, so that they too may become famil-iar. Time appears as essentially open and indeterminate because it isthe open horizon for individual and social progress.

How is this chronotope possible? Here is where the narrativeperspective becomes strategic. The narrative perspective is not just anarrator. It comprises other devices, such as focalization and editor-ial commentary, that establish the authority within the text. It is close



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to what some critics refer to as the implied author. The bourgeoisnovel constructs a special instance of authority that lends support

to the heros quest for appropriating a strange and abstract world.This authority relies heavily on establishing a rational exchange ofinformation between the represented world and the reader. Theguarantees of the rationality of this exchange are the scientific (orpseudoscientific) discourses of the time. The authority of the textconstantly legitimizes itself in the prestige of these discourses.

Through these resources the novel not only re-creates the worldbut produces its reader, a reader congruent with the hegemonic ide-ology of liberal capitalism. Therefore, within the bourgeois literaryinstitution, the realist novel is one of the apparatuses that produce

bourgeois liberal rationality. This is how a readership, in this caseconstructed as a community of rational exchange, constitutes the

basis for an ideal political communityhence the appeal of the novelbeyond the literary sphere.

A MISPLACED FORM

Let us move now to Latin America, where the absence of a European-style nineteenth-century realist novel is immediately noticeable. Westill rarely see a realist novel even in the following century, despiteattempts to adapt Naturalism, as in the vernacular novel Costum-

brismo, and also despite moves toward social realism. If one carefullyexamines titles that are usually identified as realist, such as CeciliaValds, Don Segundo Sombra, La Vorgine, Doa Brbara, one can natu-rally expect to notice some features commonly associated with therealist tradition: abundance of description, didactic interventions ofthe narrator, social determinism in the plot, and so on. However, thecore of the action generally tends toward either the allegorical or the

truculent. In fact, these could easily be mistaken for romances, ratherthan novels. In reading them, we find ourselves somewhere betweenthe realistic, the fantastic, and the didactic. That they are so deficientin realism or verisimilitude can be only partly attributed to thewriters relative ignorance of their social milieu. Instead, as RobertoSchwarz has shown, the cause of this flaw is the radical inadequacyof the bourgeois novel to the social experience of Latin America.

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In other words, as shown earlier, the bourgeois novel is credibleonly when the image of the world it produces in its readers corre-

sponds with the ideological appearances of a rationalized modernworld. Modernity and its rationalization of the world produce awidely shared ideological common sense that prefigures the fictionalworld of the bourgeois novel. Now, what common sense can assimi-late a social space that is intrinsically fragmented and heterogeneous,where many of the givens of modernity have at best an uncertainstatus?

Early Latin American novels try to account for this reality byassuming a hyperbolic character. The resort to allegory and stereo-type is a desperate means to repress the most uncomfortable data ofreality. For instance, in Doa Brbara, the fight of the abstract princi-ples of civilization and barbarism thematizes the resistance of realityto the rationalizing gaze of Santos Luzardo. Barbarism stands forwhatever the narrow schemata of the modernizing intellectual can-not assimilate.26

THE EPIC NOVEL

There is then an impasse in the adaptation of the novel form in theconfiguration of a literary form capable of making sense of the pecu-liar dynamics of Latin American modernity. This impasse did not

subside until the end of the 1940s.27 Not only the substitution of aes-thetic paradigms, but also the disenchantment with liberal imagina-tion and its aesthetic form, the bourgeois novel, accounted for thereinvention of the novel form in Latin America in the middle of thetwentieth century. The substitution of aesthetic referents coincidedwith the search for a charismatic renovation of Latin Americansocieties. Many writers saw this renovation as the realization of

its historical destiny. Following the ideas of Spengler, Keysserling,Vasconcelos, and others, a youthful Latin America saw this destinyas the replacement of a decaying Europe.28

Let us see how this renovation takes place in the novel, and let usbegin by paying some attention to the chronotope. The space-timeof the epic novel attempts to resolve the issue of abstraction in a



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different direction than does the bourgeois novel. In that attempt, theepic novel seeks to correct the design of a world that condemns a

particular region to marginality and belatedness. The chronotope ofthe epic novel dissolves the telos of progress that constitutes theuniversal measure of time instituted by a world system hegemo-nized by the West; by so doing it remaps this worlds imaginarygeography.

The epic novels deployment of space consists of dissolving thedichotomy of center and periphery. Each space appears in its ownsingularity. However, this singularity closely relates to a specifictime. Latin American culture already has its own codifications, andthe first is the one designed by Sarmiento. His dichotomy of civiliza-tion and barbarism is indeed a chronotope. It is a hierarchy of spacethat depends on its integration within a universal telos of progress.This hierarchy can only disappear when the new countries defeat

barbarism and enter the center at the same time. The Arielism ofthe turn of the century, deeply influenced by French pan-Latinism,

adds some complexity to this configuration of space-time.29 Moderntime is no longer uniform. There is a distinction between the authen-tic modernity of European (i.e., Latin) aesthetic culture and the per-verse modernity of American capitalism. Still, even in the formerconception there is a telos of progress, albeit one particular to thosecountries that remain faithful to the Latin spirit.

Nevertheless, the impact of Surrealism and the Avant-Garde will

redraw the logic of time and space in different terms. Surrealism andantimodern thought denounce Western civilization as false anddecrepit. This demands the emergence of a new logic of time andspace. In this context it is very important to note the discovery of theprimitive in art and ethnography and to attend to its peculiar logic oftime and space. Avant-Garde experimentation coincides with the dis-covery of the primitive and its valorization as a differentif not

more authenticWeltanschauung.30

The knowledge provided byethnography, anthropology, and religious studies puts at the disposalof writers and artists the logic behind the barbaric mind. It is not

by chance that the study of ancient Mayan religion and civilizationhad, for instance, a deep impact on the novelistic career of Miguelngel Asturias. By assimilating the inner logic of Mayan mentality,

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he could recast the novel form and make it more suitable to conveyhis experiences of the tension between the traditional and the

modern world. Something similar happened with Carpentier andAfro-Antillean religion.For the epic novel, to assimilate the logic of time and space of

Latin America entails both rejecting a view of a centrally hierar-chized system and dissolving the illusion of a linear and abstracttime. There is a false geography and false temporality to defeat. Thesolution is the construction of a chronotope that asserts the heteroge-neous and multilayered quality of Latin American space-time. Noone has better summarized the chronotope of the epic novel thanAnbal Quijano, a Peruvian philosopher. These are his words:

the relation between history and time is completely different than inEurope or the United States. In Latin America, what is a sequence is inother countries a simultaneity. It is also still a sequence. But in the firstplace, it is a simultaneity. What in Europe were stages of the history ofcapital, for example, here constitute both historical stages of and thepresent structural grounds for capital.. . . Time in this history is simul-taneity and sequence at the same time.

It is worthwhile to continue the quote:

It is a question of a different history of time, and of a t ime different fromhistory. This is what a lineal perspective and, worse, a unilineal per-

spective of history (such as the master narrative of the dominantversion of European-North American rationalism) cannot manage toincorporate into its own ways of producing a given reasoned mean-ing within its cognitive matrix. Although we are always made anxiousby the signs of its presence, we have not been able to completely defineor assume our own historical identity as a cognitive matrix becausewe have not successfully liberated ourselves from the control of thisrationalism.31

Here we do not have a space that is absorbed into time as in thetelos of progress or the myth of a universal time. Quite the contrary,we have a time that is spatialized and thus preserves its specificity.

The epic novel also modifies the narrative perspective. The factthat most of these novels use an omniscient narrator must not deceiveus. From a strictly formalist approach, this would put the epic



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novel closer to the realist tradition than its contemporary modernistexperiments that are characterized by an extreme subjectivism.

However, the function of the omniscient narrator in the epic novelis also completely different from its counterpart in realism. As notedbefore, realism institutes a rational authority that requires the de-tachment of an impersonal narrative perspective. The omniscience ofthe epic novel is, on the contrary, the expression of a charismaticauthority. It does not make recourse to scientific or rational knowl-edge but to something quite different. Most epic novels speak witha voice that, far from being abstract, is the embodiment of the charis-matic collective. In this way, the narrative perspective attempts tosuture the heterogeneity that is contained in the chronotope.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE EPIC NOVEL

At this point, it is important to look closely at the workings of the

epic novel by examining some concrete texts. The first is El reino deeste mundo, by Alejo Carpentier, in whose prologue he coined thefamous notion of the real-marvelous. As stated above, Carpentierscritique of Surrealism and his proposal to overcome it relied on hisontologization of the marvelous.32 Here the form of the epic novelis only partially deployed. Its chronotope clearly spatializes time, butits narrative perspective is still close to that of the bourgeois novels.

This is probably so because El reino is a parody of a historic novel, inwhich this form is deconstructed but still refuses to lead the way to anew, second form. The first chapter establishes a tension between theworld of the French colonizers and that of the young slave. Imbri-cated within the imagery of Enlightenment represented by cold,abstract prints of the king and his son, we have the vivid myths ofolder slaves. A conflict of spaces and times culminates with the

incorporation of the temporality of myth and its inescapable logic ofrepetition: the endless oscillation of oppression and emancipation.Nevertheless, a narrative distance that relies on historic evidence toauthorize its storytelling guides the text. The logic of the novelclearly questions the notion of historic time and recognizes thepower of myth as a source of hope and social change. However, itfaces a dilemma between the two time logics that it is unable to

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resolve in narrative termshence the famous last chapter, in whichthe narrator editorializes to assert the importance of myth while

distancing himself from the pessimistic connotations of the logic ofrepetition.The second novel worth examining is Hombres de maz (1949),

by Miguel ngel Asturias. It is a more complex, ambit ious, and her-metic work than El reino. In addition, it is an epic novel in a moresubstantial sense. It took Asturias more than twenty years to writethis work. He wrote several densely lyrical passages in the 1920s, butit was only in the 1940s that he came out with a structure to integratethat heterogeneous material. Asturiass study of Mayan religionand civilization, which he undertook in Paris in the twenties underGeorges Raynaud and Joseph-Louis Capitan, deeply influenced thearchitecture and style of the novel.33 At the same time, the atmos-phere and style of many passages clearly reveals the influence of Sur-realism. The space-time owes a good deal to myth logic in whichspace erases linear time. The irruption of the world of the ancestors

in sacred places disrupts the flow of historical time and instantiatesthe cyclical time of the charismatic community. However, it is thenarrative perspective that forms the more innovative aspect of thisnovel when compared with Carpentiers. In Hombres de maz, theomniscient narrator is a synthesis of all the possible registers. We findthe magical and the scientific. The latter, for instance, is the onethat organizes the passage in which the priest of San Miguel de

Acatn unsuccessfully tries to explain the mystery of the spell ofthe spiders. Nevertheless, the mythical register is clearly the one thatprevails. The final word is that of the curanderos. InHombres de maz,we encounter the narrative perspective characteristic of the epicnovel: the ultimate authority is not that of rational knowledge,

but the voice of collective memory, the incarnation of the ancientcharismatic community.

Another classic text of Latin American literature that is worthexamining under the light of the epic novel is Pedro Pramo (1954),by Juan Rulfo. By challenging realist verisimilitude, Rulfo structuresPedro Pramo around a chronotope that presents the dissolution oftime in space. Comala, a godforsaken village in the Jalisco lowlands,

becomes central. It is the sacred place where a memory capable ofconjuring up all possible times overcomes linear time. Although the



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texture of the novel is fragmented and has multiple perspectives, it ispossible to reconstruct the logic of its internal heterogeneity. In it, we

find again an anonymous narrator whose discourse allows for arestoration of the villages linearity. Similar to Hombres de maz, thiswork employs not the classical narrative authority of realism, buta charismatic authority instead. In this case, the story becomes com-prehensible when the individual hero, Juan Preciado, joins the dead,all victims of the abuses of the father he seeks to find. By a parodyof the quest of Telemachus, the individual here literally dissolves inan embrace of death. The quest of Juan Preciado becomes thus therecovery of the voice of collective memory.

In all the novels we have examined there is a visible paradox.Charismatic renovation supposes the possibility of communicatingwith a wide and heterogeneous readership through aesthetic experi-ence. Even leaving aside roadblocks like illiteracy, lack of literary cul-ture, or low reading habits, the very novelistic nature of these textsalone contradicts this desire for inclusion. They are not easy to read.

Hombres de maz is an extreme case; it not only requires intense con-centration but also asks that its readers be able to decipher its intri-cate references to pre-Columbian and classical cultures. To a lesserdegree, El reino de este mundo and Pedro Pramo are also difficult textsfull of erudite references. That reason alone suffices to highlight thenovelty of Cien aos de soledad, by the Colombian Gabriel GarcaMrquez. Cien aos de soledad is successful not only in reactualizing

the epic novel form, but in achieving for itself a charisma that noneof its predecessors reached. It is a carefully constructed text of narra-tive virtuosity that could not be possible without the assimilation ofmodernism, but it is also, surprisingly, what Roland Barthes wouldcall a readerly text. This novel thus achieves the transparency of theepic world, following the logic of Georg Lukcss The Theory of theNovel.

Cien aos de soledad is perhaps the most commented upon andworst understood book in the Latin American literary canon. Never-theless, the logic of its chronotope has been widely explained. It con-tinues the tradition of the former novels that restage the dynamic

between the center and periphery and dissolve linear time. PerhapsFranco Moretti has been the only critic perceptive enough to noticethat in this novel what appears as magic is not in the primitive but

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the modern. When modern time finally touches Macondo, it is just toshow the limits of rationalization, as modern Macondo is really a car-

icature of modernization. However, the appeal of the novel residesin its achievement of the epical ideal of self-evidence. Moretti alsonotices the virtual lack of irony in the texture ofCien aos. Despitethe intricate advancement of the plot, the novel appears to its readersas unproblematic. The clue is that Garca Mrquez has been success-ful in configuring the inner logic of orality within the confines of lit-erary language. For him, however, orality is not merely a problem ofstylizing oral dialect at the level of elocution. Actually, the novel iswritten in a literate idiom, expurgated of the localisms that aboundin other Latin American novels. The mechanisms of orality herefunction at the levels of invention and disposition, as the oral qualityis created mainly by anecdotal density and a narrative authoritygrounded in other narratives that the text deploys. This is preciselythe mechanism of common sense in a traditional community, wherethere is a density of shared experiences that have a narrative quality.

The mode of literary communication of this text requires an unques-tionable empathy, and so the main mechanism of literary authority inCien aos is built on epic empathy and clearly reveals a desire to go

back to the navet of the premodern world.Many readings stress the self-destructive character of the novel

and relate that to the cyclical logic of mythical time: by disavowingprogress it forecloses any possible redemption. This reading finds

support in the plot itself. We learn that the history of Macondo wasprophesied and recounted in Melquadess manuscripts. Still, aneven more careful look at the text reveals that the mechanism of nar-ration is subtler than this prophetic link. Melquades knows, to besure, the outcome of the Buenda saga, but the text of the novel is notof Melquades. Who then is the narrator? The narrative mechanismused here is one similar to that ofPedro Pramo in which an anony-

mous voice located in another plane tells the saga. Perhaps this voiceis located in a utopian future in which the story delivers its exem-plary character. Thus the ending explicitly states the meaning of thestory: porque las estirpes condenadas a cien aos de soledad notenan una segunda oportunidad sobre la tierra.34 It is a popularintersubjectivity speaking through collective memory.


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The editorial success of this novel and its formula has opened thepath to a plethora of emulations in Latin America and other Third

World countries. As the formula has been disseminated, however, ithas become indistinguishable from the tropes of exoticism. The criti-cal impulse of the epical novel has been exhausted, and this is notonly the exhaustion of an aesthetic paradigm but, in a sense, ofcharismatic nationalism as well. Magical Realism no longer illumi-nates the complex dynamics of temporality in Latin American soci-eties, but has become a self-evident imaginary construction thatdelivers entertainment and the aura of authenticity of primitiveworlds.

AN AESTHETICS OF PERIPHERAL MODERNITY

To conclude, let us recapitulate some of the intertwinings betweenthe political and the aesthetic in the epic novel. Roberto Gonzlez

Echevarra has rightfully shown that the most important differencebetween Surrealism and the aesthetics of the real-marvelous is thatthe latter presents itself as the ontology of Latin America. The real-marvelous is not confined to the space of representation but is a realquality of the referent. Thus it is understandable that the marvelousas an effective force requires a new form of realism.

To be sure, this ontologization of the marvelous has clearly irra-

tionalist overtones, which are the logical consequences of the linkbetween charismatic rationalism and European antimodern thought.The most evident element of this link is the notion of the incom-municability of cultures and civilizations as presented in Spenglersphilosophy of history. One possible reading of this tenet wouldpose Latin America and Europe as essentially different, a positionthat has both its benefits and its risks. On the one hand, such a claim

offers a condition of possibility for the regions heterogeneity andpaves the way toward a recognition of social groups excluded fromthe project of modernization. On the other hand, this position canleave us unarmed to criticize the irrationalities that have afflictedLatin American societies, such as authoritarianism, inequalities, andviolence.

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The real-marvelous dilutes itself into irrationalism when weare not able to transcend the limited rationality of modernization.

Consequently, it may be possible to develop more positive conclu-sions, which may give justice to the critical impulse of Latin Amer-icas dialogue with Surrealism and the Avant-Garde. Earlier, I noticedthat modernization in Latin America fails to eliminate some aspectsof its premodern societies and so fails to integrate into the time ofcapital; its cultural heterogeneity manifests itself even in the persis-tence of inhospitable times.35 However, the Eurocentric perspectivethat has dominated Latin Americas self-consciousness has tended to

dismiss this impasse as an instance of barbarism or irrationality.Anbal Quijano allows us to regard the real-marvelous and the

epic novel in a very different light. For him, it is neither nostalgianor exoticism, but the expression of a different experience of time:

In Latin America, the past runs through the present in a different waythan is pictured in the premodern European imaginary: not, that is, as

the nostalgia for a golden age that is, or was, the continent of innocence.Among ourselves, the past is, or can be, a personal experience of thepresent, not its nostalgic recovery. Our past is not lost innocence butintegrated wisdom, the unity of the tree of knowledge with the tree oflife, that which the past defends in us as the basis for an alternativerationality against the instrumental rationalism that dominates our pre-sent. Here, rationality is not a disenchantment with the world, butrather the intelligibility of its totality. The real is rational inasmuch as

rationality does not exclude its magic.36

From this enlarged rationality emerges an intersubjectivity thatis unthinkable in the dominating time logic of modernity. This inter-subjectivity is what the form of the epic novel foresees. Again, wemight be suspicious of this optimism as a case of regressive nostalgia.Nevertheless, Quijano finds a concrete social referent of this inter-

subjectivity:

In the very center of Latin American cit ies, the masses of the dominatedare building new social practices founded on reciprocity, on an assump-tion of equality, on collective solidarity, and at the same time on thefreedom of individual choice and on a democracy of collectively madedecisions, against all external impositions.37


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Wishful thinking? Maybe. Nevertheless, the recuperation of theprimitive performed by the epic novel allows us to regard diver-gent experiences of time as something other than irrational. Quite thecontrary: there is a living rationality in the popular subjectivities

behind some of the new social grassroots movements, such as theChristian communities inspired by Theology of Liberation. In themargins of modernity, we find effective remnants of a communica-tive rationality with future potential. The epic novel makes thisreality visible and understandable, and this constitutes its contribu-tion to contemporary culture.

Notes

All textual citations are translated from the original language by Ricardo Roque-Baldovinos.

1. The expression actually belongs to Carpentier, who in an interviewgiven to Elena Poniatowska uses this expression to describe the kind of novelis-

tics in which he is involved.2. Antnio Cndido, Literatura y subdesarrollo, inAmrica Latina en su

literatura, ed. Csar Fernndez Moreno (Mexico: Siglo XXI and UNESCO, 1972),33553.

3. See Francisco Zapata,Ideologa y poltica en Amrica Latina (Mexico: Cole-gio de Mxico, 1990).

4. I have borrowed the notion of charismatic community from Russell A.Bermans outstanding study, The Rise of the Modern German Novel (Cambridge:

Harvard University Press, 1989). He elaborates this notion from Max Webersdiscussion of charisma.5. Ibid., 50.6. Ibid., 51.7. Octavio Paz illustrates how the popular movement that animates the

Mexican Revolution, especially the one led by Emiliano Zapata in the south, isimpregnated by a model similar to that of the charismatic community. However,one must not forget that the significance of these movements remained obscure tothe intelligentsia. It is only after revisionist historical accounts that their character

has become more visible. See Claude Fell, Vuelta a El laberinto de la soledad (con-versacin con Octavio Paz), in Octavio Paz, Pasin Crtica, ed. Hugo Verani (Bar-celona: Seix Barral, 1990); his discussion of the Zapatista revolt is in pages 11317.

8. Octavio Paz corroborates the impact ofRevista de Occidente in LatinAmerican cultural elites: leamos mucho las publicaciones de la Revista de Occi-dente que diriga Ortega y Gasset y as mi generacin comenz a familiarizarsecon la filosofa alemana moderna, la fenomenologa de Husserl y sus sucesores y

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discpulos [We read a lot of the publications of Revista de Occidente, the journalthat Ortega y Gasset directed. By so doing, my generation began to familiarizeitself with German modern philosophy, Husserls phenomenology, and their suc-

cesors and disciples] (Rita Guibert, Octavio Paz, interview, ibid., 80).9. For an account about the cultural climate of those Latin American

authors who were in dialogue with the aesthetic Avant-Garde, see RobertoGonzlez Echevarra, Alejo Carpentier, the Pilgrim at Home (Austin: University ofTexas Press, 1990), especially the second chapter, Lord, Praised Be Thou, 3495.

10. The translation of this work, commissioned to the philosopher ManuelGarca Morente, appeared in 1923 in the series Biblioteca de Ideas del siglo XX,from the publishing house of Revista de Occidente. It had a foreword by Jos

Ortega y Gasset himself.11. Some would contend this by citing the adventure of some of the Surre-alists within the French Communist Party (PCF). Nevertheless, this was more theresult of the activism of individual artists than an organized attempt to relate aes-thetics and politics. At the end, this experience proved disastrous. Surrealismremained a movement of cultural contestation that could not be translated intoviable political formulas. See Helena Lewis, The Politics of Surrealism (New York:Paragon House, 1988); and Martin Jay, Marxism and Totality (Berkeley and LosAngeles: University of California Press, 1984), especially the chapter Henri Lefeb-

vre, the Surrealists, and the Reception of Hegelian Marxism in France, 27699.12. Among the most promminent Latin American writers are Arturo Uslar

Pietri, from Venezuela; Csar Vallejo, from Peru; Luis Cardoza y Aragn, fromGuatemala; Pablo Neruda, from Chile; and Octavio Paz, from Mexico.

13. For Asturias, see Jean Cassou, Asturias en Pars: Un descubrimientorecproco; Georges Pillement, El Pars que Asturias ha visto y vivido; PaulettePatout, La cultura latinoamericana en Pars entre 1910 y 1936; and Marc Chey-mol, Miguel ngel Asturias entre latinidad e indigenismo: Los viajes de Prensa

latina y los seminarios de cultura maya en la Sorbona, all in Miguel ngelAsturias, Paris 19241933: Periodismo y creacin literaria, ed. Amos Segala (Madrid:Coleccin Archivos, 1988). For Carpentier, see Roberto Gonzlez Echevarra,AlejoCarpentier, the Pilgrim at Home (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990).

14. Asturias wrote for El Imparcial; Carpentier for Carteles and El social.15. Jos Luis Lpez lvarez, Conversaciones con Miguel ngel Asturias

(Madrid: Magisterio Espaol, 1974), 80.16. Ibid., 81.17. El Nacional de Caracas, 16 September 1945, quoted in Alejo Carpentier,

Entrevistas, ed. Virgilio Lpez Lemus (Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1985),1921.

18. Ibid., 19.19. Interview with Radio Tlvision Franaise, quoted in Entrevistas, 92.20. Visin de Amrica: El ltimo buscador de El Dorado, in Alejo

Carpentier, Crnicas 1: Arte, literatura, poltica, vol. 8 of his complete works(Mexico: Siglo XXI Editores, 1985).

8

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21. Ibid., 199200.22. I rely on Paul Ricoeurs conception of threefold mimesis as exposed in

the first volume of Time and Narrative. He regards mimesis not as just an inert

copy of reality, but as an act ive process of prefiguration, configuration, and trans-figuration. I believe this view helps to overcome the terms of the dated dispute

betweeen realism and modernism in Marxist literary criticism. See Paul Ricoeur,Time and Narrative, vol. 1 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1983).

23. See Daro Villanueva, Theories of Literary Realism (Albany: SUNY Press,1997); and Lilian R. Furst, All Is True: The Claims and Strategies of Realist Fiction(Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1995).

24. Berman, The Rise of the Modern German Novel, 7475.

25. See Caryl Emerson and Gary Saul Morson,Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of aProsaics (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1990).26. To this inadequacy of the means of literary representation must be

added the militant character of many of the novels. Their allegoric form can alsobe explained because in many cases they are not only aesthetic objects of con-templation but also political manifestos.

27. We can find a brilliant manifestation of the Latin American chronotopein Sergei Eisensteins incomplete film Que viva Mxico! Apparently he discussedsome of his ideas about Mexicos experience of time and space with some of the

Mexican artists and intellectuals he met. One could argue that this chronotope isalready present in Mexican muralism, especially in the work of Diego Rivera.This issue exceeds the scope of this essay. See Inga Karetnikova,Mexico accordingto Eisenstein (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1991).

28. See Jos Vasconcelos and his ideas about the cosmic race in his La razacsmica: Misin de la raza iberoamericana (Madrid: Aguilar, 1966).

29. For an exposition of pan-Latinist ideology and its impact in Latin Amer-ica, see John L. Phelan, Pan-Latinism, French Intervention in Mexico (1861

1867), and the Genesis of the Idea of Latin America, in Juan A. Ortega y Medina,ed., Conciencia y autenticidad histricas: Escritos en homenaje a Edmundo OGorman(Mexico: UNAM, 1968).

30. See James Clifford, On Ethnographic Surrealism, in The Predicament ofCulture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988).

31. Anbal Quijano, Modernity, Identity, and Utopia in Latin America, inThe Postmodernism Debate in Latin America, ed. John Beverley et al. (Durham, N.C.:Duke University Press, 1995), 21011.

32. See Gonzlez Echevarra,Alejo Carpentier.33. See Asturias, Pars 19241932.34. Gabriel Garca Mrquez, Cien aos de soledad (Madrid: Ctedra, 1999), 559.35. This feature of belated and peripheral societies has been explained by

German philosopher Ernst Bloch in his concept of nonsynchronism. See ErnstBloch, Non-synchronism and Dialectics, New German Critique 11 (spring 1977).

36. Quijano, Modernity, Identity, and Utopia in Latin America, 212.37. Ibid., 214.

Documents

The epic Novel in Latin America