ESFERAS Issue 13 Spring 2022
Espacios / Instituciones / Gente Spaces / Institutions / People
The Undergraduate Journal of the NYU Department of Spanish and Portuguese New York, New York
COVER PHOTOGRAPH: Sam Cordell The images presented on the cover and interspersed throughout this issue highlight the architectural style of sections of NYUâs King Juan Carlos I Center. Forms reminiscent of the 20th Century International Style are paired with classic late-19th Century New York City architecture, a style which already invokes countless historical forms reformed to fit in a dense urban environment. Pictured are a selection of my favorite vantage points of the Center; some highlight common views seen by users of building and others abstract the space.
ESFERAS-ISSUE THIRTEEN * SPRING 2022 wp.nyu.edu/esferas/
SUBMIT TO esferas.submissions@gmail.com MANAGING EDITOR Lourdes DĂĄvila INTRODUCTION TO THE DOSSIER Sophie Slade with Lourdes DĂĄvila ASSISTANT Peter Stewart EDITORIAL TEAM Haitiana Munah Angerville, Elizabeth Baltusnik, Gabriela Barzallo, Britney Lizbeth Quiroz Rosales, Andrea Rodas, FĂ©lix Romier, Elliott Sarno, Sophie Slade, Ingrid Eileen Trost, Spencer Tsao LAYOUT AND DESIGN Sam Cordell with the Esferas Editorial team COVER DESIGN Sam Cordell
COPYRIGHT © 2022 ESFERAS & NEW YORK UNIVERSITYâS DEPARTMENT OF SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE ISBN 978-1-944398-16-3 RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS ALL RIGHTS REVERT TO THE ORIGINAL CONTENT CREATORS UPON PUBLICATION. THE EDITORS WILL FORWARD ANY RIGHTS AND PERMISSIONS CORRESPONDENCE TO THE AUTHORS.
ESFERAS is a student and alumni initiative within New York Universityâs Department of Spanish and Portuguese. We are a peer reviewed publication that publishes critical essays, visual art, creative writing, interviews, translations, and works related to Hispanic and Luso life within and beyond New York City. ESFERAS, âsphereâ in both Spanish and Portuguese, is a fusion of compelling images, distinctive voices, and multidisciplinary views. It is the ever-changing shape and infinite flow of our creative and intellectual pursuits.
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Esferas 13-Spring 2022 IntroducciĂłn/Introduction
Sophie Slade with Lourdes DĂĄvila
7
Jordana Mendelson
16
Remarks of Dr. John Brademas
John Brademas
24
John Brademasâ Tears
James D. FernĂĄndez
30
53 Washington Square South: 1890 to Today
Elizabeth Baltusnik
37
Instituciones, archivos y gente: el archivo de la Brigada Abraham Lincoln
Sophie Slade
45
A Semester in the Center
Francesc Torres
52
Anticipating the Shift of the KJCC Archival Materials to NYU Special Collections
Rachel Moorman-Minton
66
Pulling Focus: Reconsidering the Photographic Archive in Southern Peru
Christine Mladic Janney
74
Desarmar narrativas: archivos y museos. Una experiencia en clase.
Ana Leonor Romero
86
RestauraciĂłn (la autenticidad del material)
Jorge Ribalta
90
Articulation, with the King Juan Carlos Center: A Reflection on the 25th Anniversary of the KJCC.
Jill Lane
102
Blood Flow Between Cultures: Quechua Chants in Greenwich Village. The Acoustic Resonance of the KJCC
Odi Gonzales
106
Dossier Institutions, Archives, and People: KJCC@ 25
Mujukunata Tarpuspa, Planting the Seeds: Student Perspectives on Runasimi at KJCC El papel del hispanismo y la diplomacia en los centros culturales universitarios
117 Zaskia Torres
121
KJCC: An Interdisciplinary Approach
Pedro Cardim
124
Johmmiry Almonte
128
Mary L. Pratt
132
Ingrid Trost
135
Thomas Zenteno
141
Trascendiendo disciplinas: la perspectiva del artista en la Academia
MarĂa JosĂ© Urrutia
143
Paisaje interior, con fondo de King Juan Carlos Center
Vicente SĂĄnchez Biosca
146
Juan José Lahuerta
153
Cristina Pato
162
Nicole Bula
163
Montse Armengou MartĂn
168
Jo Labanyi
176
Zaskia Torres
179
A Very Very Personal Account of Catalan Culture at NYU
Mary Ann Newman
185
Una reflexiĂł sobre la meva estada al KJCC/ A Reflection on My Stay at the KJCC
Josep M. Muñoz Mary Ann Newman
194
Diplomacia, inclusiĂłn y Cuba: la directora Ana Dopico en el KJCC
Devon Vazquez Forester
200
Take a Seat Transdiciplinary Spaces: In Praise of the Potluck Interdisciplinarity and the Cultural Center ÂżCuĂĄl es la necesidad de crear el KJCC en NYU?
Hojas de los cuadernos de Nueva York Punto y aparte Cambios de responsabilidad e influencia El documental com a eina de reparaciĂł/El documental como herramienta de reparaciĂłn Two Views of the KJCC An Interview with James Dunkerley
Centros culturales contemporĂĄneos y el desmontaje de la jerarquĂa naturalizada
Rachel Moorman-Minton
206
CĂłmo revitalizar una instituciĂłn cultural bicentenaria. Entrevista con Luis Arroyo, nuevo presidente del Ateneo de Madrid
Miguel Caballero VĂĄzquez
209
âOrientalismâ in the Alhambra. Examining Western Perceptions of the Alhambra and the Fountain in the Court of Lions
Maya Mau
217
Cultural Power and Memorial Art: Kiluanji Kia Hendaâs âPlantation - Prosperity and Nightmareâ
Yagmur Akyurek
225
Pequeños motivos y bellezas renegridas: The Museum of the Old Colony de Pablo Delano End of Dossier
Nelson Rivera
228
Creative Writing and Investigation Loisada/La orquesta de la ciudad/La especie invasiva
David Rosales
244
Queer Excesses of Professional Wrestling
Hazel Bolivar
247
Nevvie
j.d.
256
En la esquina
Lourdes DĂĄvila
263
Bam-bo-le-an-te/La hija naturaleza/Por ti/La hora
Haitiana Munah Angerville
266
Senior Honors Theses
270
Biographies
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espacios, instituciones, gente spaces, institutions, people i n t r o d u c t i o n Sophie Slade with Lourdes DĂĄvila Esferas 13: espacios, instituciones, gente celebrates the 25th Anniversary of the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center (KJCC, or the center) here at New York University. A partner institution to the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Creative Writing in Spanish Program, as well as the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) among other programs, the KJCCâs original mission was to promote interdisciplinary research and dialogue about Spain and the Spanish-speaking world and to share this process of knowledge making with communities within and beyond the university. The Esferas editorial committee enters this celebration with a full belief that a cultural center must be a constantly evolving organism made of its spaces, its leadership, its events and its archives. Its people. We enter knowingly into a complex dialogue that includes questions such as: What lies behind a name? What lives within a space? What are the tensions with which the center works? How do we contribute responsibly and ethically to its history and its changes? We take this moment strategically as an opportunity to understand, reflect on and question KJCCâs history and evolution, to listen to the voices of scholars, artists and leaders in conversation with our undergraduate community of scholars and to lay claim to the centerâs potential for future development. Founded by John Brademas in 1997âNYUâs 13th Presidentâas a result of his enthusiastic passion for Iberian studies and culture, the KJCC is an institution with a rich history and all-embracing legacy. Today, it is a shared space for students, faculty, and the broader public; it engages in conversations about the history, politics, cultures and languages across all geographies worldwide where the Iberian peninsula has had a marked presence. The KJCCâs partnerships and relationships reach local and international levels and have supported initiatives such as the Latinx Project and Sulo: the Philippine Studies Initiative. Programming has included seminars, lectures, film series, art exhibitions, musical performances and publications that were 7
sponsored by numerous campus entities as well as cultural institutions in greater New York, the United States, and abroad. Especially relevant to this dossier is defining KJCCâs two honorary chair positions: the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Chair in Spanish Culture and Civilization, established in 1985, and the AndrĂ©s Bello Chair in Latin American Cultures and Civilizations, established in 2002. Under these titles combined, over 50 individuals have been invited as prestigious visitors to bring their expertise into dialogue with other communities. As current director Jordana Mendelson writes in the introduction to the dossier: âTogether, these two chairs have served to build a dynamic, intellectually rigorous, and ever-changing array of courses, programs, and experiences at the KJCC by bringing together the most exciting scholars (including artists, journalists, writers performers, filmmakers, and many others) with members of the NYU community and the larger public.â These collaborative relationshipsâgiven space and support by the KJCC within a university environmentâreveal the very core of the centerâs goals. The center was established and has been directed by individuals who place an immense value on bringing a range of disciplines, practices, and perspectives unto its multidisciplinary stage and who have not shied away from difficult conversations. The story of the King Juan Carlos I Center is not without contention. As Jordana Mendelson articulates in her introduction to this issueâs dossier on the KJCC, âToday, it might seem out-of-synch for a university to name a cultural center after any monarch, and Spainâs relationship to its monarchs has shifted over time in ways that echo the evolution of both national and international ideas about governance, power, and representation.â The decision to name the KJCC after the Spanish king traces back to John Brademas, NYUâs President Emeritus from 1981 to 1992, whose longstanding dedication to the study of Spain and Latin America transformed New York University into a more globalized university, establishing networks involving many Spanish institutions including the government. Brademas chose to name the center after him because of King Juan Carlos Iâs profound role in Spainâs period of democratization and actions which largely defined the post-Franco era. Acknowledging the motivations behind the centerâs name is paramount to understanding the criticism of the symbolic weight the centerâs name bears, as well as to celebrating its longstanding legacy of scholarship, community, and cultural relations. To memorialize the KJCC is to understand its historyâin totalityâand frame its creation, intentions, and practices in discussion with younger generations whose hesitancy to celebrate its name and the meaning behind it reveals a fundamental and necessary critique of the politics of power and the legacy of colonialism. Without such a critically informed narrative, history is left with its gaps. Thankfully, our host of essays, creative writings, and personal reflections diligently seek to fill these gaps and paint a more 8
complete picture of the KJCC and its tremendous impact at NYU over the past twenty-five years. Working through these nuances sparked even further debate among our editorial committee about what we wanted this issue to present and represent. How could we position the KJCC in the middle of an academic, peer-reviewed journal in a way that celebrates the anniversary of its foundation and its many accomplishments yet brings to light its complicated history? We offer several answers. The dossier is arranged as a conversation, a call and response among directors, chairs, artists, critics and student scholars. Within this conversation, as ex-director Jim FernĂĄndez states in conversation with us, it is important to realize that the center and its leadership have had almost complete autonomy and independence over their programming and that each leader and chair has had the potential to leave their own mark, enact their own interventions, bring to light different histories. A look at the directors thus farâJim FernĂĄndez, Jo Labanyi, Ana Dopico and Jordana Mendelsonâreveals differences in objectives, scholarship and working styles; these differences speak to the ability each director has to shape the direction of the center beyond its name. In many of the reflections in the dossier, the weight of this âfreedomâ looms large and managed to leave a mark on the chairs, as Cristina Pato tells us in âPunto y aparte:â it was essential to consider, she says, what it means to inhabit a discipline in which you constantly have to listen, renew, adapt, collaborate, innovate. In her case, as she considered the relationship between art and social responsibility, Cristina realized that: âEsa pausa obligada en el calendario me hizo entender que quizĂĄ mi futuro ya no estaba en el centro de la disciplina, sino en la intersecciĂłn que se crea entre la mĂșsica y la sociedad.â Or, as documentarian Montse Armengou MartĂn states in âEl documental com a eina de reparaciĂłâ (El documental como herramienta de reparaciĂłn), her leadership included the need to set straight the history of the transition to democracy in Spain after Franco: âNo, la transiciĂłn española no habĂa sido ni ejemplar ni modĂ©lica. Se habĂa convenido venderlo asĂ y muchos paĂses âEstados Unidos el primeroâ colaboraron para crear esta imagen, poniendo por encima sus intereses econĂłmicos y los equilibrios geoestratĂ©gicos en detrimento de los derechos mĂĄs fundamentales de las vĂctimas: verdad, justicia y reparaciĂłn.â Her words intend to show, specifically, NYUâs commitment to truth and justice as she led the semester-long seminar âDocumentary and the Recovery of Historical Memory,â where she did not shy away from her profession as a journalist who understands her craft as a form of intervention in the world to make it âun poco mĂĄs justo y solidario.â This kind of intervention can also be seen in the exhibits on the walls of the center, like in Pablo Delanoâs Museum of the Old Colony of 2017, set under the directorship of professor Ana Dopico, and masterfully analyzed for us here by critic Nelson Rivera. Rivera tells us: En vez de retratar y denunciar al colonizador, el artista se silencia y le cede la palabra al imperialista, para que Ă©ste manifieste su racismo, su sexismo y misoginia, en toda su 9
ostentosa arrogancia. Delano se apropia de las fotografĂas tomadas en Puerto Rico por estadounidenses a principios del siglo veinte y las coloca en su âmuseoâ, para revelar la mentalidad del colonizador tal cual Ă©ste la define. We do not aim to provide a unified ideology but rather to bring together voices that are at times in complete opposition to one another. In a world where polarization has impaired our ability to come together and think about different perspectives, we believe that our issue offered a platform for conversation and in so doing we followed one of the centerâs highest objectives. We decided that this issue would be a collection of writings that uncover the intricate, urgent ways in which we as individuals interact with institutions that are ubiquitous to our daily life, and not solely dedicated to the anniversary of the KJCC. Instead, this issue presents a much more comprehensive body of work that reveals the crucial intersection of institutional narratives, archival collections, and the broad scholarship of individuals who toy with more abstract themes such as power politics, knowledge production, meaning-making, information, historical memory, decolonization, interdisciplinarity, and all that goes into recording history. In this vein, we include anthropologist Christine Mladic Janneyâs entry into archival theory through Peruvian photographic archives and Argentine historian Ana Leonor Romeroâs look at working with memory archives in Argentina. How to celebrate the KJCC was not the only concern looming overhead as we dove into this issue. We were also apprehensive about how to represent all voices, just as the KJCC has sought to achieve in its recent years by expanding its focus outside of Spain and Spanish-speaking communities. Professor Odi Gonzales, in his essay âBlood Flow Between Cultures: Quechua Chants in Greenwich Village and the Acoustic Resonance of KJCC,â expounds upon the connection between the KJCC and its outreach to the Quechua-speaking community. He speaks of the Runasimi Outreach Community, a student-led initiative here at NYU based out of CLACS that invites enrolled students and the greater public to share in celebrating and preserving the Quechua language and culture. Professor Gonzales was also pivotal in collaborating with two doctoral students at NYU to publish the first academic Quechua dictionary in the United States, presented at the KJCC in 2018. His work has enriched the meaning of cultural outreach at the KJCC, one of its three primary missions and enriches our journal by offering an engaging discussion of the diversity within what many have assumed to be the mostly Spanish-speaking space. We are also proud to introduce Josep M. Muñozâs âA Reflection on My Stay at the KJCC,â which recalls his visit in Autumn of 2016 as the invited KJC Chair in Catalan, with a side-by-side translation by Mary Ann Newman. Mary Ann Newman also provides her own detailed account of bringing linguistic exchange to the forefront of cultural centers in âA Very 10
Very Personal Account of Catalan Culture at NYU.â She discusses how the KJCCâs dedication to cultural diversity and its collaboration with foreign institutions brought forth the Catalan Studies Program (1983-1986), and eventually the Catalan Center (2007-2011). Although more contributions from past KJC Chairs are included than AndrĂ©s Bello Chairs, whose position is granted to scholars and professionals with connections to Latin America or Latin American studies, writings such as those by Odi Gonzales and Josep M. Muñoz are evidence that communities and cultures are forever intertwined and that today it is inherently wrong to generalize the Spanish-speaking community. The vibrant compilation of writings in this issue aims to demonstrate that inclusivity acts as a home, similar to the KJCC, for all those who seek to find in it a sense of belonging or who understand that a space is there to be inhabited and transformed. In this manner, it is our responsibility to recognize our own place in presenting narratives outside of our own, and we did not take this task lightly. That is why this issue is unique because, although a scholarly journal, this project seeks to decenter the hegemony of academia and that of the expert in matters that concern all individuals; matters of institutional power, of archival narratives, of cultural exchange. As editors, we often cannot escape the inevitable power of decision when it comes to which submissions to publish and which to leave out, and here this publication proved no different. However, the way in which this issueâs theme is deconstructed layer by layer within our pages, reveals something very special. We included works from scholars and students alike, placed academics and artists in conversation with each other, and laid bare important debates regarding the role of representation and inclusion in modern institutions. What will you find in this issue? An elaborate web of individual accounts, some from those who have passed through the spaces of the KJCC and have even held various positions of leadership and others who have not, but all of whom define what it is to live in a world dominated and supported by institutions. First in the anniversary dossier you will have the chance to read very personal letters by KJCCâs founding members that demystify the centerâs establishment and conflicting legacy. You will encounter submissions by past chairs and directors of the KJCC who offer eloquent commentaries of their stay at NYU, what they contributed to the center, and conversely, what the center offered them in return. You will be invited to engage with student submissions who analyze not only aspects of the center, such as its architecture or collaborations with other cultural institutions, but also the dynamics of colonization, cultural diplomacy, archival collections, and interdisciplinarity in academia. You will be privy to personal interviews with past chairs as students grapple with the meaning of knowledge-making at the center. In all, you will find that all contributions critically engage with a myriad of important and timely themes and offer unique anecdotes fitting for the celebration of twenty-five years of the 11
KJCC. This issue boasts a number of scholarly essays by NYU students, many of whom were participants in Jordana Mendelsonâs Fall 2021 seminar âInstitutions, Archives, and People.â Students were encouraged to broach conversations critically not only about the KJCC and its founding but to investigate questions of institutions, education, and power. They were also introduced to the concept of the archive; how it can be a noun and a verb; how an archive can recount the past and yet be a process relative to the present; and how individuals act as constant interlocutors with archives of information. In an effort to augment the KJCCâs own archive, most of which is stored in NYUâs University Archives in Tamiment Library, students were tasked with taking on a final project that could explore any aspect of the KJCC, its mission and its history. Johmmiry Almonte in her essay âTake a Seatâ questions enduring biases and hierarchies within colonized spaces, and encourages us to remain skeptical of how we treat others and act in colonized institutions such as the university. The repetition of the word âquestioningâ in her essay allows her to address and reprove societal positions in the academic sphere and spaces of culture. Through it, she is welcoming the collective dismantling of the persistence of the foundations of colonization in present day environments. MarĂa JĂłse Urrutia launches an investigation, in her essay âTrascendiendo disciplinas: la perspectiva del artista en la Academiaâ, into the role of the artist within academic centers and finds a coincidence between the artist and the scholar: both are driven by the impulse and the duty to envision, design and create. She debates the nature of both the artist and the academic and asks what either can achieve in the environment of the other while considering the pedagogical value that lies in the collaboration among disciplines. In this vein, our issue houses important contributions by world known artists and thinkers in their field, such as Jorge Ribalta, Francesc Torres, Cristina Pato, Joseph Muñoz and Montse Armengou MartĂn. In âAn Interview with James Dunkerley,â Zaskia Torres goes beyond questions of the construction of knowledge to investigate more explicit relationships between institutions, looking specifically at cultural diplomacy as an instrument within international relations. She interviews a former AndrĂ©s Bello Chair who expounds upon his experience at the KJCC and how the center has the important role of liaison between larger, more powerful institutions. As this issue goes beyond the recognition of the KJCC and its widely felt legacy, we have included submissions from scholars who in one way or another have worked with or at the center and can offer a nuanced perspective of the position of the KJCC in academia. Mary Louise Pratt, in her piece âTransdisciplinary Spaces: In Praise of the Potluck,â addresses the name of the institution that housed her retirement fete when as a scholar she was devoted to the critique of imperialism and the decolonization of knowledge. She looks at the KJCC within the history of 12
the development of area studies and underscores the advantages of transdisciplinary intellectual spaces. In âArticulation, with the KJCC,â Jill Lane illustrates the fundamental importance of space as tied to institutions, and sheds light on their potential to both educate and decolonize histories of power and imperialism. Yagmur Akyurek emphasizes the role of memorialization versus celebration, apropos for an issue centered on institutions, archives, and individual narratives, in her piece âCultural Power and Memorial Art: Kiluanji Kia Hendaâs âPlantation Prosperity and Nightmareââ that delves into Portuguese legacies of colonization and enslavement. We have surrounded the story of the KJCC with the broad work of students and scholars alike whose contributions include short stories by j.d. and Lourdes DĂĄvila, the sensory poems that traverse the rhythms of an urban New York City by David Rosales or the sounds and bodies of Haitiana Munha Angerville, as well as a comparative analysis of masculinity and queerness in professional wrestling by Hazel Bolivar. And as usual, we are proud to present this yearâs honor students, whose innovative work runs the gamut of research and creation, including the first ever film script, by Deborah Maria Schonack, who sets her narrative film in the midst of the Shining Path conflict in Peru. Just as the KJCC pushes the envelop and eliminates barriers, students in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese move toward new forms of scholarship and expression. This issue of Esferas allows us to think positively about all of those changes. We hope that as you navigate this special issue you discover this intricate web of voices, tied together by their diverse narratives of spaces, institutions, people. As we ourselves are a group of students within a university setting, it can be difficult to avoid our own discursive, framing power, but it is important to recognize that with this issue we are participating in our own archival practice. Thus, it is our responsibility as an editorial team to do right by those students, professors, artists, directors, chairs, and authors who have entrusted us with their stories by empowering them with a platform. What follows is the proud result of a semesterâs worth of dialogue and collaboration in an effort to bring to you these exceptional stories. Esferas 13, espacios, instituciones, gente is brought to you by Lourdes DĂĄvila, its tireless leader, Jordana Mendelson, current director of the KJCC and the entire student editorial team.
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Espacios / Instituciones / Gente Spaces / Institutions / People
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Institutions, Archives, and People: KJCC @ 25
Jordana Mendelson On April 9, 2022 we celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center (KJCC) at NYU. It is an opportunity to revisit the origins and history of one of NYUâs first cultural centers, which was the culmination of an early and enthusiastic embrace of the study of Spain and the Spanish-speaking world at NYU. In 1958, NYU collaborated with the Universidad Complutense de Madrid to create the first study abroad program between a North American university and Spain, at a time when Spain was still under the rule of the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco. Almost forty years later the KJCC was founded in 1997, a process which was initiated by John Brademas, NYUâs 13th President, nearly fifteen years before. The building in which the Center is located was inaugurated at the same time as the Centerâs founding, yet this same building not only houses the KJCC, it is also the home of the History Department, the Center for the Study of Africa and the African Diaspora, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies, the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, and the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies. The relation between Center and Building, one entity and many, the history and origins of a Center and its over twenty-five years of programs, bring with it a rich tapestry that layers and intersects individual, collective, and institutional histories. Together Center and Building connect so many narratives, and they provide an opportunity for productive thinking about the interlocking of space and symbol, home and abroad, history and futurity, and commemoration and critique. Starting at the beginning helps untangle some of the historical through lines that have marked the Centerâs origin and evolution. John Brademas had a longstanding interest in Spain, which he recounted numerous times in public lectures and comments about his commitment to the study of Spain and Latin America at NYU (his experiences included learning Spanish early on as a student, visiting Spain as a congressman, and writing his doctoral thesis about the anarchosyndicalist movement in Catalonia). In many of his public tributes to the Centerâs history and founding, he explained the rationale for the Center and its name: âNew York University has established this center for the study of Spain and the Spanish-speaking world in honor of His Majesty King Juan Carlos I of Spain, a courageous champion of democracy in Spain and a noble 16
advocate of education in the service of peace.â1 In 1983, a gift from Mr. and Mrs. Milton Petrie established the King Juan Carlos I Chair in Spanish Culture and Civilization. In celebration of the creation of the Chair, NYU bestowed on the King a doctorate honoris causa.2 In 2002, the AndrĂ©s Bello Chair in Latin American Cultures and Civilizations was established. Together these two Chairs have served to build a dynamic, intellectually rigorous, and ever-changing array of courses, programs, and experiences at the KJCC by bringing together the most exciting scholars (including artists, journalists, writers, performers, filmmakers, and many others) with members of the NYU community and the larger public. Today, it might seem out-of-synch for a university to name a cultural center after any monarch, and Spainâs relationship to its monarchs has shifted over time in ways that echo the evolution of both national and international ideas about governance, power, and representation. Indeed, even at the time of its founding, NYUâs decision to name a center dedicated to Spain and Latin America after a single individual who holds so much symbolic weight was not without criticism, at the very least because the breadth of what the Center hoped to achieve in terms of its academic, cultural and outreach mission was never meant to be limited or exclusive in scope or impact. It is impossible to understand the connection between NYU and King Juan Carlos I of Spain without tracing back to John Brademas the evolution within NYU from a more locally focused campus to one that has come to be defined, in large part, by its Global Network of campuses, portals, and research institutes. As Josep Muñoz so perceptively reminds us in his reflection on his time as King Juan Carlos I Chair in Autumn 2016: âwhen I lowered my gaze to Washington Square, I immediately understood the deep meaning of my stay at the King Juan Carlos Center, founded by the good officesâand fueled, no doubt by the âpeople skillsââof John Brademas (who had passed away the same summer of 2016).â Understanding the motivations and rationale for the Centerâs name twenty-five years ago requires us to consider that for Brademas, and for many others, the Kingâs role in Spainâs transition to Democracy was paramount. Walther Bernecker explains: âDue to his leading role in the transition to democracy, the monarch won the support of many who had stood in opposition to Franco, including the Republicans and even the Communist Party. The approval of the overwhelming majority for the constitution in 1978 meant simultaneous approval for the
1. Annual Report (1996-1998), King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, NYU. All of the KJCCâs annual activity reports are availabe on the KJCC website: https://www.kjcc.org/about/ 2. https://www.kjcc.org/chairs/
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parliamentary monarchy, which was legitimated democratically along with it.â3 The King gained widespread praise again in 1981, when his televised support of the rule of law in the face of the attempted coup of February 23 in the Congress of Deputies was seen across the globe as further evidence of the Kingâs active role in supporting democracy in Spain. Yet, as Javier MorenoLuzĂłn has explained, a monarch who had once been âthe symbol of the Spanish nation that was least frequently challenged,â has over time shifted in Spain, in part âdue to the strengthening of nationalist sectors who combat the monarch simply as a symbol of the Spanish state,â but also because of changes in the mediaâs treatment of the monarchy and âmany errors in terms of their image and their own behavior.â4 In short, over the twenty-five years since the Centerâs founding, many things have changed not only in terms of the symbolic weight of past symbols but also because of changing expectations with regard to how culture, history, and national stories intersect with the questions we ask about institutions and power in the twenty-first century. When we think about commemorations, recounting the past, organizing an archive, and reviewing what we know and how we know it, the tendency may be to feel that these stories are written outside of ourselves and that we play no part in how histories are written or how they are retold. Often, especially within university settings, we may feel that the classrooms, departments, and institutions we inhabit are already built and defined in ways that are immovable, intractable, and impervious to our own positions, ideas, and opinions. And, yet, within the practices that we partake in and the scholarship that we study, we have learned through the example of philosophers, writers, and artists that institutional critique is a practice that has also become enshrined within museums and academies as an expected practice that engages dialogue between the past and the present as a necessary model for studying, dismantling, and building knowledge. In his essay âWe are the Information and its Record,â artist Kenneth Pietrobono captures this duality: âAs simultaneous receivers and producers of culture, we embody a history but are also part of determining what that history is. The institution can assume the role as cultural organizer but not without the troubling question of âhistory according to whom?â and which âweâ is in fact given voice.â5 It is with the idea of recording the history of the Center, while also engaging
3. Walther L. Bernecker, âMonarchy and Democracy: The Political Role of King Juan Carlos in the Spanish TransiciĂłn,â Journal of Contemporary History, 33:1 (Jan. 1998), 79. For a fascinating account of the Communist support of national reconciliation, see the interview with King Juan Carlos Chair Antonio Muñoz Molina: https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-9IJr8eYdU&t=1s 4. Javier Moreno-LuzĂłn, âThe King of All Spaniards? Monarchy and Nation,â Metaphors of Spain: Representations of Spanish National Identity in the Twentieth Century (Berghan Books, 2017), 103. 5. Kenneth Pietrobono, âWe are the Information and its Record,â Performance Research. A Journal of the Performing Arts, 20:4 (2015), 26.
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with its history in ways that are as varied as the voices collected in this issue, that we underline the need to recognize the different positions from which the history of any center or institution is told (and retold). We hold with as much consideration a primary source document reprinted from the KJCC archive as we do a student essay written just a few months ago. Both of these records (and the many that occupy positions between these poles) show us fundamentally the power of universities and their administrators to build institutions (as James FernĂĄndez, Director, KJCC, 1997-2012, eloquently writes about in his essay âJohn Brademasâ Tearsâ) and manage the dual roles of scholar and director (as Jo Labanyi, Director, KJCC, 2012-2019, recounts in her essay âTwo Views of KJCCâ), but also that the source for reflection and critique of these same institutions is nourished within university settings that allow for the performance of self-reflection as a tool for critical pedagogy (as Mary Louise Pratt shows us in her essay âTransdisciplinary Spaces: In Praise of the Potluckâ). The original mission of the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center was to promote research and teaching about Spain and the Spanish-speaking world at the university and to organize free public programs for a general audience that highlight the history, politics, and cultures of the Spanish-speaking world. Since its founding, the scope of its programs has grown to include the Portuguese-speaking world and, as academic fields have themselves evolved, the Center has embraced a more inclusive approach to programming that fosters discussions about the Spanish-speaking world in dialogue with the diversity of languages and cultures within the Iberian Peninsula, the Caribbean, and Latin America, but also within the United States and among Spanish-speaking communities across the globe (including Africa and Asia). Scholarship on the linguistic and cultural identities among Spanish speakers has increasingly recognized these identities as diverse, layered, and contested; the KJCC has responded by broadening and strengthening its partnerships with individuals and institutions across NYU and the globe. When Brademas launched the idea of the KJCC, the only other Spanish language-related center at NYU was the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS), founded in 1966. As mentioned, the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Chair in Spanish Culture and Civilization was established in 1985, and the KJCC opened in 1997. A year later, the Hemispheric Institute opened in 1998. In 2000, the AndrĂ©s Bello Chair in Latin American Cultures and Civilizations at KJCC was created. In 2018, the Latinx Project was founded. Most recently, the KJCC serves as the programmatic home for Sulo: the Philippine Studies Initiative at NYU. With each and every one of these centers and initiatives the KJCC has contributed to building and enhancing points of overlap and synergy at NYU, which has ultimately strengthened all of these centers and created a vibrant environment on campus that supports the study of the cultures, histories, 19
geographies, and languages in Spain and the Spanish-speaking world among the students, faculty, and staff at NYU, and the broader public. Central to its mission to support academic programs at NYU has been its longstanding partnerships with the above-named centers as well as the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Creative Writing in Spanish Program, both of which have contributed to helping the KJCC build and sustain relationships with undergraduate and graduate students since its founding. These vibrant relationships form the core of KJCCâs evolution over the past twenty-five years, which is why readers will find in this issue contributions by authors who have seen first hand how these collaborations have fueled a dynamic cultural environment that has brought so many points of community and difference into dialogue. For example, Jill Lane (Director, CLACS, 2012-2021) writes poignantly about the spaces and relationships within and across CLACS and KJCC as points of âarticulationâ, and Odi GonzĂĄlez reflects on the âacoustic resonance of KJCCâ in his essay âBlood Flow between Cultures: Quechua Chants in Greenwich Village.â Likewise, Pablo Delanoâs Installation/Exploration in the atrium in 2017âThe Museum of the Old Colonyâis matched in Esferas with Nelson Riveraâs reflection on collecting the colonial gaze to show it back to the colonizers. The KJCC has hosted thousands of programs and events focused on three principal areas: academic, cultural, and public outreach. The scope of these programs has evolved to include a range of disciplines and practices (in the humanities, social sciences, sciences, and the arts) with academic and non-academic specialists from across the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking world (KJCCâs first dedicated event on Portugal took place in 2010). We have become known for our prestigious visiting Chairs (over 50 holders of the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Chair in Spanish Culture and Civilization and the AndrĂ©s Bello Chair in Latin American Cultures and Civilizations combined), our world-class lecture and film series (especially the annual Cortocircuito Latino Shortfest and our biannual Spanish Film Festival), our exhibits, and for our collaborative relationships with other campus entities and cultural institutions in New York, the United States and abroad, which have included the Spanish Embassy, the Consulate General of Spain in New York, the Queen SofĂa Institute, the Instituto Cervantes, and the Institut RamĂłn Llull, among many others. Much of what the KJCC does is to help boost or partner with emergent programs at NYU, some of which continue to develop and create spaces of their own on campus, like the Latinx Project and Sulo: the Philippine Studies Initiative, and others which hold deep historical resonance but are no longer active on campus. As Mary Ann Newman reminds us in âA Very Personal Account of Catalan Culture at NYU,â NYU showed a longstanding commitment to Catalan studies under the leadership of Brademas, which included a Catalan Studies Program (1983-1986), and later, the Catalan Center (2007-2011), but which 20
today appears at NYU more through individual programs, classes, and partnerships than it does as an established program. In revisiting the history of the KJCC over the past two years in preparation for the anniversary, we recognize how crucial the original donors were to the founding of the Center, and how dependent any center is on the endowment it holds to build and broaden its programs. At the same time, together we have also reflected on what these structures of institution-building mean to the arc of a Centerâs development and the necessity at every turn to maintain the KJCCâs unique position as a non-degree awarding cultural center within a university, which requires an openness to different points of view as well as a constant defense of academic independence and rigor. Planning and organizing around the anniversary during this multi-year pandemic has brought into focus the importance of creating opportunities to reach across the different spaces within the university as well as those far beyond our walls. We are working with University Archives to transfer the administrative records of the KJCC from the Centerâs offices to the Library. Rachel Moorman-Mintonâs essay âAnticipating the Shift of KJCC Archival Materials to NYU Special Collectionsâ explores the intricacies of this process and the different stakeholders who ensure that the records of our institutional history remain intact, even if incomplete. Our âAtrium: Voices from the KJCCâ series is a multi-year project to interview past Chairs and edit those interviews into a format that is accessible online.6 As a multi-layered compliment to these recorded interviews, we invited all past Chairs to submit essays, reflections, or portfolios related to their stays at NYU. Across the submissions included in this issue, are critical engagements with the history of the Center and the pivotal role KJCC held in the development of research, like those by Vicente SĂĄnchez Biosca (KJC Chair 2013-2014) and Cristina Pato, (KJC Chair 2019-2020), an array of highly personal accounts and anecdotes from numerous Chairs about their stays at NYU, and visual portfolios that range from selections of photographic works and installations by Francesc Torres (KJC Chair 2005-2006) to sketches from personal diaries never before seen in public by Juan JosĂ© Lahuerta (KJC Chair 20112012). The contributions are uneven in that not every Chair submitted, and those received were overwhelmingly from KJC Chairs and not AndrĂ©s Bello Chairs. However, taken as a whole and in combination, the Atrium videos and the reflections included in this special issue compose a remarkably unique and valuable record of the voices of individuals in the building and recounting of the many histories that have played out within the spaces of the KJCC, not just those on the
6. âAtrium: Voices from the KJCCâ are viewable on the KJCC YouTube channel and website: https://www.kjcc.org/ initiatives/kjcc-25th-anniversary/
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stage in the auditorium in public lectures and symposia but also within and beyond the walls of classrooms at NYU since each and every Chair taught a seminar while at the KJCC. With a goal to share as much of the Centerâs history with faculty, staff, and students at NYU and the general public, we have digitized all of the past issues of our annual activity reports, from 1997 to the present. These, along with all of our past recorded programs (which include hosting the CWS/Poetry Archive) are available as a constantly growing resource that is accessible to all on the KJCC website (www.kjcc.org). Accompanying these institutional and archival initiatives is a desire to bring our reflections to the public through a series of online discussions (the multi-year pandemic has shifted our focus from in-person to online programs, and will extend our anniversary initiative into Fall 2022 when we hope to hold some of these conversations in person). Our goal in organizing multi-speaker panels around an array of themes that recognize and explore in critical and dynamic ways the place of Spain in the world is to engage scholars from fields central and adjacent to the ones that have traditionally been represented at the KJCC with the goal to find new and different avenues to support and grow our mission. Central to our reflections about the history and future of the KJCC at NYU is the role of students in every aspect of our mission. In Fall 2021, I offered a seminar on âInstitutions, Archives, and People,â which held as its example the KJCC. We brought the students into our conversations about our interest in documenting, exploring, and critically engaging with the many different sides of our founding and history. To do so meant bringing students into the KJCC as active participants, interlocutors, critics, and archivists. It also meant placing a priority on the perspective of students when asking questions about the history of NYUâs cultural centers, the structures through which they are founded and sustained, the mechanisms through which they are directed and administered, and the criteria with which Chairs are selected, programs are organized, and audiences are engaged. We took very seriously Pietrobonoâs insistence that telling critically informed histories requires that we ask, each time, âhistory according to whom?â and think as inclusively as possible about the âweâ that is given voice when recording and narrating institutional histories. The result of this proposal was a semester-long seminar that began by exploring theories and methods for thinking about the university, considered different frames for thinking about education and power, and together engaged in a deep dive into the origins and history of the KJCC and its programs. As part of our seminar, we visited University Archives in search of traces of the KJCC (and found very little!), we interviewed key people involved in the founding of the Center (like JesĂșs Sainz, who was instrumental in building support for the KJCC in Spain and continues to support NYU through his role in the FundaciĂłn Rey Juan Carlos, 22
and Laura TurĂ©gano, who has been Associate Director since 2004) and its past directors (James FernĂĄndez, Jo Labanyi, and Ana Dopico). Each student took on a final project that related either to the theme of the class or to the history of the KJCC, many of which are included in this issue. Each student contributed to our overall understanding of the KJCC; each sought their own perspective on the re-telling of its history. What we learned in our endeavor to make sense of just one cultural center at one university is that the history of its founding and the different narratives that can be told around its many programs intersect in important, urgent ways with the history of NYU, and the history of the world in which any center or university forms part. We also learned how the personal lives of the individuals who have passed through the KJCC, from its inauguration to the present day, have impacted its founding and its ongoing evolution. Instead of finishing the semester with a singular idea about the Center, we came to the realization that the KJCC is not one thing nor is it defined by any one of its founders, donors, directors, or Chairs. Such a conclusion may read as simplistic, but it is important in that it empowers each of us: each student, each invited speaker, each curator, each chair, each director, and every member of the public who has attended or will attend one of our programs to define the KJCC for themselves. This dossier provides a mere glimpse into the very different moments lived within the walls of the KJCC, some of which go back decades even before the Centerâs official founding, and others from just a few months ago. In addition to the submissions by NYU faculty who have been involved with the KJCC (both the Building and the Center), past Chairs, and students enrolled in the seminar, this issue also includes other submissions by NYU students who have written eloquently about issues related to culture, institutions, and archives. We also invited submissions from scholars and artists whose work directly engages with questions of the past and present of cultural institutions, including Miguel Caballeroâs illuminating interview with the current President of the Ateneo de Madrid and Jorge Ribaltaâs photographic portfolio on the Banco de España, as well as Christi Mladicâs photographs on the uses of photography in Peru. Together the submissions to this special issue of Esferas represent an important contribution to the ways we narrate the history of institutions and the singular importance of individuals (their voices, their perspectives, their politics) to any institutionâs history. We thank Lourdes DĂĄvila, editor of Esferas, and the entire editorial team for helping us bring this proposal to life.
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John Brademasâ Tears James D. FernĂĄndez John Brademas, former US congressman (D, Indiana, 1959-1981), former President of NYU (1981-1992), and founder of NYUÂŽs King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center (1997), seemed decidedly out of place in his third row seat of the large auditorium. Even though he was probably sporting the most casual outfit of his entire wardrobe, he still seemed quite overdressed for this particular occasion and for this particular crowdâwhat with his pressed tan-colored khakis, white dress shirt, sharp navy blazer and polished brown loafers with tassels. The occasion: one of the annual reunions of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. The crowd: a handful of the surviving men and women who had volunteered to fight fascism during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), surrounded by hundreds of their friends, family and fans. One of the more memorable moments of that event came when Moe Fishman, for many years a spokesman for Spanish Civil War veterans in the US, speaking from the podium, got tongue-tied while trying to pronounce the word âglobalizationâââgloba, globiz, globula⊠Darn it, it was so much easier when we just called it what it is: imperialism.â The audience roared with laughter, and John Brademas chuckled. Towards the end of that event, the band on stage began playing the rousing left-wing anthem âThe Internationale.â And the entire crowd, Fishman and Brademas included, quickly stood up. Many in the audience raised their right hand, crooked elbow, clenched fist near the right temple: the Popular Front salute. And many sang along, often with more verve than precise pitch: Arise, you prisoners of starvation! Arise, you wretched of the earth! For justice thunders condemnation. A better worldâs in birth⊠I was sitting and standing next to Brademas that day. For some reason, a weird sense of modesty kept me from turning to look straight at him during the singing of the song, as I would have liked to do. Instead, I remember trying discreetly to observe him out of the corner of my eye. I canÂŽt be sure of this, but I remember thinking at the time that he seemed to be mouthing the words to the Internationale. I recall my sense of surprise at the possibility of this moderate, progressive democrat knowing and lip-synching the words of this radical hymn. Perhaps he was just following along. But of one thing I am quite sure: as Brademas stood there that day in that raucous auditorium, a man in khaki surrounded by a sea of denim, flannel and leather, keffiyehs and berets, a couple of tears rolled down his cheek. For many years now, Iâve tried to interpret and understand those drops. 31
*** I was the very unlikely director of NYUÂŽs King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center from its opening until 2007, and in that position I got to work alongside Brademas for many years. John always had many irons in the fireâand his fire was the whole world. But the KJCC was particularly dear to him, and he invested a lot of time in it, particularly in the early years. The son of a Greek immigrant from South Bend, Indiana, John had been turned on to Spanish by an inspirational high school teacher in South Bend. He often told of how as a young adult he had hitchhiked all the way from Indiana to Central Mexico to work with indigenous Mexican communities, digging latrines and building houses in a program that was a precursor to the Peace Corps. Brademas would later write an undergraduate thesis at Harvard on a far-right wing political movement in Mexico, sinarquismo, and as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford he would earn a doctorate with a thesis on an extreme left wing movement in Spain, anarcosindicalismo, on the eve of the Spanish Civil War. He would often joke in his public remarks: âthough I studied sinarchism and anarchism, I never practiced either of them.â Indeed, he never did. John Brademas was a proud consensus-seeking centrist, with strong progressive inclinations and a keen interest, throughout his life, in the arts, culture and education. Virtually all legislation coming out of congress in the 60s and 70s related to those fields bore Brademasâs imprint and signature. He was also a real internationalist at a time when such a stance was not so common; I remember him telling me how shocked he was when he joined Congress in 1960 and learned how many of his peers in the House of Representatives didnât even have passports, and therefore had never traveled outside the United States. When Brademas lost his seat in Congress in the Reagan landslide of 1980, NYU would become the incredibly fortunate beneficiary of BrademasÂŽ values and vision. By the time I met him, he was several years into his status as President Emeritus. John was a very busy man, with little use for small talk and little interest in abstract, impractical questionsâthe ones that have always interested me the most. When I arrived at NYU and the KJCC, I was a young Associate Professor. I had spent very little time outside of the library and the classroom. Zero experience in program administration. Zero experience making decisions that affected anyone beyond myself. Zero knowledge of teamwork, negotiation, the art of compromise. And, as a result of all of the above, I was probably as naive and as self-righteous as they come. Despite this, John was always very respectful of me and of my faculty colleagues. But my faculty colleagues and I were almost certainly at times unfairly disdainful of Brademas, as we were often 32
disdainful of anyoneâparticularly faculty turned administratorsâwho took on a position of power, and was thus forced to make decisions bound to be unpopular among some people. As I think back on the wisdom that Brademas transmitted to meâusually by example, only rarely with wordsâI realize that a lot of it had to do precisely with this dichotomy between, on the one side, a certain type of scholar who might have the luxury of operating above or beyond the fray, who might enjoy the privilege of staking out and maintaining pure and righteous opinions and positions, and on the other side, the scrappy administrators and politicians who have no choice but to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty, behave opportunistically, cut deals and compromise, left, center and right. In word and deed, it was often as if Brademas were saying to me: âIf you want to always be 100% right, and 100% true to your vision, in the end you might feel good but you probably wonât ever get anything important done. If those are your goals, you might want to stay in the library. I myself have always preferred to deal with the art of the possible.â *** âJohn, is intransigence a good trait or a bad trait?â I remember Brademas looking at me like I had two headsâmaybe a good head and a bad headâwhen, the morning after the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade reunion, I asked him that question. I think he might have sensed where my doubt was coming from because I recall that he responded in an uncharacteristically cutting tone, saying something along these lines: âIntransigence is a bad trait; and if itâs coupled with the belief that you are the genuine representative of the wretched of the earthâregardless of whether the wretched have had any say in the matterâit is an absolutely miserable trait.â Brademas was back in his Monday morning business suit, and as far from vulnerability and tears as he could get. âMoe, is intransigence a good trait or a bad trait?â I posed the same question to Moe Fishman, the longtime spokesman of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, just a couple of days later. His eyes lit up. And he said something like this: âWell you know, James, Jim if I may, I think thereâs definitely a time and a place for intransigence, because its oppositeâI donât know if transigence is even a wordâbut whatever the opposite would be, can lead to that proverbial slippery slope, one concession leading to another and before long, youâve lost the war before youâve even had a chance to put up a fight. Fascism, in our lifetime, certainly called for intransigence as a response. I only wish more people had realized this sooner rather than trying to make it go away by cutting deals.â 33
I remember thinking after that conversation with Moe, that the opposite of âintransigenceâ, etymologically speaking, would probably be âtransactiveâ, in the sense of giveand-take deal-making. And if John Brademas was convincedâat least Monday to Fridayâthat intransigence was the root of all or most evil, and that deal-making was the route to peaceful and efficient coexistence, Moe Fishman was convinced that unless we are moored to inviolable principles and values, the âart of the dealâ is a sure way to drift, one transaction at a time, toward fascism or something scarily like it. Curiously, one of my earliest difficult experiences as Director of the KJCC involved both John Brademas and Moe Fishman. It was during my first or second semester in the post. I had proudly designed and announced a film series on the Spanish Civil War in English-language cinema. I think I even designed the flyer. With solid intellectual and artistic criteria, I had included Ken LoachÂŽs wonderful film šLand and Freedomâ, which approaches the war in Spain with a decidedly pro-anarchist and anti-communist point of view. Not long after distributing the flyer announcing the series, I was visited in my office by Moe Fishman, on behalf of the Lincoln Brigade Veterans. He informed me that, regrettably, the veterans would have no choice but to protest outside the Center on the day of the screening because we had chosen to project a film that they considered profoundly inaccurate and offensive to the honor and memory of the International Brigades. I left the meeting shaken, imagining a picket line outside the newly inaugurated center. And I headed up to JohnÂŽs office for advice. I can still see the smile on BrademasÂŽs face, as he listened to me nervously explain the situation. It seemed to me at the time that he was almost relishing the very thing that I was most eager to avoid: confrontation, uncomfortable differences of opinion. Brademas asked me a few questions about Moe Fishman and the Veterans, about the film, about the structure of the screeningâwas there going to be a forum before or after the film?âetc. After a brief silence, he did this gesture he had of rolling up his sleeves without actually rolling them up. âOK, James, hereâs what I would do.š And he began almost dictating a messageâsomething that he was very good at. âMr. Fishman, you and your comrades have the right to protest the screening of this film however you see fit. But rather than having you picket or boycott the event, we would much prefer for you to come inside and speak with us and our audience. Perhaps youâd like to prepare leaflets explaining your organizationâs position regarding the film that we would gladly make available to the audience. And we would like to invite you, or someone designated by you, to participate in the post-screening discussion of the film, as IÂŽm sure the audience would be delighted to learn about your experience of the Spanish Civil War and your views on this particular film.â 34
Of course I followed JohnÂŽs advice. Of course Moe accepted the invitation. The screening and debate were memorable. And that encounter ended up being part of a series of meetings and collaborations that would indirectly facilitate the acquisition by NYU of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, to this day one of the most important of Bobst LibraryÂŽs special collections; an acquisition which in part helps explain why Brademas and I were together at that Reunion of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade on that Sunday so many years ago. *** IÂŽve seen scientific claims that the chemical composition of tears varies noticeably depending on the emotions or events that trigger them. I canât verify or disprove the claim with scientific evidence. The thought, I confess, is an attractive one; tears spilled over a cut finger shouldnât be anything like tears shed over unrequited love; tears cried over an unexpected re-encounter with a beloved bike lane should have a radically different composition than tears that flow at a funeral. The tears triggered by an undeserved slap ought not be anything like the tears released from a slap known to be well-earned. Seductive though it may be, this theory of tears strikes me empirically as highly unlikely. From experience and observation, IÂŽve come to be suspicious of the idea that simple identifiable emotions actually exist in isolation one from another, let alone the thought that tears might ordinarily express, chemically or in any other way, any single identifiable emotion. The deeply ambivalent memory of having spent a good part of your life trying to legislate for freedom in a house built by slaves might require its own distillation in tears. The melancholy of looking back over a career in which youÂŽve aspired to teach for equality in an institution established to generate and maintain distinction would likely give rise to its own formula for tears. Itâs hard to imagine the chemical signature of tears caused by that mix of pride and shame, of accomplishment and disappointment, of certainty and doubt, that gets concocted whenever one looks back honestly, that is to say, vulnerably, at a life of commitment and compromise, a life of deals and idealsâand such is, alas, the life of institution builders; such is life itself. I too cried at that reunion, standing there next to Brademas: my tears came, I recall, when the crowd got to the part of the Internationale that says âWe must ourselves decide our duty/ We must decide and do it well.â
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53 Washington Square South: 1890 to Today
Elizabeth Baltusnik The King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center assumes the important role of educating the local community on Spanish and Latin American culture and history, but what about the physical history of the center itself? Visually, the hotel-turned-dormitory-turned-cultural-center has appeared unchanged since the 1890s, but various renovations and changing groups of occupants have greatly shifted the interior qualities and function of the space. Hidden behind an eclectic façade lies a rich and unique history, one that is rarely publicized by the university. In order to understand how the physical space of the KJCC shapes the behaviors and interactions that take place inside of it, we first need to understand the history of the space itself. Its preserved exterior has ensured that we donât erase the early beginnings of 53 Washington Square South, but has this continued history helped or hurt the KJCCâs identification as a cultural center? Although the façade of todayâs KJCC is over a century old, careful preservation has ensured the ornate detailing remains virtually unchanged from its 19th-century design. In the late 1800s, architects McKim, Mead, & White faced the challenge of producing a curated image for the properties surrounding Washington Square Park. The Italian Renaissance Eclectic building and ten-story tower (campanile) that house the KJCC at 52-54 Washington Square Southâwhat was then part of the Judson Memorial Churchâwere built in conjunction with the Washington Square Arch. Architect Stanford White intended for these structures to work together to evoke the beauty of an Italian piazza or, when viewed from north of the arch, a Roman forum. White considered this complex consisting of a church, campanile and hotel to complete his masterpiece of composition for the Square. The style of the building stands in stark contrast to the red-brick apartment towers and brownstones surrounding the square, and this was also the case in the 1800s. The exterior walls are warm, yellow Roman brick and ârepresent the bricklayerâs art at his bestâ (âJudson Hallâ 1). At the second, third and fifth floors of the hotel are masterfully laid bands of terra cotta, adding dimension and contrast to the exterior. Round-headed windows on the upper stories are enveloped by brick arches, while the square-headed windows of the lower three stories are topped with brick lintels. A variation of one and two-story brick pilasters divide the windows, further evoking the idea of a Roman forum with its capitals and bases. As the building was originally 37
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a five-story structure, White topped the building with an ornamental cornice and balustrade railing, adding dimension to an already impressive composition (âJudson Hallâ 1). The ten-story campanile attached to the center is similarly designed, making use of the same yellow brick and terra cotta. The horizontal terra cotta bands alternate with recessed brick courses to create an impressive pattern that towers over the surrounding area. On the first floor of the façade, swirls cover ornately carved terracotta, adding a unique textural element that draws viewers to the ornamental metal grills and stately wooden doors deeply recessed within the doorway (âJudson Hallâ 1). The base of the tower raises it four feet above street level and includes a trim reminiscent of the Roman fasces, symbolizing the idea of the site as a place of victory and power. The height of the tower gives it the potential to appear repetitive, but the inclusion of both round-headed and square-headed windows breaks up the monotony of such a tall structure. At the top of the campanile are the three arches of the belfry, punctuated with slender support columns. Like the hall below it, the tower also culminates in a richly decorated cornice at the roofline. Visually, 53 Washington Square South stands nearly exactly as it did when it was first constructed, but the original purpose of the hall has been essentially erased. After Stanford White gained notoriety for designing the permanent version of the Washington Arch, the members of the Berean Baptist Church solicited his aid in designing a new building complex for their congregation. The church, Judson Memorial Church, continues to operate today and honors the Baptist minister Adoniram Judson, the United Statesâ first internationally known missionary. The church complex consisted of a church, tower and hotel, with the latter two components housing the KJCC today. The hotel was integral to the churchâs success, as the inexpensive studios and living quarters for artists, primarily, served to fund their mission trips that were essential to carrying on the legacy of Adoniram Judson. The gentrification of tenements in other areas of New York City lead to an influx of Italian immigrants in Greenwich Village, which not only supplied the hotel with new residents but also aided in informing Stanford White in his design of the church. By combining early Christian and Italian Renaissance styles to generate the Italian Renaissance Eclectic style, White was able to design a form that was externally representative of the purpose it served and the people that occupied it. The stunning architectural qualities of the complex also appeased and consoled residents of the square after the razing of other ornamental buildings, namely NYUâs University Building and the Reformed Dutch Church, for commercial development. Physical manifestations of the Judson Memorial Churchâs influence can still be seen around the Square today, as the campanile inspired the towers atop the apartment buildings like 39
those along Washington Square West (Harris 150, 213, 298). The impact of Whiteâs design and its influence on the Square has caused many to staunchly defend the site and protest any changes that might alter its role in the context of the neighborhood. The NYU acquisition of the Judson Hotel in 1925 remained relatively uncontroversial until the proposal of a law school annex on West 3rd Street in the Spring of 2000 that would have obscured views of the campanile. Although the university would have been within their rights to build the 194-foot tall facility, not to mention the fact that the campanile was NYU property, community members and historians were angered at the mere suggestion that the building would be erased from the skyline. The university had already been heavily criticized for its âcontinuing land grab for more control over the squareâ and compromised with critics, reducing the annex to a height of 145 feet (Harris 248). This intrusion was not the first time the Judson Hotelâs standing had been threatenedâRobert Mosesâ early 20th century plan to reroute traffic through Washington Square would have razed the complex. Similarly, community pushback over the continued loss of ornamental architecture saw the end of this urban renewal project (Harris 249). Although NYU demonstrated a lack of concern over the campanileâs role in the integrity of the Washington Square skyline, it was conscientious enough not to alter the Hotelâs exterior even as it dramatically developed the interior. When they acquired the hotel in 1925 to build a dormitory, the universityâs main campus was still in the Bronx, in âthe Heights.â However, a rapid increase in enrollmentâ14,000 students, to be preciseâat the âSquare branchâ had begun to initiate a shift within the school and a rapid development of the Washington Square Campus, with the Judson Hotel being the fourth site to come into the universityâs possession within the previous six months. Prior to this acquisition, there was no dormitory at the Washington Square campus and only one other dormitory at any school in downtown Manhattan (âJudson Hotel to be N.Y.U. Dormitoryâ). The hotel was not immediately converted to a dormitory, and it was instead held as an investment for some time before eventually becoming the first iteration of many forms that the space would take during its time as an NYU site. After being officially opened, the NYU Judson Dormitory at 53 Washington Square South was still subjected to internal shifts. Once the prior lease ended, Judson Dormitory opened its doors to male students in hopes of â[providing] a social center and inexpensive residence for the young men of the neighborhoodâ (âJudson Hotel to be N.Y.U. Dormitoryâ). In 1947, the dormitory closed for a year to undergo renovations to become a womenâs residence hall. A New York Times article published after the reopening in 1948 cited the additions of a âdiet kitchenâ 40
and a âfour-bed infirmary,â along with the freshly painted rooms in âpastel shades of pink, green, and yellowâ (âJudson Hall Againâ). The conversion to a womenâs dormitory evidently brought along unexpected costs, as in 1952 NYU sought to revert the dormitory to a menâs residence hall. Operating deficits incurred by the Judson Dormitory prompted them to reduce securityâ something that âseemed impracticable with girls in residenceâ (âBroomsâ). The women, however, were unwilling to give up their park views and tower bedrooms, choosing instead to take on the role of housekeepers themselves. The strong-willed residents of Judson Dormitory were not unlike the artists and poets of the Judson Hotel. Unique architectural qualities inspired fireplace headboards and pink radiators; rooms were covered with colorful candles and black bedspreads (âDormitory Decorâ). The Judson Dormitory shut its doors to residents in the late 1980s, and, unfortunately, the legacy of the space seems to have disappeared with it. The building still stands prominently on campus as it did back then, but information and documentation about Judson Dormitory is, unfortunately, hard to come by. During its time as Judson Dormitory, the site underwent the process to be formally designated as a Landmark Site. After a hearing and thoughtful review, the Landmarks Preservation Commission granted landmark status to 51-54 Washington Square South on May 17, 1966. âCareful considerationâ found that the site has âspecial character, special historical and aesthetic interest, and value as part of the development, heritage and cultural characteristics of New York Cityâ (âJudson Hallâ 1). The commission also emphasized the ânew elegance and joyâ it brought to âa city of red brick and brownstone,â a sentiment that continues today. Mere steps from the KJCC lie the metal and glass of the Kimmel Center and the massive brick structure that is Bobst Library, further emphasizing the unique architectural character of the yellow brick and terra cotta masterpiece. While landmark status ensures the façade will stand proudly for years to come, Landmark regulations coupled with age can make essential renovations a challenge. In 1995, architecture firm Polshek and Partners began the extensive process of unifying four historic buildingsâ51-54 Washington Square Southâto create the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center. The design sought to achieve what any other university center might: to create a new university common space, academic and administrative offices, classrooms and meeting areas (âKing Juan Carlos Iâ). The upper floors retain the snaking hallways and nearly-identical rooms of the Judson Dormitory era, while the first and second floors are the most architecturally intriguing. After leaving the security vestibule, visitors enter the open space of a âtwo-level gallery with floor-to-ceiling glass and uninterrupted windowsâ (âKing Juan Carlos Iâ). The foyer seems to extend outwards onto the terrace beyond the glass, evoking the feeling of a traditional 41
Spanish courtyard. It was important for the architects that this âseamless experience from inside to outsideâ introduced âa sense of intimate scale, comfort, and reposeâ (McClurkan). In contrast to the Renaissance-style exterior, the interior aesthetic is described as âdistinctly modern.â Heavy focus was placed on highlighting the Spanish influence on the project âwithout being âkitschyâ or ânostalgicââ through a âminimalist abstract approachâ inspired by both historic and contemporary Spanish design (McClurkan). Spanish materials including wood, blue ceramic tiles, marble and limestone are emblematic of the country the space serves, but are used in ways that almost symbolize a ânewâ era of Spain, not one characterized by kingdoms and monarchy. Sharply angled walls, paneling, and cutouts are in stark contrast to the traditional flowing curves of Spanish architecture, representing a modernization not unlike the one brought upon by King Juan Carlos during the Spanish transition to democracy (Bernecker 66). Unlike nearly every other NYU building in the city, thereâs no flag, no sign, no NYUrelated anything on the exterior of the KJCC. A passersby on the street would likely assume that itâs part of the Judson Memorial Church that still stands on the corner of Washington Square South and Thompson Street. The KJCC is almost like a secret: something to be thoughtfully cherished by those who know what lies behind the façade, but something thatâs at risk of being regrettably unrecognized, and thus underutilized, by the community. This sentiment naturally extends beyond the physical use of the center. In an era of constant digital bombardment by ads and emails, concrete manifestations of cultural centers might be becoming more important than ever. During the 1995 renovation, it was important to the architects and the university that the buildings continued to be âuseful and contributing members of the local communityâ (McClurkan). Without visual representation, how are community members, both within and outside of NYU, supposed to learn about the critical events and programs the center has to offer? Much like the history of 53 Washington Square South has lain hidden, the KJCC remains obscured by a façade connecting it to a bygone era. Intricate ornamentation certainly worthy of preservation and appreciation might intrigue those walking along Washington Square South, but what does it mean for a cultural center like the KJCC if this façade renders it unnoticeable? In the interior, Spanish materials nod to the purpose of the space just as the exterior Italian materials of the Judson Hotel represented its inhabitants. Modern qualities of the new design represent a much-needed cultural shift, away from the era of colonialism and towards one of equal representation and equity. However, if this shift lies behind a 19th-century façade, how can the center transform what it houses behind its façade to achieve its full potential?
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Bibliography Bernecker, Walter L. âMonarchy and Democracy: The Political Role of King Juan Carlos in the Spanish TransiciĂłn.â Journal of Contemporary History, Jan., 1998, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Jan., 1998), 65-84. Web. âBrooms Repel N.Y.U. Men.â The New York Times, 23 December 1952, 25. âDormitory Decor Is in a Class by Itself.â The New York Times, 2 November 1961, 40. Harris, Luther S. Around Washington Square: An Illustrated History of Greenwich Village. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. âJudson Hall.â Landmarks Preservation Commission, 17 May 1966. Web. âJudson Hotel to be N.Y.U. Dormitory.â The New York Times, 8 November 1925, 66. âJudson Hotel Again an N.Y.U. Residence.â The New York Times, 7 July 1948, 31. âKing Juan Carlos I of Spain Center.â Bergen Street Studio, n.d. Web. McClurkan, Kevin. Email to Clay Miller. 20 January 2022.
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Instituciones, archivos y gente:
el archivo de la Brigada Abraham Lincoln Sophie Slade ÂżHas pensado alguna vez en los mediadores de intercambios culturales o quiĂ©nes son los actores involucrados en la elaboraciĂłn de una historia institucional? ÂżHas pensado en lo que pasa con la adquisiciĂłn de un archivo o la colaboraciĂłn realizada para llevar a cabo eventos histĂłricos en tu universidad? ÂżQuĂ© relaciones existen entre las instituciones culturales y las narrativas que Ă©stas producen? Utilizando entrevistas con dos investigadores hispanistas, James FernĂĄndez y Sebastiaan Faber âambos directores de organizaciones que funcionan dentro de un marco institucionalâ este ensayo considera las instituciones y los archivos, al igual que la gente involucrada en las conexiones entre los dos. EspecĂficamente, el ensayo se centra en el King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center (conocido como el KJCC o el centro de aquĂ en adelante) âestablecido en la Universidad de Nueva York en abril de 1997â y la organizaciĂłn sin fines de lucro de los Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (conocido como ALBA de ahora en adelante), fundada en 1978. Durante la Guerra Civil española (1936-1939) casi 2,800 americanos se ofrecieron como voluntarios para luchar por la causa republicana, uniĂ©ndose a las Brigadas Internacionales en su esfuerzo por frenar el fascismo. Este colectivo de voluntarios estadounidenses llegĂł a ser conocido como la Brigada Abraham Lincoln (veteranos de la Abraham Lincoln Brigade o VALB). La organizaciĂłn, ALBA, se estableciĂł para promover la defensa de los derechos humanos y el activismo, pero tambiĂ©n para conservar el legado de los voluntarios, el cual estĂĄ documentado exhaustivamente en un archivo. âEl archivoâ, como lo llamaremos de ahora en adelante, consiste en mĂĄs de 300 colecciones individuales, incluyendo documentos, fotografĂas, carteles y artefactos originales que se encuentran en la biblioteca Tamiment de NYU. Este ensayo analiza la relaciĂłn entre el KJCC, ALBA, y su archivo, para investigar especĂficamente quĂ© lugar ocupa el centro como instituciĂłn cultural en la narrativa y memoria de los voluntarios. Este ensayo estĂĄ organizado por una serie de preguntas presentadas a ambos entrevistados con el propĂłsito de resaltar las perspectivas y experiencias de cada uno sobre el rol de las instituciones para promover, interrumpir y manejar las narrativas histĂłricas elaboradas en torno a los voluntarios de ALBA. TambiĂ©n, destaca una cronologĂa mĂĄs completa de las interacciones entre las instituciones y la naturaleza de su relaciĂłn. La primera entrevista, con Sebastiaan Faber, 45
profesor de estudios hispanos en Oberlin College y cĂĄtedra actual de ALBA, se realizĂł el 9 de diciembre de 2021. La segunda fue con James FernĂĄndez, profesor de estudios hispanos en NYU y primer director del KJCC, el 11 de diciembre de 2021. Tal investigaciĂłn es muy Ăștil para comprender el nexo entre los centros culturales y las narrativas que estos perpetĂșan y crean. Con esta comprensiĂłn, se revela el poder y la influencia de las instituciones culturales, asĂ como la hermosa crĂłnica de la colaboraciĂłn entre ellas. Slade: ÂżQuĂ© es ALBA (el archivo y la organizaciĂłn) y quĂ© era de mĂĄs importancia o interĂ©s para usted y el centro? Sebastiaan Faber, en su introducciĂłn, dijo que se sintiĂł atraĂdo por el tema de la Guerra Civil española y la Brigada Abraham Lincoln por sus estudios sobre el exilio republicano español en MĂ©xico. Al principio, Ă©l fue el Presidente del Consejo, y luego asumiĂł la cĂĄtedra en 2012. MĂĄs recientemente, ha estado involucrado como escritor y coeditor de la revista trimestral de ALBA, The Volunteer. En su cĂĄtedra actual, Ă©l dio una descripciĂłn de la organizaciĂłn y su relaciĂłn con el archivo en la biblioteca Tamiment. âALBA se fundĂł en los años setenta por un grupo de voluntarios veteranos de la Guerra Civil española con un grupo de acadĂ©micos y activistas con el fin de asegurar la permanencia, la supervivencia del archivo de los documentos de la memoria con fines educativosâ. Aunque el archivo fĂsico se trasladĂł de Brandeis University a la biblioteca Tamiment en NYU, ALBA permaneciĂł involucrado con la colecciĂłn. Faber caracteriza la relaciĂłn con Tamiment como algo espectacular. âNos tenemos simpatĂa mutua y colaboramos en lo posibleâ. AdemĂĄs, Faber recordĂł cĂłmo James FernĂĄndez llegĂł a NYU en el mismo momento de la inauguraciĂłn del centro por John Brademas, que era investigador sobre el teatro español, y cĂłmo â[habĂa] en torno del cambio del milenio una especie de sinergĂa [...] de personas interesadas y de cambios institucionalesâ que condujeron a mucha productividad. En general, interpreta la historia de su relaciĂłn como provechosa, anotando que Tamiment vio desde el principio âel valor de esa colecciĂłnâ. James FernĂĄndez conociĂł la Brigada Abraham Lincoln por primera vez cuando era estudiante universitario. DescribiĂł cĂłmo en sus primeros años en Dartmouth College fue influenciado tanto por profesores interesados por la Guerra Civil española como por las celebraciones de varios aniversarios de la guerra a las que asistiĂł. En uno de estos eventos en la universidad conociĂł a veteranos de la Brigada junto con eruditos y artistas como Rafael Alberti. Entonces, con esa âhermosaâ presentaciĂłn, comenzĂł a desarrollar un mayor interĂ©s por el teatro 46
español y la Guerra Civil. LlegĂł a NYU en 1995 âen el momento de la fundaciĂłn del centroâ y fue nombrado oficialmente director interino, continuando como director hasta 2007. Cuando le preguntĂ© sobre el archivo, dijo: ânos pusimos a programar algunas cosas que tenĂan que ver con la Guerra Civil porque es un tema tan importante y porque siempre ha habido mucho interĂ©s en Nueva York por ese temaâ. En su definiciĂłn del archivo, FernĂĄndez recordĂł el âpequeño grupo de brigadistas en los años setenta, ochenta [que] empezĂł a depositar sus archivos personales en Brandeisâ. Esto fue la gĂ©nesis del archivo de la Brigada, âun puñado de colecciones de individuos que [...] iba creciendo y creciendo porque tristemente iban muriendo los brigadistasâ, señalĂł FernĂĄndez. HablĂł sobre cĂłmo los brigadistas solo querĂan conservar la memoria de sus experiencias âporque es cierto que el relato mainstream de los Estados Unidos tiende a borrar ese episodio de la historiaâ. En sus palabras, el hermoso esfuerzo fue un âantifascismo prematuro [...] antes de Pearl Harborâ. Por esta razĂłn, la adquisiciĂłn fue muy importante porque la colecciĂłn ha seguido creciendo y muchos investigadores que pasan por Nueva York que tienen interĂ©s en los temas del archivo pueden visitarlo. SegĂșn FernĂĄndez, por un periodo, el archivo fue la colecciĂłn mĂĄs consultada de Tamiment y sigue siendo el archivo mĂĄs completo de artefactos relacionados con la participaciĂłn americana en la Guerra Civil española. Slade: ÂżCuĂĄl es la relaciĂłn actual entre ALBA (la asociaciĂłn) y la colecciĂłn fĂsica en Tamiment? ÂżCĂłmo era en el pasado? ÂżQuĂ© cambios hubo a lo largo del tiempo? Para entender mejor la relaciĂłn entre el ALBA y el KJCC, le hice esta pregunta a Faber. Ăl hizo referencia a la adquisiciĂłn del archivo en NYU en 2000 de la Universidad Brandeis y cĂłmo la transferencia no impidiĂł la continuaciĂłn de la relaciĂłn de ALBA con la colecciĂłn. âUna de las funciones que hemos tenido es mantener viva la comunidad de descendientes, primero de sobrevivientes y despuĂ©s de descendientes de voluntarios. Y, por tanto, cada vez que hay una familia, un pariente que descubre algo que quiere legar o donar algo, nosotros le dirigimos hacia la biblioteca; entonces, somos una especie de conducto de materiales y ayudamos para desarrollar la colecciĂłnâ, indicĂł. De esta manera, ALBA estĂĄ intrĂnsecamente vinculada a la colecciĂłn, ya que le da la capacidad de crecer. Faber continuĂł diciendo que ALBA estĂĄ formada por investigadores y periodistas que, como educadores, ânutrimos constantemente el archivo; [lo] usamos, yo en mis libros y en mis artĂculos, pero tambiĂ©n en mis clases y tambiĂ©n en la revista y tambiĂ©n en los talleres que hacemos con profesores de secundaria, usamos las cartas, las fotos, los vĂdeos, 47
los audios, los carteles, etcĂ©tera, constantementeâ. AsĂ, la relaciĂłn se convierte en âuna especie de simbiosis muy productiva de apoyo mutuo y de uso mutuoâ; por ejemplo, ALBA âtambiĂ©n justifica su existencia [la del archivo] porque parte del pĂșblico usuario que tiene la biblioteca tambiĂ©n viene a travĂ©s de nosotrosâ, anotĂł Faber. A partir de su respuesta, se hace evidente la red o âconglomeradoâ de personas e instituciones que afectan al archivo, incluyendo la comunidad de investigadores fuera de los EE. UU. Slade: ÂżQuĂ© papel crees que tienen la organizaciĂłn ALBA/el KJCC en la definiciĂłn del legado de los voluntarios de la Brigada Abraham Lincoln? SegĂșn FernĂĄndez: âEs difĂcil atribuir mĂ©ritos y decir que el KJCC es responsable de esto o de lo otro. Pero sin duda en la adquisiciĂłn y luego en el uso de los archivos, el centro ha tenido un papel importante, por su programaciĂłn y eso es una gran contribuciĂłn en todos los sentidosâ. ContinĂșa explicando cĂłmo estos eventos y programas han sido importantes porque los fundadores de los archivos eran los mismos veteranos cuya âpreocupaciĂłn principal era que no cayera en el olvido su propia experienciaâ, lo que era un miedo real, anotĂł Ă©l. Como respuesta, sintiĂł que se necesitaba cierta celebraciĂłn para proteger su legado. âPero tambiĂ©n supongo que soñaban con que el archivo siempre ayudarĂĄ a que la gente celebre sus acciones, y yo creo que es cierto, que hay muchas cosas que salen del archivo que son celebratorias. Es difĂcil no celebrar, desde mi punto de vista, las acciones bastante altruistas y valientes de los brigadistasâ. Faber afirmĂł este profundo sentimiento de responsabilidad de celebrar a los voluntarios: âHa sido muy importante la desapariciĂłn fĂsica de los veteranos; el hecho de que hayan venido muriĂ©ndose hasta que ya no queda ninguno ha cambiado nuestro papel porque ya no existenâ. Por eso, Faber dijo que hay una necesidad de âcontar el relato de lo que pasĂł en España, traduciendo al mundo actual y amplificando un poco su significadoâ. De la misma forma, preguntĂ© a ambos autores si habĂan observado un cambio en el propĂłsito o el uso del archivo fĂsico y el KJCC (a FernĂĄndez) o de la organizaciĂłn ALBA y su revista The Volunteer (a Faber). Faber respondiĂł positivamente, admitiendo: âSĂ, ha habido una evoluciĂłn seguramente, incluso en los veinte años que yo estoy involucrado con ALBA. Bueno, hay un par de cosas, uno es que [ALBA] cambia el mundo y por tanto cambiamos nosotros, Âżno? Entonces hablar del antifascismo en 2005 no tenĂa la misma referencia que tiene hoy; entonces, curiosamente, ha habido un regreso lamentable a una percepciĂłn de peligros fascistas o de extrema derecha que ha hecho que el interĂ©s en la historia que contamos haya cambiado y haya 48
incrementadoâ. Del mismo modo, los archivos evolucionan, âadquiriendo nuevos materiales y clasifica[ndo] nuevas formasâ, dijo FernĂĄndez. No obstante, el cambio mĂĄs grande en su opiniĂłn proviene de las preguntas que los investigadores se plantean y llevan hasta el archivo. Ăl hace una analogĂa identificable para todos nosotros: âSi tĂș lees una novela con quince años y la vuelves a ver con veinticinco o treinta y cinco, es otra novela. Puede ser el mismo ejemplar y tiene los apuntes en los mĂĄrgenes, pero a veces a mĂ me pasa que no reconozco los apuntes y son mĂos [...] porque yo fui otra personaâ. AsĂ, FernĂĄndez argumenta que curar un archivo es lo mismo porque la forma en que evoluciona depende de quiĂ©nes visitan y manejan el archivo, tanto como los archiveros que ayudan a los investigadores a encontrar sus respuestas. Para Ă©l, lo mĂĄs importante es âel trabajo a largo plazo de mantener vivas las perspectivas y mantenerse abiertos a nuevas perspectivas para que la gente pueda ir al archivo con nuevas inquietudesâ. Slade: Como parte del liderazgo del KJCC [o si estuvieras en la posiciĂłn del KJCC, cuando preguntĂ© a Faber], Âżcrees que hay una responsabilidad de promover el archivo a pĂșblicos interesados? ÂżQuĂ© deber tienen los directores de reforzar la narrativa establecida para los archivos? ÂżQuĂ© libertad tienen para modificarla? Ambos respondieron de manera similar. La administraciĂłn y sus experiencias pasadas dan forma a sus intereses como lĂderes y la direcciĂłn de una organizaciĂłn con respecto a la programaciĂłn. Al mismo tiempo, ambos tambiĂ©n reconocieron que tener un archivo tan amplio e histĂłricamente importante en NYU representa algo que exige atenciĂłn âtanto pedagĂłgica como de la configuraciĂłn del pĂșblico. FernĂĄndez planteĂł tambiĂ©n otro factor: âEl tiempo es limitado, y cada director o directora tiene que distribuir su tiempo y elegir quĂ© aspectos enfatizar y quĂ© aspectos no; cada directora tiene que pensar cĂłmo invertir su tiempo y todos tenĂamos intereses muy diversosâ. UsĂł como referencia los diferentes antecedentes acadĂ©micos de los directores anteriores del KJCC, incluyendo a la actual directora, y señalĂł que hay una razĂłn por la que algunos años el archivo recibe mĂĄs atenciĂłn especĂficamente a travĂ©s de la programaciĂłn del KJCC. SegĂșn FernĂĄndez, ni siquiera el fundador de un archivo âdebe intentar prever todos los usos, no debe intentar controlar los usos a los que se va a poner ese archivo porque no convieneâ. FernĂĄndez tambiĂ©n mencionĂł que el archivo âya tiene vida propiaâ en la biblioteca Tamiment, a diferencia de cuando era director y se realizaban muchos eventos para visibilizar el archivo. Faber comparĂł la pregunta con la instituciĂłn de ALBA, diciendo que âtenemos una misiĂłn muy claramente definida. [...] El Centro Juan Carlos I tiene otra misiĂłn mucho 49
mĂĄs amplia, pues entiendo perfectamente que pueda haber periodos o personas, directores y directoras, que quieran poner otros Ă©nfasis, y tiene mucho sentido porque claro, el pedazo de historia de la que estamos hablando es muy peculiar, estĂĄ muy centrado en España, y una comunidad tambiĂ©n en NYU muy determinada entonces entiendo muy perfectamente que puede haber años en que [el archivo] recibe menos atenciĂłn. Por otro lado, Faber reconociĂł el hecho de que el archivo en NYU âparece un buen motivo para seguir haciendo cosasâ organizadas por el centro. âEs que el mundo de lo que es los estudios ibĂ©ricos en EE.UU. es un mundo bastante pequeño, a fin de cuentas, y el centro ocupa un lugar importante ahĂâ, observĂł Ă©l. ContinuĂł comentando sobre la relaciĂłn histĂłrica que ALBA tiene con NYU en una escala mayor y cĂłmo es muy importante tener, y haber tenido, su apoyo y recursos como instituciĂłn acadĂ©mica. Jorge Blasco, autor del âCeci nâest pas une archiveâ, escribe que âArchive is not just a nounâsomething finished, designed and identifiable in a spaceâarchive is a verb and weâall of usâarchive and that is perhaps the most interesting and least conscious versionâ (Blasco, âCeci nâest pas une archiveâ). Esta investigaciĂłn fue un experimento para probar tal afirmaciĂłn y aprender mĂĄs sobre las instituciones y centros culturales que tienen un papel muy importante en el proceso de archivar o aumentar un archivo. En conclusiĂłn, se revela la compleja red entre el King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, la organizaciĂłn titulada Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives y la colecciĂłn fĂsica de artefactos en la biblioteca Tamiment en la Universidad de Nueva York. EspecĂficamente, quedĂł claro que las instituciones culturales asumen muchos papeles y eso incluye el rol de colaborador y enlace entre otros centros, el rol de un historiador que elige quĂ© documentar y quĂ© dejar fuera de la narrativa y el rol de un lĂder que asume proyectos que dejan una huella positiva en la sociedad como la preservaciĂłn y la celebraciĂłn de un archivo como el de los veteranos de la Brigada Abraham Lincoln. Es importante ver los centros culturales asĂ y tratarlos como agentes de meaning-making porque son entidades que a menudo olvidamos que existen. Como dijo FernĂĄndez en nuestra entrevista, la adquisiciĂłn del archivo âdemostrĂł que, a pesar del nombre, el centro tenĂa autonomĂa e independencia intelectual casi absoluta y que no iban rehuir de ciertos temasâ. AsĂ, las instituciones navegan agendas importantes, en la promociĂłn de un archivo de este tipo en la universidad y la creaciĂłn de eventos que sean apreciados por estudiantes, acadĂ©micos e hispanistas por igual. Sin embargo, estĂĄn hechos por individuos que tienen la potencia de dejar un legado institucional que los superarĂĄ en el tiempo, como los profesores y las cĂĄtedras de Jim FernĂĄndez y Sebastiaan Faber.
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BibliografĂa âAbout the Centerâ. NYU KJCC, 1 agosto, 2017. Red. FernĂĄndez, James. Entrevista por Sophie Slade, 11 de diciembre de 2021, entrevista 2, transcripciĂłn y grabaciĂłn, New York University. Blasco, Jorge. âCeci nâest pas une archiveâ, Revistafakta. Red. Faber, Sebastiaan. Entrevista por Sophie Slade, 9 de diciembre de 2021, entrevista 1, transcripciĂłn y grabaciĂłn, New York University.
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Francesc Torres
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Images from âMemory Remainsâ, 2006-2011. A piece based on the objects and material sediment from Ground Zero in Manhattan preserved for their historical significance and temporarily kept in the cargo Hangar 17 at the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Airport in New York City. The piece premiered simultaneously in NYC, London, Madrid and Barcelona, cities hit by massive terrorists bombings in the Twentieth Century. The bombing of Barcelona was both military and terrorist, like Guernika, but while this Basque city was hit only once, Barcelona was continuously bombed over a two year span for the first time in history, a sign of what was coming once WW II began.
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A Semester in the Center 2006 was quite a year. I was involved in a long drawn out and complicated project dealing, a little too prematurely, with the historical memory of the Spanish Civil War within the realm of âfine arts;â and, more concretely, with the Republican victims of fascist repression during the war and the never ending postwarâthe majority of whom were still lying at the time in unmarked common graves all over the Iberian peninsula. That year I was also generously invited to chair a semester at the King Juan Carlos I Center of Spanish Culture and Civilization at NYU. My predecessor was Judge Baltasar GarzĂłn. I am an artist, not an academic, so I was somewhat hesitant as to what might be the best way for me to contribute to the remarkable history of the Center. The first possibility was to work with the Spanish Refugee Aid (SRA) archives, which had recently arrived at the Tamiment Library of NYU, consisting of hundreds upon hundreds of boxes of individual files of Spanish refugees who remained in France for decades. It was extraordinary to see all that material which included letters from supporters such as Albert Camus, Hanna Arendt and the like. James FernĂĄndez, then the director of the Center, asked me to consider working with the files as the subject of my tenure, which was very tempting, but the sheer volume of the material was overwhelming. I thought, realistically, that I could only barely scratch the surface of that incredible treasure, consequently I discarded the possibility. However, I brought the subject to the attention of the Generalitat de Catalunya and a team of historians and archivists was sent to NY to examine the files in order to determine the archiveâs nature and importance. As a result, and taking advantage of an official visit to the UN, Pascual Maragall, then president of the Generalitat, stopped by the Tamiment Library and was shown the archives. An agreement of collaboration was reached between NYU and the Generalitat through which the Catalan Government would help finance the ordering and digitalization of the archive in exchange for a digital copy that would be deposited in the Catalan National Archives. Due to the nature of the Spanish and Catalan political environment, I cannot say what was actually accomplished by this agreement, but we tried. 54
The bulk of my activity at the Center ended up being a workshop on multi-media installation around a theme project based on the roughly one hundred African-Americans who enlisted in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and fought for the Spanish Republican Government during the Civil War (1936-1939). Simultaneously, I spent considerable time examining material from the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA) also housed at the Tamiment Library. Thanks to the help of Professor Juan Salas, I became aware of the existence of a roll of 16 mm. film with 40 minutes of extraordinary unseen material shot by Harry Randall in Spain between 1937 and 1938. Years later this became the core of a piece of mine titled âWhat Does History Know of Nail Bitingâ which is now included in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art in NYC. A few panel discussions were organized during my tenure with the participation, among others, of John Hanhardt, then curator of time-based art at the Guggenheim Museum and the late Arthur Danto, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Columbia University. We held a collaborative panel discussion with the New York Institute of Architecture; and I delivered the yearly lecture organized by ALBA at the Cervantes Institute in NYC. While all this was happening, I continued to work on my current project at the time, âDark is the Room Where We Sleepâ, which was premiered a year later at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in NYC coinciding with an anthology of Robert Capaâs work and the first retrospective of Gerda Taro. The time spent at the Center also alerted me to the existence of the Hangar 17 repository and introduced me to the staff of the newly created September Eleven National Memorial and Museum, which enabled me to realize another significant project a few years later. So, to sum up, the generous invitation to reside at the Center during the second semester of the 200506 academic year helped facilitate all of the above. It was an unforgettable experience. Francesc Torres, 2022. 55
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Images from âDark Is The Room Where We Sleepâ, 2007. Fully documented exhumation of a common grave of 46 civilians killed by fascist paramilitary forces at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). The piece is now in the permanent collection of the International Center of Photography (ICP), in New York City.
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Anticipating the Shift of KJCC
Archival Materials to NYU Special Collections Rachel Moorman-Minton In light of the 25th anniversary of the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, it is important to consider how institutional history is preserved, and how the context in which it is found influences the discoveries that can be made about it. The planned transfer of the materials in the KJCCâs archive to NYUâs University Archives, housed in Bobst Library, provides a good opportunity to ask these questions of the KJCCâs historical ephemera. I will be exploring the following two questions: what role in the preservation of the history of the KJCC might the University Archives play in the future; and what will the implications be in terms of organization, preservation and access to that history? How might the context in which this material is positioned influence its interpretation by future researchers? To explore these questions, I have conducted two interviews; the first with Janet Bunde and Danielle Nista, University Archivist and Reference Associate, respectively, at NYU Special Collections and the second with Laura TurĂ©gano, who has been Associate Director at the KJCC since 2004 whose time was punctuated by multiple stints as Acting Director. Their answers provided great insight into the way the centerâs history has been collected and stored in the past and how it will be processed in the future once it is transferred to NYU Special Collections. Each of the interviewees approaches the center, its history, and its physical collections from a different point of view and with slightly differing priorities. Laura, who has lived and collected this history firsthand, is to a large extent responsible for deciding what ephemera from the centerâs history should be saved. She also understands the centerâs history through the lens of her own experiences, whereas Janet and Danielle are approaching the centerâs history from the outside perspective. Janet is the person who would be responsible for organizing the centerâs history within the framework of the archive once transferred from the KJCC. She must also ensure that everything that is in the collection can be housed and preserved in such a way that it does not deteriorate and can be made available to serve to researchers. Meanwhile, Danielle approaches the collection from the perspective of the researchers and of her work supporting them, particularly in terms of how this material would converse with other parts of the universityâs history and repositories of archival materials. The archival collections at NYU are divided amongst three 66
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repositories: the University Archives, the Tamiment Library and the Fales collection. Even without its administrative records being there, the KJCC is already somewhat represented in NYUâs Special Collections. Before I interviewed them, Janet and Danielle had already familiarized themselves with the KJCC as it appears in the archival collection for the sake of our class, when we visited to learn about how the KJCCâs history and influence appeared in the repositories. In the interview, Janet explained how the voice of the center itself was not represented in the collection, so it became necessary to look where else people had spoken about it and its work. It was also necessary to locate where the resources and the will for the creation of the center had come from. She said that âin figuring out who those people were, thatâs what led me back to John Brademas and then to his Congressional Papersâ (Bunde and Nista). The history of the center intersects with the contents of the University Archives due to John Brademasâ strong personal connection and involvement with the actions of the center during its first years. John Brademasâ administrative papers from his time as president of NYU (1981-1992) form a portion of the University Archives, as do his Congressional Papers, records of his time as a US Congressman from 1977 to 1981. In a dinner for King Juan Carlos I at which he was awarded an honorary degree and the Chair was established in his honor in 1983, Brademas spoke to the âpersonal bondâ that he felt with Spain because âjust thirty years ago I wrote my own doctoral dissertation on Spainâ (Brademas 82). This event, Brademas writes, âsymbolized the dedication of New York University to Hispanic studies in particularâ (Brademas 81). Laura TurĂ©gano points out that in terms of the KJCC, âit was really Brademas that wanted to create a center on Spainâ (TurĂ©gano). In the early years of the center, he was also instrumental in using his connections to âthe Spanish entrepreneurs and businessmen [and] the kingâ to help raise the necessary funds to establish and maintain the center and its academic, cultural and outreach programs (TurĂ©gano). In addition, the KJCCâs influence on the study of Spain more broadly at NYU contributed to the accession of the entire Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archive (ALBA) into the Tamiment Collection in 2000. Danielle, who was consulting the libraryâs Tamiment repository, explained this surprising way in which she first encountered the KJCC in the collection: âI happened across a letter in our collection files from Jim Fernandez, who was the director of KJCC at the time, advocating for this collection to be brought to NYU. So in that way, the KJCC is appearing in our own institutional records, as an actor and not just as a subject and influencing the way that we were able to assist researchers and influencing the way that the archives interact with each otherâ (Bunde and Nista). Shifting the KJCCâs administrative archive to NYU Special Collections implies changes in 68
the organization, preservation and access to the materials. In their current organizational structure in the KJCC building, it is possible to thumb through the entirety of the organizationâs history in chronological order, or to look at records relating to any one of the chairs that has come through the center. Laura showed me the records following our interview. There were folders dedicated to each event in the centerâs history that include relevant documentsâlargely promotional material, invoices from related payments, email correspondence and any written communication. There are also files dedicated to each of the King Juan Carlos and Andres Bello Chairs who have spent time at the center and the specific events, partnerships, courses and other initiatives they created. They are very well organized, which Laura herself also attests to. âThe more organized you are, the easier it is to work,â she says (TurĂ©gano). Currently, it is also possible to speak directly with Laura about the centerâs history to better understand it and how it appears in the records she has. Even when the materials are transferred to Special Collections in the future, Janet affirms that âyouâre probably going to find the same organizational structure that whatever person had charge of those records,â which means that Lauraâs organization of the centerâs administrative files will likely carry over once housed in the University Archives (Bunde and Nista). This will allow future researchers to interpret the material in a context as close to the original as possible. However, while the organizational structure may remain the same, it will be more difficult to see everything at a glance. Instead of them all being stored in the same handful of filing cabinets and a closet in the KJCC, the materials would be divided into boxes with the rest of NYUâs Special Collections, potentially at an offsite location. It is also important to note that Laura has in recent years stopped printing much of the historical ephemera, opting instead to keep similarly wellorganized digital folders (TurĂ©gano). Because the KJCCâs archival collections will not all be stored as one coherent unit, it may be more difficult to see any gaps in the recorded history. However, because conversations between the KJCC and Special Collections will be ongoing while the archival collections are being transferred, there will be greater clarity regarding these potential gaps. Janet spoke to this as a major benefit both for herself and for researchers in interpreting the collection in the future: Thatâs where having the initial conversation I had, which will be the first of many, with Jordana and Laura, was super helpful. Because one thing I took away from that conversation was that before Laura was there, records were kept in a different way. So documentation⊠for the first six to eight years of the center is going to look different and be organized differently, and maybe spottier, because she wasnât there imposing a particular organizational structure or collecting and saving materials in a particular way. So thatâs information that we can use when weâre processing the collection, that we can communicate to researchers through the finding aid that will help them understand why 69
they may see some things in those first eight years, some kinds of documents that donât continue. Or something that starts to appear in like 2003 and theyâre like, âwell, where was it before then?â And we can say with a little more certainty, âwell, it might not have been created or organized in that way because the person responsible for the organizational structure at the bulk of this collection wasnât here then (Bunde and Nista). Having clarity about reasons for peculiarities or gaps in the record better prepares Special Collections staff to assist researchers in interpreting the history they find in the archive. Preservation is another concern when dealing with archival materials, one where the long-term benefits of the materialâs inclusion in NYUâs Special Collections are clear. Special Collections has much greater environmental control, storing all of its materials in temperatureand humidity-controlled spaces, which help to preserve the materials for as long as possible. At the same time, not all of the material that currently makes up the KJCC archive will necessarily wind up in the collections held in the University Archives. The material will be pared down, and so in a sense, not all of it will be preserved. This is a topic Janet discussed in the interview, using as an example âa receipt from a grocery store for food that was at a receptionâ (Bunde and Nista). This is the type of documentation that would likely be excluded, âparticularly when, as in any large bureaucratic institution, it winds up with a purchase order, and then thereâs the catering menu and thereâs all these other documents attached to it that might have things like credit card numbers that I really canât share, that really canât be openedâ (Bunde and Nista). Ephemera such as invoices and receipts which are currently interspersed with other records from events held at the center may be discarded in favor of ensuring that other, more historically significant items, âlike the annual reports from the center that talk about the administratorâs vision for the center and what kind of work it should be doing,â can be included (Bunde and Nista). Other reasons to pare down the material that currently makes up the centerâs archive can be as simple as there being duplicates. For example, the KJCC has many leftover flyers, posters, printed calendars, and annual reports, and only one copy of each will be preserved at NYU Special Collections. Archivist and Records Manager Gregory Hunter calls this appraisal and selection process, during which archivists must âdecide which materials to add to the archives and which to destroy,â the âheart of archival workâ (Hunter 103). While all materials have âsome conceivable value,â he says, it is the job of the archivist to âselect those records with sufficient value to justify the costs of storage, arrangement, description, preservation, and referenceâ (Hunter 104). In terms of access, moving the KJCC archive to Special Collections means putting it in a space where it is expected to be studied, and facilitating that study is central to the everyday purpose of the department. It will be added to the online finding aid, which will describe 70
the contents of the collection. This means that on a logistical level, it will be much easier for researchers to know about the KJCC and access the collection. This ease of access is central to the purpose of archives. Danielle explained: âwe want them to be useful. Archives donât exist to be locked away, they exist to be used by people. Obviously balancing the need for preservation with the need for access, but thereâs not much of a point to collections not being used if weâre devoting resources to caring for themâ (Bunde and Nista). Beyond this, it will signify a shift in the way the KJCC and its history are contextualized. In our interview, Danielle emphasized that âthings arenât made to be put in the archive necessarily. Theyâre made with some sort of purpose in mind. But eventually someone has to make the choice that this does have historical value, itâs worth savingâ (Bunde and Nista). Right now, the history of the KJCC, as a young center, still feels administratively relevant. Since the entire history of the center is easily accessible on Lauraâs computer or in her office filing cabinets, it still feels as though the records are fulfilling the purpose which they were intended to fill. By transitioning them to the University Archive and presenting them alongside NYUâs history as a whole, the voice of the center will be positioned in terms of its relation to other entities at the University and to the broader relationships between NYU, Spain and the Spanish speaking world. The inclusion of the KJCC archives into NYU Special Collections will also unite the extensive records of Brademasâ time as President of NYU and in Congress with ephemera in the KJCC archive that gives insight into his relationship with Spain and more specifically with King Juan Carlos. Laura described to me âtwo medals that John Brademas got, which are the highest honors that the government of Spain can give to civilians. One is the Isabel la CatĂłlica medal, and the other one is Alfonso X El Sabio medal. He also received a letter handwritten by King Juan Carlos, which Brademas received on his 80th birthdayâ (TurĂ©gano). These give insight into the personal and professional connection between Brademas and King Juan Carlos that was likely not previously contained in the archive, and researchers will be able to consult it and other ephemera like it in conversation with the other materials in the repositories such as Brademasâ Congressional Papers. There will likely be many other interesting connections like these to be found between the KJCCâs archival collections and the existing repositories at NYU Special Collections. Of these unexpected connections, Danielle said, âit just shows how youâve got to let the archives kind of show you paths and show you different connections in different ways. And even if a researcher has consulted a collection a thousand times over, or several researchers have consulted a collection a thousand times over, thereâs always something new to discover because someone else is going to 71
bring a new lens to that endâ (Bunde and Nista). Moving the KJCCâs archival history to NYU Special Collections ensures that the impact of the KJCC on the community, on the university and on scholarship related to Spain and the Spanish-speaking world will be felt long past its 25th anniversary. It positions the center as a wellestablished place, one whose founding and early history were long ago enough to be studied and considered alongside the history of the university as a whole. Bibliography Brademas, John. âInternational Education.â Washington, D.C. to Washington Square. New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986. Bunde, Janet, and Danielle Nista. Personal interview. 7 December, 2021. Hunter, Gregory S. âSelection and Appraisal.â Developing and Maintaining Practical Archives: A How-To-Do-It Manual, American Library Association, 2020. Web. TurĂ©gano, Laura. Personal interview. 8 December, 2021.
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Pulling Focus: Reconsidering the Photographic Archive in Southern Peru Christine Mladic Janney 83-year-old Javier Glave first showed me the material he had saved from his fatherâs photography studio in early 2016. A good deal of it was being stored in the office area of a rugged warehouse space in one of Arequipaâs industrial corridors, about a half-hour drive from the city center. He said that he had done his best to try to take care of it over the years, but earthquakes, theft, and the impact of Arequipaâs desert climate had taken their toll. As he held some negatives up to the light streaming in through a small window, it was clear that the dramatic shift in humidity between the dry and rainy seasons, and the passing of time, had caused severe damage to the balance of chemicals holding on to the images in negative form, with many of them beginning to fade. Box upon box of Kodak, Agfa, and Hammer dry glass plates were stacked on piles that had been consumed by a thick layer of dust; even inside the boxes, dust had crept between each plate. Javier made it clear that he was eager, at that point in his life, to have more people appreciate the work of his father, Manuel JesĂșs Glave Gomez (b.1896-d.1981), who worked for many years with his studio partner, Victor AlcĂĄzar. He thought that he might be able to achieve greater national and international circulation of their work by collaborating with me, a doctoral scholar from NYU conducting fieldwork about photographic practice in Peru. In return, I would help to conserve, digitize, and disseminate his fatherâs photographic legacy. Photographic archives are currently on the move in Peru, both physically and conceptually. While much photographic material remains as a kind of family heirloomâsuch as that of the Studio Glave-AlcĂĄzarâinstitutions are taking greater interest in acquiring it for 74
Cambio de foco: reconsiderando el concepto de archivo fotogrĂĄfico en el sur del PerĂș traducido por Ros Postigo A principios del año 2016, Javier Glave, de 83 años, me mostrĂł por primera vez el material que habĂa guardado del estudio fotogrĂĄfico de su padre. Una gran parte de este archivo estaba almacenado en un depĂłsito de una de las zonas industriales de Arequipa, ubicada aproximadamente a media hora en auto del centro de la ciudad. Javier me contĂł que habĂa hecho todo lo posible por cuidarlo durante muchos años, pero los terremotos, los robos y el impacto del clima desĂ©rtico de Arequipa inevitablemente le habĂan pasado factura. Mientras Ă©l sostenĂa algunos negativos a la luz que por una pequeña ventana iluminaba la habitaciĂłn, se hizo evidente que el cambio dramĂĄtico de humedad entre las estaciones seca y lluviosa de la ciudad, junto al paso del tiempo, habĂan ocasionado graves daños en la estabilidad quĂmica de los materiales ocasionando el desvanecimiento de las imĂĄgenes. Cajas de cajas de placas de vidrio seco de las marcas Kodak, Agfa y Hammer, estaban apiladas en medio de una capa gruesa de polvo, el mismo que habĂa ingresado dentro de las cajas cubriendo cada una de las placas. En ese momento de su vida, Javier dejĂł claro que se sentĂa ansioso por que mĂĄs personas conocieran y aprecieran el trabajo de su padre, Manuel JesĂșs Glave GĂłmez (n.1896 - d.1981), quien habĂa trabajado durante muchos años en sociedad con el fotĂłgrafo VĂctor AlcĂĄzar. Javier viĂł una oportunidad y pensĂł que podrĂa lograr que el trabajo de su padre obtuviera difusiĂłn nacional e internacional colaborando conmigo, una estudiante de doctorado de la Universidad de Nueva York que se encontraba en Arequipa realizando un trabajo de campo sobre la prĂĄctica fotogrĂĄfica en PerĂș. A cambio, lo ayudarĂa a conservar, digitalizar y difundir el legado fotogrĂĄfico de su padre. Los archivos fotogrĂĄficos en PerĂș se encuentran actualmente en movimiento, tanto fĂsica como conceptualmente. Si bien gran parte de los archivos aĂșn permanecen como herencia familiar, como lo fue el archivo del estudio Glave-AlcĂĄzar, las instituciones pĂșblicas y privadas se estĂĄn interesando cada vez mĂĄs en adquirirlos para sus colecciones. No solo se habla de los archivos fotogrĂĄficos como patrimonio local, sino que tambiĂ©n han empezado a ser registrados legalmente como Patrimonio Cultural de la NaciĂłn, como ha sido el caso del archivo de MartĂn 75
their collections. Not only are photographic
Chambi. Archivos enteros o parte de ellos,
archives talked about as local forms of
estån cambiando de posesión a través de
patrimonio, but they are also beginning to
caminos difĂciles de seguirles el rastro, pasan
be legally registered as Patrimonio Cultural
por manos de turistas, dueños de tiendas de
de la NaciĂłn (National Cultural Heritage),
antigĂŒedades, acadĂ©micos, coleccionistas,
which is what occurred with the archive of
vendedores de mercadillos, entre otros.
MartĂn Chambi. Portions of archives and
A través de estos y otros procesos, se han
entire collections are changing possession
ampliado los marcos conceptuales en torno
through circuitous pathways, passing
a las fotografĂas y los archivos fotogrĂĄficos.
through the hands of tourists, antique store
El tĂ©rmino âarchivo fotogrĂĄficoâ
owners, academics, collectors, flea market
hoy se menciona con mucha frecuencia
vendors, and others. Through these and
en el mundo de la fotografĂa peruana.
other processes, the conceptual frames
Por ejemplo, lo hallamos en el evento que
around photographs and photographic
lleva por nombre âEncuentro de Archivos
archives are also expanding.
FotogrĂĄficosâ gestado por la escuela de
The term âarchivo fotogrĂĄficoâ
fotografĂa Centro de la Imagen ubicada
(photographic archive) is mentioned with
en Lima, PerĂș. Se utiliza en artĂculos
great frequency in Peruvian photography
periodĂsticos, tesis, exposiciones y libros,
today. It is in the title of the event series,
asà como también en conversaciones
âEncuentro de Archivos FotogrĂĄficosâ
coloquiales. Comprender los significados
(Photographic Archive Conference),
que hay detrĂĄs del tĂ©rmino âarchivos
organized by the Centro de la Imagen of
fotogrĂĄficosâ es fundamental, pues no solo
Lima, Peru. It is used in newspaper articles,
influye en cĂłmo el material fotogrĂĄfico
theses, exhibitions, and books, as well as in
histórico serå tratado, sino que también
colloquial conversation. Understanding the
darĂĄ forma a la construcciĂłn (o negaciĂłn)
meanings of âarchivo fotogrĂĄficoâ is critical,
de diferentes âimaginarios de archivoâ
however, because they not only influence
(Ginsburg 2018). El término no es sencillo,
how historical photographic material might
pues combina dos conceptos que ya son
be treated, but also shape the production (or
bastante precarios por sĂ mismos. Aunque la
denial) of different âarchival imaginariesâ
percepciĂłn comĂșn del archivo lo presente
(Ginsburg 2018).
como una fuente de conocimiento sobre el
The term itself is hardly straightforward,
pasado contenido en soportes materiales, los
combining two concepts that are already
estudios que analizan la teorĂa y la prĂĄctica
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rather precarious on their own. Although a common perception of an archive presents it as a source of knowledge about the past that is found in the content of material items, scholarship analyzing archival practice and theory reveals otherwise. An archive is neither static nor stable, but an âactive historical processâ (Edwards and Morton 2009). Rather than sites of knowledge retrieval, archives are sites of knowledge production (Stoler 2002). Archives have come to exist the way they do (or donât) because of the logic, structures and power dynamics at work within and around them (Foucault 1972; Derrida 1996, 2002), which is why analysis of form is just as important as that of content (Stoler 2002). On the other hand, while adding âphotographicâ may appear to help specify the material nature of the archive, potentially aiming to distinguish between an archive of documents (with or without photographs in it) versus an archive of primarily photographic images, this is hardly the result. After all, what counts as âphotographicâ material? The boundaries of the photographic archive are difficult to trace, with the inclusion and treatment of items like cameras, enlargers, chemical bottles, and frames remaining unclear. The ideas of the âoriginalâ and the âhistoricalâ can also be elusive when dealing with photography. Is the original image found in the photographic negative, or the positive photographic print? What if no negative was ever made, or it wasnât saved? Can a print achieve original status if it was printed by an assistant as well as the photographer? Is a photographic print historical if it was created before a certain year, or can it be historical if it was printed recently but from a particularly old negative? Just as a photographer might change the focal plane from one shot to the next, scholars, collectors, and practitioners alike are pulling focus on the photographic archive itself, offering new ways to expand interpretation, interact with material, and challenge existing power dynamics. Featuring images made by the Studio Glave-AlcĂĄzar and images made during the investigation of this photographic practice, this photo essay offers a wide view of the 78
archivĂstica revelan lo contrario. En ese sentido, un archivo no es estĂĄtico ni estable, sino que es un âproceso histĂłrico activoâ (Edwards y Morton 2009). MĂĄs que un espacio de recuperaciĂłn de conocimiento o memoria, los archivos son espacios de producciĂłn de conocimiento (Stoler 2002). Los archivos han llegado a existir tal como son (o no) debido a la lĂłgica, estructuras y dinĂĄmicas de poder que operan dentro y alrededor de ellos (Foucault 1972; Derrida 1996, 2002), por ese motivo el anĂĄlisis de la forma resulta tan importante como la del contenido (Stoler 2002). Por otro lado, si bien agregar la palabra âfotogrĂĄficoâ puede parecer que ayuda a especificar la naturaleza del material de un archivo, tal vez con el objetivo de distinguir entre un archivo de documentos (con o sin fotografĂas) frente a un archivo principalmente de imĂĄgenes fotogrĂĄficas, esta es una especificidad aĂșn difĂcil de lograr. DespuĂ©s de todo ÂżquĂ© cuenta como material âfotogrĂĄficoâ? Los lĂmites de un archivo fotogrĂĄfico son difĂciles de trazar, y la inclusiĂłn de elementos como cĂĄmaras, ampliadoras, botellas de productos quĂmicos, marcos, entre otros, siguen sin estar claros. Las ideas de lo que se denomina como âoriginalâ e âhistĂłricoâ tambiĂ©n pueden ser esquivas cuando se habla de fotografĂa. ÂżLa imagen original se encuentra en el negativo o en la impresiĂłn positiva? ÂżQuĂ© pasa si nunca se hizo un negativo o no se guardĂł? ÂżPuede una impresiĂłn positiva considerarse como original si esta fue impresa por un asistente y no por el fotĂłgrafo que capturĂł la imagen? ÂżSe considera histĂłrica una impresiĂłn fotogrĂĄfica si fue creada antes de un determinado año, o puede ser histĂłrica si fue impresa recientemente pero a partir de un negativo antiguo? AsĂ como un fotĂłgrafo puede cambiar el plano focal entre una captura y otra; los coleccionistas, acadĂ©micos y profesionales cambian el foco de un archivo ofreciendo nuevas formas de expandir su interpretaciĂłn, de interactuar con el material y de desafiar las dinĂĄmicas de poder existentes. A travĂ©s de imĂĄgenes producidas por el estudio Glave-AlcĂĄzar y del registro visual de la investigaciĂłn de su prĂĄctica fotogrĂĄfica, este ensayo ofrece una visiĂłn amplia de aquello que se entiende como âarchivo fotogrĂĄficoâ, sirviendo, ademĂĄs, como un recurso de contemplaciĂłn visual para reflexionar sobre estos debates. El estudio de las imĂĄgenes y del material fotogrĂĄfico 79
âphotographic archive,â serving as a visual contemplation of such ongoing concerns. Study of the photographic images and material that are property of the Glave family continues, as well as conservation efforts. To see more images from the archive, and to watch videos featuring the history of photography in Arequipa and an interview with Javier Glave, please visit the virtual photography exhibition curated by Christine Mladic Janney, Ros Postigo y Juan Carlos BelĂłn of CIEFO, La Otra Ribera, at https://ucsp.edu.pe/glaveyalcazar/laotraribera/. Any additional information related to this essay can be sent to: ciefo.peru@gmail.com. Captions of in-text photos in order of appearance, left to right, top to bottom: Javier Glave holding a collection of photo postcards made either by the Studio Glave-AlcĂĄzar or Casa Glave in Arequipa, Peru. Photograph by Christine Mladic Janney, 2016. Three bottles of chemicals found in the photographic archive of the Studio Glave-AlcĂĄzar. Photograph by Christine Mladic Janney, 2016. Javier Glave inspecting a glass plate negative in the storage unit in Arequipa city where he kept archival materials from the Studio Glave-AlcĂĄzar. Photograph by Christine Mladic Janney, 2016. Research Assistant Leonilda Humpiri Puma cleaning and scanning glass plate negatives from the archive of the Studio Glave-AlcĂĄzar in Arequipa, Peru. Photograph by Christine Mladic Janney, 2016. The studio camera used by Manuel JesĂșs Glave and Victor AlcĂĄzar. The lens is engraved with the âMax T. Vargas,â who was one of the most important and influential photographers working at the turn of the 20th century in the southern Andes. Photograph by Christine Mladic Janney, 2016. Boxes of glass plate negatives that form part of the photographic archive of the Studio GlaveAlcĂĄzar. Photograph by Christine Mladic Janney, 2016. 80
que es de propiedad de la familia Glave aĂșn sigue en curso, asĂ como los esfuerzos para su conservaciĂłn. Para ver mĂĄs contenido relacionado al archivo Glave-AlcĂĄzar, visite la exposiciĂłn virtual permanente âLa otra riberaâ, curada por Christine Mladic Janney, Ros Postigo y Juan Carlos BelĂłn de CIEFO, en el siguiente enlace: https://ucsp.edu.pe /glaveyalcazar/laotraribera/. Para obtener mayor informaciĂłn relacionada con este ensayo, puede escribir a ciefo.peru@gmail. com.
Leyendas para las fotos en texto en orden de apariciĂłn, de izquierda a derecha, de arriba a abajo: Javier Glave con una colecciĂłn de postales fotogrĂĄficas realizadas por el Studio Glave-AlcĂĄzar o Casa Glave en Arequipa, PerĂș. FotografĂa tomada por Christine Mladic Janney, 2016. Tres botellas de productos quĂmicos encontradas en el archivo fotogrĂĄfico del Estudio Glave-AlcĂĄzar. FotografĂa tomada por Christine Mladic Janney, 2016. Javier Glave inspeccionando un negativo de placa de vidrio en el depĂłsito donde guardaba materiales de archivo del estudio Glave-AlcĂĄzar, Arequipa, PerĂș. FotografĂa tomada por Christine Mladic Janney, 2016. Asistente de investigaciĂłn Leonilda Humpiri Puma limpiando y escaneando negativos de placas de vidrio del archivo del Estudio Glave-AlcĂĄzar en Arequipa, PerĂș. FotografĂa tomada por Christine Mladic Janney, 2016. La cĂĄmara fotogrĂĄfica del estudio de Manuel JesĂșs Glave y Victor AlcĂĄzar. El lente estĂĄ grabado con âMax T. Vargasâ, quien fue uno de los fotĂłgrafos mĂĄs importantes e influyentes que trabajaron a principios del siglo XX en el sur de los Andes. FotografĂa tomada por Christine Mladic Janney, 2016. Cajas de negativos en placa de vidrio que forman parte del archivo fotogrĂĄfico del Estudio Glave-AlcĂĄzar. FotografĂa tomada por Christine Mladic Janney, 2016. 81
Manuel JesĂșs Glave outside the Studio of the Brothers Vargas in the Plaza de Armas of Arequipa city, where he apprenticed and worked as a retoucher before opening his own studio with Victor AlcĂĄzar. Photograph found in the Archive of the Studio Glave-AlcĂĄzar, unknown year. Manuel JesĂșs Glave afuera del Estudio de los Hermanos Vargas en la Plaza de Armas de la ciudad de Arequipa, donde fue aprendiz y trabajĂł como retocador antes de abrir su propio estudio con VĂctor AlcĂĄzar. FotografĂa encontrada en el Archivo del Estudio Glave-AlcĂĄzar,, año desconocido.
Manuel JesĂșs Glave (far right) with unidentified men. Photograph found in the Archive of the Studio Glave-AlcĂĄzar, unknown year. Manuel JesĂșs Glave (extremo derecho) con hombres no identificados. FotografĂa encontrada en el Archivo del Estudio Glave-AlcĂĄzar, año desconocido.
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Manuel JesĂșs Glave (far right) with peers and retouching equipment in an unidentified photography studio. Photograph found in the Archive of the Studio Glave-AlcĂĄzar, unknown year. Manuel JesĂșs Glave (extremo derecho) con compañeros y equipo de retoque en un estudio de fotografĂa no identificado. FotografĂa encontrada en el Archivo del Estudio GlaveAlcĂĄzar, año desconocido.
View from the balcony of the Studio Glave-AlcĂĄzar, located above the Glave family home on Alameda Pardo in Arequipa, Peru. Photograph found in the Archive of the Studio Glave-AlcĂĄzar, unknown year. Vista desde el balcĂłn del Estudio Glave-AlcĂĄzar, ubicado sobre la casa de la familia Glave en la Alameda Pardo en Arequipa, PerĂș. FotografĂa encontrada en el Archivo del Estudio Glave-AlcĂĄzar, año desconocido.
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Photograph found in the Archive of the Studio Glave-AlcĂĄzar, unknown year. FotografĂa encontrada en el Archivo del Estudio Glave-AlcĂĄzar, año desconocido.
Photograph found in the Archive of the Studio GlaveAlcĂĄzar, unknown year. FotografĂa encontrada en el Archivo del Estudio GlaveAlcĂĄzar, año desconocido.
Photograph found in the Archive of the Studio Glave-AlcĂĄzar, unknown year. FotografĂa encontrada en el Archivo del Estudio Glave-AlcĂĄzar, año desconocido.
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Photograph found in the Archive of the Studio Glave-AlcĂĄzar, unknown year. FotografĂa encontrada en el Archivo del Estudio GlaveAlcĂĄzar, año desconocido.
Photograph found in the Archive of the Studio GlaveAlcĂĄzar, unknown year. FotografĂa encontrada en el Archivo del Estudio GlaveAlcĂĄzar, año desconocido.
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Desarmar narrativas: archivos y museos Una experiencia en clase Ana Leonor Romero Hacer archivo me resulta siempre un gran programa. QuizĂĄs porque cuando leo documentos el tiempo se detiene, quizĂĄs porque siempre es un misterio a desentrañar, o quizĂĄs porque soy historiadora y me gusta lo que hago. Explorar un archivo es como viajar; puedo recorrer espacios por primera vez y ver otros mundos donde a veces las cuestiones me resultan familiares y otras extrañas. En los Ășltimos años la multiplicaciĂłn de los archivos digitales acrecentĂł ese potencial. El giro digital, como se le ha llamado a esta transformaciĂłn cuantitativa y cualitativa del acceso a los documentos, impactĂł sobre el modo de hacer historia y de reflexionar sobre el pasado. AcercĂł, virtualmente, archivos ubicados en espacios remotos rompiendo lĂmites materiales de la prĂĄctica de la investigaciĂłn histĂłrica. PosibilitĂł deslocalizar las investigaciones, indagar con mayor facilidad por fuera de los lĂmites de la narrativa del Estado NaciĂłn, establecer conexiones y diversificar mĂĄs las agendas de investigaciĂłn1. Como investigadora latinoamericana, la posibilidad de acceder a archivos digitales en España o Estados Unidos me permitiĂł profundizar la perspectiva global y transnacional de mis indagaciones. Para mĂ este no fue, ni es, el Ășnico beneficio del giro digital. Desde 2017 form parte del ComitĂ© Editorial del sitio que alberga la obra y los papeles del historiador argentino JosĂ© Luis Romero, mi abuelo2. La digitalizaciĂłn nos permitiĂł poner al alcance pĂșblico su legado como historiador y como ciudadano, que en mĂ confluye en el aprendizaje del oficio y en la posibilidad de recorrer una obra que fue fundamental en mi formaciĂłn. Mi participaciĂłn en el proceso de 1.. Sobre el impacto de los archivos digitales en la investigaciĂłn, su articulaciĂłn con la Historia Global y sus lĂmites ver: Putnam, L. âThe transnational and the Text-Searchable: Digitized Sourced and the shadows they castsâ The American Historical Review. Abril 2016; 21 (2), 377â402. Red. 2.. JosĂ© Luis Romero (1909-1977) Historiador argentino. Profesor de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata, de la RepĂșblica del Uruguay y de la Universidad de Buenos Aires, de la que fue Rector y Decano de la Facultad de FilosofĂa y Letras. AllĂ creĂł la CĂĄtedra de Historia Social General que tuvo una influencia decisiva en la renovaciĂłn historiogrĂĄfica de la dĂ©cada de 1960. Especializado en historia medieval europea, su obra analiza la historia del mundo occidental desde sus orĂgenes greco-romanos al presente. AnalizĂł el desarrollo de la mentalidad burguesa surgida en la edad media y su crisis en el siglo XX. Su abarcadora visiĂłn de la expansiĂłn europea incluye estudios sobre la sociedad y la polĂtica en la Argentina y AmĂ©rica Latina. El sitio JosĂ© Luis Romero. Obras completas y archivo digital (https:// jlromero.com.ar/) del cual NicolĂĄs Quiroga es codirector del proyecto de digitalizaciĂłn y del archivo digital reĂșne sus obras completas y papeles personales.
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digitalizaciĂłn me abriĂł una ventana a los complejos entramados que acompañan el desarrollo de las humanidades digitales, el peso que tienen las lĂłgicas de programaciĂłn y los formatos en los que los archivos son guardados y recuperados. LĂłgicas tan complejas como las de los archivos materiales. Los archivos fĂsicos, sobre todo los pĂșblicos, ofrecen el encanto de la experiencia corporal de transitar esas lĂłgicas, de aventurarnos en los procesos de almacenamiento y memoria que tiene el Estado. Cada visita a un archivo es Ășnica y cada investigador realiza una observaciĂłn propia al adentrarse en sus pasillos. La sola etnografĂa de un archivo permite un plus en la indagaciĂłn de su acervo: ver las relaciones de poder y el lugar que ocupan las distintas colecciones en los sistemas de almacenamiento. El modo en que se ordena, clasifica y pauta el acceso a esas colecciones es un modo de armar un relato sobre las mismas. Por sobre todo, en contraste con la digital, la experiencia del archivo permite situar los documentos en el entramado local, entender sus dimensiones fĂsicas, tocarlos, palparlos, sumando asĂ su dimensiĂłn material y develando el entramado de su contexto de producciĂłn3. En AmĂ©rica Latina, y en la Argentina en particular, los archivos cobran un lugar central no sĂłlo como acervos pĂșblicos del funcionamiento institucional sino tambiĂ©n como espacio de memoria, un lugar donde reunir el material referente a un pasado reciente y doloroso que aĂșn estĂĄ siendo indagado no sĂłlo por historiadores sino tambiĂ©n por organismos de derechos humanos y por la opiniĂłn pĂșblica4. Su emplazamiento combina en varios casos ambas cuestiones. AsĂ, el Archivo Nacional de la Memoria preserva la documentaciĂłn sobre el quebrantamiento de derechos humanos en la Argentina, posee fondos de origen pĂșblico y privado y estĂĄ ubicado en Espacio Memoria y Derechos Humanos (ex ESMA), emplazado en lo que fue un centro de detenciĂłn clandestino en el interior de una instituciĂłn estatal, la Escuela de MecĂĄnica de la Armada5. Hoy, como sitio de memoria ademĂĄs de archivo, ofrece un espacio en donde se despliegan testimonios de ese momento histĂłrico, buscando aportar a la comprensiĂłn sobre cĂłmo se planificĂł y ejecutĂł el terrorismo de Estado en la Argentina y sus consecuencias en el presente. Los aportes de les estudiantes de NYU en Buenos Aires que realizaron pasantĂas en este espacio han sido en mi clase un elemento central para profundizar el debate sobre las lĂłgicas internas de almacenamiento y despliegue de sus colecciones y el modo en que los Estados, y cada una de sus
3.. Sobre las experiencias en el archivo: Farge, A. La atracciĂłn del archivo, Valencia: Edicions Alfons el Magnanim, 1991. Caimari, L. La vida en el archivo. Goces, tedios y desvĂos en el oficio de la historia, Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2017. 4.. Ver entre otros: Jelin, E. âPublic Memorialization in Perspective: Truth, Justice and Memory of Past Repression in the Southern Cone of South Americaâ The International Journal of Transitional Justice. 2007; Vol. 1, 138.156. Web. 5.. Para mĂĄs informaciĂłn sobre el Archivo ver: https://www.argentina.gob.ar/derechoshumanos/ANM. Para mĂĄs informaciĂłn sobre el sitio https://www.espaciomemoria.ar/
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instituciones, establecen una relaciĂłn con el pasado. Al igual que ir a un archivo o realizar una pasantĂa, la experiencia de estudiar historia latinoamericana en un espacio latinoamericano como Buenos Aires es una oportunidad para situar lo estudiado y contextualizarlo. La mirada de quien viaja, exploradora y extrañada, es similar a la de quien visita un archivo buscando desentrañar sus lĂłgicas. Dar la clase de Introduction to Latin American Studies en Buenos Aires para estudiantes de NYU me planteĂł el reto de trazar un diĂĄlogo entre mis preconcepciones sobre LatinoamĂ©rica, su historia y su presente y las de los estudiantes y, luego, el desafĂo de iniciar una deconstrucciĂłn. Esta clase inicial, generalmente reĂșne estudiantes de distintas orientaciones para adentrarse por primera vez en los rudimentos de la perspectiva histĂłrica para desarmar a partir de un abordaje crĂtico las mĂșltiples narrativas sobre AmĂ©rica Latina. El primer dĂa de clases les estĂmulo a ser parte de este proceso: les propongo poner en papel, y sĂłlo para su propio beneficio, sus ideas e impresiones previas al viaje sobre lo que esperaban encontrar en su estadĂa, sobre la historia latinoamericana y sus expectativas del semestre para que luego, al final de la cursada, lo relean y reflexionen sobre si se transformĂł su visiĂłn y cĂłmo. El desafĂo es poder incorporar en este proceso la experiencia especĂfica de la investigaciĂłn histĂłrica, del archivo, que ofrece una herramienta para reflexionar sobre las lĂłgicas narrativas y para desarmarlas, en un curso introductorio, heterogĂ©neo y situado. Las visitas a los museos me permiten ofrecerles este recurso. Museos y archivos despliegan los mismos objetos con propĂłsitos diferentes y para pĂșblicos distintos; en muchos casos una misma instituciĂłn despliega sus colecciones en estas dos direcciones. Mientras que los archivos organizan sus acervos para ser recuperados por quienes buscan informaciĂłn, los museos despliegan sus colecciones construyendo imĂĄgenes de un pasado, armando una narrativa y dando forma a la historia pĂșblica6. Estas narrativas interpelan, en tanto turistas y visitantes extranjeros, directamente a los estudiantes de ILAS. La propuesta es incitarlos a aceptar esta interpelaciĂłn e instarlos a desafiarla. Visitar asĂ dos espacios vinculados con nudos temĂĄticos del syllabus, gestionados de modos distintos y emplazados en sitios que permiten pensar un recorrido etnogrĂĄfico por la ciudad. Una primera visita al Museo Evita âde gestiĂłn autĂłnoma, vinculado al Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones HistĂłricas Eva PerĂłn7â estĂĄ dirigida a trabajar las imĂĄgenes del peronismo y de uno de sus principales Ăconos. El uso de la imagen en este espacio es central; de hecho el anĂĄlisis 6.. Sobre el papel de los museos en las narrativas histĂłricas ver: Blasco, M. E., Pagano, P., Di Marco, J., Di Meglio, G., Katz, M., Sarsale, C., Carman, C., GĂłmez, F., Finocchio, S., Paganini, M., y Lorenz, F. âInvestigaciĂłn, transferencia y gestiĂłn en museos histĂłricosâ, Cuadernos del Instituto Ravignani. 2021; 01, Segunda Serie. Web. 7.. Para mĂĄs informaciĂłn del museo: https://museoevita.org.ar/
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del Instagram del Museo proveyĂł en tiempos de aislamiento social un dispositivo para desarmar el modo en que se presenta la imagen de Eva y su vinculaciĂłn con el presente. Una segunda visita, al finalizar el curso, al Museo del Bicentenario âdependencia del gobierno nacional y emplazado en la Casa de Gobierno8â que presenta una narrativa de la historia argentina articulada en torno a las gestiones presidenciales estĂĄ orientada a pensar el papel de los grandes relatos nacionales. Los museos permiten sumar otro tipo de fuentes âdiferentes, principalmente vinculadas con imĂĄgenesâ del repertorio de la investigaciĂłn histĂłrica y presentar abanicos de los modos de acceso a un acervo histĂłrico. La etnografĂa de esas visitas se plasma en ensayos estructurados que buscan explicitar estas conexiones. Como resultado, he tenido el privilegio de leer una variedad de anĂĄlisis, impresiones y agudas reflexiones originales sobre estos espacios. Les estudiantes ponen a prueba sus intuiciones, colocan en juego los temas discutidos en clase y vinculan el pasado con los procesos del presente. MĂĄs de una vez, me encontrĂ© sorprendida por las vinculaciones que establecen en sus lecturas del pasado con los colectivos actuales, con sus propias experiencias y con la coyuntura polĂtica local que les tocĂł transitar durante su visita. Todas las veces me sentĂ interpelada a cuestionar mis propias interpretaciones. La visita al Museo del Bicentenario es ademĂĄs un trabajo de cierre y balance. En Ă©l les propongo que analicen la narrativa del museo y, a partir de ese disparador, escriban un ensayo que vincule lo que ven en el museo, lo trabajado en clase, y su propia experiencia en Buenos Aires. Mi invitaciĂłn es a que evidencien el proceso de deconstrucciĂłn de narrativas propias y ajenas sobre AmĂ©rica Latina. Les desafĂo a que relean con esa mirada ese primer escrito, revisen su experiencia casi de modo etnogrĂĄfico y lo contrasten con lo discutido y analizado; que plasman, a partir del ejercicio, su propio proceso de transformaciĂłn de ideas. En este intercambio, esa mirada de quien se animĂł a ese proceso, una mirada extrañada del cotidiano, me ofreciĂł nuevas perspectivas para cuestionar mis propias narrativas de la Argentina y de AmĂ©rica Latina. Por sobre todo me señalĂł, y sigue señalĂĄndome, mis puntos ciegos, aquellos que por estar acostumbrada o muy inmersa en la situaciĂłn no puedo desarmar. Al llamarme la atenciĂłn sobre cuestiones como el papel de la violencia, el aspecto racial del conflicto social, el lugar cotidiano del debate polĂtico me iluminĂł aristas de procesos que de otro modo me quedarĂan solapados y fragmentados.
8.. Para mĂĄs informaciĂłn del museo: https://www.casarosada.gob.ar/la-casa-rosada/museo
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SelecciĂłn de imĂĄgenes de la serie de Jorge Ribalta, RestauraciĂłn, 2017-18. CortesĂa del Banco de España.
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RestauraciĂłn (la autenticidad del material) Jorge Ribalta âEl oro y la autenticidad son justamente expresiĂłn de la fungibilidad, de la comparabilidad de las cosasâ Theodor W. Adorno, Prueba del oro (Minima Moralia, 1945). El concepto de truth to material o de la verdad o autenticidad del material es consustancial a la arquitectura y las artes de la modernidad. Su teorizaciĂłn se remonta a John Ruskin, que dictaminĂł que âninguna forma ni materia deben ser representadas con falsedadâ (Las siete lĂĄmparas de la arquitectura, 1849). Cada material tiene sus cualidades singulares y la comprensiĂłn y el respeto de tal especificidad de los materiales y de la pureza de las artes es un imperativo. Los materiales se muestran a sĂ mismos: cada uno sirve para una funciĂłn y una forma, y eso debe ser legible, nunca ocultado. Esa verdad, a la vez estĂ©tica y moral, es lo moderno. NingĂșn medio se debe transformar en otro. En fotografĂa, este imperativo de pureza en el uso de mĂ©todos fotogrĂĄficos genuinos (Paul Strand, Photography, 1917) produce el rechazo al mimetismo de la pintura en favor de los principios de nitidez, objetividad y funcionalismo. Sobre tales principios se basa la idea documental que surge en la dĂ©cada de 1920 con la primera democratizaciĂłn/masificaciĂłn de la tecnologĂa fotogrĂĄfica, cuyo emblema es la cĂĄmara Leica (de hecho, esa es la segunda democratizaciĂłn: la primera es el nacimiento de Kodak y la implantaciĂłn del gelatinobromuro en la dĂ©cada de 1880; una tercera, la era Instamatic, culminarĂĄ en la dĂ©cada de 1970). Los procedimientos pigmentarios de positivado, que caracterizaron las estĂ©ticas de la primera modernidad fotogrĂĄfica en el cambio de siglo XIX al XX, son abandonados en favor del papel al gelatinobromuro. Los mĂ©todos artesanales dejan paso definitivamente a los materiales producidos industrialmente. [Excurso: Con la masificaciĂłn de los medios digitales, Internet y las redes sociales en el trĂĄnsito del siglo XX al XXI âÂżuna cuarta democratizaciĂłn?â, la autenticidad del material en fotografĂa se complica. Los papeles y las tĂ©cnicas de impresiĂłn de tinta evolucionan en busca de la calidad fotoquĂmica. Esto es, imitan o intentan reproducir la materialidad de las copias al gelatinobromuro. En esa bĂșsqueda, Leica replica el diseño de su clĂĄsica cĂĄmara telemĂ©trica 91
y produce en 2012 un modelo digital monocromĂĄtico. MĂĄs allĂĄ de la aristocrĂĄtica Leica, en las cĂĄmaras digitales la pantalla sustituye al visor directo. Este pequeño detalle de la desapariciĂłn del visor y de la visiĂłn directa en la cĂĄmara explica un profundo cambio epistĂ©mico del dispositivo fotogrĂĄfico digital. De hecho, con los medios digitales acaso asistimos a la desapariciĂłn de la cĂĄmara como tal, al quedar integrada en el telĂ©fono mĂłvil y, de ahĂ, en las redes sociales. La autenticidad del material en las tĂ©cnicas fotogrĂĄficas digitales es inautĂ©ntica, es un mimetismo. A pesar de la masificaciĂłn de la fotografĂa digital, la tecnologĂa fotoquĂmica persiste. Doblemente: persiste como tal y persiste como un inconsciente o precondiciĂłn de la fotografĂa digital. Persiste de manera autĂ©ntica y de manera inautĂ©ntica, por asĂ decir. Hoy, el fotĂłgrafo no tiene mĂĄs remedio que tomar partido a favor o en contra de la autenticidad del material, escoger entre verdad o falsedad. Aunque este dilema se presente de forma equĂvoca, confusa o hĂbrida, incluso fantasmagĂłrica, porque la fotografĂa con medios digitales ya no es propiamente fotografĂa sino otro medio diferente, como lo es el video del cine. Su autenticidad permanece indefinida.] Esta serie sobre la restauraciĂłn de la fachada del Banco de España se basa en la adopciĂłn lo mĂĄs literal posible de los principios de la autenticidad (Ăłptica y fotoquĂmica) del material fotogrĂĄfico propios de los discursos de modernidad fotogrĂĄfica tal como se formulan en la dĂ©cada fundacional de 1920. Esa adopciĂłn tiene diversos subtextos. MencionarĂ© dos. Uno de ellos es reconocer la simultaneidad histĂłrica de Ruskin y Marx. La âautenticidad del materialâ es uno de los discursos que adopta el surgimiento del materialismo histĂłrico. En torno a 1850, ademĂĄs de Ruskin y Marx, se inicia la era de la fotografĂa reproducible y de los ĂĄlbumes (la fotografĂa âpĂșblicaâ), con la revoluciĂłn tecnolĂłgica del colodiĂłn y la albĂșmina, la mĂtica âedad de oroâ de la fotografĂa previa a su industrializaciĂłn en la dĂ©cada de 1880. Esa primera revoluciĂłn de la tecnologĂa fotogrĂĄfica constituye un momento fundacional, aunque su reconocimiento y teorizaciĂłn no se producirĂĄ sino medio siglo mĂĄs tarde, entre lo que inicia Paul Strand (circa 1916) y culmina Walter Benjamin (Pequeña historia de la fotografĂa, 1931 y La obra de arte en la Ă©poca de su reproductibilidad tĂ©cnica, 1936). La comprensiĂłn del surgimiento de la fotografĂa como una traducciĂłn tecnolĂłgica de los discursos del materialismo histĂłrico nos lleva de nuevo a Benjamin, en donde ademĂĄs tanto la fotografĂa como el materialismo histĂłrico (o la fotografĂa como materialismo histĂłrico) adquieren nuevos sentidos. Benjamin hace una crĂtica al materialismo histĂłrico en sus tesis de filosofĂa de la historia (1940), donde lo compara con un autĂłmata. El estudio de la historia no puede reducirse a un marco teĂłrico preconcebido y sobre-determinado, es necesario un concepto mĂĄs poroso y delicado de la historia. Habla de 92
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cĂłmo la tarea del materialista histĂłrico es cepillar la historia a contrapelo. Esta idea de acciĂłn âa contrapeloâ es importante para la fotografĂa, y reaparecerĂĄ cuarenta años mĂĄs tarde con Allan Sekula, al retomar el testigo dejado por Benjamin y denominar justamente como âfotografĂa a contrapeloâ su proyecto artĂstico, en su primer y mĂĄs importante libro (Photography Against the Grain, 1984). En suma, mi argumento es que la filosofĂa de la autenticidad del material de las artes y en particular de la fotografĂa, que se formula al inicio del siglo XX, se fundamenta y es una consecuencia de la confluencia de discursos y tecnologĂas (en torno al materialismo histĂłrico) que se produce hacia 1850 y que eso es algo constitutivo de la fotografĂa, una suerte de inconsciente que emerge de diversas formas y en diversos momentos. El otro subtexto es la relaciĂłn o equivalencia de la fotografĂa y el dinero. De nuevo en torno a 1850, Oliver Wendell Holmes estableciĂł una analogĂa impagable y visionaria entre los archivos fotogrĂĄficos y el dinero. Con la existencia y proliferaciĂłn de archivos fotogrĂĄficos se abrĂa la posibilidad de un sistema universal de intercambio de imĂĄgenes que equiparaba las fotografĂas con los billetes de banco. En un giro inesperado de la idea que marca la apariciĂłn de la fotografĂa, introducida por Fox Talbot veinte años antes (Photogenic Drawing, 1839), de que con la fotografĂa la naturaleza se representa a sĂ misma, Wendell Holmes aporta una nueva dimensiĂłn a esa misma idea: la fotografĂa como un gran âBanco de la Naturalezaâ (The Stereoscope and the Stereograph, 1859). Si la fotografĂa es un instrumento de cosificaciĂłn, el archivo fotogrĂĄfico es por tanto un banco (Âżacaso no estamos, por otro lado, ante una formulaciĂłn avant la lettre del âcapitalismo mundial integradoâ de Guattari?). La reformulaciĂłn que hace Wendell Holmes de Fox Talbot se puede sintetizar asĂ: con la fotografĂa, el capitalismo se representa a sĂ mismo. Estas consideraciones vienen a cuento ante la tarea de fotografiar un banco. Al fotĂłgrafo se le ocurre que fotografiar el banco es la âprueba del oroâ de autenticidad de la fotografĂa. Y si ademĂĄs se trata del Banco de España (el Banco), el fotĂłgrafo se da cuenta de que se enfrenta tambiĂ©n a la cuestiĂłn nacional (ese otro inconsciente que no le abandona a uno, aunque uno lo abandone a Ă©l). Resulta que el fotĂłgrafo fotografĂa el Banco durante las obras de restauraciĂłn y limpieza de su fachada en 2017 y 2018. Al constatar que el edificio del Banco data de la dĂ©cada de 1880, el fotĂłgrafo (que entiende el dispositivo fotogrĂĄfico como una mĂĄquina histĂłrica o, valga la pirueta semĂĄntica, una âmĂĄquina del tiempoâ) no puede sino relacionarlo con la historia de la fotografĂa (el inicio de la era Kodak, digamos) y ademĂĄs con el periodo histĂłrico de la RestauraciĂłn borbĂłnica en España (1874-1931). AsĂ, el edificio del Banco se le aparece como un documento/monumento de la RestauraciĂłn. La idea de restauraciĂłn adquiere pues un doble sentido: la restauraciĂłn de la RestauraciĂłn. ÂżLa RestauraciĂłn se representa a sĂ misma? 97
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El 28 octubre de 2015 se produjo un desprendimiento de un canecillo de la cornisa del edificio del Banco de España sobre la calle AlcalĂĄ, tras el cual se instalĂł un andamio en todo el perĂmetro de la fachada exterior (calle AlcalĂĄ, paseo del Prado, calle Madrazo), y una red en las cornisas altas para garantizar la seguridad y para proceder al estudio tĂ©cnico de la piedra de la fachada. El estudio detectĂł fisuras y sĂntomas de inicio de fractura de varios otros canecillos de mĂĄrmol de Carrara en la cara inferior de la cornisa de la calle AlcalĂĄ. Las obras de restauraciĂłn consistieron en la sustituciĂłn de los canecillos afectados y el refuerzo preventivo de los elementos de la cornisa superior. El dispositivo para la restauraciĂłn estructural de la cornisa se aprovechĂł para la limpieza de las fachadas externas. Las obras se iniciaron en febrero de 2017 y se prolongaron durante un año. A lo largo de 2017 secciones del andamio se fueron desmontando a medida que se iban completando los trabajos. Los Ășltimos tramos del andamio en la calle AlcalĂĄ se retiraron en febrero de 2018. Las fotografĂas realizadas durante las obras de restauraciĂłn de la fachada no constituyen un seguimiento exhaustivo ni sistemĂĄtico del proceso de las obras, aunque aspiran a constituir un documento de ese episodio en la historia del Banco. Abren una dimensiĂłn meditativa sobre la instituciĂłn del Banco y su historia a partir de la documentaciĂłn fotogrĂĄfica de las obras. El andamio y los elementos de refuerzo estructural son una prĂłtesis en el edificio, que palian un estado de debilidad o convalecencia [Otro excurso: la posible equiparaciĂłn de ese estado con el de enfermedad gubernamental/institucional endĂ©mica caracterĂstico de la era Rajoy en España, iniciada en 2011 ây en la que se produjo la abdicaciĂłn del rey Juan Carlos I en 2014-, queda como tarea para el lector o espectador]. Han sido realizadas entre marzo de 2017 y febrero de 2018 y muestran diferentes momentos y actividades dentro del proceso de la restauraciĂłn.
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Articulation, with the King Juan Carlos Center: A Reflection on the 25th Anniversary of the KJCC Jill Lane The King Juan Carlos Center has been a valued site of institutional articulation at New York University since its founding. We could invoke âarticulationâ in a range of meanings as a site that has enabled the precise execution and expression of ideas. As a dynamic venue and sponsor, the KJCC has âarticulatedâ the space of the university in an architectural senseâproviding shape, form, and texture to the production of knowledge, the way one might âarticulateâ a flat plane with angles and depth, or a facade with light and shadow. In an anatomical sense, it has enabled specific linkages between disparate parts the way a joint articulates the movement of surrounding bones. It not only brings together disparate elements (languages, regions, media, discourses, people, communities); it sets them in motion and puts them in relation to one another. The work of such rich articulation allows us to engage across coordinates of difference, and, more importantly, to better understand the challenges, benefits, and risks of doing so. I have had the good fortune to organize a number of events and projects at the KJCC over the last dozen yearsâ first as a faculty member and later as director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS). I offer three illustrations from my experience of these complex moments of articulation for which the KJCC is so deservedly valued. 2009: After Truth Domingo Giribaldi del Marâs haunting photograph of an infant victimâs recovered sweater hung in the atrium of the King Juan Carlos Center in 2009. The photograph was part of the exhibition Si no vuelvo, bĂșsquenme en Putis. In 2008, Giribaldi traveled with the Equipo Peruano de AntropologĂa Forense (EPAF)âdirected by JosĂ© Pablo Baraybarâto the Andean town of Putis, Peru, in order to document the exhumation of the mass grave where 123 campesinos were massacred in 1984. The most compelling photographs pictured exhumed clothesâa baby sweater, buckled shoes, knitted capsâ carefully laid out against bright blue tarps, the empty clothes conjuring up the disappeared bodies. Both the exhumation and its photographs served as extended rituals of mourning through which the dead were honored and the living came to terms with their loss. 102
The photography exhibit was one of two staged simultaneously at the KJCC in conjunction with a symposium called âAfter Truth: Justice, TRCs, and Related Aftermaths,â which brought Giribaldi, Baraybar, and the Mayor of Putis together with a range of other artists, scholars, activists, and other social actors to reconsider the legacy of the first truth and reconciliation commissions in Latin America. The other was a traveling iteration of Yuyanapaq: Para recordar (Quechua and Spanish for âto rememberââ), an exhibit created in 2003 as part of Peruâs Truth and Reconciliation process that aimed to recreate the key events of the conflict drawing from a vast photographic inventory collected as part of the Commissionâs work. The exhibitions contrasted one another: Yuyanapaq was drawn primarily from photojournalism and aimed to create a reckoning with the conflict primarily for the privileged part of the country, especially Lima, that had not suffered its worst consequences; Si no vuelvo was an intimate memorial to the Andean victims. Yuyanapaq provided a powerful narrative context for the photographs of Putis; yet Putis seemed to speak back powerfully and even reproachfully to Yuyanapaq. What does the larger nation that âforgotâ the atrocities as they were happening owe Putis? What is the value of their traumatic memory, and how and when is it used or misused to imagine truth and reconciliation for that âforgetfulâ nation? Our goalâwith my collaborator Marcial Godoy, managing director of the Hemispheric Instituteâin bringing these two exhibits to the KJCC and in having a public conversation about the legacy of TRCs was to stage precisely these complex challenges and, furthermore, to challenge our own community at NYU and in New York to think about our own relation to these histories, and our own strategic forgettings. 2013: Whatâs Left of Cuba? In his lecture-demonstration entitled âPhotographs of the Day Before,â presented at the KJCC in April 2013 as part of a lecture series organized by CLACS, the writer and photographer Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo described Cuba as both âa closed fortress of internal feudal repressionâ and âthe utopia of the international left.â He presented a series of photographs taken prior to his departure from the island; they captured both the Cuban reality and the internationally romanticized dream of Cuba âbeforeâ the Revolution ended. His images asked: could it be that such dreams of the days âbeforeâ dramatic change arrived are, in reality, our way of coping with the day âafterâ that is already here? His presentation answered the central concern of the Spring 2013 CLACS graduate seminar and lecture series entitled âWhatâs Left of Cuba?â It was co-organized and taught by three professorsâwho were also colleagues and friends of mineâAna Dopico, the late and 103
beloved JosĂ© EstĂ©ban Muñoz, and myself. The seminar and lecture series asked: where was Cuba now in the geopolitical context that once heralded it as the exemplar of radical left projects in Latin America? Cuban civil society had for a number of years begun to challenge the projects of the revolution and had recast the tired cold war frames of embargo, exile, and exceptionalism. A new generation of writers, bloggers, visual and performance artists, as well as political activists and dissidents, were demanding both universality and contingency: an agenda that mixes the politics of human and civic rights, Cuban values, and the unfinished projects of both the republic and the revolution. From a burgeoning presence in social media to smaller, more poignant acts of reclamation such as political tattoos and graffiti, these social actors were creating spaces of expression and action that opened fissures in the discourse of the revolution and the control of the state. We invited artists, activists, and scholars from Cuba and from Greater Cubaâincluding TomĂĄs Robaina, Antonio JosĂ© Ponte, Yoani SanchĂ©z, Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, Alberto Laguna, Alexandra Vasquez, Coco Fusco and Tania Brugueraâto reflect on what is left of, left to, and left for Cuba in the complex transition from the days âbeforeâ to the days after. 2016: From War to Politics The peace process that ended El Salvadorâs 13-year brutal civil war (1979â1992) was a remarkable achievement that enabled the country to transition to peaceful civilian rule. In 2016, we organized âFrom War to Politics: An International Conference on El Salvadorâs Peace Process,â a historic three-day conference held mainly at KJCC that brought together the principal protagonists to reflect on the nature of such political works. We sought to reflect on the circumstances that allowed the peace process to be so successful and on the legacies of that process today. An exceptional range of actors participated, including leaders of Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (ARENA) and the Government of El Salvador during the 1980s and beyond; former members of the Frente Farabundo MartĂ para la LiberaciĂłn Nacional (FMLN) leadership; the UN officials who brokered the accords; former members of the U.S. Military Assistance Group involved in directing the counter-insurgency war and their counterparts in the Salvadoran Armed Forces (ESAF); human rights activists; and representatives, policymakers, and members of the US diplomatic corps from the Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Clinton administrations. In a series of roundtable discussions, participants were asked to dialogue on these key questions: How did changing Cold War dynamics shape the prospects for peace? Why was the UN able to play such a decisive role? How did battleground dynamics influence negotiating 104
strategies? How did external actors shape the peace? Who or what âwonâ this warâand how does that matter now? Like many large scale events that find their way to the auditorium of the KJCC, the organization was a cross-institutional venture involving the effort, talent, and labor of many parties led by a team of New York-based faculty from area schools, including Van Gosse of Franklin & Marshall College, HĂ©ctor Lindo Fuentes of Fordham, with George Vickers of Columbia, alongside other NYU and Columbia faculty. The organization and funding were provided in part by CLACS and the Institute of Latin American Studies at Columbia; the two are longstanding consortium partners in a Department of Education Title VI grant that jointly designated them a National Resource Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, an important funding source that underwrote costs for the prior two events described above as well. In this example we see the ways in which the KJCC is a site for the precise articulation not only of the labor of scholars, artists, and social actors, but also the articulation of a set of institutional relations, resources, and investments on which the production of knowledge deeply depends. I hope that these three cases together might briefly illustrate the range of work performed by the KJCC in the service of complex and impactful academic work as sponsor, partner, and host. I would further venture that the most valuable yet curiously undervalued work of articulation often happens in the beautiful two-story atrium of the KJCC. It has been a striking home for many exhibitions, including those described above, but here I signal its role as the liminal space that hosts the informal gatherings that take place at such eventsâwhere we encounter participants and guests as they enter the building; where we mingle over coffee during breaks in a long day of conferencing; where we share wine and cheese at the closing reception. If this sounds like leisure, it is not quite, or it is not only so: as most academics know well, at times the real work of teaching, learning, sharing, mentoring, and collaborating happens in these interstitial spaces where conversations and encounters enter an improvisational and creative mode. Indeed, the success of institutional articulation might be measured by the density of the informal, liminal energy it generates around itâa measure in which the King Juan Carlos Center has far excelled.
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Blood Flow Between Cultures:
Quechua Chants in Greenwich Village and the Acoustic Resonance of the KJCC Odi Gonzales No one would have predicted that at the beginning of the new millennium, a millenary culture that ruled in the confines of the continent (The Andes), and another, global, resolutely modern, multicultural, vertiginous, would converge in the Greenwich (Village) Meridian, at the edges of a majestic grove: Washington Square Park (New York). Just a few meters from the iconic music club Cafe Wha? or The Bitter End where Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix or Janis Joplin used to exhale the tensor curve of their voices, a pair of Scissor Dancers (Danzantes de Tijeras) from Coracora, Ayacucho (PerĂș), usually composed a dance and competition choreography in an intimate venue called King Juan Carlos Center (KJCC) of New York University. Founded in 2008 at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS), the Quechua Program at NYU is enhanced and enriched every year by the inclusion of students from Columbia, Fordham, Princeton, CUNY, Yale, and other schools from Europe. Since then, working together with students and the 5 directors of CLACS (the late professor Thomas Abercrombie, Sinclair Thomson, Ada Ferrer, Jill Lane, Dylon Robbins) we produced books, a trilingual dictionary, videos, translations, Quechua documentaries with English subtitles, audio materials, podcasts, debates, seminars, poetry readings, performances, and a comic book based on a folktale. All these activities were presented in the stages of a single location: the King Juan Carlos Auditorium, the Atrium, and The Backyard. It was all possible thanks to the decisive promotion and support of the KJCCâs team: associate director Laura TurĂ©gano; former directors Jo Labanyi and Ana Dopico; current director Jordana Mendelson; and administrative assistant Luis Alfonso PĂ©rez, among other people. Since then, in terms of revitalizing the Quechua language and culture, we can talk of a âbeforeâ and an âafterâ the NYU Quechua Program, at universities in the US. The influence of NYUâs Quechua Program was evident: before that, only 5 universities had a Quechua Program, but nowadays there are at least a dozen American universities offering Quechua programs and Andean Studies: Stanford, University of California; UCLA; University of Georgia; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Indiana University; University of Kansas; University of Michigan, 106
Ann Arbor; University of Pittsburgh; University of Pennsylvania; University of Texas, Austin; Brigham Young University; University of Wisconsin, Madison; Ohio State University; Rutgers University; University of Colorado, Boulder. Quechuaâs Hidden Variables First of all, the original name of the Andean language isnât Quechua, itâs runasimi, which means language of people or language of the human being, to differentiate it from the language of birds or rivers, and this has been how native speakers refer to their language. Quechua was the name assigned to the language by the Spanish priest Domingo de Santo TomĂĄs (1499-1570) when he was working on the first dictionary and the written grammar book about this language in the 16th century. Quechua derives from qheswa, which is the name of an Andean geographical region, a kind of valley in which the priests lived and worked. There are currently an estimated 10 million Quechua speakers in Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru, as in certain regions of Argentina (Jujuy, Santiago del Estero), Colombia (Pasto region), and Chile (Maule river). Quechua is understood as a language that has many variants; the Cusco variant or Southern Quechua is the language that NYU offers, but in conjunction with Peruvian variants such as Quechua Chanka, Ayacucho, Apurimac, Huancavelica, Huaraz, and other variants from Bolivia, Argentina, Ecuador. Quechua is an agglutinative language, which means that a series of suffixes can be attached to root morphemes or verb stems to denote unique and specific semantic nuances. For this reason, Quechua dispenses with synonyms: synonymy is more typical of written languages as opposed to oral ones, and it means each word is unique, and non-transferrable. For example, the word dusk is defined as châisinyay, rasphiyay, and tutayay. While at first glance these may appear as synonyms, they actually each refer to different and distinct moments in the process of nightfall, related to the type of semi-darkness, half-light, or shadows. The verb waqay/to cry is unique for the same reason. In Spanish we have: llorar, sollozar, gemir, plañir, lagrimear, gimotear; in English, it is the same. However, Quechua has several disjointed words that derive from the same root waqa; we can differentiate them by specific and precise suffixes: Waqakuy
cry intimately, for oneself (sob)
Waqayuy
crying disconsolately, with intensity
Waqapakuy
moan, whining (crying with pauses) 107
Waqapayay
cry again and again (to get something)
Waqanayay
have the urge to cry, being about to cry
Waqarpariy
crying suddenly
Waqaysiy
cry with (accompany in tears)
Concrete philosophy The Andean cosmogony or Quechua philosophy are not expressed through prepositions, premises, axioms, inferences, syllogisms, or conclusions (metalanguage). The philosophy is rooted in the language itself (object-language, or the language of everyday) through concrete forms: the suffixes. Andean philosophy (los saberes) is not theoretical or discursive; it happens every day through interactions in markets, burials, planting, households, or in chicherĂas where people go to drink chicha or corn beer. You donât assimilate the philosophy or cultural categories of the Andean world through abstractions; knowledge moves through peopleâs language or actions. It is from there that you have to extract and interpret it. For example: Quechua language has two personal pronouns for âwe:â ñoqanchis, which includes the speaker and the listeners, and ñoqayku, which includes the speaker and a few listeners, but excludes the caller. Ăoqanchis is all of us; ñoqayku some of us. In concrete terms, why does the Quechua language have two personal pronouns for âwe?â In Andean philosophy, the collective is more important than the individual. There are many actions that we share with animals. In this case, the root is similarly applied to both human and animal, but the difference is marked by a suffix. For example: Wachay: give birth (animal) Wachakuy: give birth (human) Hispâay: urinate (animal) Hispâakuy: urinate (human) In the latter case, the suffix âku denotes that the animal lacks awareness; animals can urinate wherever they please, but not the human being. The suffix âku remarks that. The private and public categories are simply distinguished by a human being. In the Quechua language, all verbs were shaped solely from the perspective of the human being, not the machine. Thatâs why verbs such as âto walkâ and âto travelâ have the same meaning: the only way to travel for the human being was walking; due to the deep respect for 108
animals, the Andeans did not even ride the llamas, the greatest of their beasts. There are no verbs to say turn on/turn off the radio, TV, or cell phone. In order to communicate new concepts such as these ones, speakers create neologisms or take words from Spanish or even English. Trilingual dictionary at the KJCC One of the most significant achievements of the Quechua Program was the work performed jointly by the professor with two graduate students to produce a trilingual dictionary, which was presented at the KJCC on April 30, 2018. Containing nearly a decade of research, Christine Mladic Janney (then a NYU PhD candidate, now an anthropologist), Emily Fjaellen Thompson (then MA, now a PhD candidate), and I worked fervently on this project, one of the first academic Quechua dictionaries to be published in the United States. Published by Hippocrene Books (New York), this full-length dictionary of 11,000 entries includes 3 sections: EnglishQuechua, Spanish-Quechua, and Quechua-English-Spanish. Spanish is a logical conduit language between Quechua and English, and many Quechua words are found in Peruvian written and spoken Spanish. The night of the presentation at KJCC, I described the cultural differences that arose while we were working on this project. Although I knew Emily and Christi for several years (they were my students for two years), our cultural differences emerged every time we tried to translate some Quechua or Spanish expressions into English. I remember the case of the verb qâallpay: we argued for two weeks without being able to conciliate our different points of view. We did not initially agree because the word qâallpay in Quechua is not merely a verb; it is also an event. It happens when a playful child lifts a girlâs skirt deliberately to see if she has underwear1. But the act of lifting the skirt can also happen unintentionally, for example as the result of the force of the wind. The first few days, Christi and Emily seemed very confused, so I used this example as an explanation: âSipaskuna (young ladies)â I said, âhave you seen that scene from a movie in which Marilyn Monroe, when she
1. This action also occurs among adults in the carnival festivities.
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was glamorously standing above the subway station, when suddenly the train in motion causes her red dress to lift up? Thatâs is qâallpay without intention,â I said. But even with the explanation, it was impossible to put all of these details in our dictionary. Quixote in Quechua In 2005, news of the translation of the classic novel Don Quixote into Quechua raised great expectations in Peru, Latin America, and Spain, countries that were celebrating the 400th anniversary of the bookâs publication (part one, 1605)2. In 2015, it was announced that the second part of Cervantesâ novel had also been translated into Quechua. At first it was a kind of epic feelingâa literary accomplishment that mixed pride and self-esteem: no literary work of such magnitude as that of Quixote had ever been translated into any native language before. However, a careful reading of the Quechua version of Cervantesâ novel3 shows the cracks in the collision between two irreducible codes: writing (Spanish) and orality (Quechua), with a tension evident in the very title. The complete translation of the novelâs cover in Quechua [Yachay sapa wiraqucha dun Quixote manchamantan Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra qilqan] involves an orality/writing conflict: Quechua orality prevails over Spanish writing. How? On the cover of the book, space intended for the title of the book and the name of the author, there is a hidden voice: that of the speaking subject. This external voice comments or says that someone (Cervantes) writes something (Quixote). This is called a writing oralization, the process in which the speaker displaces the author and his work. A conference on November 18th, 2015 at the KJCC analyzed the complexities involved in Demetrio Tupac Yupanquiâs translation, which interspersed two incompatible codes, forcingâ for momentsâthe oral nature of Quechua language into the writing discourse of a novel, which made it scarcely understandable by a Quechua reader but not by a listener. The translation of any text into oral Quechua involves a double challenge, as it must be addressed to two recipients: the reader and the listener. The great challenge of the Quechua translator is to configure a single speech that is understandable by both the reader and the listener. It cannot be ignored that a large number of the Quechua speakers are illiterateâmany will not be able to read but can understand if someone reads to them in their language. 2. As is known, the first part was published in 1605 and the second part in 1615. 3. Yachay sapa wiraqucha dun Quixote manchamantan Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra qilqan. TraducciĂłn y adaptaciĂłn de Demetrio TĂșpac Yupanqui. Primera parte. Lima: Ediciones empresa editora El Comercio, 2005.
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That night, in the fully packed King Juan Carlos Center Auditorium, we began the talk about emphasizing the oral nature of Quechua: the fact that Quechua can be written with the Spanish alphabet does not mean that Quechua has lost its oral character. In Quechua, it is extremely difficult to translate purely rhetorical constructions such as The Unbearable Lightness of Being (La insoportable levedad del ser), the title of eminent writer Milan Kunderaâs novel. Why? In that grammatical construction, there is not a single concrete action. Quechua is a language with a tendency towards concrete actions (performative verbs) and dispenses with concepts and rhetorical expressions. The translation of an ancient or modern literary work into Quechua is difficult but not impossible. It is a laborious exercise that canât be done hastily. To translate a text in general from Spanish or English into Quechua, the rhetoric, concepts, and abstractions with which it assembles a novel must be deconstructed into its simplest most concrete forms (performative verbs) that constitute the nature of Quechua. Thatâs what my students and I did when we translated, for example, the New York Occupy Wall Street Manifesto. Academic discourse, and in general that of science, philosophy, and politics, are embodied in an artificial language (metalanguage), but not in the object-language (daily speech level). For Quechua thought, academic discourse is considered as a dead language, with relevance only among academics or in very restricted circuitsâa child or an adult who is not an academic will not understand. Scissor Dancers at the Atrium The night of Friday, October 18th, 2016 at King Juan Carlos Atrium was particularly memorable. Probably no art or dance critic would have ever said what a jubilant delegation of African-American children from the Bronxâone of the guests at the Scissor Dancers eventâsaid about the performance: âIt was cool, like break dance!â Originating in the Ayachuco region of southern Peru during the Andean resistance period in the mid-16th century, ancient Scissor Dancers were prohibited from performing because they were considered rebels and heretics, and possessed demons. However, they used dance as a form of resistance against the Spanish rule and the processes imposed by catholic missionary organizations that promoted the extirpation of Andean gods and deities. Even so, scissor dancers have survived until the present. The Scissor Dance at the KJCC was performed by a group of Andean artists called âLos Chankas,â made up of Alejandro VelĂĄzquez on harp, Ignacio VelĂĄzquez on violin, and two 111
competing dancers: Steve Tintascca Cotaquispe and Walter Qesqento Velille. The event was presented by students in three languages (Quechua, Spanish and English) under the coordination of graduate students Arlean Dawes and Mike Cary.
Comic book Peruvian writer JosĂ© MarĂa Arguedas (1911-1969) published La agonĂa de Rasu Ăitâi [The agony of Rasu Ăitâi]4 in 1962. The story is about an old scissor dancer Pedro Huancayre, Rasu Ăitâi, who is dying. Before passing away, he wanted to reveal to someone the ancestral ritual and ideology of Andean scissor dancers. In the presence of his family, Rasu Ăitâi is eventually relieved by the young dancer Atuq Saykâu. In recent years, Peruvian playwright and draftsman Walter Ventosilla adapted the story into a comic version. From this version, my students and I worked on the translation from Spanish into Quechua. The bilingual comic version Rasu Ăitâiq wañunayanmanta/La agonĂa de Rasu Ăitâi, was published thanks to the support of CLACS and 4. The grammatical construction Rasu Ăitâi derives from proto-Quechua, and means The one who crushes snow. It refers to pilgrims who used to take their offerings to the Wamani, or spirit of the sacred mountain, to the top of mountains, snow-covered mountains, and glaciers.
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was presented by the Quechua student group Runasimi Outreach Committee (ROC) at the KJCC on October 30th, 2018.
A spread from Rasu Ăitâiq wañunayanmanta/La agonĂa de Rasu Ăitâi
Quechua voices at KJCC The great Andean guitarist and troubadour Manuelcha Prado and the first Andean coloratura soprano Sylvia FalcĂłn, presented their majestic musical shows on many different occasions. Manuelcha came from Europe after receiving recognition from the BBC, which was also attended by none other than Jimmy Page, the lead-guitar of the British band Led Zeppelin. Sylvia FalcĂłn, the heiress of Ima Sumac, frequently comes to New York to present her Quechua lyrical singing show at institutions such as Lincoln Center, New York University, Cornelia Street CafĂ©, and others. As usual, the introductory words of Sylviaâs presentation (Andean Carnival, March 23, 2016, and An Evening with Sylvia FalcĂłn, October 2, 2014), and of Manuelcha Prado (Intimate concert, October 2012) were given by Jill Lane (Director of CLACS), and students of ROC. The friendship forged between the artists and the students was so frank and cordial that the studentsâdressed in traditional Andean clothesâsang some Andean waynos with them in Quechua. 113
Clockwise from top: audience at Andean Carnival in 2016; Sylvia FalcĂłn singing at Andean Carnival in 2016; Intimate Concert in 2012; Manuelcha Prado singing at Intimate Concert in 2012
The Occupy Wall Street Manifesto in Quechua It was the student and activist Christopher Santiago (now an anthropologist and Professor at CUNY, Staten Island) who proposed a Quechua version of the Occupy Wall Street Manifesto to his fellow OWS New York board members. The translation of this document from English into Quechua was one of the most complex challenges we had in our experience as translators. The OWS manifesto was written almost entirely with concepts, abstractions, and rhetorical terms different from the nature of the Andean language. To translate it into a language with a tendency 114
to concrete actions was like âpulling a train with the teeth.â But we did it, and we included Intermediate and Advanced level Quechua students in the project. The presentation at the KJCC was not about the document itself; it was a kind of discussion about the translation of a document written in a way that was so different from the nature of Quechua language. The Quechua translationâalongside other versions: French, Slovak, Spanish, German, and Italianâwas accepted by the NYC General Assembly on September 29, 2011 and was published a day later. As a Quechua speaker, I must confess: the Spanish and English versions seem like mere proclamations, while the Quechua version is much more dramatic and moving because it was assembled with concrete, basic, essential terms instead of with concepts, abstractions, or rhetorical phrases. Here are some excerpts: They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses. Paykuna hapâikapunku qolqenkupas kanman hina llapan impuestonchiskunata, chay mana kutichiwasqanchis qolqeta yapayunku qella directorkunaq sueldonman They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of oneâs skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation. They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization. Paykunataq cheqniwanchis; munayninkuwan tâaqawanchis, châeqechiwanchis; qarqowanchis llankâanakunamanta machupaya kaqtinchis, hoqniraq kaqtinchis, manapaykuna hina kaqtinchis. Paykunataq manachaninta usuchishanku, châusaqyachishanku tukuy tarpuykunatapas, chakrakunata hapâikapushanku, rakinakushanku paykunapura. They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices. Paykunan ñakâarichiwanchis, laqha ukhupi kawsachiwanchis; paykunataq nakâarparinku uywanchiskunatapas, pakallapi lluytapas qâotorapunku They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions. Paykunataq pisiyachishanku llankâaqkunaq salarionkunata, paykuna mana huntâasqatachu pagashanku empleadonkunaman, ichaqa llankâachinku mana samachispa They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right. Paykunataq estudiantekunatapas manuyachinku, wakchayachinku estudio rayku, ichaqa educacionqa manan rantinachu, derechonchismi 115
They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility. Paykunataq llusinku qolqewan juezkunatapas leykunata pantachinankupaq, mana Corporacionkunata carcelman winanankupaq They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit. Paykunataq sapa kutinpas usuchinku asnaq petroleota mayukunapi, Mamaqochapi ima; paykuna wañuchinku runata accidentekunapi; qâechunakunku wakchakunaq qolqenta Coda At this point, you must be wondering who are the people who study Quechua in NYC. They are mostly students in social sciences such as Anthropology, Archeology, Musicology, Colonial Studies in the Andean region, International Law of Indigenous People, Linguistics, and Cultural Studies. There are a few cases in which a student chooses Quechua for reasons that go beyond academics: although their parents are migrants (Ecuadorian, Bolivian, Peruvian), they were born in the US or came to New York as children. When they return to their countries of origin, they cannot communicate with their grandparents who only speak Quechua. Thus, they study Quechua for sentimental reasons and self-esteem. Quechua is the most widely spoken native language in the Americas. CLACS and the KJCC give it visibility and strength, a space to nourish its growth, and a home for the articulation of its community and culture.
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Mujukunata Tarpuspa, Planting the Seeds: Student Reflections on Runasimi at the KJCC
âWe didnât know what to expect. Our request for funds for some snacks had been fulfilled. We had booked a room at the KJCC and moved the tables to make space for a circle of chairs. It was the first Quechua Conversation Night, and we were prepared for nobody to show up. We couldnât have been more wrong. We were some of Odi Gonzalesâs first students in a brand new Quechua language program at NYU. We thought that we could complement our coursework with some free-spirited mingling events, which we aimed to conduct (as best we could) in Quechua. We figured it might be a good way for students at NYU to practice language skills outside of the classroom, but we also opened the event to the general public. That night, we discovered the true potential that these events had. If I recall correctly, more than 20 people showed up to the first âQuechua Night,â and the majority were actually not NYU students. In fact, there was a great diversity of guests, from NYU students and faculty to grandmothers from Queens and men from various neighborhoods in Manhattan and the Bronx. The concept of the event mushroomed in the best way possible, and we realized that we had tapped into something much richer than our original idea. Over the years, the kinds of events that were organized by the student groupâfirst as the Quechua Outreach Committee, then as the Runasimi Outreach Committee (ROC)âdiversified, and the number of attendees grew exponentially. We organized poetry readings, immersive game nights, BINGO and enormous dance presentations. Events were held throughout NYC boroughs and in New Jersey. Yet, the KJCC acted as a kind of home, a place where we knew that we could reserve space and be welcomed by those managing the Centerâand in turn, a place in which we could welcome people from across NYU and surrounding communities. Of course, what we were pursuing was much more than practice in the mechanics of speech: we were strengthening and building relationships, we were challenging dominant narratives, we were overturning historical hierarchies. Being a part of ROC was one of the most incredible, rewarding, and humbling experiences of my time at NYU.â âChristine Mladic Janney (Quechua student, 2008-2020) 117
âI have only positive memories working alongside my wayqeykuna and panaykuna, especially through the Runasimi Outreach Committee. In retrospect, one of the most significant moments may have been our groupâs name change. Initially, the group was formed under the name of Quechua Outreach Committee. As the group conducted greater outreach within the wider Andean community in the New York City area, we opted to use the languageâs original name and called ourselves the Runasimi Outreach Committee. Events with the Peruvian diaspora in Paterson, engagement with intergenerational Kichwa speakers at the Queens Museum, and a Kichwa radio program broadcast from the Bronx to the world are a testament to our groupâs focus on the community and speakers themselves beyond the academic context. In many ways, and without realizing, the Runasimi Outreach Committee may very well have been participating in a minka right in the hatun llaqta of NYC.â âMichael Abbott (Quechua student, 2012-2014)
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âWe launched the very first Kichwa-Quechua Film Festival in NYC! We brought the director and some of his family came, too! It was a SUCCESS, with an outreach and activities that extended to multiple boroughs and even to New Jersey. I mean, when I look back, it seems we were responsible for bringing the Runasimi Outreach Committee to its glory. We held monthly Quechua Outreach nights and had a solid attendance at the events. I donât knowâwe did a HUGE event at the Queens museum. I mean⊠I can barely believe it. I had no idea there were so many Quechua speakers living in the United States. For me, as a Peruvian, it was ironicâ but not surprisingâthat I had to come to NYU to start learning Quechua, because the racism that pervades Peruvian culture makes it so that the language is not taught in schools. The fact that this is offered at NYU is more than significant: it is life-changing.â âConstanza Ontaneda (Quechua student, 2013-2015)
âI am extremely grateful for the Runasimi Outreach Committee. To this day, nearly a decade later, the Quechua community at NYU (and beyond) continues to challenge and support me intellectually and personally. Time with the ROC involved buying as many tâika (flowers), tâanta (bread), and rurukuna (fruit) as we could on our shoestring budget to bring with us on the long subway ride to Quechua Night in Queens; meeting intrepid Quechua speaker Serafina in a market just blocks from CLACS; interviewing Kichwa musicians in snowy Central Park; learning to cook, sing and dance with Elvacha in her Brooklyn apartment on the weekends; and later spending hours poring over translations in Odiâs office. These moments were some of the most grounding, and ultimately impactful, aspects of my MA at CLACS.â âEmily Fjaellen Thompson (Quechua student, 2011-2013)
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El papel del hispanismo y la diplomacia en los centros culturales universitarios Zaskia Torres Las universidades como instituciones son fundamentales en una sociedad contemporĂĄnea. Las personas que forman parte de las universidades aportan nuevas ideas, perspectivas y opiniones. En âEl Habitus. Una revisiĂłn analĂticaâ, JosĂ© Saturnino MartĂnez GarcĂa analiza el concepto de habitus acuñado a partir del âHomo academicusâ del sociĂłlogo francĂ©s Pierre Bourdieu. SegĂșn MartĂnez GarcĂa, un habitus es una mezcla de diferentes condiciones y experiencias sociales, econĂłmicas y culturales que, junto con relaciones establecidas entre personas e instituciones, conducen a tendencias de comportamiento (MartĂnez GarcĂa 2). Las universidades estĂĄn formadas por diferentes individuos con sus propios habitus que, integrados en la instituciĂłn, desarrollan un nuevo conjunto de tendencias que trascienden el nivel universitario. Esto es particularmente cierto cuando la universidad establece centros culturales; dedicados a la investigaciĂłn y el estudio, los centros tienen la capacidad de articular polĂticas que impactan mĂĄs allĂĄ del espacio universitario. En este ensayo, propongo que un centro cultural dedicado a España y al mundo hispanohablante, en la Universidad de Nueva York, tendrĂĄ el doble propĂłsito de promover el hispanismo y, al mismo tiempo, de mejorar las relaciones diplomĂĄticas y culturales entre los dos paĂses. Establecer un centro dedicado a este estudio proporciona un espacio para un discurso mĂĄs amplio sobre las complejidades y matices de la historia española, que tenga en cuenta mĂșltiples perspectivas, amplifique opiniones diferentes y fomente la multiplicidad de conocimientos dentro y fuera de la instituciĂłn. Las instituciones tienen un gran impacto, no solo en la comunidad local sino tambiĂ©n a nivel mundial, ya que âel conocimiento no solo se ve como universal, racional y unificado, sino que tambiĂ©n se considera comprensible para todos aquellos en todas partes que han pasado por los rituales apropiados de educaciĂłnâ (Frank y Meyer, 2). El conocimiento acadĂ©mico es la caracterĂstica principal de la universidad como instituciĂłn. Al mismo tiempo, las instituciones sirven como paraguas de este âconocimiento unificadoâ. Este concepto es muy poderoso porque el conocimiento se puede examinar y estudiar de diferentes maneras bajo diferentes marcos organizacionales alrededor del mundo. Por lo tanto, las ideas y los nuevos aprendizajes desarrollados dentro de un centro cultural sobre el estudio del hispanismo trascenderĂĄn el nivel local y se convertirĂĄn en parte de la universidad global. 121
La universidad por un lado sirve como una idea global, pero es, ademĂĄs, un instrumento para introducir ideas y opiniones propias, en ocasiones, con motivos polĂticos. Un centro cultural dedicado a España en los EE. UU. crea una atmĂłsfera positiva entre los dos paĂses. Esto se debe a que los centros pueden servir como mediadores para las relaciones econĂłmicas y exteriores entre dos o mĂĄs gobiernos. En este sentido, un centro cultural puede funcionar como poderosa herramienta diplomĂĄtica en negociaciones de mayor escala. A mediados del siglo XX, el gobierno de EE. UU. aprovechĂł el poder de las instituciones para fomentar la modernidad en el extranjero. ParticipĂł en proyectos internacionales como el establecimiento de universidades occidentales en paĂses de bajos ingresos: â[Las universidades de investigaciĂłn estadounidenses] creĂan que las universidades como instituciones eran mecanismos esenciales para el desarrollo, y que la administraciĂłn pĂșblica era fundamental para llevar la modernidad al estilo estadounidense a los paĂses en desarrollo...â (Schrum, 127). El papel de la universidad en este ejemplo muestra cĂłmo una instituciĂłn puede impactar las relaciones entre los paĂses. En este caso, Estados Unidos utilizĂł su poder blando para influir en las sociedades de otros paĂses, invirtiendo en capital intelectual de la poblaciĂłn. Los estudiantes universitarios desarrollan un habitus colectivo que se traduce en sus vidas cotidianas. Si son estudiantes que viajan de España o LatinoamĂ©rica a los Estados Unidos, funcionan como representantes de su tierra natal y traen consigo sus costumbres y habitus. Al mismo tiempo, los centros culturales atraen a personas de sectores mĂĄs amplios a participar en una multiplicidad de eventos. Los estudiantes que vienen del extranjero encuentran en el centro una conexiĂłn con su lugar de origen, mientras que los otros individuos que se sienten atraĂdos al centro pueden expandir su conocimiento y participar en conversaciones sobre el lugar del hispanismo en España y LatinoamĂ©rica. Por lo tanto, un centro cultural dedicado a España y al mundo hispanohablante tiene la capacidad de fortalecer lazos diplomĂĄticos y culturales. La nociĂłn de que la universidad como idea e instrumento no tiene lĂmite para llevar sus ideas al mundo demuestra lo poderoso que es el conocimiento y el concepto de habitus. Establecer un centro cultural es un aspecto importante de la universidad global, ya que beneficia a la sociedad al promover el hispanismo y unificar el conocimiento bajo un mismo espacio. El establecimiento de un centro cultural en la Universidad de Nueva York sobre España y el mundo hispanohablante proporciona muchos aspectos positivos; sin embargo, tambiĂ©n muestra la importancia de crear estos espacios no solo para el beneficio de los gobiernos, sino ademĂĄs para ampliar las conversaciones sobre perspectivas histĂłricas y culturales que incluyan a los miembros de la comunidad en el discurso.
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BibliografĂa Frank, David John y John W. Meyer. The University and the Global Knowledge Society. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020. MartĂnez GarcĂa, J. S. âEl Habitus. Una revisiĂłn analĂticaâ . Revista Internacional de SociologĂa, vol. 75, no. 3, sept. 2017, 144-57. Red. Payne, Stanley G. âEl hispanismo y la hispanofilia: una perspectiva histĂłricaâ. VĂnculos de Historia, no. 9, 2020, 144-57. Red. Schrum, Ethan D. The Instrumental University: Education in Service of the National Agenda after World War II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019.
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KJCC: An Interdisciplinary Approach Pedro Cardim Before holding the King Juan Carlos I Chair in Spanish Culture and Civilization in 2014, I was professor in the history department of Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal. My research focused on the sixteenth- to eighteenth-century Iberian world. Besides studying the political, legal, and social interactions between Portugal and the Spanish Monarchy, I also worked, from a legal historical perspective, on the Iberian colonization in the Americas and, more generally, on the history of the Atlantic world during the early modern period. My first experience at New York University was in 1998, at a symposium held at the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center entitled Philip II of Spain and His Times. The symposium was convened by Antonio Feros, then a professor in NYUâs history department. At that time, I was a young PhD candidate and was included in the program only because my mentor, Antonio Hespanha, was unable to attend the event. It was a great honor for me to present my research in the presence of so many experts on sixteenth-century Spain that I so deeply admired. On that occasion I also came to appreciate the KJCCâs potential not only to foster innovative research, but its ability to showcase the rich diversity of the societies and cultures of Spanish-speaking peoples. In the spring of 1999, while preparing my PhD dissertation on political thought in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Iberia, I undertook a research stay in New York City. My aim was to take advantage of the cityâs extraordinary libraries, as well as to explore the archival collection of the Hispanic Society of America. Thanks to the working relationship and friendship that I already had with Antonio Feros, New York University served as my host institution, and I was thus able to have access to the Elmer Holmes Bobst Library. For a young doctoral student like me, coming from a country with a great lack of academic libraries, access to NYUâs library system was an extraordinary opportunity. During my stay, I had the privilege of being involved in the vibrant intellectual life of NYU: I presented my doctoral research in the graduate program in history; attended all the events and seminars I could; and was introduced to historians who are still a reference point for my research, such as Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia or Alejandro Cañeque. Obviously, at the end of this stay I was very eager to return to NYU. That opportunity came fifteen years later, when Lauren Bentonâby that time a professor in NYUâs history departmentâput my name forward for the King Juan Carlos Chair in Spanish Culture and Civilization. Lauren was incredibly generous and believed that I could make a worthwhile contribution to the intellectual and cultural life of the KJCC. I am forever grateful to 124
her for placing such confidence in me. *** As King Juan Carlos Professor, I spent the fall of 2014 at the KJCC. During that period, I taught a seminar in the graduate program in history, entitled âThe Early Modern Iberian Monarchies: from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic,â and had the privilege of working with several excellent students not only from the history department, but also from the Spanish and Portuguese department, and from other New York City universities. In addition, I delivered two lectures at the KJCC and convened a symposium on the topic of âCommunity-Formation Across the Early Modern Iberian World.â The purpose of this symposium was to bring together several specialists to discuss the dynamics of community formation across the Iberian world from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. I had the pleasure of inviting to the KJCC great historians from Spain, Portugal, the United States and France. The speakers at the KJCC focused not only on the dynamics of inclusion, but also on processes of exclusion and discrimination across the Iberian world. Resistance against the political and social order of early modern Iberia was also very much in focus. As a result, the symposium was the stage for an extremely intense intellectual exchange. In order to do this, I benefited from the constant support of Ana Dopico (by that time the KJCCâs director), Laura TurĂ©gano and, last but not least, Luis Alfonso PĂ©rez. Their competence and dedication made my job much easier. *** The almost four months I spent at the KJCC profoundly changed the way I think and work. First of all, I had a unique opportunity to interact with NYU faculty members who are leading authorities in my field of study, such as Lauren Benton, Sinclair Thomas, Barbara Weinstein, Larry Wolff, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Frederick Cooper, Jane Burbank, Mahnaz Yousefzadeh and Georgina Dopico Black, among many others. I had unforgettable conversations with each one of them, which were extremely fruitful for my research. The fact that NYU was the host institution for many international scholars also presented a great opportunity. One of them was Luigi Nuzzo, professor at the UniversitĂ del Salento, in Italy. Luigi was doing a postdoc at NYUâs Law School at the time, and we shared many common research interests. I vividly recall the many conversations on legal history I had with him. It was also a privilege and a challenge to interact with the PhD students at NYU, all of whom were extraordinarily advanced. It was likewise very special to work with these students in a seminar setting. This experience led me to reshape, sometimes quite profoundly, the way I teach and work with students in my home country. Another unforgettable aspect of my time at the KJCC was my participation in the Atlantic History Workshop at NYU. There I had the enormous privilege of engaging with remarkable 125
figures such as Karen Ordahl Kupperman, and also with colleagues I already admired, such as Ada Ferrer, Nicole Eustace, Rebecca Goetz, Yuko Miki and Gabriel Rocha. Apart from listening to and discussing with some of the foremost scholars in the field, I had the great honor of presenting my research in this workshop. The challenge of submitting my work for appraisal by colleagues participating in it was immensely rewarding. My research benefited greatly from their expertise and constructive critique. During that fall of 2014, I tried to participate in as many events as possible at the KJCC and NYU. I recall, for example, an extremely interesting symposium in honor of Mary Louise Pratt and the many excellent photography exhibitions that were hosted by the KJCC. I also took part in several seminars at NYUâs Center for European and Mediterranean Studies, brilliantly led by Larry Wolff and as in extremely interesting events organized by Ruth Ben-Ghiat at NYUâs Casa Italiana Zerilli - MarimĂČ. Unsurprisingly, the stay at the KJCC changed the way I study the history of Western Europe and its colonial empires. During my time in New York City, and parallel to presenting my research, I endeavored to engage with the methods and approaches of my colleagues and visiting scholars at NYU, but also at other institutions, such as Columbia University, The New School, and CUNY. This experience further demonstrated to me the importance of interdisciplinary approaches, and the porous barriers between various social sciences and the humanities. Their concern for thorough and continuous theoretical and methodological reflection left a deep impression on me. The debate on Eurocentric biases and their impact on historical research was another important aspect of my time at the KJCC. The same could be said of two other dimensions of the work of many NYU faculty members and graduate students: the marked interest in the history of colonial America from the perspective of the Amerindian Peoples, Africans, and African Americans; the concern forâand the political commitment toâmaking visible the agency of people from the so-called subaltern groups, often silenced by those who write history. The many conversations I had with NYU colleagues on these and other topics left me only more convinced of how important it is to study power relations from the perspective of the dominant groups as well as those who were the object of power projects. I also gained a more acute awareness of the importance of taking the ânon eliteâ groups into consideration and highlighting their ability to contest, to question, and to resist those in power. Although these questions were already part of my research agenda, they gained much more weight after my splendid and unforgettable stay at NYUâs KJCC.
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Take a Seat Johmmiry Almonte In December 2021, I interviewed two of the past AndrĂ©s Bello Chairs in Latin American Cultures and Civilizations as part of the final project for the seminar âInstitutions, Archives and People,â which had as one of its aims to research the history of the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center (KJCC). I also reviewed previously recorded interviews with them and their scholarship. I chose these two Chairs because they are both feminist writers who approach their creative and scholarly activities in a way that connects them to issues that matter to me. However, my experience speaking with them also revealed something important about the difference in our positions and priorities: I am an Afro-Latinx student in New York City and they are two prominent writers who work and teach in Mexico City. The interview was centered around their socioeconomic status; It became evident that they experienced and expressed an awareness of class through the lens of others. As an Afro-Latinx, I am aware of the impact that my presence makes in the spaces that I occupy. I was conscious of my position as an undergraduate student who went into the interview expecting groundbreaking alternatives for issues of performative diversity, colorism and sexism. Due to time restrictions, we were unable to dive deeply into critical conversations that explore the root causes of systemic issues. Despite the distance between my expectations and my experience, I learned a lot from the interview. Those who may appear to be enlightened might not be enlightened in the way you would want them to be. It is important to think about who is asking the questions and who is having these conversations. Even though scholars have worked with and studied certain communities, their knowledge differentiates from actually living the impact that these issues have in the communities affected. That said, these scholars are not always the most equipped to participate in dismantling or decolonizing the institutions in which they are working. Eduardo Restrepoâs âDecolonizar la universidad,â one of the readings we discussed in class, alludes to this argument: âDe ahĂ que la deseabilidad y posibilidad de descolonizar la universidad requiere de una adecuada comprensiĂłnâ (16). Individuals interested in engaging in decolonizing/dismantling conversations need to have an in-depth understanding of the subject; without this knowledge, legitimate advances cannot take place. As a social work major, I constantly contemplate intersectionality while navigating my studies and life experiences; race, ethnicity and privilege are recurring themes in my courses. 128
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In fact, numerous kinds of privileges arise in class discussions. Through those conversations, non-BIPOC students realize the difference between their life experiences and the experiences of BIPOC students (BIPOC: Black, Indigenous, People of Color). BIPOCs also acknowledge certain privileges they have within the community. Able-bodied individuals see how much accessibility they truly have, and all get to understand the various layers that exist in the term âdisabled.â Additionally, Iâve encountered social work professors that, even with their titles and years worth of experience, have seemed to have lost touch with their students. The privilege that comes with their positions unintentionally results in this disconnect, which is what I experienced in my interview with these two highly esteemed feminist thinkers. Something that would have made the interview different, amongst numerous other factors, is an awareness of positionality. In âRecuperando Nuestra Identidad: AfroLatinx Students Decolonizing Their African Lineage,â author Claudia GarcĂa-Louis exhibits this self-awareness and position as she confronts this topic: I self-identify as a Mexican immigrant woman who is phenotypically mestiza. Since I am not Afro-Latina, I critically considered data through multiple viewpoints by journaling and discussing thoughts, procedures, and findings with two colleagues. I am conscious of the fact many Afro-Latinxs experience(d) prejudice and discrimination by mestizes, therefore, building trust and rapport required intentionality and authenticity. I verbalized the importance of the research and worked with participants over the span of a year to establish rapport. My experiences as a First-Generation, immigrant student, who grew up in a predominantly white community, where I experienced severe racism, informed my worldview and helped establish trust with participants. My transnational and panethnic ties manifested into identity confusion given I was racialized and alienated by U.S. born LatinxsâI too navigated the in-between (97). This positionality is lacking in higher education and other institutions in general. Unfortunately, from my interview with these AndrĂ©s Bello Chairs, it became audible and visible that it was missing here at NYU as well. Acknowledging oneâs privilege is the first step in tackling the layers of issues around colonization. In my case, though I am Afro-Latinx, I am light skinned and, therefore, privileged in this colorist world. I am also a student at an institution in which these questions of positionality should be raised and confronted by those individuals who occupy positions of authority. Overall, the conversation I had with the chairs and the information I reviewed about the Centerâs history demonstrate that the root of this issue is deciding who is nominated and who ascends to these prestigious and powerful roles. In class, we consistently discussed matters like decolonization and positions of power. âUna visiĂłn del mundo universitarioâ by Julio CĂ©sar 130
Olvera GarcĂa stresses the several layers that make up a university as an institution. Olvera comments, âel campo universitario es el lugar de una lucha por determinar las condiciones y los criterios de la pertenencia y de las jerarquĂas legĂtimas, es decir, aquellas propiedades adquiridas que funcionan como capital para producir los beneficios especĂficos que el campo proveeâ (306). These roles of prestige and power only reflect whoever created them and their place of residence. In order to begin the process of decolonization, we have to get to the core of this predicament. âDecolonizar la universidadâ was also a recurring subject throughout the semester. To the same degree as Olvera, Restrepo dissects his topic of decolonization. Restrepo illustrates the diverse ways in which colonization is seen in the university in order to proceed towards decolonization: âEl giro decolonial como estrategia de descolonizaciĂłn de la universidad apunta al cuestionamiento del profundo eurocentrismo que ha descalificado a los conocimientos de los sujetos colonialesâ (20). This point encapsulates how decolonization can be initiated, with the mere action of questioning the institutions of which we partake. I have begun practicing this insistence of questioning as a skill through my social work classes. Questioning is the first step to approaching decolonization. Questioning needs to be done not only by students but by those who acquire prestigious positions. Questioning the rights of not only the demographics that pertain to oneself, but to other communities, is vital. Real change and decolonization cannot occur until those with influential positions are Afro-Latinx, Black, Indigenous, etc. There are still many unanswered questions and a lot of work to do. Bibliography Almonte, Johmmiry. Personal interview with Carmen Boullosa and Marisa Belausteguigoitia. 10 December 2021. GarcĂa-Louis, Claudia. âRecuperando Nuestra Identidad: Afrolatinx Students Decolonizing Their African Lineage.â International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, vol. 34, no. 2, 2020, 89â107. Web. Olvera GarcĂa, Julio CĂ©sar. âUna visiĂłn del mundo universitario.â Convergencia. Revista De Ciencias Sociales, vol. 16, 2009, 305â310. Restrepo, Eduardo. âDecolonizar la universidad.â InvestigaciĂłn cualitativa emergente: reflexiones y casos, 2018. Web.
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Transdisciplinary Spaces: In Praise of the Potluck Mary L. Pratt When I retired from NYU a few years ago, my day-long retirement fete was held at the King Juan Carlos of Spain Center. Judging by the name, some might have found it a strange choice of venue to celebrate a career devoted to the critique of imperialism and the decolonization of knowledge. But, for other reasons, the KJCC was the perfect place. I was a scholar whose big questions reached beyond disciplinary boundaries, and the KJCCâs founding aim had been to foster a transdisciplinary intellectual community. That history made it easy for my two departmentsâ Spanish and Portuguese and Social and Cultural Analysisâto work together to organize the event. The KJCCâs central location was familiar to colleagues from all over the campus; this generous social space encouraged conversation; its uniquely intimate auditorium was a familiar home for everyone who, as I did, studied Latin America within and across disciplines. The âSpanish [and Portuguese]-speaking worldâ in whose name the KJCC was founded is, of course, the product of empire and colonialism. The phrase does not denote a linguistically unified âworldâ where only Spanish is spoken. Rather, it denotes the parts of the world where the Spanish language cohabits with many othersâCatalan, Basque and Gallego in Spain, and dozens of languages in the Americas and the Philippines, including both indigenous and other imperial languages (like French, Portuguese, or English). The âSpanish-speaking worldâ is an enormously heterogeneous entity, precisely because it was created by layerings of empire over already existing societies and histories. Transdisciplinary intellectual spaces like the KJCC have become ever more important to the mission of universities, alongside the disciplinary departments that have formed their traditional core. The KJCC reflects one key early source of interdisciplinary institutional forms: the area studies programs that proliferated in American universities after World War II, in response to the shifts in global geopolitics. As the Cold War mapped the world into geographically defined areas of influence for one side or the other, the U.S. government called on universities to produce comprehensive knowledge of particular regionsâSoutheast Asia, the Soviet Union, Latin America, for example. The National Defense Education Act of 1958 funded the establishment of area studies centers at universities across the country aiming at bringing 132
together scholars working in different disciplines, but focused on particular regions. The Title VI grants that fund the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) are the legacy of that initiative. They included the National Defense Foreign Language Fellowship program that poured millions of dollars into language training, without regard to disciplines. As a Comparative Literature graduate student, for example, I received an NDFL grant to learn Portuguese in Brazil. In Slavic Studies, such funding supported political scientists like former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, but also generations of Russian literature scholars whose knowledge was also considered important. Area studies associations, like LASA (Latin American Studies Association) evolved into capacious, dynamic spaces of intellectual ferment whose annual meetings were radically multidisciplinary. A literary scholar could decide (as I once did) to attend all the sessions on agronomy; a panel on the ecology of water could include participants from political economy, anthropology, and cinema. Area studies never upheld the boundaries of Cold War anticommunism. Energized by Third World anti-imperial and anti-colonial struggles, it challenged and disrupted them, all the time. The revolutions in knowledge-making that took place in the 1970s, 80s and 90s hugely magnified the need for transdisciplinary intellectual spaces. The KJCC, conceived in the 1980s and realized in the 90s, was born into a time of astonishing transformation and innovation in the work of knowledge-making. The democratization of higher education demanded new subject matters and fields of inquiry. The transgressive, insurgent energies galvanized by 1968 uprisings took up residence in university departments. Every discipline underwent methodological revolution in these decades, often multiple ones. Disciplinary boundaries were challenged at every turn as new objects of study leaped into view, objects that were impossible to house in existing disciplinesâlike ideology, hegemony, patriarchy, modernity, sexuality, the social imagination, coloniality, transculturation, race, madness, the state, etc. Methodologies traveled. Humanists brought their interpretive methods to bear on domains beyond literature and the arts. Feminism, ethnic studies and post-colonialism challenged literary canons, and at the same time revitalized them with new revelations about old texts. The emergence of race, gender and ethnicity as objects of study fostered new methodologies and institutional spaces, animated by social and political urgency. Relationality became important: studying âthe Spanish-speaking worldâ no longer meant studying Spain and Spanish America separately, for instance. Transatlantic and transoceanic paradigms enable reflection on the extent to which they constituted and defined each other.
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For individual scholars, this methodological ferment, into which the KJCC was born, was enormously liberating. You could be a scholar without necessarily housing yourself in a single discipline, methodology, or department. You could rove and belong to multiple conversations. You could cultivate the arts of trespass. You could look for connections, commonalities, and continuities across contrasting or opposing domains. It was and is an exhilarating experience. In 1976, Raymond Williams, one of the founders of cultural studies, introduced his groundbreaking work, Keywords thus: âThe work which this book records has been done in an area where several disciplines converge but in general do not meetâ (Williams, 1977, 2). Today, because of Williams and many other innovative theorists, many of them do meet in post-disciplinary intellectual spaces with names that end with the word âStudies,â and in postdisciplinary institutional spaces whose names contain the word âCenterâ. The KJCC is one such space. I like to think of centers like the KJCC through the image of the potluckâthe shared meal to which each person brings what they best know how to make. Nobody knows in advance how the meal will turn out, but everyone trusts that everyone else will do what they can to make the feast a successful collaborative event. The potluck model does not make disciplines irrelevant. Au contraire, they are essential contributors to the feast. The potluck requires a spirit of generosity, community and good faith. These are the qualities I most value in the KJCC.
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Interdisciplinarity and the Cultural Center Ingrid Trost As the King Juan Carlos I Centerâs undergraduate intern for the 2021-2022 school year, I have worked with a wonderful team to organize cultural conversations and develop programs at the center. In the fall semester, we kicked off our Fridays on the Patio programs, where students, faculty and other NYU community members were invited into the KJCC for weekly communitybuilding events. I have had the privilege of meeting many people across the NYU community from groups and organizations I am unlikely to have found on my own, and have been fortunate to assist them in identifying a space to share their missions with a broad community of students seeking to connect. We were able to collaborate with groups from a variety of undergraduate journals, the student-run radio station, and the LGBTQ+ Center, as well as organize some less structured activities like collaging, knitting and game nights. The casual environment allowed students and faculty alike to relax and get to know each other outside of the classroom, an often difficult process which has been further exacerbated by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In the shade of the outdoor patio, we witnessed student-run journals comparing their editing and publication processes and people returning week after week, inviting their friends as a break after a week of class. Students even volunteered to teach different skills for later Fridays, and we had multiple student clubs express their desire to co-sponsor future events. And on a chilly November afternoon, we sipped hot chocolate outside with first-year students who had never visited the center before. A key component to the mission of the KJCCâwhich perhaps should be replicated by other such centers nationally and internationallyâis to offer community-centered programming in a non-classroom setting, in a space which can encourage innovation, invite the participation of the public and allow for a decentralized progression of cultural thought. As programming professionals with budgetary, human resource-related and accessibility limitations, we need to ask ourselves: what is the primary goal of a cultural and academic center, and how may we achieve and maintain that goal in our ever-changing environment in an inclusive and accessible manner? I argue that the most important role of the academic and cultural center is fostering practical and genuine interdisciplinary collaboration and providing a setting where all community members can connect and converse without academic hierarchy. The academic and cultural center is uniquely suited to this mission because of its ability to quickly respond to community needs and 135
wants, with the possibility of a distance from university hierarchy and a capacity to prioritize student-led multidisciplinary initiatives. Research shows that thereâs a great need for the services an academic center can provide, given that our universities are more isolated and disconnected than ever. Faculty are stretched thin and students are frustrated. Even before the coronavirus pandemic, university communities were distanced from the public and surrounding neighborhoodâan academic center could fill these gaps. A pre-pandemic poll of more than 32,000 students across the United States reveals a student body wherein only one third feel they have the knowledge and skills to be prepared adequately for the job market or the workplace (Friedman 96-114). A smaller survey executed by The Chronicle of Higher Education and Fidelity Investments reveals that in the wake of the pandemic, more than half of the university faculty have considered early retirement or a change in career path. Faculty members were twice as discouraged, angry and fatigued in 2020 compared to 2019; this trend also falls along a binarily-gendered line with female faculty members experiencing stress with ten percent more frequency than their male counterparts (Tugend). A study performed in six American college towns from 1940-2000 by Cambridge University observes a town-gown effect evolving in communities from the 1970s onwards; town referring to the public of a college town, gown referring to the distinct college or university community (Rousmaniere 320-340). It is hard to imagine calling New York a college town, but I believe the effect is still more than prevalent. I have been fortunate to experience real collaboration with a global community in interdisciplinary classes such as Queer Activisms taught by Ana Gabriela Alvarez and Zeb Tortorici, where we met with numerous experts in a variety of subjects pertaining to queer resistance and storytelling, but it should not be the role of individual professors alone to establish connections with our community. Unfortunately, I have been a part of isolated volunteering missions organized throughout the university where students remained distanced and did not speak to anyone except their group, per the design of the activity; this does nothing to establish real trust or connection with the community. Academic and cultural centers offer a setting for an effective form of collaboration and connection to take place if it is prioritized in their mission and resources. The involvement of diverse communities, including both the university and public, and direct sharing of knowledge should be the primary concern for those involved in cultural, political and area studies, lest we repeat the same patterns of exclusion and the same discounting of personal experience that are far too prevalent. In the words of KimberlĂš Crenshaw: âknowledge production about race and social power has always been a contested enterprise in which the very same dynamics that were 136
under study were playing out among those involved in the field.â The post-pandemic reimagining of our educational structure and the publicâs involvement can provide us with an opportunity to restructure and reprogram in a way that more effectively supports the individuals and communities whose efforts make our existence possible. One thing the pandemic has taught us is that while we have a lot to learn when it comes to accessibility, diversity and adaptability, we often can weather more changes than we ever thought possible. Working in academia and having adapted so much to continue the varied missions of education has shown that a skeptical review of our present organizational and operational structure is long overdue. This practice and subsequent changes will help us to achieve our respective and collective goals while preventing burnout on either side of the studentteacher relationship. While I criticize components of our institutional structure, I do so with the desire to push collectively towards a higher standard, as well as with the utmost empathy for the restrictions that make overwhelming change challenging under any circumstance. Institutions were and are created through incremental actions carried out by individuals, and their reform will be gradual; still, we must push ourselves to imagine better structures for our organizations and those we serve and do so with actionable changeâto do otherwise would be to resign to unimaginative fatalism. Any review of the organizational and operational systems of United States universities will reveal a departmental structure which generally follows disciplinary divisions.1 Philosophically, this may be attributed to diverging theories emerging from the critical rationalist thought of the eighteenth century,2 but practical limitations like physical space as well as individual and capitalist needs for streamlined hiring, promotion and rewards processes are surely a key concern as well. Disciplines help us to distinguish between the different âmethodolog[ies],â âsubjectmatter[s],ââcurriculum[s],âand shared âpurpose[s]â of given âintellectualâ communities (Post 749770). By distinguishing disciplines by department, smaller areas of study are given their deserved recognition in the university system. In this way, disciplines may make autonomous decisions 1. For further reading, Robert Post has collected a wonderful variety of sources discussing departmental disciplinarity in his essay âDebating Disciplinarity,â cited below; especially those on pages 752-53. 2. In the 1840s, Comte called for a universal social scientific discipline studying the subject of humanity. Marx, Spencer, Bentham echoed such a perspective; with a(n) universal/indivisible conception of human society, the study of that society should therefore be similarly united. They do not elaborate how this may be practically achieved, given diversity of perspective but also simple physical restrictions which may lead to more disciplinary thought. Perhaps this is why a more compartmentalized organization continues. Reference: Greenfeld, Liah and Nisbet, Robert A.. âSocial Scienceâ. Encyclopedia Britannica, 22 Oct. 2021. Accessed 4 January 2022.
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regarding their educational and facutorial standards and requirements. Stanley Fish declares that disciplines allow us to stake out individual and collective territorial claims in academic study (Fish); decolonial scholarship raises an eyebrow. Despite the encompassing nature of departmental organization and the difficulty of envisioning a transition to a different structure, many of us understand that âthe notion of disciplinary unity is triply false: minimizing or denying differences that exist across the plurality of specialties grouped loosely under a single disciplinary label, undervaluing connections across specialties of separate disciplines, and discounting the frequency and impact of cross-disciplinary influencesâ (Klein 190). The theoretical separation between different disciplines and departments often results in physical distance between them, reinforcing the separation in an exaggerated manner. The academic discipline or department is limited in its ability to respond to the everevolving needs of the subject, students, and faculty it serves, as it is accountable for the university as an institution and must match its bureaucratic systems of employment as well as educational operations; plans must be made at least a semester in advance, limiting a departmentâs capacity for responsiveness. The result of our present organizational and operational structure is dissatisfaction in most facets of the university system and its interactions with the public, and the discipline-based department is a key unit in this structure. The cultural center allows for programming and conversation which may establish a framework for interdisciplinarity that has been made difficult by physical separation. I argue that the most important role of the academic and cultural center is that of fostering practical interdisciplinary collaboration, and providing a space in which students, faculty, and other community members may gather to share ideas on equal footing, outside of the classroom. This focus will provide those feeling frustrated with the present structure a space to ensure that their perspectives regarding their own discipline as well as the broader institutional structure can be heard and discussed among their peers and community. With the central mission of the academic and cultural center being to share political, cultural, and historical knowledge, attempting to do so without incorporating the public or highlighting varied ways of knowing means a limited scope and thus a failure of their mission (hooks). In our summer planning meetings, KJCC Director Jordana Mendelson and I agreed that the Centerâs physical presence within an academic building should translate to a similar interconnectedness with students and other university community members. We made it our goal to demonstrate the variety of perspectives, careers, and expressions available to those connected to Spain and the Spanish-speaking world through identity and study. This direct relationship 138
strengthened week-by-week through Fridays on the Patio as we saw increased attendance, leading to contact with over a hundred students. This inclusion results in a more connected and weighty relationship with the student body which has the possibility of translating into increased interest in similar classes. Students of an analytical research university like NYU should experience a connected and multidisciplinary educational community, and the academic and cultural center provides a setting for this to occur at a variety of levels. We can look to already established interdisciplinary initiatives such as the undergraduate core curriculum and multi-disciplined hiring efforts as positive instances of collaboration across departments. However, these efforts are limited in scale and duration and are merely supplementary, rather than a guiding principle for academic departments. These are important tools, but they are based in the institution of the university. Progress may thus be slowed by bureaucracyâs struggle to incorporate extremely broad and contrasting perspectives, so the cultural and academic center may fill the gaps presented by a departmental organization and can help distinct disciplines collaborate to execute their goals on a larger scale. While departments continue their philosophical conversations, asking what is the most effective way to execute our research and whether a disciplinary vision helps in the pursuit of that goal, the academic center may offer support to students and faculty directly. The autonomy and adaptability of an academic and cultural center that does not have the pressure of meeting specific educational requirements enables its members to craft its mission in real time and to present a variety of content and ways of knowing (hooks). There are often smaller numbers of employees within the center, so there is direct communication and ample opportunity for student involvement. Academic and cultural centers must create a space for conversations about progress by establishing programming that invites the community to gather and discuss what their experiences and studies have taught them, intentionally providing space for learning to become praxis. Of course, any faculty member or administrator will emphasize that their schedule is already overwhelmed, so I implore the executive boards of centers to establish more positions for undergraduate and graduate student involvement through internships or hired hourly employees. Invite the student-run clubs in your field to gather in your space, giving them the chance to grow familiar without the power dynamic seen in the classroom and to see the variety of how others inhabit their experiences and studies. The academic center is uniquely positioned to provide a space for active interdisciplinary cooperation through the implementation of inclusive community programming, both online 139
and in person. There is significant student interest in participation in these programs which will only increase with a more supportive structure. The presentation and debate of narratives and counternarratives is the only way to develop true understanding, and the cultural and academic center may provide a setting for this to occur in real time. While departments and centers work to find ways to engage students and further their missions; I repeat June Jordanâs famed question cited by hooks: âIs the university prepared to teach us something new?â Bibliography Crenshaw, KimberlĂ© Williams. âRace Liberalism and the Deradicalization of Racial Reform.â Harvard Law Review, vol. 130, no. 9, Oct. 2017, 2298â2319. Web. Fish, Stanley. âBeing Interdisciplinary Is So Very Hard to Do,â Profession, 1989. Friedman, Hershey H., and Linda W. Friedman. âDoes Growing the Number of Academic Departments Improve the Quality of Higher Education?â Psychosociological Issues in Human Resource Management, vol. 6, no. 1, 2018, 96-114. Web. hooks, bell. Teaching Community : A Pedagogy of Hope, Taylor & Francis Group, 2003. Web. Klein. âBlurring, Cracking, and Crossing: Permeation and the Fracturing of Discipline,â in Knowledges: Historical and Critical Studies in Disciplinarity, ed. Messer-Davidow, Shumway, and David J. Sylvan. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1993. Post, Robert. âDebating Disciplinarity.â Critical Inquiry, vol. 35, no. 4, 2009, 749-770. Web. Rousmaniere, K. What Happened to Your College Town: The Changing Relationship of Higher Education and College Towns, 1940â2000. History of Education Quarterly, 61(3), 2021, 320-340. Tugend, Alina. ââOn the Verge of Burnout:â Covid-19âs Impact on Faculty Well-Being and Career Plans.â Chronicle of Higher Education, 2020. Web.
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ÂżCuĂĄl es la necesidad de crear el KJCC en NYU? Thomas Zenteno Los centros culturales son instituciones formadas con el propĂłsito de promover la cultura y las artes. A finales de la dĂ©cada de los ochentas, las universidades en los Estados Unidos empezaron a establecer centros dedicados a la investigaciĂłn y enseñanza de paĂses y culturas especĂficas. En ese momento surgiĂł la conciencia de que habĂa poca informaciĂłn acerca de España y LatinoamĂ©rica. El Centro Cultural del Rey Juan Carlos I es un ejemplo de uno de estos centros culturales; segĂșn su pĂĄgina web, este centro fue fundado en el año 1997 con la misiĂłn de fomentar la investigaciĂłn y la enseñanza de la historia y la cultura de España y el mundo hispanohablante en NYU (âThe King Juan Carlos I of Spain Centerâ). El amor y el interĂ©s por el hispanismo es algo que puede trazarse a travĂ©s del tiempo. Stanley G. Payne, en su artĂculo âEl hispanismo y la hispanofiliaâ, nos muestra los orĂgenes del hispanismo en Francia e Inglaterra. Aunque estos paĂses tenĂan enfoques diferentes, contribuyeron cada cual a su modo a la expansiĂłn de los estudios hispanos. En âThe Instrumental Universityâ, Ethan Schrum plantea cĂłmo las universidades pueden llegar a ser utilizadas como instrumentos para establecer e impulsar un âhabitusâ. Schrum, a su vez, sugiere que las universidades se pueden utilizar como herramientas diplomĂĄticas para promover programas e, incluso, culturas. (Shrum 129). Al mismo tiempo, Schrum sugiere que el desarrollo administrativo de universidades en vĂas de desarrollo evidenciĂł la presencia de mecanismos establecidos por las universidades estadounidenses a finales de los años 50 (Schrum 127). Las ideas presentadas por Schrum nos ayudan a entender el poder que tienen las instituciones acadĂ©micas para influir y establecer doctrinas que promuevan ciertos comportamientos e ideologĂas. Sin duda alguna, NYU es una instituciĂłn reconocida mundialmente. Este reconocimiento es precisamente lo que le permite ubicarse en una posiciĂłn de influencia. El hecho de que NYU haya fundado un centro cultural para el estudio del hispanismo, junto a instituciones como Yale o Harvard, nos muestra la importancia y el interĂ©s hacia el mundo hispano que existĂa entre los fundadores durante esa Ă©poca. Aunque para algunos es fĂĄcil comprender las razones por las que el estudio de España es esencial en el continente americano, muchos podrĂan no comprender del todo cuĂĄl es el afĂĄn por conservar la historia hispana en una instituciĂłn como NYU. Es interesante destacar que la poblaciĂłn latina e hispana tiene una gran presencia en la ciudad de Nueva York; constituye cerca del 30% de la poblaciĂłn total (âNYC 141
Censusâ). Por otro lado, una quinta parte de la poblaciĂłn total de NYU es considerada latina o hispana (âNYU at a Glanceâ). Por eso, la existencia de un centro cultural dedicado al idioma español y la cultura hispana es una gran motivaciĂłn para que estas personas valoren su historia y aprendan mĂĄs de ella. En general, los centros culturales son vistos como incubadores de conocimiento donde a travĂ©s de invitados y de sus mismos miembros, obtienen la habilidad de expresarse libremente y contribuyen a los estudios en los que se enfocan. En mi opiniĂłn el centro cultural KJCC logra su cometido pues permite acceder, a todos aquellos que lo desean, a una rica experiencia cultural e histĂłrica del mundo hispanohablante, mientras fomenta el interĂ©s y la enseñanza en NYU, una de las instituciones mĂĄs influyentes hoy en dĂa. BibliografĂa New York City Census. Red. âNYU at a Glanceâ. NYU. Red. Payne, Stanley G. âEl Hispanismo y La Hispanofilia: Una Perspectiva HistĂłricaâ. VĂnculos De Historia. Red. Schrum, Ethan D. The Instrumental University: Education in Service of the National Agenda after World War II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019. âThe King Juan Carlos I of Spain Centerâ. NYU KJCC | The King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, 21 agosto. 2015. Red.
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Trascendiendo disciplinas:
la perspectiva del artista en la Academia MarĂa JosĂ© Urrutia IntroducciĂłn En la Ă©poca de los ochentas la Universidad de Nueva York, bajo la direcciĂłn de John Brademas, empezĂł a formar centros dedicados al estudio y enseñanza de distintos paĂses y culturas del exterior. Uno de estos centros fue el King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, que fue inaugurado en abril de 1997 ante la presencia del Rey y la Reina de España. El centro fue el resultado de una campaña extensa para presentar a acadĂ©micos, estudiantes y al pĂșblico en general el rico mundo cultural de España y LatinoamĂ©rica. Su apuesta âcrear una mayor consciencia sobre el mundo hispanohablante basada en los estudios intersdisciplinariosâ llevĂł a formar una nueva generaciĂłn de hispanistas. Por ello, se convirtiĂł en un lugar de gran valor cultural para la comunidad universitaria y de la ciudad de Nueva York. Hoy en dĂa, el centro organiza muchos programas, mirando siempre hacia el futuro mientras busca servir a una audiencia cada vez mĂĄs amplia. Las cĂĄtedras cumplen un rol vital en esta bĂșsqueda por obtener nuevas audiencias y aumentar el alcance acadĂ©mico del centro. Aportan un mundo de conocimiento y experiencia que el centro optimiza para abrir mĂĄs puertas y asĂ establecer conexiones con mĂĄs estudiantes y miembros de la comunidad. En su labor interdsiciplinaria, el mundo del arte ha sido una de las ĂĄreas de enfoque principal del centro en sus primeros veinticinco años y esto se refleja en el liderazgo de individuos como el conocido artista visual multimediĂĄtico y curador de exhibiciones Francesc Torres, quien fuera el King Juan Carlos Chair in Spanish Culture and Civilization en el año 2005-2006. MĂĄs recientemente, en el año acadĂ©mico de 2019-2020, el King Juan Carlos Chair fue otorgado a Cristina Pato, gaitera, pianista y compositora de mĂșsica de renombre mundial proveniente de Galicia. Ellos no son acadĂ©micos, pero fueron elegidos para ocupar dichas cĂĄtedras en un espacio acadĂ©mico. Este texto es una reflexiĂłn que examina mĂĄs a fondo el rol y las perspectivas que traen los artistas al mundo acadĂ©mico y cultural. La esencia del artista Pero, ÂżquĂ© es un artista? El concepto del arte es amplio y subjetivo, asimismo, lo que cada persona considera arte varĂa dependiendo a menudo de los gustos personales y opiniones. Se podrĂa 143
definir a un âartistaâ con esta generalizaciĂłn: una persona con los talentos y las habilidades de conceptualizar y realizar trabajos creativos. ÂżQuĂ© son trabajos creativos? La respuesta es infinita: pinturas, dibujos, fotografĂas, prosa, filmografĂa, escultura, actuaciĂłn, mĂșsica, danza. Por supuesto, es de mucha importancia que los artistas posean la habilidad y el deseo de embarcarse en el arduo proceso de imaginar, diseñar y fabricar los objetos, fotos, imĂĄgenes, palabras e ideas que constituyen su corpus de trabajo. AquĂ encontramos una gran similaridad entre acadĂ©micos y artistas, especĂficamente entre las personas que ocupan una cĂĄtedra en un centro cultural. Cada cĂĄtedra debe aportar una visiĂłn al Centro durante su tenencia, ideas que deben ser visualizadas y eventualmente realizadas en una serie de conferencias en el Centro y clases para estudiantes de la Universidad de Nueva York. Imaginar, diseñar y fabricar âexactamente el proceso que ocupa a los artistas. El artista en una cĂĄtedra acadĂ©mica AĂșn teniendo en cuenta estas similitudes entre acadĂ©micos y artistas, estas profesiones poseen diferencias. Como dice Francesc Torres: I am not an academic [...] Artists function differently when it comes to articulating knowledge. (âFrancesc Torres Interview Footageâ) Efectivamente, un artista interpreta y comunica el conocimiento de modo diverso a un acadĂ©mico. Cristina Pato, en sus conferencias durante su tiempo como King Juan Carlos Chair, se enfocĂł mucho en traer a mĂșsicos para hablar de temas como los genes del cerebro o la sustentabilidad cultural. De hecho, la Dr. Pato mostrĂł a lo largo de su posiciĂłn cĂłmo el arte estĂĄ presente e impacta diferentes conceptos, incluyendo la educaciĂłn. En temas como la memoria cultural y la responsabilidad social, muchos pensarĂĄn que el arte no tiene nada que aportar a esos temas, pero la Dr. Pato y Francesc Torres demuestran lo contrario. En la conferencia titulada, âAn Invisible Ancestry and the Unquiet Genes of the Brainâ, Cristina Pato establece una conexiĂłn entre el Alzheimer y cĂłmo âa culture or a nation chooses to remember its pastâ. AsĂ como las personas pierden sus recuerdos al padecer de Alzheimer o demencia, hay paĂses enteros que pierden su memoria cultural âla Dr. Pato menciona a España como un ejemplo. Ella establece una conexiĂłn hermosa entre la mĂșsica y el cerebro, y explica cĂłmo hay caminos neurales que recuerdan partes de instrumentos o notas especĂficas. Relaciona la memoria al impacto de la mĂșsica en las culturas del mundo, y subraya cĂłmo esta puede ayudar a las sociedades a reencontrarse con el pasado. Estas son las conexiones y enseñanzas que la Dr. Pato puede hacer debido a su formaciĂłn y el lente con el que mira al mundo âel lente de una 144
artista. Tal y como ella dijo, se trata de un lente diferente al de un acadĂ©mico, pero es igualmente poderoso y perspicaz: [Itâs about] helping to redefine the role of artists in academia. [...] There is a power in not fitting inâand the role of an artist in academia and society is more powerful than we think it is. (âATRIUMâ) CĂĄtedras como las de Cristina Pato y Francesc Torres han aportado un nuevo aire al King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center ây al mundo acadĂ©mico de la Universidad de Nueva York en general. Artistas que tal vez no encajarĂan en la academia son hoy mĂĄs necesarios que nunca. No solo es necesario para abrir el paso de artistas en el mundo acadĂ©mico, sino tambiĂ©n para abrir las mentes de estudiantes y miembros de la comunidad a pensar fuera del status quo sobre las culturas y sociedades del mundo. BibliografĂa âATRIUM: Voices from the KJCC Presents Christina Patoâ. NYU KJCC, 2 julio, 2021. Red. âFrancesc Torres Interview Footageâ. YouTube, YouTube, 7 diciembre. 2021. Red.
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Paisaje interior,
con fondo de King Juan Carlos Center Vicente SĂĄnchez Biosca I La sensaciĂłn de vulnerabilidad extrema ha venido siempre en mĂ acompañada de un ocĂ©ano de presagios, de una lectura compulsiva de detalles, de una proliferaciĂłn inmediata de rituales de exorcismo. Mi viaje a NYC, cuando en enero de 2013 me disponĂa a tomar posesiĂłn de la cĂĄtedra del KJCC de NYU, acumulaba una carga de sufrimiento todavĂa inconcluso y esa forma de aflicciĂłn anticipada que llamamos aprehensiĂłn. La conexiĂłn en Madrid fallĂł y, mientras contemplaba mi enorme maleta girar en solitario sobre la cinta transportadora de devoluciĂłn, alguien me entregĂł un bono para un hotel cercano. ConcluĂ âo creĂ concluirâ que las señales admitĂan poco equĂvoco: era una llamada al regreso. Mas lo propio del carĂĄcter obsesivo es la incertidumbre, la duda despuĂ©s de la decisiĂłn y la espera de un nuevo signo que contradiga el anterior. Cuanto mĂĄs absurdo y paralizante, mĂĄs esperanza de claridad. Innecesario es decir que aguardĂ©, atrincherado en una inacciĂłn que, en realidad, era dar alas al destino. Una vez en esa habitaciĂłn sin vistas ni atributos, no osĂ© abrir el candado de la maleta; se me antoja que ni siquiera coloquĂ© el equipaje del derecho, como si aguardase que siguiera su propio camino sin mi ayuda. Al dĂa siguiente, volaba en direcciĂłn a Nueva York. Las figuras que un disparatado mendigo inventado por Paul Auster trazaba sobre las calles de Nueva York en el libro que me acompañaba hicieron telĂșrico el paisaje al que iba a ingresar. No era Nueva York un lugar nuevo para mĂ, claro, pero, siempre que lo habĂa recorrido, sus recodos e iconos habĂan estado cubiertos âÂżenterrados?â por capas que los sepultaban. Un film âAngel Heartâ arrasĂł mi primer paso por la ciudad, marcando cada rincĂłn oscuro con un susurro que solo yo podĂa oĂr y que me estremecĂa. Y tambiĂ©n una habitaciĂłn iluminada de Times Square, donde algo satĂĄnico ocurrĂa fuera del alcance de los ojos del espectador y que, cual reguero de pĂłlvora, invadiĂł mi sueño de la ciudad entera. Hubo otras huellas, literarias las mĂĄs de las veces, pero prefiero callarlas ahora. Puedo, eso sĂ, confesar que todas ellas arrojaban una plomiza lluvia negra sobre la urbe. Sin embargo, ahora âen aquel ahora que era el invierno de 2013â, el dolor no era un efecto onĂrico suscitado por el 146
cine ni la literatura; no era un temblor de ficciĂłn. Era una pĂ©rdida Ăntima abrasivamente lenta, donde la generaciĂłn que me precedĂa se precipitaba en el abismo y ese valle que fue una vida en comĂșn, se alejaban. Todo habĂa sido anunciado, por supuesto; todo salvo su aciaga y pasmosa lentitud y la fangosa inhumanidad que llevĂł aparejado el proceso. Duraba ya mĂĄs de un año y habĂa de prolongarse âen un descenso hasta la simaâ mucho mĂĄs. II Nueva York me recibiĂł con un manto de nieve que la hacĂa a la par preciosa e inocente, pues tornaba irreconocible cada detalle de sus edificios, sus calles, incluso sus ĂĄrboles. La bondad angĂ©lica de Jo Labanyi me acogiĂł con un tĂ© en La Laterna di Vittorio y unas provisiones para el primer fin de semana. Sus palabras serenas y realistas al atolondramiento suave y perezoso que entraña cualquier largo viaje dieron un bosquejo de vida a mi silencio y sequedad interiores. Por supuesto, ella desconocĂa mi drama. Pero asĂ sucede con las gentes que nos hacen el bien en el momento preciso. El fin de semana transcurriĂł entre nubes. Al lunes siguiente, Laura TurĂ©gano, Luis PĂ©rez, Cristina Colmena me hicieron sentir, con una naturalidad que en nada restaba sorpresa, que ya era parte de algo y que existĂa una hoja de ruta. La Bobst Library, un despacho, mi apartamento en el nĂșmero 2 de Washington Square Village fueron acompasĂĄndose con nuevos lugares que me dieron cobijo y calor y que, como en todo descubrimiento, siempre son mĂĄs pequeños y modestos de como los habĂamos imaginado. Las periĂłdicas descargas elĂ©ctricas cada vez que tocaba un objeto metĂĄlico me devolvĂan a la realidad cuando me atrevĂa a ensimismarme. ConquistĂ© el espacio como leĂ que lo habĂan hecho los soldados en antiguas guerras: palmo a palmo, acera a acera, montĂłn de nieve a montĂłn de nieve. Lo hice desde la paralizada humildad de los temores que me atenazaban. Film Forum se convirtiĂł en el escenario diario de mis tardes y parte de mis noches, siempre iguales y siempre distintas. TambiĂ©n lo fue el Anthology Film Archives. Subir al primer metro me tomĂł casi un mes âo asĂ creo recordarloâ, pero sĂ visitĂ©, como si fuese por primera vez, decenas de lugares que ya habĂa visto. Los lugares nunca son los mismos si uno es consciente de que no lo es. AquĂ cada zarpazo sobre un libro, la inmersiĂłn en una secciĂłn nueva del laberinto de la biblioteca, un aparato nuevo del gimnasio, un ensayo de las cheerleaders en Coleâs, ese ciclo infinito del Hollywood de 1933 que colmaba de brillos la Gran DepresiĂłn con una atmĂłsfera deslumbrante y vagamente triste, esos asientos desgastados del Anthology y los cafĂ©s que rodeaban Washington Square, incluidos los sillones de los edificios que uno descubrĂa que pertenecĂan a NYU solo si alzaba los ojos y detectaba la banderita con su antorcha colgada y el inequĂvoco color violeta. Todo esto consumĂł una batalla de trincheras que, 147
a fin de cuentas, se libraba a seis mil kilĂłmetros de allĂ, donde se partĂa mi alma en dos trozos de vida. Ese palmo a palmo me pareciĂł una toma de posesiĂłn de la isla: no porque se la arrebatase a nadie, sino porque esa idea aristotĂ©lica (quizĂĄ hipocrĂĄtica) de catarsis se fue extendiendo por mis adentros convenciĂ©ndome de que trascendĂa algo mi banalidad cotidiana. Tan sencillo y tan comĂșn. Y lo sĂ© porque nada de ese descubrimiento (desvelamiento) volverĂa a producirse ni a ser recordado cuatro años mĂĄs tarde cuando regresĂ© durante un largo perĂodo a sus mismas calles para una investigaciĂłn. Lo supe siempre: no se habĂa apagado Nueva York; se habĂa apagado mi luz. Tal vez por eso, recordar el deslumbramiento tiene algo de epifanĂa. III Mis clases se trabaron con mis lecturas, mis periĂłdicos encuentros con Jo, y con esa otra figura que identifico con el Nueva York generoso: Stuart Liebman. Siguieron otros amigos que iban creciendo tan poco a poco como inexorablemente: mĂĄs paradas de metro, mĂĄs recovecos, no todos visibles. No hay mejor reconocimiento que ver bajo una luz nueva aquello que ya se ha visto. ÂżNo es asĂ como observa ParĂs quien hoy se enfrenta a las fotografĂas casi fantasmales de EugĂšne Atget? En suma, Nueva York me perteneciĂł. No mĂĄs de lo que pertenece a cualquier otro que lo desea, tal vez; pero contuvo (en la anfibologĂa de esta palabra) mi calvario y las estaciones que lo formaron fueron momentos de una intensidad cercana a la plenitud. Fue, pues, mĂa sin dejar de ser de otros en el alborear de la primavera de 2013. InĂștil añadir que me sentĂ curado. InĂștil tambiĂ©n decir que no lo estaba. La aflicciĂłn retornĂł (siempre lo hace) y dejĂł las marcas de sus garras para siempre. Pero eso importa poco: fui libre entre las cuatro paredes inmensas de la isla cuando no lo esperaba y de la que habĂa tratado, iluso, de escapar. ÂĄBendita obsesiĂłn, prodigio de la duda! DisfrutĂ© cada paso, cada cafĂ©, cada sillĂłn en cuyo fondo leĂ con pasiĂłn algunas pĂĄginas de mis libros errabundos, reciĂ©n retirados y quizĂĄ jamĂĄs concluidos. Un dĂa, concluyendo mis clases de inglĂ©s, cenamos en Carmineâs, junto a Times Square. Todo era inmenso, pero lo inconmensurable era la sensaciĂłn de haberme ganado pertenecer a algo. Ese lugar en el que habĂa hecho cola para conseguir entradas de algĂșn musical, disfrutar de unos neones que, reconocibles en el mundo entero, quizĂĄ ya no podĂan competir con algunos de Tokio o de Shanghai, se habĂa convertido en mi pequeño hogar. Me movilicĂ©, saltando del abandono y la pereza, para que mi familia (amada y breve familia) viera, desde el tĂșnel que preparĂ©, la ciudad. LlegĂł âdijeâ la primavera. DebiĂł hacerlo sin ruido. Lo sĂ© porque la nieve se desvaneciĂł y los ĂĄrboles y el parque volvieron a ser reconocibles (para mĂ ya solo lo serĂĄn con la nieve que los 148
oculta). Tampoco porque mĂșsicos y cantantes, jugadores de ajedrez y paseantes atravesaban ya sin arrastrar sus botas por Washington Square. Lo sĂ©, en realidad, porque la ropa de abrigo pesaba y los interiores expulsaban a las gentes, las horas caminando por el high line estimulaban a seguir sin freno y porque los pies se hinchaban, aunque nada instaba a regresar a las profundidades de uno de aquellos sillones que tanta felicidad me habĂan entregado antaño. IV Poco he dicho âingrato de mĂâ de la instituciĂłn que me regalĂł esta dicha: el King Juan Carlos Center de la New York University. En realidad, todo cuanto he nombrado (y aun lo que he omitido) se lo debo a ella y, como las obras tienen nombres, a Jo Labanyi en primer lugar. La generosidad de Stuart Liebman tiene reminiscencias de aquellos grandes hombres de antaño (y soy consciente de que el tĂ©rmino âmuy francĂ©s y nacionalista, por ciertoâ es polĂticamente dudoso), que ya escasean hoy. MĂĄs tarde, apenas unos dĂas despuĂ©s de que, entre calores, abandonase el gimnasio Coleâs (años mĂĄs tarde en obras) y derramase dĂ©bilmente lĂĄgrimas estudiando la inminencia de mi partida y la retirada del sueño, recordarĂa dos dĂas preciosos que se proyectarĂan, mĂĄs allĂĄ de sordideces y retornos al duro banco del mundo, a un futuro que hoy, pasado y sellado, juzgo entre lo mĂĄs Ăntimamente sagrado de mi universo intelectual. Mejor evocarlo. Entre mis cometidos como chair holder del KJCC se contaba la organizaciĂłn de un symposium. Jo Labanyi me otorgĂł, no solo libertad, sino su ĂĄnimo y apoyo, para concebirlo. PensĂ© con ella en algo que al final se denominarĂa The Desire to See. The Production and Circulation of Images of Atrocity. No me atraĂa concebir un mundo hispano ni latino separado del resto del mundo, con sus especialistas y sus certezas. Soy dubitativo, pero no conformista. Por eso, no lleguĂ© a ser hispanista de pro ni historiador de pro, ni filĂłlogo de pro, ni en realidad nada de pro en toda mi vida. Ahora sĂ puedo asegurarlo, porque ya no cambiarĂĄ. Me atraĂa la comparaciĂłn, el reto, como desde mi juventud me atrajeron los viajes dĂ©bilmente organizados (tambiĂ©n por manifiesta incompetencia) con la guĂa Lonely Planet en la mano, la mĂĄs elemental guesthouse, que se traducĂa en una insuficiente visiĂłn de las ciudades y los monumentos (me avergonzaba no haber visto o no recordar haber visto algo que cualquier viajero a estos lugares mencionaba a las primeras de cambio). Algo se hermanĂł aquĂ o, como dicen los enĂłlogos, se maridĂł: busquĂ© en ây me beneficiĂ© deâ mis leales amigos y otros acadĂ©micos: Jo Labanyi, Stuart Liebman, Ben Kiernan, Marita Sturken, Allan Thomson, Daniel HernĂĄndez-Salazar. El Simposio fue un Ă©xito para mĂ. Ignoro todavĂa âla honestidad debe ser preservadaâ si lo fue para los demĂĄs. 149
Pero sĂ© que, de las entrañas de aquellos dĂas, de aquellas conversaciones, la visiĂłn de las imĂĄgenes que recorrieron el salĂłn de actos del KJCC y de su larvada agitaciĂłn interior que recogĂan a su paso las rodadas por Rithy Panh que jamĂĄs habĂa logrado dejar de invocar en mi interior, mi rumbo cambiĂł. Mi retorno a España estuvo marcado por toda la sordidez de la que se compone la vida (la soledad, el dolor, la muerte, la ausencia, el remordimiento incierto âno es un oxĂmoronâ). En cambio, mi bĂșsqueda tratĂł de hallar algo cuya intensidad emotiva se hallase a la altura de mi aflicciĂłn y que la desbordase: una suerte de redenciĂłn que no puede esconder el egoĂsmo de la que nace. Camboya, atravesada por los horrores perpetrados por los Jemeres Rojos en menos de cuatro años, me ofreciĂł el paisaje que anhelaba: una sonrisa budista y una crueldad sin fondo, una contemplaciĂłn idĂlica y una aceleraciĂłn del gran salto hacia adelante. Pero, sobre todo, un lugar que contenĂa todos mis lugares interiores: pequeño (Âża escala humana, es decir, del sufrimiento humano?), donde los cuerpos se retorcieron de dolor un dĂa y donde sus huellas se resistĂan a desaparecer. AllĂ pude morir unos años mĂĄs tarde. Tampoco es esto una metĂĄfora. Era lo mĂĄs verosĂmil, pero el destino no lo quiso. V Desde enero de 2013, entre dos despachos, una biblioteca, un apartamento y varios cafĂ©s, este componente material que habĂa instilado mis viajes desde mucho tiempo atrĂĄs se hizo mĂĄs evidente. Un pudor hacia el ridĂculo lo camuflĂł, pero no logrĂł hacerlo desaparecer. De ahĂ nacieron mis libros Miradas criminales, ojos de vĂctima. ImĂĄgenes de la aflicciĂłn en Camboya (2017) y mi reciente La muerte en los ojos. QuĂ© perpetran las imĂĄgenes de perpetrador (2021). Yo hubiese deseado que naciesen otras cosas que por ahora quedan sepultadas, en fragmentos inseguros, entre mis archivos, inconclusas quiĂ©n sabe si para siempre. Pero la figura del perpetrador de crĂmenes de masa âen el fondo latente en todo cuanto me ha inquietado a lo largo de mi vidaâ tomĂł forma y ya ha salido a la superficie. Cualesquiera que sean los logros y los fracasos acadĂ©micos y humanos, me es imposible contemplar todo esto sin el KJCC y sin Jo Labanyi, a quien me une a la vez el cariño y el remordimiento de no haber cumplido un antiguo compromiso de trabajo en comĂșn. Reconozco que no puedo ver mi transcurso intelectual y vital como un proceso de mejora y progresiĂłn. Pero no me lleva esta incapacidad a verme envuelto en un cĂrculo que retorna compulsivamente al lugar de origen. Me veo mĂĄs bien preso âcondenado y a veces disfrutando del reconocimientoâ de una serie desordenada de rimas âasonantes unas, consonantes otrasâ que conforman 150
estrofas no sistemĂĄticas, pero tampoco carentes de sentido. Mi Camboya, es decir, la de mis conversaciones con Rithy Panh, las horas pasadas en los archivos del Bophana Center, las que pugnĂ© por acceder al DC-Cam, a tratar de atravesar el rĂo crecido que daba acceso al primer lugar de tortura que dirigiĂł Duch (M-13), en las celdas estrechas de Tuol Sleng o mirando a la cara durante largos minutos rostros que se asomaban a la muerte inminente en el museo o los archivos del Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, son indisociables del Java CafĂ© donde pasaba horas enteras frente al monumento a la independencia, los paseos en tuk-tuk, las lecturas frente al TonlĂ© Sap o el bello jardĂn de la casa de madera de Helen Jarvis a orillas del Mekkong. Todas estas mudas de mi Phnom Penh y de Battambang, Angkor, Sihanoukville, entre otros, riman con los viajes a Varanasi, KatmandĂș, Birmania o a SudĂĄfrica, en compañĂa de Elena, a Ho-Chi Minh City o, ya con mi hija Adriana (prendada de Nueva York desde la primera mirada), por Tokio, Kyoto, Shanghai o Indonesia. Pero igual que saltan por encima del tiempo, algunos de estos hilos que llamĂ© rimas atraviesan las calles de Nueva York, como si de un tĂșnel se tratase. Treblinka, Sobibor, Chelmno, Maidanek, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Sighet, la Toft und Söhne Stiftung de Erfurt, diligentes y profesionales fabricantes de los hornos crematorios, Mauthausen, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, NĂșrenberg, Sachsenhausen, TerezĂn, Dachau y tantos otros lugares estuvieron periĂłdicamente en mĂ aparentemente ajenos a esos meses de 2013. Y, sin embargo, tambiĂ©n ellos estĂĄn atravesados, en el maelstrom del tiempo, por ese invierno y primavera de 2013 en el KJCC. Un crisol de vida, imperfecto y por eso genuino: no lo contiene todo, no da sentido a todo, pero reluce e ilumina. El KJCC fue en mi vida un interludio en el que se condensĂł una redenciĂłn imperfecta; un tĂșnel con ramificaciones por el que pasan algunas de esas cristalizaciones del mundo que tiene la vida: una nota manuscrita, una âvisiĂłnâ de futuro, un reencuentro con lo olvidado. Que la vida no me haya redimido tras aquella plenitud no resta un ĂĄpice de valor a lo que debo a aquel tiempo. Precisamente porque pude sentir que lo que ocurrĂa en mĂ era obra de una conquista mĂa (modesta, banal, imperceptible) que vibra en ese año en que Rafa Nadal regresĂł a las pistas cuando se le creĂa acabado y una muchachita nepalĂ me servĂa mi cafĂ© matutino en un modesto cafĂ© en una esquina de Washington Square.
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de los cuadernos de Nueva York Llegamos a Nueva York -Imma y yo- el 15 de enero de 2012, hoy hace exactamente 10 años. No tengo cĂĄmara fotogrĂĄfica y, aunque todo el mundo me habĂa dicho que no podrĂa sobrevivir ni un dĂa sin Ă©l, tampoco tengo -tuve- mĂłvil. Al igual que tantos otros presuntuosos como yo -nada original-, llevo siempre encima un cuaderno en el que tomo toda clase de notas, escritas -a veces âcaligrafiadasâ- o dibujadas: museos, librerĂas y bares son lo que mĂĄs abunda. Prefiero la anotaciĂłn o el dibujo a la fotografĂa, sobre todo en estos tiempos en los que la fotografĂa no cuesta nada -aunque, en verdad, siempre que alguien toma una fotografĂa con su mĂłvil, estĂĄ trabajando gratis para la mĂĄs poderosa de las compañĂas, para el gran monopolio. Ahora, en fin, fotografiar es olvidar. Escribir o dibujar, en cambio, significa obligatoriamente detenerse, observar, pensar, reflexionar, aunque sea un poco y, de un modo u otro, depositar cuidadosamente lo visto, oĂdo, pensado o reflexionado en algĂșn estrato de la memoria al que siempre podremos regresar con la memoria misma -si no es que es la memoria la que, por su cuenta, nos regresa, puesto que con la anotaciĂłn o el dibujo no todo estĂĄ ya hecho. DecĂa Bernardino de Laredo, sobre las tortugas, que son âanimales que se encierran dentro de sĂ, y cuando estĂĄn encerrados obran guardando su vida en muy callada quietudâ: ÂĄquĂ© gran metĂĄfora para aspirar! Sea como fuere, estos cuadernos, en definitiva, tan poco insĂłlitos -con sus interpolaciones y licencias, tortugas incluidas, que ustedes tendrĂĄn que adivinar si es que quieren perder el tiempo con ellos-, son lo que son: cosas mĂasbonitos recuerdos de los meses felices, llenos de suerte, en que vivimos en Washington Square. Sobre todo, recuerdos de todas las amigas y de los amigos que tanto nos mimaron mientras estuvimos allĂ -empezando por mi querida Jordana, claro estĂĄ. Juan JosĂ© Lahuerta 15/01/2022
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Punto y aparte Cristina Pato ComenzĂł como comienzan todos los cursos, de manera tranquila y a su vez frenĂ©tica. Pero nada de aquel final de aquel verano nos hacĂa ver que ese iba a ser un curso diferente. Un curso que nos cambiarĂa la vida a todos. Sin distinciĂłn. Recuerdo que, en septiembre de 2019, lleguĂ© a mi nueva oficina con la emociĂłn de poder contribuir a un lugar nuevo, con la intenciĂłn de tender puentes entre las disciplinas y los temas en los que habĂa trabajado durante los Ășltimos años. Pero tambiĂ©n con la esperanza de poder aportar todas esas cosas intangibles que, de alguna manera, intentamos aportar aquellos que nos dedicamos a las artes. A travĂ©s de las actividades que habĂa diseñado para mi estancia en el King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, querĂa hacer una reflexiĂłn sobre el rol de los artistas en el mundo acadĂ©mico y en la sociedad, sobre cuĂĄles son los valores que nos suelen llevar a ser invitados como artistas en residencia, sobre lo que significa habitar una disciplina en la que tienes que estar constantemente escuchando, renovando, adaptando, colaborando e innovando. Con la idea de terminar mi estancia reflexionando, en pĂșblico, sobre la relaciĂłn entre las artes y la responsabilidad social. ÂżPero quiĂ©n nos iba a decir a nosotros que esa Ășltima reflexiĂłn pĂșblica, la del 5 de marzo de 2020, iba a ser tambiĂ©n la Ășltima ocasiĂłn que tendrĂamos de vernos, abrazarnos y emocionarnos en directo con la mĂșsica y las palabras de mi mentor, el violonchelista Yo-Yo Ma? Sin distancia social. Sin mascarilla. ÂżQuiĂ©n nos iba a decir que el mundo se pararĂa de repente y que una pandemia nos harĂa cuestionar todos los pilares en los que sostenemos nuestra existenciaâŠ? En realidad, lo que quiero decir es que ahora, mirando atrĂĄs, ese curso del 2019-2020 parece que sucediĂł hace una dĂ©cada. Personalmente ya no soy la misma que era cuando lleguĂ© al KJCC, ni siquiera sabrĂa cĂłmo definirme en este momento, pues una de las cosas que aprendĂ durante estos dos años es que todas esas vidas que desarrollaba fuera de los escenarios (la docencia, la escritura, la producciĂłn) eran tambiĂ©n mis pasiones, y que, aunque mi vida pĂșblica era como artista, la verdad es que no echaba en falta mi relaciĂłn con la mĂșsica, mĂĄs bien todo lo contrario. Esa pausa obligada en el calendario me hizo entender que quizĂĄ mi futuro ya no estaba en el centro de la disciplina, sino en la intersecciĂłn que se crea entre la mĂșsica y la sociedad. Por eso hoy, al releer los materiales relacionados con mi estancia en la CĂĄtedra de Cultura y CivilizaciĂłn Española, siento que quizĂĄ ya habĂa comenzado ese viaje antes de que llegara la pandemia, y que el hecho de haber tenido que parar justo en ese momento, justo despuĂ©s de aquella charla sobre cultura y responsabilidad social, hizo de ese evento una circunstancia vital. Esa pausa que comenzĂł como un parĂ©ntesis acabĂł como un punto y aparte, y me ha llevado a entender que esa Ășltima reuniĂłn en el KJCC marcarĂa un antes y un despuĂ©s en lo que significa, a nivel personal, haber habitado la mĂșsica para ahora aprender a vivir fuera de ella. Pero siempre con ella. Nueva York, enero de 2022
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Cambios de responsabilidad e influencia Nicole Bula Imagina un lugar centrado en el estudio de España y el hispanismo. Un lugar que reĂșne a expertos de diferentes campos profesionales de varias partes del mundo. Mejor aĂșn, imagina un centro creado sĂłlo para estas personas. Un lugar donde pueden venir y enseñar a los estudiantes universitarios sobre sus pasiones. Es increĂble pensar en un lugar asĂ, pero es aĂșn mĂĄs increĂble verlo con tus propios ojos. He visto personalmente el impacto positivo que tiene el King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center (KJCC) en cada persona que entra por sus puertas. Personalmente, me tomĂł por sorpresa cuĂĄnto iba a afectar mi vida. Como persona reciĂ©n llegada a la ciudad de Nueva York y estudiante de primer año en New York University (NYU), creĂa que el propĂłsito del centro era reconocer los trabajos y el impacto de la comunidad hispanohablante. Sin embargo, estaba equivocada porque rĂĄpidamente aprendĂ que es mucho mĂĄs que eso. QuĂ© mejor lugar entonces para comenzar esta historia que en 1993, antes de la fundaciĂłn del KJCC. Años antes de que yo naciera, un joven acadĂ©mico de Cambridge, Inglaterra, se fue a vivir a Nueva York por primera vez como profesor visitante en NYU. El nombre de este profesor era Paul Julian Smith y la intenciĂłn de su investigaciĂłn como chair del KJCC era âto bring French theory and Hispanic studies and later cinema and visual culture because it was not studied so much at that time within the literature departmentâ (Smith. Entrevista)1. El Profesor Smith obtuvo su BA en literatura española y francesa en Cambridge, Inglaterra, asĂ como su doctorado en literatura española e italiana. En lo que respecta al cine, el Profesor Smith siguiĂł la recomendaciĂłn de su colega de Cambridge, Jo Labanyi (directora del KJCC, 2007-2014), para obtener un certificado en estudios cinematogrĂĄficos en el British Film Institute, donde aprendiĂł a analizar pelĂculas plano a plano y a travĂ©s del montaje. La mezcla de la literatura y el cine en sus estudios me hace reflexionar sobre el papel universal del cine en un contexto acadĂ©mico. Para explicar esta conexiĂłn, el Profesor Smith ha observado que âin general visual culture is part of everyday life in a way that maybe text isnât because television and fashion, for example, are integrated into daily life in a very immediate way. And literature is somewhat separateâ (Smith)2. AsĂ, me pregunto si esto afecta el 1.. âacercar la teorĂa francesa y los estudios hispĂĄnicos y mĂĄs adelante el cine y la cultura visual porque no se estudiaba tanto en ese momento dentro del departamento de literaturaâ (Paul Julian Smith. Entrevista Personal. 13 de diciembre de 2021). [Todas las traducciones son de la autora del trabajo] 2.. âen general, la cultura visual es parte de la vida cotidiana de una manera que tal vez el texto no lo sea. La televisiĂłn
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peso de los textos frente a los elementos visuales en el aprendizaje, Âżson mĂĄs o menos valiosos? ÂżO sĂłlo se puede medir caso por caso, individualmente? Lo cierto es que esa interdisciplinariedad trae consigo no solo nuevas avenidas de investigaciĂłn al campo de la literatura y la cultura sino tambiĂ©n preguntas importantes sobre la jerarquĂa de poderes y saberes en las distintas disciplinas acadĂ©micas. ÂżQuĂ© rol juegan las cĂĄtedras del KJCC en la constituciĂłn, organizaciĂłn y distribuciĂłn de saberes? Las cĂĄtedras del KJCC influyen mucho en las disciplinas y las metodologĂas que practican los estudiantes en sus seminarios, dado que vienen de campos de estudio muy distintos y variados. Por ejemplo, el Profesor Smith explica que como profesor en NYU âthere werenât many students that had a background in how they would study film. So I thought that it was something I had to promote [...] I had PhD students in England who wanted to work on queer issues in Spain and very little had been written. So I thought, well, I could write about that and then I can help them by establishing that this is a subjectâ (Smith. Entrevista)3. De allĂ naciĂł Leyes del deseo: Cuestiones de la homosexualidad en la escritura y el cine españoles 1960-1990, en el que el Profesor Smith aborda la homosexualidad en textos autobiogrĂĄficos, novelas, investigaciĂłn de archivo y pelĂculas. Es clave, en la actualizaciĂłn del estudio acadĂ©mico, tener a profesores como Paul Julian Smith que tomen la iniciativa de ayudar a establecer el cine como una disciplina dentro del campo del hispanismo en la universidad; estar dispuesto a escribir y enseñar sobre temas en los que nadie mĂĄs se ha enfocado es una meta muy difĂcil y, al mismo tiempo, muy valiosa para los estudiantes y la universidad en general. Esto me hace pensar mucho en el tipo de intereses que podrĂan tener otros profesores y cĂłmo impacta eso en sus enfoques a la hora de enseñar. Dos dĂ©cadas mĂĄs tarde en Nueva York, casualmente, Jo Labanyi conociĂł a Montserrat Armengou MartĂn (periodista y documentalista de investigaciĂłn española) en un congreso organizado sobre la represioÌn y las viÌctimas del franquismo. A diferencia del Profesor Smith, quien fue profesor visitante antes de la creaciĂłn del KJCC, Montserrat Armengou MartĂn fue escogida para la cĂĄtedra en Cultura y CivilizaciĂłn Española del KJCC en 2016, cuando el KJCC ya era un centro establecido en NYU. Armengou MartĂn naciĂł en Barcelona, CatalunÌa y estudiĂł Ciencias de la ComunicacioÌn con especialidad en periodismo. Luego en la Universidad aprendiĂł sobre audiovisuales mientras hacĂa colaboraciones para perioÌdicos como El PaiÌs. En 1980 ingresĂł en
y la moda, por ejemplo, se integran en la vida cotidiana de una manera muy inmediata. Y la literatura es algo separadoâ (Paul Julian Smith. Entrevista Personal. 13 de diciembre de 2021) 3.. âno habĂa muchos estudiantes que tuvieran experiencia en cĂłmo estudiar cine. Entonces pensĂ© que era algo que tenĂa que promover[...] TenĂa estudiantes de doctorado que querĂan trabajar sobre temas queer en España y se habĂa escrito muy poco sobre eso. Entonces pensĂ©, bueno, podrĂa escribir sobre eso y luego ayudarlos estableciendo que esto es un temaâ (Paul Julian Smith. Entrevista Personal. 13 de diciembre de 2021).
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los servicios informativos de TV3, la televisioÌn de CatalunÌa, y desarrollĂł su carrera profesional en televisioÌn. Primero se enfocĂł en noticias diarias y luego ya en otros formatos de reportajes y documentales. Mientras desarrollaba su trabajo en el mundo televisivo, seguĂa haciendo colaboraciones con la prensa y escribiĂł seis libros. Dado este trasfondo, es importante tener en cuenta el proceso de selecciĂłn al nominar a un catedrĂĄtico para el KJCC y quĂ© exactamente se necesita para sobresalir como candidato. ÂżCuĂĄles son las caracterĂsticas que se buscan para cada uno de las cĂĄtedras del centro? Una de las responsabilidades del catedrĂĄtico en el KJCC es organizar un seminario acadeÌmico, es decir, al ser nominado hay que proponer ideas de cursos para los estudiantes de NYU. Entiendo el reto que tuvo que enfrentar Armengou MartĂn al crear todo un curso sin experiencia previa como profesora, a pesar de que ella explica que âeso no fue un impedimento. Al contrario, lo que se buscaba era esa mirada fresca y quizaÌ praÌctica [...] que cada uno de nosotros pudieÌramos proponer nuestra estancia en Nueva York con una propuesta absolutamente libreâ (Montserrat Armengou MartĂn. Entrevista). Esto explica por quĂ© vienen al centro catedrĂĄticos con perfiles tan diversos. La idea es incluir varios tipos de educadores para crear riqueza y diversidad en el KJCC. La flexibilidad de NYU promueve un ambiente que trae como resultado los beneficios de estar abiertos al aprendizaje a travĂ©s de la visiĂłn y conocimiento de personas con intereses completamente distintos. El Profesor Julian Smith, por ejemplo, tiene sus propios puntos de vista sobre lo que la gente puede aprender acadĂ©micamente al explorar distintos formatos visuales: â[...] people think that television is ephemeral, that it doesnât last, but thatâs not trueâ (Paul Julian Smith. Entrevista.)4. Esto es especialmente cierto porque los materiales visuales comunican y modulan la percepciĂłn de modos distintos; las diferencias tienen implicaciones a nivel generacional. La televisiĂłn inconscientemente tiene un gran efecto en la forma en que pensamos y tomamos decisiones porque desde jĂłvenes vemos y aprendemos con la televisiĂłn. Esta es la razĂłn por la que me encanta la idea de estudiar dicho medio âlas imĂĄgenes son universales, los formatos tambiĂ©n, pero cada cultura los utiliza de forma diversa. El campo de la cultura evoluciona con las perspectivas que traen los distintos catedrĂĄticos que vienen de visita a la universidad. De la misma manera que los estudiantes aprenden de sus profesores, los profesores a su vez tambiĂ©n aprenden del intercambio con sus estudiantes. En relaciĂłn a la estancia del Profesor Smith como catedrĂĄtico en NYU, Smith notĂł que âto be in the Americas and to see a European director where your link is through the Spanish language [...] is significant because [someone like]
4.. â[...] la gente piensa que la televisiĂłn es efĂmera, que no dura, pero eso no es ciertoâ (Smith, Paul Julian. Entrevista Personal. 13 de diciembre de 2021).
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AlmodĂłvar is popular in some Latin American countries, but not in othersâ (Smith. Entrevista)5. Por lo tanto, lo que aprendiĂł el Profesor Smith de sus estudiantes fue cĂłmo ver a AlmodĂłvar desde un ĂĄngulo latinoamericano. En los años noventa, Gran Bretaña y Estados Unidos eran mĂĄs receptivos a temas queer que en España. Obviamente, fue difĂcil para el Profesor Smith como extranjero intentar pedir ayuda en España para sus investigaciones porque era un paĂs donde en ese momento los temas queer bĂĄsicamente no existĂan en la academia española. Lo mismo ocurre en nuestras clases hoy en dĂa, donde muchos estudiantes no tienen un gran conocimiento sobre los problemas importantes del mundo. Por ejemplo, como catedrĂĄtica en NYU, Armengou MartĂn recuerda âel desconocimiento de la situacioÌn de las viÌctimas en EspanÌa. En EspanÌa despueÌs de la muerte del general Franco, el dictador que protagonizoÌ una dictadura sanguinaria y feroz durante cuarenta anÌos hasta pocas semanas antes de su muerte en 1975, se seguiÌa condenando a muerte a gente en EspanÌa [...] Estaba enterrado ahiÌ el dictador como un gran homenaje. SeriÌa impensable pensar que hubiera un gran mausoleo, un monumento a Hitler, cerca de BerliÌnâ (Montserrat Armengou MartĂn. Entrevista). La Profesora Armengou MartĂn hablaba del gran monumento en el Valle de los CaĂdos, que queda a sesenta kilĂłmetros de la capital de España. Honestamente, yo tambiĂ©n soy parte de la masa de gente que no es consciente de la situaciĂłn e injusticia que todavĂa existe en España. Y la Ășnica manera de modelar la reparaciĂłn para las viÌctimas es aceptar la responsabilidad como la Profesora Armengou MartĂn ha hecho en su trabajo con el KJCC, y ser un altavoz para la transmisioÌn de la situacioÌn de estas personas. Tal vez, la realidad de cĂłmo podemos ver el impacto de las cĂĄtedras del KJCC no es solamente analizarlos a ellos sino tambiĂ©n a sus estudiantes. Como estudiantes somos responsables sobre quĂ© y cĂłmo vamos a contribuir a nuestra sociedad usando lo que aprendemos en el aula. AsĂ, no importa la forma en que aprendemos sobre los problemas del mundo; lo que sĂ es clave es que aprendamos a reconocer problemas en todas sus formas tanto en la literatura como en el cine, el periodismo o los documentales. De este modo podemos servir a nuestras comunidades y tener allĂ impactos positivos no importa cĂłmo decidamos utilizar nuestros conocimientos. ÂżCĂłmo vas a aprovechar lo que has aprendido en tu educaciĂłn para cambiar tu mundo? BibliografĂa Armengou MartĂn, Montserrat. Entrevista por Nicole Bula. 15 de diciembre de 2021. Smith, Paul Julian. Entrevista por Nicole Bula. 13 de diciembre de 2021. 5.. âestar en AmĂ©rica y ver a un director europeo cuyo vĂnculo contigo es a travĂ©s del idioma español es [...] significativo porque AlmodĂłvar es popular en algunos paĂses de AmĂ©rica Latina, pero no en otrosâ (Smith, Paul Julian. Entrevista Personal. 13 de diciembre de 2021).
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El documental com a eina de reparaciĂł Montse Armengou MartĂn Mai un cafĂš robat a unes atapeĂŻdes agendes havia tingut un resultat tan important per la meva vida. No, no parlo de lâinici dâuna relaciĂł personal o amorosa -bĂ©, en el meu cas aixĂČ es va produir amb una cervesa, no pas amb un cafĂš!- sinĂł del que va ser la proposta de la doctora Jo Labanyi dâoptar com a chair al NYU KJCC. Jo coneixia el centre per ella, quan lâany 2006 va organitzar conjuntament amb James FernĂĄndez el seminari The Politics of Memory in Contemporary Spain. AllĂ ens vam reunir algunes de les persones que, des de diferents Ă mbits, treballĂ vem pel rescat de la memĂČria histĂČrica a Espanya i la reparaciĂł de les vĂctimes del franquisme: JuliĂĄn Casanova (Universidad de Zaragoza), Gina Herrmann (University of Oregon, que va tenir la gentilesa de parlar del meu treball a la ponĂšncia âThe documentary films of Montse Armengou and Ricard Belis: The Labours of Memoryâ), AndrĂ©s Soria (Universidad de Granada), Emilio Silva (AsociaciĂłn para la RecuperaciĂłn de la Memoria HistĂłrica), Francisco FerrĂĄndiz (Universidad de Extremadura) o lâartista catalĂ afincat a Nova York Francesc Torres. A aquell seminari vaig poder constatar la magnitud de la tragĂšdia de les vĂctimes directes i indirectes del franquisme: el mite de la transiciĂł espanyola seguia funcionant a la perfecciĂł. Els assistents es quedaven estupefactes quan se nâassabentaven que associacions privades i voluntĂ ries (com la que va fundar lâEmilio Silva per recuperar el cos del seu avi afusellat sense judici i a sang freda pels franquistes) grataven camins i cunetes de tota la geografia espanyola mirant de trobar alguns dels milers de desapareguts de la guerra civil. No eren vĂctimes de combats, no, sinĂł vĂctimes dâuna repressiĂł ferotge que es va cebar especialment en la poblaciĂł civil. El seu delicte? Senzillament no pensar com els feixistes que sâhavien alçat el 1936 contra la RepĂșblica democrĂ ticament escollida a les urnes. Aquests voluntaris invertien caps de setmana i vacances sense cap mena dâajuda del govern espanyol per tornar la dignitat als desapareguts i les seves famĂlies. El pĂșblic tambĂ© quedava astorat quan els parlava de la meva investigaciĂł sobre els nens robats durant el franquisme per separar-los de les seves famĂlies ârojas y republicanasâ. O quan explicava en el meu llibre i documental âEl comboi dels 927â que aquell tren va ser el primer dâEuropa occidental que va traslladar poblaciĂł civil -famĂlies senceres, avis, pares i fills-, des dâAngulema (França) al camp de concentraciĂł de Mauthausen (Austria). Eren refugiats 168
El documental como herramienta de reparaciĂłn Montse Armengou MartĂn Nunca un cafĂ© robado a unas apretadas agendas ha tenido un efecto tan importante en mi vida. No, no hablo del inicio de una relaciĂłn personal o amorosa âbueno, en mi caso esto sucediĂł con una cerveza, no con un cafĂ©â sino de la propuesta de la doctora Jo Labanyi de optar a chair para el NYU KJCC. Yo conocĂa el centro gracias a ella, cuando organizĂł conjuntamente con James FernĂĄndez el seminario The Politics of Memory in Contemporary Spain en 2006. AllĂ nos reunimos algunas de las personas que, desde diferentes ĂĄmbitos, trabajĂĄbamos en el rescate de la memoria histĂłrica en España y en la reparaciĂłn de las vĂctimas del franquismo: JuliĂĄn Casanova (Universidad de Zaragoza), Gina Herrmann (University of Oregon, que tuvo la gentileza de hablar de mi trabajo en la ponencia âThe documentary films of Montse Armengou and Ricard Belis: The Labours of Memoryâ), AndrĂ©s Soria (Universidad de Granada), Emilio Silva (AsociaciĂłn para la RecuperaciĂłn de la Memoria HistĂłrica), Francisco FerrĂĄndiz (Universidad de Extremadura) o el artista catalĂĄn afincado en Nueva York Francesc Torres. En aquel seminario pude constatar la magnitud de la tragedia de las vĂctimas directas e indirectas del franquismo: el mito de la transiciĂłn española seguĂa funcionando a la perfecciĂłn. Los asistentes se quedaban estupefactos cuando se enteraban que voluntarios y asociaciones privadas (como la que fundĂł Emilio Silva para recuperar el cuerpo de su abuelo fusilado sin juicio y a sangre frĂa por los franquistas) escarbaban caminos y cunetas de toda la geografĂa española intentando encontrar a algunos de los miles de desaparecidos de la Guerra Civil. No eran vĂctimas de combates, no, sino vĂctimas de una represiĂłn salvaje que se cebĂł especialmente en la poblaciĂłn civil. ÂżSu delito? Sencillamente no pensar como los fascistas que se habĂan alzado en armas en 1936 contra la RepĂșblica democrĂĄticamente escogida en las urnas. Estos voluntarios y voluntarias invertĂan fines de semana y vacaciones âsin ayuda del gobierno españolâ para devolver la dignidad a los desaparecidos y sus familias. El pĂșblico tambiĂ©n se quedaba atĂłnito cuando les hablaba de mi investigaciĂłn sobre los niños robados durante el franquismo para separarlos de sus familias ârojas y republicanasâ. O cuando explicaba en mi libro y documental âEl convoy de los 927â que aquel tren fue el primero de Europa occidental que trasladĂł poblaciĂłn civil âfamilias enteras, abuelos, padres e hijosâ, desde Angulema (Francia) al campo de concentraciĂłn de Mauthausen (Austria). Eran refugiados
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republicans espanyols exiliats a França. Estem al 1940 i les grans razzies contra els jueus encara no han començat a aquell paĂs. O que a 60 km escassos de Madrid existeixi el Valle de los CaĂdos, un mausoleu dedicat al dictador Francisco Franco. Us imagineu aixĂČ mateix a Berlin, un homenatge permanent a Hitler? No, la transiciĂł espanyola no havia estat ni exemplar ni modĂšlica. Havia convingut vendre-la aixĂ i molts paĂŻsos -Estats Units el primer- van col.laborar a crear aquesta imatge, posant per sobre els seus interessos econĂČmics i els equilibris geoestratĂšgics en detriment dels drets mĂ©s fonamentals de les vĂctimes: veritat, justĂcia i reparaciĂł. Em va impressionar lâinterĂšs de lâaudiĂšncia nord-americana, el fet que seâns convidĂ©s a xerrades per mig mon quan a Espanya prĂ cticament seâns ignorava, la riquesa de seminaris com els que organitzava NYU -que no tenia cap empatx en convocar i barrejar gent de disciplines molt diverses, tant de lâĂ mbit acadĂšmic com de fora-, que fossin els departaments dâespanyol i portuguĂšs de les universitats nord-americanes els mĂ©s interessats en aquesta qĂŒestiĂł... Explico tot aixĂČ per posar en relleu la valentia i el compromĂs de NYU en aquell moment. I el de la Jo Labanyi en fer-me la proposta deu anys desprĂ©s de venir al NYU KJCC. Jo havia fet classes a la universitat de manera esporĂ dica, perquĂš el meu lloc estava sobre el terreny, entrevistant vĂctimes i familiars de vĂctimes â que per tant tambĂ© son vĂctimes-. 170
republicanos españoles exiliados en Francia. Estamos en 1940 y las grandes razzias contra los judĂos todavĂa no han comenzado en aquel paĂs. O que a 60 km escasos de Madrid exista el Valle de los CaĂdos, un mausoleo dedicado al dictador Francisco Franco. ÂżSe imaginan esto mismo en BerlĂn, un homenaje permanente a Hitler? No, la transiciĂłn española no habĂa sido ni ejemplar ni modĂ©lica. Se habĂa convenido venderlo asĂ y muchos paĂses âEstados Unidos el primeroâ colaboraron para crear esta imagen, poniendo por encima sus intereses econĂłmicos y los equilibrios geoestratĂ©gicos en detrimento de los derechos mĂĄs fundamentales de las vĂctimas: verdad, justicia y reparaciĂłn. Me impresionĂł el interĂ©s de la audiencia norteamericana, el hecho de que se nos invitara a charlas por medio mundo cuando en España prĂĄcticamente se nos ignoraba, la riqueza de seminarios como los que organizaba NYU âque no tenĂa ningĂșn empacho en convocar y mezclar a gente de disciplinas muy diversas, tanto del ĂĄmbito acadĂ©mico como de fueraâ, que fueran los departamentos de español y portuguĂ©s de las universidades norteamericanas los mĂĄs interesados ââen esta cuestiĂłn... Explico todo esto para poner de relieve la valentĂa y el compromiso de NYU en ese momento. Y el de Jo Labanyi al hacerme la propuesta diez años despuĂ©s de venir al NYU KJCC. Yo habĂa dado clases en la universidad de manera esporĂĄdica porque mi sitio estaba sobre el terreno, entrevistando a vĂctimas
No tenia doncs un perfil estrictament acadĂšmic. PerĂČ la Jo, novament amb la seva claredat, em va dir que volien aire fresc. I que quina millor manera que mostrar aquella realitat a travĂ©s dels meus documentals. Sabia que allĂČ era nomĂ©s era una proposta, quedava un dur procĂ©s de selecciĂł. PerĂČ un gener de 2017 arribava a âthe big cityâ per encetar una de les aventures personals i professionals mĂ©s grans de la meva vida. Us estalvio detalls personals de la meva estada, lâexperiĂšncia de viure la riquesa de la ciutat que ânever slepsâ i em centrarĂ© nomĂ©s en lâexperiĂšncia dâun semestre titolat âDocumentary and the Recovery of Historical Memoryâ. Per quĂš aquest tĂtol? Doncs perquĂš crec fermament que el documental Ă©s una eina de reparaciĂł de les vĂctimes de conflictes en absĂšncia de polĂtiques dâestat, allĂČ que els francesos anomenen âdevoir de memoireâ. I la trista realitat dâEspanya era -i Ă©s- encara que hi ha un deute de justĂcia i humanitat amb les vĂctimes del franquisme i els seus descendents. Malgrat haver tingut governs dâesquerres amb majoria absoluta, malgrat alguns darrers passos per fer justĂcia -com la retirada de la tomba de Franco del Valle de los CaĂdos-, el cert Ă©s que Espanya tĂ© un forat negre en la seva qualitat democrĂ tica i es diu reparaciĂł i justĂcia amb les vĂctimes. I malgrat lâabsoluta llibertat de cĂ tedra dâuna universitat com NYU, i malgrat que alguns dels plantejaments del meu seminari no agradessin a alguns representants espanyols
y familiares de vĂctimas âque por tanto tambiĂ©n son vĂctimasâ. No tenĂa un perfil estrictamente acadĂ©mico. Pero Jo, nuevamente con su claridad, me dijo que querĂan aire fresco. ÂżY quĂ© mejor manera que mostrar esa realidad a travĂ©s de mis documentales? SabĂa que eso era solo una propuesta, quedaba un duro proceso de selecciĂłn. Pero un enero de 2017 llegaba a la âbig cityâ para empezar una de las mayores aventuras personales y profesionales de mi vida. Os ahorro detalles de mi estancia, la experiencia de vivir la riqueza de la ciudad que ânever sleepsâ y me centrarĂ© sĂłlo en la experiencia de un semestre titulado âDocumentary and the Recovery of Historical Memoryâ. ÂżPor quĂ© ese tĂtulo? Pues porque creo firmemente que el documental es una herramienta de reparaciĂłn de las vĂctimas de conflictos en ausencia de polĂticas de estado, lo que los franceses llaman âdevoir de memoireâ. Y la triste realidad de España era ây esâ que todavĂa existe una deuda de justicia y humanidad con las vĂctimas del franquismo y sus descendientes. A pesar de haber tenido gobiernos de izquierdas con una mayorĂa absoluta, a pesar de algunos Ășltimos pasos para hacer justicia âcomo la retirada de la tumba de Franco del Valle de los CaĂdosâ, lo cierto es que España tiene un agujero negro en su calidad democrĂĄtica y se llama reparaciĂłn y justicia para con las vĂctimas. Y pese a la tranquilidad que da la absoluta libertad de cĂĄtedra de una universidad como NYU, y a pesar de que algunos de los planteamientos 171
del moment -amb un govern espanyol presidit per un Partit Popular que no havia trencat vincles amb el franquisme-, la meva tesi no era una opiniĂł, sinĂł una evidĂšncia. PerquĂš abans dâaportar unes dades vull deixar clara la meva postura. Soc periodista i reivindico aquest ofici com un compromĂs, com una manera dâintervenir en el mĂłn per fer-lo una mica mĂ©s just i solidari, fins i tot -com diu un amic meu, Xavier GirĂł, professor de la Universitat AutĂČnoma de Barcelonauna manera de fer polĂtica encara que no ens nâadonem. No crec en el periodisme objectiu, imparcial, neutral, que no es âmullaâ. Busqueu lâasĂšpsia a un quirĂČfan -i de vegades ni allĂ , perquĂš les infeccions hospitalĂ ries son de les mĂ©s mortĂferes-, no en el periodisme. AixĂČ sĂ, lâĂșnica lĂnia vermella que no es pot traspassar Ă©s la del rigor. I per aixĂČ, en virtut del rigor, aquĂ van algunes dades. Espanya Ă©s el segon paĂs del mon en nombre de desapareguts en fosses comunes desprĂ©s de Cambodja. Espanya Ă©s un paĂs on cada dia milers de persones intenten trobar els seus familiars desapareguts. Espanya Ă©s un paĂs on els nens van ser robats a les seves mares, primer com a forma de repressiĂł polĂtica, desprĂ©s com a repressiĂł moral -contra mares solteres- i finalment va esdevenir un gran negoci que es va allargar fins a les portes del segle XXI. Espanya Ă©s un paĂs amb milers dâafectats per poliomielitis que es van infectar entrats els anys 60 quan ja hi havia una vacuna -per 172
de mi seminario no gustaran a algunos representantes españoles del momento âcon un gobierno español presidido por un Partido Popular que no habĂa roto vĂnculos con el franquismoâ, mi tesis no era una opiniĂłn, sino una evidencia. Antes de aportar unos datos quiero dejar clara mi postura. Soy periodista y reivindico este oficio como un compromiso, como una forma de intervenir en el mundo para hacerlo un poco mĂĄs justo y solidario, incluso âcomo mi buen amigo Xavier GirĂł, profesor de la Universidad AutĂłnoma de Barcelonaâ una forma de hacer polĂtica aunque no nos demos cuenta. No creo en el periodismo objetivo, imparcial, neutral, que no se âmojaâ. Busquen la asepsia en un quirĂłfano ây a veces ni allĂ, porque las infecciones hospitalarias son de las mĂĄs mortĂferasâ, no en el periodismo. Eso sĂ, la Ășnica lĂnea roja que no puede traspasarse es la del rigor. Y por eso, en virtud del rigor, aquĂ van algunos datos. España es el segundo paĂs del mundo en nĂșmero de desaparecidos en fosas comunes despuĂ©s de Camboya. España es un paĂs en el que cada dĂa miles de personas intentan encontrar a sus familiares desaparecidos. España es un paĂs donde los niños fueron robados a sus madres, primero como forma de represiĂłn polĂtica, despuĂ©s como represiĂłn moral âcontra madres solterasâ y finalmente se convirtiĂł en un gran negocio que se prolongĂł hasta las puertas del siglo XXI. España es un paĂs con miles de afectados por poliomielitis que se infectaron entrados
cert, la del nord-americĂ Jonas Salk, lliure de patent- perquĂš la dictadura estava invertint els diners en construir el Valle de los CaĂdos. Espanya Ă©s un paĂs on milers de nens van ser vĂctimes dâabusos sexuals i explotaciĂł laboral als internats franquistes. Espanya estĂ en el punt de mira dâorganitzacions com lâONU, Amnistia Internacional, Human Rights Watch o el Consell dâEuropa per no derogar la llei dâamnistia del 1977 que va deixar milers de torturadors i assassins lliures i al carrer. Espanya Ă©s el lloc que inhabilita jutges que han buscat la reparaciĂł, com Baltasar GarzĂłn. Espanya Ă©s el paĂs on els seus ciutadans han dâacudir a la justĂcia internacional â com la querella argentina contra els crims del franquismesi volen obtenir una satisfacciĂł a les seves demandes. NingĂș ha estat ni jutjat ni condemnat per totes aquestes atrocitats. Els quaranta anys de dictadura van fer a la perfecciĂł la seva feina de repressiĂł, un rĂšgim que poques setmanes abans de la mort del dictador Francisco Franco encara signava sentĂšncies de mort. PerĂČ i la democrĂ cia, quĂš han fet mĂ©s de quaranta anys de democrĂ cia per les vĂctimes? Davant dâaquesta situaciĂł de parĂ lisi deliberada i intencionada per part de lâestat, dâaquest âestablishmentâ de dretes i esquerres que mira cap a un altre cantĂł, vaig plantejar el curs i les diferents xerrades obertes que vam organitzar. Volia demostrar com els mecanismes de memĂČria i reparaciĂł han hagut
los años 60, cuando ya habĂa una vacuna âpor cierto, la del estadounidense Jonas Salk, libre de patenteâ porque la dictadura estaba invirtiendo el dinero en construir el Valle de los CaĂdos. España es un paĂs en el que miles de niños fueron vĂctimas de abusos sexuales y explotaciĂłn laboral en los internados franquistas. España estĂĄ en el punto de mira de organizaciones como la ONU, AmnistĂa Internacional, Human Rights Watch o el Consejo de Europa por no derogar la ley de amnistĂa de 1977, que dejĂł a miles de torturadores y asesinos libres y en la calle. España es el lugar que inhabilita a jueces que han buscado la reparaciĂłn, como Baltasar GarzĂłn. España es el paĂs donde sus ciudadanos deben acudir a la justicia internacional âcomo la querella argentina contra los crĂmenes del franquismoâ si quieren obtener alguna satisfacciĂłn a sus demandas. Nadie ha sido ni juzgado ni condenado por todas estas atrocidades. Los cuarenta años de dictadura hicieron a la perfecciĂłn su trabajo de represiĂłn, un rĂ©gimen que pocas semanas antes de la muerte del dictador Francisco Franco todavĂa firmaba sentencias de muerte. Pero, Âży la democracia, quĂ© han hecho mĂĄs de cuarenta años de democracia por las vĂctimas? Ante esta situaciĂłn de parĂĄlisis deliberada e intencionada por parte del estado, de ese âestablishmentâ de derechas e izquierdas que mira hacia otro lado, planteĂ© el curso y las diferentes charlas abiertas que organizamos. QuerĂa demostrar cĂłmo los mecanismos de memoria y reparaciĂłn han 173
dâemergir mĂ©s enllĂ de lâestat, com en absĂšncia de polĂtiques governamentals que donin satisfacciĂł a les demandes -no econĂČmiques, sinĂł morals i de justĂcia- de les vĂctimes i els seus descendents, diferents sectors sâhan mobilitzat. Aquest fracĂ s de lâestat per crear mecanisme per a la veritat, justĂcia i reparaciĂł han forçat actuacions extraordinĂ ries per part de la societat civil: periodistes, organitzacions civils, acadĂšmics o directors de documentals han contribuĂŻt a recopilar material, evidĂšncies i testimonis que denuncien les crueltats de la dictadura franquista, una de les mĂ©s llargues i sanguinĂ ries de la histĂČria. De manera generosa i desinteressada van col.laborar un munt de persones: els periodistes Miquel Ramos, Richard Schweid i John Lee Anderson, el relator de lâIONU Pablo de Greiff, el president dâAmnistia Internacional España Esteban BeltrĂĄn, els professors Vicenç Navarro (The Johns Hopkins University), Ludger Mees (Universidad del PaĂs Vasco), ArĂĄnzazu Borrachero (CUNY), Luis Martin Cabrera (U. San Diego), Soledad Luque (AsociaciĂłn Todos los niños robados son tambiĂ©n mis niños), Jordi GuixĂ© (EUROM/Universitat de Barcelona), etc, etc, etc. Molta gent va ser clau en que les meves xerrades obertes al KJCC fossin un Ăšxit i que, malgrat la bonança dâuna primavera que ja sâanunciava als jardins de Manhattan, centenars de persones preferissin tancar-se a un auditori de Washington Square per patir amb crims 174
tenido que emerger mĂĄs allĂĄ del estado, como en ausencia de polĂticas gubernamentales que den satisfacciĂłn a las demandas de las vĂctimas y sus descendientes âno econĂłmicas, sino morales y de justiciaâ, diferentes sectores se han movilizado. Este fracaso del estado para crear mecanismos para la verdad, justicia y reparaciĂłn han forzado actuaciones extraordinarias por parte de la sociedad civil: periodistas, organizaciones civiles, acadĂ©micos o directores de documentales han contribuido a recopilar material, evidencias y testimonios que denuncien las crueldades de la dictadura franquista, una de las mĂĄs largas y sanguinarias de la historia. De forma generosa y desinteresada colaboraron un gran nĂșmero de personas: los periodistas Miquel Ramos, Richard Schweid y John Lee Anderson, el relator de La ONU Pablo de Greiff, el presidente de AmnistĂa Internacional España Esteban BeltrĂĄn, los profesores Vicenç Navarro (The Johns Hopkins University), Ludger Mees (Universidad del PaĂs Vasco), ArĂĄnzazu Borrachero (CUNY), Luis Martin Cabrera (U. San Diego), Soledad Luque (AsociaciĂłn Todos los niños robados son tambiĂ©n mis niños), Jordi GuixĂ© (EUROM /Universidad de Barcelona), etc, etc, etc. Mucha gente fue clave para que mis charlas abiertas en el KJCC fueran un Ă©xito y que, pese a la bonanza de una primavera que ya se anunciaba en los jardines de Manhattan, cientos de personas prefirieran encerrarse en un auditorio de Washington Square para sufrir
desconeguts del franquisme i solidaritzar-se amb les vĂctimes. Persones com Laura TurĂ©gano (associate director KJCC), la directora de documentals CĂšlia Novis, la professora Jordana Mendelson (NYU) o la gran promotora de la llengua i la cultura catalana Mary Ann Newman van ser claus en lâĂšxit i difusiĂł dâaquestes jornades. PerĂČ sobretot he de donar les grĂ cies als meus alumnes, els que em van permetre marxar amb molta tristesa de Nova York perĂČ amb la sensaciĂł â i potser Ă©s supĂšrbia per part mevaque grĂ cies a ells havia pogut fer dâaltaveu de les vĂctimes, que la seva injustĂcia i la seva lluita sâescampava pel mon grĂ cies a ells i al NYU KJCC. GrĂ cies i nomĂ©s em queda una pregunta (deu ser per allĂČ que soc periodista i no puc evitar el vici de preguntar): es pot
con los crĂmenes desconocidos del franquismo y solidarizarse con las vĂctimas. Personas como Laura TurĂ©gano (directora asociada del KJCC), la directora de documentales Celia Novis, la profesora Jordana Mendelson (NYU) o la gran promotora de la lengua y la cultura catalana Mary Ann Newman fueron claves en el Ă©xito y difusiĂłn de estas jornadas. Pero sobre todo tengo que dar las gracias a mis alumnos, los que me permitieron marcharme con mucha tristeza de Nueva York pero con la sensaciĂłn ây quizĂĄs es soberbia por mi parteâ que gracias a ellos habĂa podido hacer de altavoz de las vĂctimas, que su injusticia y su lucha se esparcĂa por el mundo gracias a ellos y al NYU KJCC. Gracias, y solo me queda una pregunta (serĂĄ porque soy periodista y no puedo evitar el vicio de preguntar): ÂżSe puede repetir? ÂĄHasta siempre!
repetir? Fins sempre!
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Two Views of the KJCC Jo Labanyi As I began to write these reflections on my two experiences of KJCCâas holder of the King Juan Carlos I Chair of Spanish Culture and Civilization in Fall 2002, and as the centerâs director from 2008-2014âI realized that the two experiences gave me rather different views of the institution. If, as a guest for one semester, the centerâs activities seemed to happen effortlessly, as though things could not be any other way, it was only when I became director that I realized how much work was needed behind the scenes to make everything seem easyâand that the success of its various events was by no means guaranteed. I quickly learned that the apparent effortlessness of its activities was due to the efficiency and imaginationâa perfect combination for any administrator, and particularly for one responsible for running a cultural center in a city that regards itself as the cultural capital of the worldâof the centerâs Associate Director, Laura TurĂ©gano. Before the Fall of 2002 I had only made short visits to New York; It was a privilege to live for four months in a sublet studio in NYU faculty housing in Washington Square Village and also have an office in the KJCC building on Washington Square. The fact that my office was not in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese turned out to be something of an advantage; I found that graduate students would make their way to my office to talk about things that they felt uncomfortable discussing in the department itself, where their professors might overhear them. I have remained in touch with one of those students to the present day. Teaching a graduate class in the Department of Spanish and Portugueseâone of my duties as holder of the KJC Chairâ was a stimulating experience as my first introduction to the enthusiasm of American students for class discussion (in contrast with British studentsâ shyness about speaking in front of their peers). I had been asked to teach a graduate class on Spanish cinema, since cinema was not part of the departmentâs curriculum at the time (it is now taught by several faculty members, I should add). I find the topic I chose (âHistorias violentasâ) somewhat unimaginative in retrospect, but it did allow us to watch some gripping movies. Being able to hold the screenings in KJCCâs auditorium, with large-screen projection facilities, was an enormous advantage when it came to analyzing the filmsâ visual techniques; in recent years, students have become too accustomed to watching movies on their laptop, where it is hard to spot visual details, and where the concept of cinema as a social experience is lost. The highlight of the semester was being given a budget by KJCC 176
to organize a speaker series around the topic of my graduate class, open to other students and faculty and, most importantly, to the public. This was a marvelous opportunity to meet in-person scholars of Spanish cinema whose work I admired and continue to admire today. The speaker series made the class into a collaborative projectâthe best kind of learning experience one can wish for. The speaker series also introduced me to the challenge of fielding questions from a mixed academic/public audience whose levels of prior knowledge varied widely, from expert to novice, and whose agendas were often unexpectedâfar more difficult than fielding questions at an academic conference. But the Q&A sessions were also highly rewarding, and at the receptions after the talks one would often discover that some incredibly interesting people had been a part of the audience. The post-event receptions at KJCC are (or were, before Covid-19 forced its activities online) proverbial for their conviviality and, as I quickly discovered, a key reason why colleagues from the various universities in and around New York City would attend eventsâas much for the intellectual and social exchange in the atrium over a glass of wine and the inevitable chorizo and manchego, as for the talk or film screening itself. Indeed, most of the contacts that I made during my semester at KJCC in Fall 2002 were via its receptions, which functioned as a kind of community center for those interested in Spanish-speaking cultures, at whatever level. I was not aware at the time that, during that Fall 2002 semester, I was (or so I deduce retrospectively) being examined as a potential hire for NYUâs Department of Spanish and Portuguese, but when that invitation came, I accepted it with great pleasure, largely because I had benefited so much from my earlier semester at KJCC. It was in my second year as faculty in the department (in 2008) that I was asked to direct the center, taking over from James FernĂĄndez who had built up the centerâs programming over the previous 12 years and deserved a wellearned rest. That was when I discovered two things. The first was that, to run a cultural center in a city like New York, one must compete with a plethora of world-class institutions for an audience. Before the start of every event, there was the heart-stopping moment of wondering if anyone was going to come (they always did, but usually at the last minute and not always in the numbers one would have liked). I learned from this that programming needs to be varied and of sufficiently wide interest to attract a decent-sized audience. This led to the prioritization of panels of speakers from a range of institutions (academic and otherwise) and preferably from different disciplines or language areas, whose presence together in the same space was more or less guaranteed to make something happen. I also learned quite quickly that including speakers from different specializationsâwhether from different NYU departments or from external cultural 177
institutionsâbrought in new audience members from their own constituencies (and might even bring in a bit of financial sponsorship). The events I remember with the most pleasure are those that were held jointly with the departments of History, Judaic Studies, Photography and Imaging, or the Institute of Fine Arts; and even beyond the academy with institutions such as the Americas Society, MoMA, the International Center of Photography, embassies and consulates of Spain, Mexico, Peru, to name a few. Those collaborations allowed me to meet wonderful people who I would otherwise never have known. Being exposed to these institutions provided an opportunity for me to learn that running a cultural center in New York is not like running one in London (I had previously directed the Institute of Romance Studies at London Universityâs School of Advanced Study, whose main function was to run conferences and other activities relating to the Romance Languages). In New York, the slightest cultural upset is likely to hit the headlines of the country whose sensibility has been offended, whereas in London (particularly if the event is of an academic nature) it would probably pass unnoticed. My first semester as KJCC Director put me on a very fast learning curve when the poster for a Venezuelan Film Festival caused major diplomatic offense (I will not go into details about what caused the offense nor the nature of the fallout, except to say that it snowballed and had quite serious consequences). That was not the only diplomatic incident that occurred during my tenure as director. What I learned from those experiences is that, when running a public-facing institutionâparticularly in a cultural spotlight like New Yorkâone has to find a delicate balance when organizing activities with the purpose of stimulating a free exchange of ideas and being considerate to not offend political or other sensibilities. As a visiting professor based at KJCC in the Fall of 2002, I was blissfully unaware of either of these challenges: the careful planning and outreach needed to attract an audience, and the need for political sensitivity. However, there was one thing that both experiences had in common: my enjoyment of the various film festivals organized by the centerâlargely thanks to the contacts and hard work of Laura TurĂ©ganoâand also to a number of graduate students who organized festivals of films from their own country (and found the sponsorship to make them possible). Never, at any other time of my life, have I watched so many movies. And, of course, I benefited tremendously from meeting the successive holders of the KJC Chair and of the AndrĂ©s Bello Chair of Latin American Culture and Civilization who were based at KJCC during my time as director, several of whom would become long-term friends.
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An Interview with Dr. James Dunkerley Zaskia Torres
Dr. James Dunkerley has been a professor at Queen Mary University of London since 1986. Throughout his career, he has edited for the Journal of Latin American Studies and currently serves on the editorial boards of Government and Opposition and NorteamĂ©rica. Between the years of 1998 and 2008, Dr. Dunkerley directed the University of Londonâs Institute for the Study of the Americas. In 2009, he served as the AndrĂ©s Bello Chair of Latin American Culture and Civilization at New York Universityâs (NYU) King Juan Carlos I Center (KJCC), and subsequently was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to UK-Latin American relations in 2010. During his time as AndrĂ©s Bello Chair, Dr. Dunkerley taught the graduate course âIdeas and Power in Spanish Americaâ at NYUâs Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS). Over the semester, he organized a series of public talks titled, âBehind the Name,â and delivered two public lectures at the KJCC titled, âWhere is Carlos Montufar?: Scenes of Sensibility in the Scientific Life of Alexander von Humboldtâ on September 22, 2009 and âAndrĂ©s Bello and the Role of Scholarship in Nation-Buildingâ on November 17, 2009. Additionally, on December 1, 2009, he organized and participated in a panel on Bolivia titled, âThe Elections and Democracy in Historical Contextâ in conjunction with Dr. Sinclair Thomson, Dr. Brooke Larson, and Dr. Laura Gotkowitz. On December 6, 2021, I interviewed Dr. Dunkerley on his reflections and experience as the 2009 AndrĂ©s Bello Chair. Throughout the interview, I asked him a series of questions pertaining to his own personal research of Latin America before delving into the role of the KJCC as a tool of cultural diplomacy within the context of international relations.
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Interview Transcript Torres: Can you describe your scholarly journey through the years? Dr. Dunkerley: My scholarly journey is slightly peculiar in that I come from a military family; and thatâs how I started out. I realized pretty soon I wasnât cut out for the Royal Navy and I wanted to do research. I went to the University of Oxford and did my research degrees there, which as you know, is a pretty old fashioned traditional university so perhaps the transition wasnât as radical as I feared. I went to St. Anthonyâs College at Oxford Universityâs collegiate university with what you might call a âliberal arts collegeââ aspect, even inside the great, huge university. This was reassuring to me because it meant that I could meet a lot of fellow students, many of whom at St. Anthonyâs came from what used to be called the âthird world.â There were area studies centers, such as Latin America, Africa and the Middle East and thatâs when I got to meet a lot of Latin Americans for the first time. My first degree had nothing to do with Latin America but rather with history and, more specifically, medieval history. One thing I should say is that I went to Oxford to study as a postgraduate in 1974. As a student of history, one immediately thinks, âthis is the year after the coup in Chile and the overthrow of Allende.â And so, to be honest, it was a strange experience for me with that family military background. I found myself in solidarity campaigns, looking off to refugees and hearing terrible stories of people who got out of Chile. So it was a radicalized beginning as well as an orthodox, traditional beginning. Torres: How would you describe your experience as the AndrĂ©s Bello Chair? Dr. Dunkerley: At NYU, thereâs a wide range of intellectual political opinions with a deep reach in terms of disciplinary enterprise and exploration. I was for the first time really mixing with other specialists in the country that I really hadnât known most about. I was particularly drawn by Sinclair Thompsonâs and Brooke Larsonandâs work. At the KJCC, I got to meet a lot of new people and had very interesting conversations. Torres: In retrospect, did the role of the AndrĂ©s Bello Chair affect your own personal research and interests? Did your years as the AndrĂ©s Bello Chair influence your publication of âAndrĂ©s Bello and the Challenges of Spanish American Liberalismâ? If so, how? Dr. Dunkerley: Completely! If youâre a Latin Americanist in London, you canât avoid Bello. I mean, he hasnât got statues in quite the same way as SimĂłn BolĂvar and Francisco de Miranda, but heâs not that kind of a guy either. However, his intellectual stamp is there and he made a great deal of use of his time in London. It was easy to study him here at one point because heâs got a massive amount 180
of writing; however, there is still more to find out about him. I believe that foreign policy is, still, founded by AndrĂ©s Bello. I venture to say, although people may think Iâm being a little biased, it has elements of European and soft power approaches. Torres: Out of all the events you helped organize and participated in during your time as chair, can you describe one in particular tailored to the study of Latin American and the Spanish speaking world? Dr. Dunkerley: Yes, [âThe Elections and Democracy in Historical Contextâ]; Bolivia has historically been understudied, even after Evo Morales. It was studied as a subset of Chavismo and the Left in general. A lot of people came to look at Bolivia as another example of a regional movement, rather than a deep study of the country itself, which is a complex placeânot just because of the important indigenous languages, societies and cultures prior to the Hispanic Republic. Which of course, Evo and the masses did a lot to revive, venerate and make us respect in ways that we probably hadnât done so far. Having the opportunity to talk with other people from different universities in different disciplines really broadened my knowledge and perhaps more than my knowledge, my interest and curiosity. By the time I left the KJCC, I had a lot of notes! My time there really fed into my intellectual scholarly experience for the next few years. Torres: What do you think is the role of Latin Americanists in a center that focuses on Spain and the Spanish speaking world? Do you consider yourself a Latin Americanist? Dr. Dunkerley: Thatâs a very good question. It inevitably involves dealing with the relations between Spain and Latin America, which have not always been smooth. I think that interaction between an ex-colonial power and its ex-colonies in a scholarly environment like the KJCC, where they are equals, there are a lot of lessons to be learned. Those lessons are more readily delivered in places like the KJCC such as opportunities for discussions, conversations and public debate. I no longer consider myself a Latin Americanist but I used to be one, and I went to the center as one. But, although Iâm a historian by training, I really believe, and this is particularly to Bolivia, I remember someone telling me this 30 years ago, âthat if you study Latin America, you have to go there and if youâre going to go, you need to study original sources.â As you get into your sixties, thatâs very hard to do, and itâs particularly hard to do [at] 12,000 feet! People who donât work in archives donât understand the dangers of dust and if you are at a high altitude in the Andes, itâs especially challenging. However, I love to be a researcher in theory and in practice at Sucre, Bolivia where the national archive is.
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Torres: Throughout our course, Institutions, Archives, and People, we learned about the various roles with which the university is associated. One in particular is its ability to serve as a tool of cultural diplomacy, as a means of soft power in larger-scale political negotiations (Schrum, 217). What role does a center like the KJCC play as a mediator for economic and political relations between the West and the Spanish speaking world? Dr. Dunkerley: Yeah, thatâs a very good question. And I donât think thereâs a very clear cut off because in mediation it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish the input from the output. Now, one thing thatâs really important is that the visitors [at the KJCC] got a taste of addressing a different audience, often an audience that was not used to ideas outside of social sciences; so it was a learning curve for us. It was really important that we were able to see how our ideas wouldnât just be transmitted to the people, but to other scholars who would actually percolate through into networks that would affect policy or will at least be heard. I work and live in London, which I think itâs true to say now, every single Latin American country has an embassy, but this wasnât always the case. Sometimes there would be, particularly Central America, a need to find someone to talk to. I used to specialize in Central America and BoliviaâI donât do that so much nowâand people needed to know about that. Of course, the British donât have embassies in all of the Central American states and indeed, under the conservative governments at the beginning of the 21st century, they closed five embassies down which is absolutely scandalous. But then they realized that they were closing down sources of information that they needed to understand, not just local conflicts, but the source of refugees. It may surprise you to know that many years before, in 1982, in the uproar to the Falklands War, the British taskforce had one serving servicemen who could speak Spanish. So they had real problems intervening in all sorts of things like radar, radio signals, and so on and so forth. These things have changed a lot and itâs due, I think, to some appreciable degree, perhaps not an overwhelming degree, to the fact that Latin American studies and the study of Spain has entered into the mainstream scholarship in this country in a way that had not been 40 years ago. Torres: To follow-up, do you think that institutions such as universities or centers like the KJCC hold as much weight as embassies do in terms of diplomatic relations between countries? Dr. Dunkerley: Yes, in the sense that when weâre talking about soft power on a wider spectrum of possibilities (after the end of the Cold War it took some time to happen) Iâd say by the mid nineties, the importance of soft power was being increasingly recognized. Prior to that, if you wanted to talk about international relations, you basically had to talk about diplomacy or military affairs.
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From the 1990s onwards, the embassies remained obviously very pertinent in terms of government to government relations but, government to government relations were not as dominant in international relations as they had been under the Cold War or immediately after the Cold War. It was recognized by many states that they didnât need to send people to visit places like the KJCC, and other places in the global north. If you think about it, itâs pretty obvious with the possible exception of Mexico, Brazil, and Chile to some degree, these places didnât have the resources to send scholars north to acquire anything other than a very short experience. They couldnât really situate themselves down, to learn about the North. Scholarly visitors at a center is important and I think that makes a real difference. Really at my time in New York, at NYU, I just got to meet so many people whose work I had read, whose scholarship I admired, and with whom I would never otherwise have the opportunity to have a conversation. Torres: In the context of international relations, many countries are at war with others either physically or politically. In the case for Spain, Cataloniaâs independence is a rather contentious one. When it comes to representation within a center, whether itâd be leadership positions, guest speakers, or events, should a center maintain neutrality during disputes between or within countries? How can a center facilitate discourse without establishing bias? In sum, what role does a center such as the KJCC play in matters of international relations? Dr. Dunkerley: I think we should all respect freedom of speech in practice as well as in theory. When we are dealing with contentious issues like this one, which is not just a recent issue but also a historic one. For my generation, which was born in the years after World War II, the memories recounted to us, particularly by my Spanish and Catalan friends, were very vivid. Itâs easy to mouth platitudes about free speech, but one has to remember that it has to stay within the law and it shouldnât advocate violence. Itâs very easy for people who are not involved in such conflicts to forget the undertones, the nuances, the implications of statements that might, to an outsider, appear super innocentâand theyâre not. Yes; it does take an Olympian sense of freedom to say, look, letâs keep free speech, letâs do our best to practice it, and letâs avoid the advocacy of violence. In recent years, that has been achieved but inside Western Europe, the Iberian Peninsula has suffered some pretty close callsâwe ought to be aware of that as well.
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Torres: This takes me to my last question. The KJCCâs mission states: âTo promote research and teaching on Spain and the Spanish-speaking world at the university, and to mount free public programs for a general audience that highlight the history, politics and cultures of the Spanish-speaking world.â Do you believe that the KJCC today is serving and carrying out its mission? Dr. Dunkerley: These days, I tend to work outside of Latin America but my impression is yes. The KJCC is one of the few centers in the North where there really is, as the mission says, an engagement not just in politics. Youâd expect politics to be the main subject and international relations. I know you are a student of international relations, but when you start to get between history and culture, then you get interactions that truly add value. And so, I was impressed when I was there 12 years ago. My distinct impression now is that the tremendous tradition has been kept up by the great scholars and directors in the context of a university that has remained a world leader for a very long time. Bibliography Dunkerley, James. âAndrĂ©s Bello and the Challenges of Spanish American Liberalism.â Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, vol. 24, 105-125, 2014. Web. Frank, David John, and John W. Meyer. âThe University and the Global Knowledge Society,â 2020, 1-20. Web. Medina, Alberto. âStories and Politics of Hispanism.â Revista HispĂĄnica Moderna, vol. 74 no. 1, 2021. Web. Schrum, Ethan. âThe Instrumental University,â 2019, 126-63. Web. Tenorio-Trillo, Mauricio. Latin America: The Allure and Power of an Idea. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. Trigo, Abril. âLos estudios transatlĂĄnticos y la geopolĂtica del neo-hispanismo.â Cuadernos de Literatura, vol. no. 31, 2012,16-45. Web.
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A Very Very Personal Account of Catalan Culture at NYU Mary Ann Newman In academia, certain kinds of institutions, standard-bearers of distinction partially predicated on exclusion, propose to mold you in their form of excellence, to produce the most perfect version of you in the likeness of their marque. Other academic institutions derive their excellence through a more generous and porous spirit and invite you into their fold, where you explore and form yourself under their tutelage. New York University is the latter kind of institutionâa sort of greenhouse where people who might not meet anywhere else find each other. Where pods form, tendrils shoot out. In 1980, a program in Catalan studies could have only been contemplated at a place like New York University, a mildly chaotic institution with the capacity to absorb and nurture a new idea. Franco had only died in 1975, the Spanish Constitution had just been approved in 1978, and the Catalan Statute of Autonomy had become law in December 1979. The notion of Catalan culture as an exportable field of knowledge was unlikely, at best. It would require a concurrence of individualsâlike Xavier Rubert de VentĂłs, John Brademas, John Coleman, HaydĂ©e Vitali, Robert Lubarâand many acts of imagination. In 1978, Xavier Rubert de VentĂłs, the most formidable and most generous contemporary Catalan philosopher, was a founding fellow at Richard Sennettâs nascent Institute for the Humanities. I was starting my doctoral studies at that time. In a long perambulating conversation from Soho to the East River, Xavier and I discussed Eugeni dâOrs. The seed Xavier planted was followed by a paper in John Colemanâs European Classics class, a summer at the Biblioteca de Catalunya, and an application for a Fulbright under the umbrella of NYU that took me as a Fellow to Barcelona. The kernel of the idea for the Catalan Studies Program, housed at NYU from 1983 to 1986, was planted there by the cultural officer of the American embassy in Spain. In Fall 1980, he invited the dozen scholars of the Fulbright cohort in Barcelona to lunch at Agut dâAvignon, the newest, most elegant restaurant in Barcelona (as the dollar had been devalued that year, this was a delightful respite from our usual 50 pesseta menus). He called me the following day. He wanted to support the State of the Autonomies (the new federal system in Spain) by establishing exchange programs between universities in the Autonomous Communities and their 185
U.S. counterparts. It was then he asked if I would like to help with the exchange program for Cataloniaâwould I ever! Home for the Christmas holidays, I told my mentor and dissertation director, Dr. HaydĂ©e Vitali, about the proposal. She informed me, in turn, that the new President of New York University was Dr. John Brademas, the Democratic House Whip who had been swept out
âCatalan Studies Week,â March 21-25, 1983. Program designed by NYU office of graphic design.
of office on Ronald Reaganâs coattails, who had done his doctoral dissertation on the anarcho-syndicalist movement in Catalonia and Andalusia in the 1930s. The stars were aligning. Back in Barcelona, more plotting with Xavier Rubert de VentĂłs. Xavier was not only a brilliant thinker; he was also a cultural activist, curious, generous, and responsible for founding and supporting countless projectsâthe Col.legi de Filosofia, among others, home to Jordi Llovet, Josep Ramoneda, Pep SubirĂłs, Eugenio Trias, et al.âand sponsoring innumerable individuals in their careers. And a consummate Catalanist. As we waited for word from the cultural officer, I went back to my research. On February 23rd, 1981, on my way home from the Biblioteca de
Catalunya, I stopped at a kiosk for cigarettes. There, I heard the last broadcast that would be transmitted on the Spanish airwaves announcing that a Civil Guard had taken over the Congress of Deputies in Madrid and was holding the deputies hostage. I hurried home. The danger to the young Spanish democracy of a coup was plain. I listened to the BBC on short-wave radio until the wee hours. Around 3 a.m., King Juan Carlos disavowed the coup and the tanks in Valencia and the rebel Civil Guards were drawn back. The coup was averted. But nothing would be the same. A few weeks later, when the dust had settled, I called the cultural officer, hoping to pick up the thread of his idea for a university exchange program. He responded, âNo, Mary Ann, we can no longer support the State of the Autonomies. Now we 186
must throw our support behind Spanish democracy.â The repercussions of the coup reached even as far as a merely budding idea. I went to Xavierâs house to share the terrible news. He was unperturbed. He said not to worry, that he would talk with Pasqual. The Pasqual in question, Xavierâs inseparable childhood friend, was Pasqual Maragall, the first Deputy Mayor under NarcĂs Serra, who was the first democratically-elected Mayor of Barcelona after Franco. Soon after, Felipe GonzĂĄlez, the President of Spain, would tap Serra to be the Minister of Defense, and Pasqual Maragall would become acting Mayor of Barcelona. A new project was launchedâThe exchange program between the Universitat de Barcelona and New York University migrated under the umbrella of the City Hall of Barcelona. With the support of John Brademas and the Rector of the UB, Dr. Antoni Badia i Margarit, and with funding from Barcelona and the U.S.-Spain Fulbright Commission, the program, known in Barcelona as the CĂ tedra Barcelona-New York and in New York as the âCatalan Studies Program at NYU,â was off and running. The first explosion of Catalan culture in New York took place from March 21-25, 1983 and featured a concert by Raimon with Pete Seeger; a lecture on GaudĂ by George Collins; the screening of four brilliant Catalan films including Ocaña, retrat intermitent by Ventura Pons; and a colloquium on Catalonia in Modern Spain featuring John Brademas, Pasqual Maragall, and Xavier Rubert de VentĂłs, among others. In the Fall, the program was launched. Masterâs level courses counted toward an M.A. in Humanities; undergraduate Catalan language courses counted as language credits. Between Fall 1983 and Spring 1986, the program hosted a dozen notable visiting professors, from MartĂ de Riquer in literature to Ignasi de SolĂ Morales in urban planning and Mary Nash in womenâs studies. There were lectures and special events with politician Miquel Roca, musician Barbara Held, artist EugĂšnia Balcells, and poet David Rosenthal, who at the time was singlehandedly translating the greatest works of Catalan literature, from MercĂš Rodoreda to Tirant lo Blanc. The programâs funding ran out in Spring 1986, and Professor Mary Nashâs course on Feminism in Catalonia was the last to be offered. But surely the most lasting contribution of the program to the field of Catalan studiesâa tribute to the importance of the basic sciences and humanities to cultural diffusionâwas the transmission of the Catalan language through its classes. The launching of the Catalan studies program coincided with the start of doctoral research on MirĂł by Robert Lubar at the NYU Institute of Fine Arts. Already fluent in French, in two intensive semesters he perfected his command of spoken and written Catalan and in the ensuing years came to be one of the worldâs authorities on Joan MirĂł. 187
Surely Robertâs scholarship was enhanced by the opportunity to learn the language formally; this was by no means a given in 1983. Under his influence, the importance of acquiring Catalan language research skills was passed on to his mentees, who became the brilliant scholars Professors Jordana Mendelson and Miriam Basilio of NYU, and Senior Curator Ann Umland of the Museum of Modern Artâa tendril from the CĂ tedra Barcelona-Nova York. I went on to teach at Williams, Bard, and Middlebury College. The tender plants of the Catalan Studies Program went unattended, and the relationships lay fallow. Then, In 1997, the same year that the King Juan Carlos Center was inaugurated, Pasqual Maragall left the mayoralty. He would spend the Spring 1998 semester that year between the University of Rome, La terza, and New York University as Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the King Juan Carlos Center. I was his liaison with the university. With James FernĂĄndez, the Director of the KJCC, Thomas Bender, and Mitchell Moss, Pasqual would organize a symposium called âA World of Cities and Regionsâ bringing mayors from all over Latin America, Spain, and the United States. With Professors Tony Judt and Katherine Fleming of the Remarque Institute, he organized a seminar on âDevolution of Power to Regions and Cities: A Road to European Citizenship.â Though this was not strictly related to Catalan studies, it was Europe from a deeply Catalan, deeply Maragallian perspective. His work planted new seeds and a new set of tendrils began to grow in the years following this event. The desire to implement the European Union ideals of devolution and subsidiarityâ bringing the government closer to the peopleâwhich Maragall had explored in the Remarque symposium, would inform his decision to run for the Presidency of Catalonia in 1999. He lost that time. The effect of the Hondt Methodâmuch like that of our Electoral Collegeâprevailed, and Maragall won in votes and lost in seats. In 2003, in coalition with Esquerra Republicana and Iniciativa per Catalunya-Verds, Maragall became President of the Generalitat after twenty-three years with a single President, the Honorable Jordi Pujol. President Maragall invited me to work in his Department of Foreign Affairs, but I asked to work at the very new Institut Ramon Llull, founded in 2002, to spread Catalan language, literature, and culture abroad. From that privileged vantage point, I observed that a sea change was taking place in Catalan culture in the United States. The Lincoln Center Film Society, under Richard Peña of Columbia University, was proposing a major retrospective of Catalan cinema. Curator William Robinson of the Cleveland Museum of Art was gathering a grand exhibition of Catalan art in conjunction with the Metropolitan Museum: Barcelona and Modernity: GaudĂ, Picasso, DalĂ. Joseph Melillo, of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, wanted to devote a Next Wave Festival to Catalan performing arts. A new generation of institutional directors, like Robert Lubar 188
at NYU, understood Catalan culture and were in a position to begin featuring it. In light of this, I wrote a report for President Maragall about the timeliness of establishing a Catalan cultural center in New York. It was logical to approach the King Juan Carlos Center and the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies. Professor Katherine E. Fleming, our ally for the symposium at the Remarque Institute, welcomed the proposal and the door was opened for the Institute Ramon Llull to establish the Catalan Center at New York University. I moved back to New York to direct the Center, assisted by Maria Litvan, a Catalan dramaturge living in New York with her finger on the pulse of many young artists. The Center took off in Spring 2007 with a beautiful show at the Bobst Library called A Mediterranean Mirror: Catalan Law in an International Context, which exhibited books from the collection of the Col.legi dâAdvocats de Barcelona. In a felicitous juxtaposition, it was accompanied by an extraordinary show of posters from the Spanish Civil War.1 Barcelona and Modernity: GaudĂ, Picasso, DalĂ opened at the Metropolitan Museum on March 7. On April 19 and 20 we celebrated it with a symposium at the King Juan Carlos Center, offering the context of literature, music, and urban planning in the Barcelona of the time. We brought together a stellar cast: Antoni PizĂ , Jaume Subirana, Margarida Casacuberta, Juanjo Lahuerta, XosĂ© Aviñoa, Jordi FalgĂ s, Robert Lubar, Miriam Basilio, with a memorable closing session by composer Benet Casablancas. In founding the Catalan Center at NYU, we were able to be a lightning rod for Catalan cultural initiatives. We both developed programs of our own and enhanced initiatives from other institutions. Early on, for example, Tate Modern Curator Mark Nash was doing a retrospective of Pere Portabellaâs films at the Museum of Modern Art. He approached the King Juan Carlos
1. Images can be found here.
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Center to do a round table. Laura Turégano called us, and the round table evolved into a symposium that brought Portabella together with critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, his champion
since the 1970âs. They met in 2007 for the first time. In the 1970s, Portabellaâs passport had been confiscated by Franco for his having financed Buñuelâs Viridiana and he had been unable to attend the original New Directors event at the MoMA. The title of the symposium, âPere Portabella: A Catalan Master Filmmaker in New York (At Last!)â is a subtle nod to this absurd delay. The symposium opened with a dialogue between Rosenbaum and Portabella and closed with a dialogue by Richard Peña. In between, there were discussions by Santos Zunzunegui, FĂšlix FanĂ©s, Marcelo ExpĂłsito, and Mark Nash himself. In the Fall 2007 semester alone, in addition to the spotlight on Pere Portabella, we presented a conversation with Marc Recha about his film Pau i el seu germĂ ; a reading and discussion of the new translation of the poetry of Jacint Verdaguer, by Professor Ronald Puppo of the Universitat de Vic, with Antoni PizĂ , our beloved colleague and Chair of the Foundation for Iberian Music at the CUNY Graduate Center, who had been cultivating his own greenhouse for many years now. In December, to celebrate Francesc Torresâs major exhibition at the International Center for Photography, Dark Is the Room Where We Sleep, we organized âDark Rooms of Memory: Visions of Trauma in the Work of Francesc Torres,â with Francesc himself and Arthur 190
Danto, the great art critic, with curator Kristen Lubben as moderator. In the ensuing years, we presented independent scholar Anthony Bonnerâs magnum opus The Art and Logic of Ramon Llull: A Userâs Guide with an extraordinary cast of commentators (March 2008) from Friedrich Pukelsheim of Heidelberg commenting on the mathematics of elections in Llullâs writings (still relevant to our elections, including the Hondt Method and the Electoral College, it seems this is a theme), and Paul Freedman, Harvey Hames, Ibtissam Bouachrine, Montserrat Piera, and Anthony Bonner himself, of course, all addressing diverse aspects of Llullâs Logic. We celebrated with the Institut Ramon Llull the 100th anniversary of MercĂš Rodoreda and the 30th of the North American Catalan Institute, the professional organization of Catalan scholars in the United States, which brought together the finest North America-based Rodoreda scholars: Kathryn Everly, Jo Labanyi, Enric Bou, Joan Ramon Resina, Jaume MartĂ-Olivella, Roser Caminals-Heath, Marta MarĂn-DĂČmine. In keeping with the objective of the Catalan Center of showcasing Catalan artists working in the States, the event closed with a concert by Catalan jazz musicians Alexis Cuadrado and Oscar Peñas. In the spring of 2009, The Catalan Center showcased both On Translation: Miedo/Jauf, a film by Antoni Muntadas on the exploration of fear on the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean, and Memoria negra, a documentary by Xavier MontanyĂ on the legacy of Spanish colonization in Equatorial Guinea, in conjunction with Benita Sampedro of Hofstra University. There was additionally a concert and a conversation by Douglas Riva on his Enric Granados scholarship and the excavation of the lost Granados score for Cant de les Estrelles, and the many vicissitudes that kept it from being played: the Spanish Civil War, bad blood in the Granados family, fire, flood, and more. In 2010, when the Institut Ramon Llull organized a concert by Benet Casablancas at the Miller Theater at Columbia University and Jaume CabrĂ© was Visiting Scholar at the CĂ tedra Coromines at the University of Chicago, the Catalan Center contributed to both events by offering an additional platform to these two principal Catalan artists. Our role was often to supply the context of an artistâs work to deepen understanding of their performance or practice. This role as a magnifier was particularly gratifying, as our presence in New York allowed for conduits to be constructed, both overground and underground. Our ascription to the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies gave us the breadth to collaborate with the Irish House at NYU on a comparative look at Barcelona and Dublin as Destination Cities, exploring âTourism, Immigration, and Urban Transformations.â Or with the AIA-Center for Architecture on programs with Josep Anton Acebillo or Enric Geli. Or with the IEMed, the European Institute of the Mediterranean, on questions of migration. Catalan studies, endeavors, scholars, 191
practitioners, artists, and, occasionally, gadflies were highlighted alongside their American or international counterparts. We were a touchstone for Catalan Culture in the U.S. and came to be known as an ally for any beautiful and provocative proposal. This extended to the political world, as well. Throughout its tenure, the Catalan Center proudly hosted Pasqual Maragall, Josep-LluĂs Carod-Rovira, Josep Saura, and Ernest Benach. In our final semester we hosted, together with Princeton University, the Institut Ramon Llull, the Consulate of Spain, under the direction of Consul Ferran Villalonga, and the Delegation of Catalonia to the U.S., under the direction of Dr. Andrew Davis, a standing-room-only talk by former President Jordi Pujol, one of the last events to take place under our umbrella. Many, many more events took place during the brief lifetime of The Catalan Center. In our final semester we explored groundbreaking documentaries, the invention of creative documentary, developed under the tutelage of Josep BallĂł at the University Pompeu Fabra. But what is invisibleâthe roots that made their way undergroundâare the many conversations offside, the budding projects, and the opportunities for complicity. The international network of scholars, and the local networks of artists and friends. The embrace of New York and New Yorkadjacent institutions, from the U.N to Philip Johnsonâs Glass House, to the MoMA, to Robert Wilsonâs Watermill Center. And that is just the start. It was truly a place of imagination. Between 2007 and 2011, perhaps the most important achievement of the Catalan Studies Program at New York University, with the support of the Institut Ramon Llull and the proverbial generosity and intellectual freedom fostered by New York University, was the creation of a rich, open-ended intellectual community. I have been talking about tendrils and shoots, but perhaps for this stage we might take recourse to the tropes of forest ecology, the roots and spores that run underground, storing information for future use, assuring that nothing is lost and that new plants will emerge where others wilted. This is a paean to all the people mentioned in the article and to the many more who traveled along with us who are not mentioned. It is fortunate that the work of Catalan Studies at New York University is carried on by Robert Lubar, Jordana Mendelson, Miriam Basilio, and Sara Nadal. It is providential that Elsa Ăbeda continues to provide the opportunity to study Catalan at Columbia University. Catalan scholars like Wadda RĂos-Font at Barnard and AurĂ©lie Vialette at SUNY Stony Brook, all the extraordinary colleagues at the North American Catalan Society, and translators like Sharon Feldman, Hillary Gardner, and many more carry the torch of Catalan culture in the U.S. The work of Catalan culture in the U.S. goes onâonly the canopy is gone.
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Una reflexiĂł sobre la meva estada al KJCC (tardor 2016) Josep M. Muñoz Les coses mai no passen perquĂš sĂ. I aixĂČ que en aterrar a Washington Square, lâagost del 2016, jo venia amb la sensaciĂł que aquella extraordinĂ ria oportunitat acadĂšmica que se mâoferia era un dâaquests regals inesperats que molt de tant en tant âno fos cas que tâhi abonessisâ et fa la vida. PerĂČ, just en arribar i alçar el cap âun moviment que a Manhattan esdevĂ© connatural â vaig adonar-me que existia una connexiĂł, un lligam amb aquell lloc, que mâarribava com si provinguĂ©s dâun cable telegrĂ fic estĂšs per sota lâoceĂ . Amb tota seguretat, jo havia estat abans en un dels edificis alts que tancaven un dels costats de la plaça. Concretament, al penthouse de lâaleshores president de NYU, John Brademas. Un home dâuna enorme simpatia, dotat de âlâentregentâ â aquell terme francĂšs que un dels nostres mĂ©s grans escriptors, Josep Pla, havia volgut naturalitzar en catalĂ , tot aprofitant la proximitat lingĂŒĂstica. El diccionari Larousse en dona alguns sinĂČnims en francĂšs: âdiplomatieâ, âdoigtĂ©â (que ve de âdoigtâ, dit), âsavoir-faireâ. Ara mateix no sabria situar amb tota exactitud la data, perĂČ es tractava sense cap mena de dubte dâun dels meus primers viatges a Nova York âpossiblement el primerâ que vaig fer acompanyant lâaleshores alcalde de Barcelona, Pasqual Maragall. Eren els anys immediatament previs a la celebraciĂł dels Jocs OlĂmpics del 1992, i arreu hi havia molta curiositat per saber quĂš faria Barcelona. A AmĂšrica, a mĂ©s, lâinterĂšs es va acrĂ©ixer des del moment que es va saber que la ciutat designada a prendre el relleu de la torxa olĂmpica per als Jocs dâestiu del 1996 era Atlanta, GA. Jo aleshores formava part del Gabinet de lâAlcaldia (ho traduĂem per Mayorâs Office) i solia acompanyar Maragall en els seus viatges fora dâEuropa. Van ser un anys dâaprenentatge, al costat dâuna figura polĂtica diferent, Ășnica i irrepetible. En aterrar lâaviĂł, ell podia donar-te, amb un gest que traduĂŻa una desgana nomĂ©s aparent, lâexemplar de la New York Review of Books que havia estat llegint durant el vol, i on, per exemple, havia estat subratllant profusament un article de Vaclav Havel. No cal dir que jo, en tornar a casa, el primer que vaig fer Ă©s subscriureâm a la NYRB, lâempremta de la qual seria inevitable trobar, al cap dâuns pocs anys, en LâAvenç â la revista que dirigeixo des de fa mĂ©s de vint anys i que Ă©s la que, de fet, em va portar de nou a Washington Square, al King Juan Carlos Center, el 2016. La party que el president Brademas va organitzar per honorar la visita de Pasqual Maragall 194
A Reflection on My Stay at the KJCC (Autumn 2016)
Translated by Mary Ann Newman Things never happen just because. When I landed in Washington Square in August 2016 I had come with the feeling that the extraordinary academic opportunity being offered to me was one of those unexpected gifts that life very occasionallyânot something you should get used toâgives you. But as soon as I lifted my headâan innate movement in ManhattanâI realized that there was a connection, a link to the place that reached me as if it came from a telegraph cable stretched under the ocean. It was clear that I had been in one of those tall buildings that lined one side of the square before. Specifically, in the penthouse of the then president of NYU, John Brademas. A very charming man, endowed with entregentâthat French term that the great Catalan writer Josep Pla had wanted to import into Catalan, taking advantage of the linguistic overlap. The Larousse offers some synonyms in French: diplomatie, doigtĂ©, savoir-faire, all of which came together in Brademasâs âpeople skills.â I canât pinpoint the exact date right now but surely it was one of my first trips to New Yorkâpossibly the firstâthat I made with the then-mayor of Barcelona, ââPasqual Maragall. These were the years immediately preceding the 1992 Olympic Games, and there was a lot of curiosity everywhere about what Barcelona would do. In America, moreover, interest had only grown since it was announced that the city designated to take over the Olympic torch for the 1996 Summer Games was Atlanta, GA. I worked in the Mayorâs Office and used to accompany Maragall on his travels outside Europe. Those were years of apprenticeship, alongside a different, unique, and unrepeatable political figure. When the plane landed, he might hand you, with a gesture of only apparent reluctance, the copy of the New York Review of Books he had been reading during the flight, and in which he had been copiously underlining an article by Vaclav Havel. Needless to say, when I returned home the first thing I did was subscribe to the NYRB, the imprint of which would be inevitable, a few years later, upon LâAvençâthe magazine that Iâve been editing now for over twenty years and the journalistic enterprise that actually took me back to Washington Square, to the King Juan Carlos Center, in 2016. The party that President Brademas organized in honor of Pasqual Maragallâs visit to New York had, to my recollection, an air of great sophisticationâstarting, of course, with the 195
a Nova York va tenir, en el meu record, un aire
apartment itself, a duplex with a terrace
molt sofisticat âcomençant Ă©s clar per lâĂ tic,
overlooking the city. Over the course of the
un dĂșplex amb una terrassa amb vistes sobre
informal dinnerâwe would perch wherever
la ciutat. En el curs del sopar âinformal, mig
we couldâI talked for a while with Diandra
sĂšiem allĂ on podĂemâ vaig estar parlant una
Luker about a family perhaps related to the
bona estona amb Diandra Luker, dâuna famĂlia
Kennedys (it could be a false memory, to add
no sé si emparentada amb els Kennedy (potser
glamor?) who, at the time, was the wife of
Ă©s un fals record, per afegir-hi glamur?), i
the actor Michael Douglas, with a fabulous
que aleshores era la dona de lâactor Michael
house in Mallorca. It was, you will forgive
Douglas, i tenien una casa fabulosa a Mallorca.
the cliché, the closest thing to a Woody Allen
Era, disculpeu el tĂČpic, el mĂ©s semblant a una
movie Iâve ever experienced. And that is saying
pel·lĂcula de Woody Allen que jo havia viscut
a lot, coming from Barcelona and those years
mai. AixĂČ, venint de Barcelona i dels anys
when we adored Allen. With a few words
que adorĂ vem Allen, Ă©s molt dir. En uns mots
of gratitude, Pasqual Maragall responded
dâagraĂŻment, Pasqual Maragall va correspondre
to the reception given to him by Brademas
a la rebuda que li havia fet Brademas dient que,
that, if life were fair, the United States would
si la vida fos justa, els Estats Units haurien de
be governed by the âGreeks:â everyone
ser governats pels âgrecsâ: tothom va entendre
understood that it was an allusion to the
que era, també, una al·lusió al candidat del
Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis who
Partit DemĂČcrata, Michael Dukakis, que feia
had recently lost the 1988 election to George
poc que havia perdut lâelecciĂł del 1988 contra
Bush, Sr.
George Bush pare. PerĂČ jo ja sabia qui era el âgrecâ John
But I already knew who the âGreekâ John Brademas was because one of the first
Brademas, perquĂš un dels primers llibres
books I had read on the history of the Spanish
sobre la histĂČria de la Guerra Civil espanyola
Civil War even before I entered the University,
que jo havia llegit abans fins i tot dâentrar a
borrowed from my grandfatherâs library, was
la Universitat, manllevant-lo de la biblioteca
his pioneering study of Spanish anarcho-
del meu avi, era el seu estudi pioner sobre
syndicalism, largely centered on the case of
lâanarcosindicalisme espanyol, molt centrat
Catalonia, and published in Spanish in 1974
en el cas catalĂ , i que es va publicar en castellĂ
(Anarcosindicalismo y revolución en España,
lâany 1974 (Anarcosindicalismo y revoluciĂłn
1930- 1937) in JoaquĂn Romero Mauraâs
en España, 1930- 1937), en traducció de
translation. The book covered the material
JoaquĂn Romero Maura. El llibre era el fruit de
of Brademasâs dissertation in the early 1950âs
196
la tesi que Brademas va fer, a primers dels anys
as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University,
1950, com a Rhodes Scholar a la Universitat
for which he had had the opportunity, if I
dâOxford, i per a la qual havia tingut
remember correctly, to interview significant
lâoportunitat, si ho recordo bĂ©, dâentrevistar
characters from the notable nucleus of
personatges significats de lâimportant nucli
anarchist exiles who were living at the time in
dâexiliats anarquistes que hi havia aleshores a la
the French city of Toulouse.
ciutat francesa de Tolosa del Llenguadoc. Moltes vegades, un fil, només cal
Often one only needs to pull on a thread to reveal the entire seam. Here
estirar-lo. I et porta lluny. En aquell cas, de la
the thread leads you from the failed 1936
revoluciĂł mancada dels anarcosindicalistes del
revolution of the anarcho-syndicalists, through
1936, de la devastadora derrota a la Guerra
the devastating defeat of the Civil War and
Civil i de lâexperiĂšncia amarga de lâexili,
the bitter experience of exile, to the greatest
a la mĂ©s gran operaciĂł de consens ciutadĂ
operation of citizen consensus around the
orquestrada a lâaleshores jove democrĂ cia
1992 Olympic Games, orchestrated by the
espanyola, com van ser els Jocs OlĂmpics del
then still-young Spanish democracy. An
1992. Una operació on el més important no
operation in which the most important
eren els Jocs en ells mateixos, que presentĂ vem
element was not the Games themselves.
âsense cap problema per part nostra a lâhora
We shamelessly presented them as a simple
dâafirmar-hoâ com una mera âexcusaâ per
âexcuseâ for the extraordinary urban
a lâextraordinĂ ria transformaciĂł urbanĂstica
transformation of the city of Barcelona ââafter
de la ciutat de Barcelona, desprĂ©s dâanys de
years of neglect and speculation, which
negligĂšncia i dâespeculaciĂł, i que va permetre
allowed us to recover a civic âprideâ the
recuperar un âorgullâ cĂvic del qual la ciutat
city badly needed following the endless
anava molt necessitada després de la llarga
humiliation endured under General Francoâs
humiliaciĂł a quĂš lâhavia sotmĂšs la dictadura del
dictatorship.
General Franco. En abaixar el cap, doncs, a Washington
So when I lowered my gaze to Washington Square, I immediately understood
Square, vaig entendre de seguida el sentit
the deep meaning of my stay at the King
profund de la meva estada al King Juan Carlos
Juan Carlos Center, founded by the good
Center, fundat per obra i grĂ cia âajudat,
offices, and fueled, no doubt, by the âpeople
sens dubte, pel seu âentregentââ de John
skillsâ of John Brademas who had passed
Brademas (que havia traspassat aquell mateix
away that same summer of 2016. When
estiu de 2016). Quan la Jordana Mendelson i
Jordana Mendelson and the then director of 197
lâaleshores directora del KJCC, Ana Dopico,
the KJCC, Ana Dopico, asked me to identify
em van demanar que identifiqués un tema
a topic for the postgraduate course I was to
per al curs de postgrau que havia dâimpartir
teachâand for the symposium I had the
âi eventualment per al simposi que tenia la
magnificent opportunity to organizeâI was
magnĂfica oportunitat dâorganitzarâ vaig trobar
delighted. I found it almost natural to propose
gairebĂ© natural proposar-los un curs el propĂČsit
a course whose purpose was to analyze, from
del qual era analitzar, des dâuna proximitat
a temporal proximity that perhaps physical
temporal que tal vegada la distĂ ncia fĂsica ens
distance would help us to compensate, the
ajudaria a compensar, els dos moviments que
two movements that had closed, with all
havien tancat, amb tot el seu simbolisme i
their symbolism and potential, the stage of
potencial, lâetapa de reconstrucciĂł democrĂ tica
democratic reconstruction that the approval of
que a Espanya havia obert lâaprovaciĂł de la
the 1978 Constitution had opened in Spain.
ConstituciĂł del 1978: em refereixo, Ă©s clar,
I am referring, of course, to the movement
al moviment dels âindignadosâ (un nom en
of the âoutraged,â the indignados (a name in
castellĂ que va obtenir ressonĂ ncies en altres
Spanish that resonated in other languages ââ
llengĂŒes i contextos) i al moviment que, a la
and contexts) and to the movement that,
manera dâEscĂČcia, propugnava la independĂšncia
along the lines of Scotland, advocated for
de Catalunya respecte dâEspanya. Tots dos
the independence of Catalonia from Spain.
moviments sorgits dâuna mateixa conjuntura,
These two movements arose from the same
entorn a 2010-2011, amb lligams no sempre
historical moment, around 2010-2011, with
explĂcits i evidents, perĂČ efectivament existents,
links that existed but were not always explicit
entre tots dos, i que sacsejaven de forma
and obvious. They caused a significant shock
important el tauler polĂtic i social espanyol.
to the Spanish political and social chessboard.
Quan vaig arribar al KJCC, el seu retrat encara
When I reached the KJCC, the portrait of
presidia la âportrait roomâ, perĂČ Juan Carlos
Juan Carlos still presided over the conference
ja havia abdicat com a rei dâEspanya, i la
room. He had already abdicated as King of
unanimitat del relat que sâhavia imposat desprĂ©s
Spain, and the unanimity of the narrative
del 1978 i dâuna TransiciĂł que, malgrat les seves
that prevailed after 1978 of a Transition,
mancances, sâhavia presentat com a âmodĂšlicaâ,
which, despite its shortcomings, had been
ja sâhavia esquerdat dâuna manera important i
presented as a âmodel,â had already suffered an
no sabĂem dir si irreparable.
important rupture and no one could predict if
Del trimestre de tardor del 2016, de la inquietud i preparaciĂł dels meus estudiants, 198
it was reparable. I remember with tremendous
de la magnĂfica oportunitat de presentar la
satisfaction the Fall 2016 term, from the
âqĂŒestiĂł catalanaâ que va significar el simposi
curiosity and preparation of my students,
que vaig poder organitzar grĂ cies a lâescĂ s perĂČ
to the extraordinary opportunity to discuss
competent personal del KJCC, en guardo
the âCatalan questionâ represented by the
un enorme record. Jo sabia que el curs que
symposium that I was able to organize thanks
proposava tenia unes connotacions que no
to the minimal but very competent staff of
escapaven a ningĂș i que potser, fins i tot, feien
the KJCC. I knew that the course I proposed
arrufar les celles a algĂș altre. Per aixĂČ, de tota
had implications that were clear to everyone
aquella experiĂšncia, breu i intensa, el que
and that perhaps even furrowed a couple of
guardo com un tresor més apreciat és el clima
brows. This is why, of all that brief and intense
de llibertat intel·lectual que vaig trobar a NYU,
experience, what I retain as my most esteemed
i la seva indiscutible adscripciĂł al principi de
treasure is the climate of intellectual freedom I
llibertat de cĂ tedra. Un principi sobre el qual
found at NYU and its indisputable devotion to
es fonamenta la democrĂ cia, que vaig poder
the principle of academic freedom. A principle
veure com era defensada amb una immediata i
on which democracy is based, and which I
alarmada mobilitzaciĂł per part de professors i
was able to see defended with immediate and
estudiants de NYU (alguns, com una estudiant
alarming mobilization by NYU professors and
meva, amb llĂ grimes als ulls) lâendemĂ mateix
students alike (some, like a student of mine,
de la victĂČria de Donald Trump en lâelecciĂł de
with tears in their eyes) the day after Donald
novembre de 2016, que vaig viure en directe a
Trumpâs victory in the November 2016
Nova York, i que va esdevenir una demostraciĂł
election I experienced this for myself in New
més, si és que em calia, que la Universitat és,
York, and it became one more demonstration,
abans que res, el lloc on es construeixen els
if I have any need of it, that the University is,
ciutadans lliures dâun paĂs lliure. GrĂ cies, NYU.
first and foremost, the place where the free
Moltes grĂ cies i llarga vida al KJCC.
citizens of a free country are shaped. Thank you, NYU. Thank you very much and long life to the KJCC.
199
Diplomacia, inclusiĂłn y Cuba:
la directora Ana Dopico en el KJCC Devon Vazquez Forester Cuando yo era joven, no existĂan alrededor de mĂ centros culturales latinxs, no existĂa siquiera esa identidad. Uno era, quizĂĄ, âhispanicâ. En la universidad o en mi carrera de doctorado de literatura comparada no habĂa otros latinos de EEUU⊠eso vino muy tarde. Al hacerme profesora, y despuĂ©s directora del centro, me di cuenta del poder convocatorio del centro, su capacidad de crear comunidad. Al hacer comunidad, al poder convocar a otros pensadores en espacios universitarios, uno puede ayudar a nutrir el desarrollo intelectual y personal de estudiantes, de colegas. Y al abrir esas puertas a una comunidad mĂĄs amplia en la ciudad, cambiamos nuestro rol, y nuestra labor, reconociendo que las comunidades latinas hacen su historia y su teorĂa y su arte mĂĄs allĂĄ de la universidad. Creo que es fundamental poder tener donde te puedes reconocer a ti misma, o a ti mismo, y poder crear una comunidad. Tratamos de hacer eso en el King Juan Carlos Center... crear espacios donde la gente pueda hablar, pueda reconocerse entre sĂ, pueda reconocer que los espacios elites no excluyen las comunidades que pretendemos representar. Es muy importante⊠es una responsabilidad de la instituciĂłn⊠abrir las puertas al pĂșblico un poquito mĂĄs. Estas son las palabras de Ana Dopico, directora del King Juan Carlos I Center de 2014 a 2019, en una entrevista sobre su trabajo como directora del centro. Dopico naciĂł en Cuba y creciĂł en Miami. EstudiĂł historia y literatura comparada y se doctorĂł en Columbia University en Nueva York. ComenzĂł su carrera en NYU como profesora de los departamentos de español y de literatura comparada. Dopico aportĂł esa experiencia personal y ese entrenamiento intelectual al convertirse en la primera directora latina del centro. Durante su tiempo como directora, la profesora Dopico intentĂł ampliar el rol de la comunidad latinx para que formara parte central de la programaciĂłn y las cĂĄtedras del centro. La profesora Dopico asumiĂł el cargo durante una etapa crucial de la historia en la que el Presidente Barack Obama restableciĂł relaciones con Cuba. Este cambio en el discurso polĂtico y las relaciones interamericanas le dio a Dopico la oportunidad de responder con algo que se necesitaba en el nuevo panorama polĂtico: un espacio para indagar las consecuencias de la reapertura y las consecuencias populares, diplomĂĄticas, culturales y econĂłmicas. En enero de 2015 Ana Dopico, junto a la profesora Jill Lane, directora del Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS), las profesoras Arlene DĂĄvila y Ada Ferrer y 200
Meg Satterthwaite, la Directora del Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) en la Facultad de Leyes de NYU, solicitĂł y ganĂł una beca de la FundaciĂłn Mellon para crear la serie Cuban Futures Beyond the Market: Geopolitics and Interpretive Infrastructures in the Humanities, Social Science and the Law.1 Aunque identificaron que el enfoque del pĂșblico en las nuevas relaciones con Cuba estaba centrado en la economĂa, Ana Dopico y su equipo querĂan enfatizar la vida cultural, la vida diaria y la experiencia cubana mĂĄs allĂĄ de las lĂłgicas del mercado. En su informe escrito sobre la serie, Ana Dopico reflexiona sobre este hecho: âIn spring of 2015, our team immediately began to carefully consider where our best and most meaningful interventions and dialogues might lie and how to assemble a network of participants from Cuba, the United States and beyond who would help change the narrativeâ. Por esta razĂłn, el Centro organizĂł una variedad de eventos en las ĂĄreas de los medios y la representaciĂłn, la experiencia afrocubana, el estado del campo de los estudios cubanos y el papel de Cuba en el contexto latinoamericano. Uno de los eventos mĂĄs grandes que Dopico organizĂł como directora del centro, independiente del seminario Cuban Futures, fue la conferencia del 21-22 de abril del 2016 titulada: Storytelling the Revolution: Narrative and Latin American Revolutionary Politics. La CĂĄtedra AndrĂ©s Bello en ese momento la ocupaba el escritor Jon Lee Anderson, quien trabajĂł con el Centro para traer a mĂĄs de 25 autores, activistas, profesores y periodistas de investigaciĂłn para hablar sobre las revoluciones en AmĂ©rica Latina durante los Ășltimos 50 años. Cada panel se dedicĂł a uno de los siguientes paĂses: Cuba, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, AmĂ©rica Central y MĂ©xico y Venezuela. Estos paneles incluĂan a acadĂ©micos de todo el mundo, entre ellos: MarĂa Jimena DuzĂĄn, periodista colombiana, experta polĂtica y anfitriona del programa nocturno Semana en Vivo; Jean-Marie Simon, escritora, fotĂłgrafa y representante de Human Rights Watch, quien se ha enfocado en el estudio de Guatemala; Gilberto Padilla, ensayista cubano, profesor y director de ColecciĂłn G y Tamara AdriĂĄn, abogada venezolana que sirve como Presidente del ComitĂ© del DĂa Internacional contra la Homofobia y Transfobia y mantiene una posiciĂłn como consejera del WHO y PAHO. Estos panelistas y muchos mĂĄs se reunieron en el auditorio del KJCC y pasaron muchas horas hablando sobre cĂłmo las narrativas sobre la revoluciĂłn han cambiado, cĂłmo las suposiciones se han formado en nuestras imaginaciones y cuĂĄles podrĂan ser las nuevas vĂas de conversaciĂłn. Este evento ciertamente mostrĂł los esfuerzos realizados por Dopico, Anderson y su equipo para darles a las conversaciones del KJCC perspectivas internacionales y crear un punto de encuentro entre el centro y un pĂșblico mĂĄs amplio. 1.. Ana Dopico, Ada Ferrer, Jill Lane, Arlene DĂĄvila y Meg Satterthwaite fueron las creadoras oficiales del seminario del NYU Mellon Sawyer Series.
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En septiembre de 2015, Dopico tuvo el honor de nombrar al galardonado periodista Juan GonzĂĄlez a la CĂĄtedra AndrĂ©s Bello, el primer puertorriqueño y primer latino en ocupar el cargo. En el KJCC, GonzĂĄlez organizĂł conferencias y eventos sobre The Puerto Rican Debt Crisis, Rebel Latino Writers in American Journalism y The Struggle for Latino Studies and American Higher Education (Communications). Para Dopico: One of the most significant achievements of my tenure was the naming of Juan GonzĂĄlez as AndrĂ©s Bello Chair. His presence and programming, which included material on the Young Lords and Puerto Rican Debt and a public dialogue with Lin Manuel Miranda and Sonia Manzano, were key to opening the Center to Latino audiences. El diĂĄlogo con Lin Manuel Miranda y Sonia Manzano atrajo a 700 estudiantes, artistas y miembros de la comunidad al Skirball Center for the Performing Arts para hablar sobre la comunidad de artistas latinos (ATRIUM: Voices from the KJCC Presents Juan GonzĂĄlez). Juan GonzĂĄlez dirigiĂł conferencias perspicaces e interesantes sobre temas relevantes para la comunidad latina, atrayendo asĂ a una mayor audiencia para aprender sobre estudios latinos a travĂ©s del KJCC. Como parte de su enfoque en Cuba, Dopico presentĂł Towers, Letters, and Ferris Wheels: Alternative Spaces for Cuban Writing. Esta mesa redonda se centrĂł en los desafĂos de escribir y publicar literatura en Cuba y la historia de los espacios existentes para los escritores y sus obras dentro y fuera del paĂs. Los participantes incluyeron a Reina MarĂa RodrĂguez de La Habana, una poeta defensora de un espacio cultural alternativo en Cuba y muy conocida por âLa azotea de Reinaâ, un espacio de reuniĂłn de escritores en su casa. Otros participantes fueron Oscar Cruz, de Santiago de Cuba, autor, editor de la revista literaria La Noria y receptor de elogios internacionales en literatura; y, una vez mĂĄs, el ensayista y profesor de La Habana, Gilberto Padilla. Dopico presentĂł el evento y Walfrido Dorta, el becario postdoctoral del Mellon Sawyer Seminar, moderĂł el evento, el cual explorĂł las dificultades de publicar literatura en Cuba en la era digital. La discusiĂłn reuniĂł a voces cubanas sobre asuntos cubanos. Ana Dopico comentĂł en su entrevista sobre la importancia de establecer vĂnculos con acadĂ©micos en Cuba: Estos efectos no se pueden cuantificar fĂĄcilmente, pero cuando una investigadora, una escritora, una artista, un cineasta, una pensadora cubana/o visita los Estados Unidos, esto activa una red de acadĂ©micos de Cuba, grupos comunitarios o instituciones. Esa visita ây las conexiones y la comunidad que se va armandoâ permiten una circulaciĂłn de ideas y de diĂĄlogo que de otra manera no serĂa posible. Es profundamente importante establecer esos intercambios, facilitarlos y normalizarlos para asĂ ir ampliando el conocimiento pĂșblico sobre Cuba en EEUU. Pero todo cambiĂł con la elecciĂłn de un nuevo presidente en 2016, el Presidente Donald Trump. 202
Trump vio las nuevas polĂticas diplomĂĄticas como parciales y volviĂł a los Estados Unidos a un estado de aislamiento de Cuba. Dopico comentĂł sobre este tema en su entrevista: DespuĂ©s de la elecciĂłn de Trump, el horizonte de posibilidades que estaba cambiando con respecto a Cuba se fue nublando. Poco a poco, se hicieron mĂĄs difĂciles los vĂnculos que habĂamos hecho, las colaboraciones, los intercambios institucionales. Los vĂnculos, los viajes, las invitaciones, las visas para viajar, todo se hizo mĂĄs difĂcil. Y a medida que cambiaban las cosas, los cubanos tambiĂ©n respondĂan con sus propias dificultades. Pero Âżtraer acadĂ©micos, o artistas? SĂ, se puede invitar. Pero casi siempre se hace a nivel individual y nos encontramos con mĂĄs esperas, mĂĄs dificultades⊠En el momento de apertura de Obama, parecĂa que todo era posible ây se cerrĂł. Y se cerrĂł de una manera totalmente arbitraria y horrible. Al cerrarse la vĂa polĂtica se cierra todo un mundo de conocimiento, de relaciones humanas, de colaboraciones. Se cierran posibilidades, se cierran investigaciones, exposiciones, proyectos en comĂșn, desaparecen momentos de posibilidad y sufren tambiĂ©n las amistades y relaciones personales y nuestra propia capacidad para imaginar el mundo. Estas dificultades polĂticas que en este caso cancelaron la apertura de relaciones con Cuba, tambiĂ©n pusieron en relieve el rol de NYU como instituciĂłn global y la diplomacia y las polĂticas que las directoras de centro tienen que enfrentar. Sebastiaan Faber, profesor de los estudios hispĂĄnicos en Oberlin College, explora este asunto en su artĂculo âScholars, Spies, and Other Agents: U.S. Hispanism and the Stateâ. Faber señala: If they are lucky, [scholars] receive double the state support and recognition... More often, however, they are likely to be caught between competing loyalties or, worse, subject to suspicion, surveillance, and harassment from both sides. Modern nation-states, it seems, have tended to consider the academic fields that study their own history and cultureâ either practiced domestically or abroad, by national or foreign scholarsâas a potential generator of status and prestige and, therefore, as extensions of their foreign policy and even a kind of shadow diplomacy⊠Still, while states value scholarly knowledge about other countries, they also seem to harbor a stubborn distrust for the individuals who generate that knowledge. De esta manera, el KJCC supera su estatus como una instituciĂłn de exploraciĂłn e investigaciĂłn para entrar a formar parte de la diplomacia estadounidense y en esta posiciĂłn hay reglas con las que la instituciĂłn estĂĄ obligada a cumplir. Esta caracterĂstica de las instituciones globales tenĂa un sentido primordial para Ana Dopico y el KJCC. Como Dopico dijo en su entrevista: âMe empecĂ© a dar cuenta del poder de las instituciones en hacer posible una historia o cancelarla. Y para Cuba eso es muy importante porque la historia de Cuba es muy polarizadaâ. AsĂ, Dopico logrĂł traer a cubanos a Nueva York, dĂĄndoles la oportunidad de compartir sus historias y proporcionando un espacio para nuevos 203
diĂĄlogos, pero al mismo tiempo se vio truncada en su actividad debido a la polĂtica. Mientras que el panorama global siempre cambiarĂĄ, sigue siendo esencial que las instituciones hagan lo que puedan, cuando puedan, para crear espacios de conversaciĂłn y aceptaciĂłn. La idea de que NYU y el KJCC deben ser lugares de investigaciĂłn global, se remonta a la creaciĂłn de la CĂĄtedra del King Juan Carlos, al centro mismo y al promotor de ambos, el entonces Presidente de NYU John Brademas. Brademas, un especialista en estudios españoles, representante del Congreso y presidente de NYU, creĂa en expandir el alcance global de la Universidad a travĂ©s del estudio de otros paĂses, culturas e idiomas. Bajo su direcciĂłn, se prestĂł especial atenciĂłn a los programas entre NYU y otras instituciones en todo el mundo que servĂan como avenidas para la diplomacia. Brademas compartiĂł regularmente con el pĂșblico su ideologĂa acerca de la necesidad de poseer un conocimiento global, y fue la idea principal de su charla âInternational Educationâ, la que presentĂł ante un pĂșblico que incluyĂł al Rey Juan Carlos I, porque la charla sirviĂł para introducir la cena para anunciar la cĂĄtedra que llevarĂa su nombre, y el Presidente de Argentina RaĂșl AlfonsĂn. Brademas estableciĂł: The events of tonight and tomorrow mark a significant moment in the history of New York University and, I like to think, in the relationship between the peoples of the United States and Spain. For the presence with us of Their Majesties King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofia of Spain symbolize not only the many contributions that Spain has made⊠but also to the rising importance of Spanish-speaking peoples in the life of the United States and of this city⊠We have, moreover, welcomed to our lecture halls and classrooms some of the most eminent writers and thinkers of twentieth-century Spain as well as of Latin America (Brademas). Mientras que las conexiones formadas por Brademas sucedieron principalmente entre las altas Ă©lites sociales, podemos entender la iniciativa de Ana Dopico de crear un espacio para la discusiĂłn sobre el tema cubano como una continuaciĂłn de los mismos valores fundamentales creados por Brademas y que son una parte integral del KJCC, pero con su propio alcance a voces mĂĄs diversas. El corazĂłn de la misiĂłn del KJCC es retenido por Dopico, pero ella agregĂł una expansiĂłn muy necesaria de la accesibilidad al Centro. En su entrevista enfatizĂł: âŠpoder dirigir el centro me dio la oportunidad de pensar en un pĂșblico, en gente que no estĂĄ incluida por el proyecto Ă©lite de la universidad y empezar a trabajar en lo que dicen âpublic scholarshipâ⊠cosas para ampliar y abrir las puertas al pĂșblico un poquito mĂĄs. âŠtraer un pĂșblico que no ha venido a una universidad, democratizar los espacios, descolonizar los espacios de la universidad... por ejemplo [para personas como] mi abuela, que nunca fue a la universidad. 204
La dedicaciĂłn a hacer un espacio para el estudio de otros paĂses, traer acadĂ©micos al campus e impactar la diplomacia americana se refleja igualmente en John Brademas y Ana Dopico, con su compromiso de conectar la universidad con el mundo hispanohablante. Ambos han impactado profundamente en el proceso de hacer de NYU una instituciĂłn donde puedan llevarse a cabo conversaciones y conexiones entre diversos paĂses. Ana Dopico dirigiĂł el KJCC hacia una transiciĂłn impulsada por su inclusiĂłn de una nueva audiencia de latinos, cubanos y neoyorquinos locales que formaron comunidad en el centro. Dopico proporcionĂł un espacio necesario a los que querĂan discutir y aprender sobre la relaciĂłn cambiante con Cuba y los afectados por ella y creĂł conexiones diplomĂĄticas entre el KJCC y Cuba a travĂ©s de su dedicaciĂłn a su estudio. La terminaciĂłn de su proyecto por el gobierno llama la atenciĂłn al papel de una instituciĂłn cultural y universitaria y a cuĂĄles pueden ser los lĂmites que se le imponen, pero aĂșn asĂ, Ana Dopico logrĂł unir a las personas y crear nuevas comunidades en el King Juan Carlos I Center. BibliografĂa Ana Dopico. Entrevista en la clase de NYU Instituciones, archivos y personas. 9 noviembre. 2021. ATRIUM: Voices from the KJCC Presents Juan GonzĂĄlez. Youtube. Red. Brademas, John. Washington, D.C. to Washington Square. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1986. Communications, NYU Web. Columnist and Author Juan GonzĂĄlez Joins King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center at NYU. Dopico, Ana. (2018). Grant Report Mellon Sawyer Seminar at New York University Cuban Futures Beyond the Market: Geopolitics and Interpretive Infrastructures in the Humanities, Social Science and the Law. Faber, Sebastiaan. âScholars, Spies, and Other Agents: US Hispanism and the Stateâ. Revista His pĂĄnica Moderna, vol. 74, no. 1, 2021, 47â59. Red.
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Centros culturales contemporĂĄneos y el desmontaje de la jerarquĂa naturalizada Rachel Moorman-Minton Las universidades han compartido un papel central en el establecimiento de jerarquĂas y lĂmites de conocimiento que influyen no tan solo en los que estudian en ellas, sino a travĂ©s de las normas culturales que promueven a nivel global. En el caso de una universidad como NYU, hay bĂĄsicamente dos niveles de preguntas que podrĂamos hacernos al pensar en el KJCC, un centro cultural dedicado a España y al mundo hispanohablante. ÂżCuĂĄles son los objetivos diplomĂĄticos y econĂłmicos de los paĂses que representa? ÂżQuĂ© representaciĂłn y acceso tienen las poblaciones cuyas historias aparecen en las colecciones y programas de la instituciĂłn? Si una instituciĂłn intenta crear un centro cultural âespecialmente si estĂĄ dedicado al mundo hispanohablante que es producto de siglos de represiĂłn de lenguas, culturas y formas de vidaâ es necesario tomar como objetivo central una representaciĂłn justa y equitativa de toda la poblaciĂłn. Hay razones muy pragmĂĄticas para dedicar un centro al estudio del mundo hispanohablante. La mayorĂa de este hemisferio habla español y la poblaciĂłn hispanohablante en los Estados Unidos estĂĄ creciendo, especialmente en una ciudad como Nueva York. Una de las misiones institucionales de la Universidad de Nueva York es incluir distintas perspectivas internacionales en la experiencia educativa. AdemĂĄs, intenta establecer normas globales para la excelencia acadĂ©mica. NYU se encuentra en una posiciĂłn muy ventajosa para trabajar con estos objetivos porque se ha posicionado como un ejemplo de la universidad âinstrumentalâ, evidenciado en sus exitosos sitios globales que la han ayudado a conseguir una presencia internacional casi sin rival (Schrum). Este prestigio global es un privilegio, pero es tambiĂ©n una enorme responsabilidad. Frank y Meyer cuestionan las suposiciones que respalda la universidad, incluyendo la idea de que el conocimiento sea coherente y unificado y de que exista un conocimiento universalmente verdadero. Estas ideas le dan mĂĄs importancia a la universidad por su papel en la difusiĂłn del conocimiento, creando un ciclo de refuerzo del poder universitario. Eduardo Restrepo llama la atenciĂłn sobre la fuente de estas ideas occidentales sobre el conocimiento: la colonialidad. Es decir, la clasificaciĂłn y valorizaciĂłn del conocimiento tiene sus raĂces en la colonizaciĂłn y ha resultado en un mundo acadĂ©mico eurocĂ©ntrico. HistĂłricamente ha existido, dentro de las instituciones culturales, una agenda de represiĂłn. Joan Ramon Resina comenta: âcultural agents 206
are, therefore, encouraged to repress not only the link between cultural universality and violence but even the historical traces of the latterâ (Resina 163). Una instituciĂłn contemporĂĄnea debe, por lo tanto, como eje central deconstruir estas jerarquĂas de conocimiento y la examinaciĂłn de la subyugaciĂłn colonial presente en la historia del mundo hispanohablante. Por eso, la pregunta central que se debe considerar en relaciĂłn con el establecimiento de una instituciĂłn cultural dentro de una universidad es: Âżse puede considerar la suma de los contenidos de una instituciĂłn como representativa de la poblaciĂłn que se propone representar? Es una pregunta que tiene varios niveles de anĂĄlisis y en la prĂĄctica no hay recursos ni tiempo en un centro cultural para investigarlos todos. Pero si esta pregunta se encuentra en el centro de la organizaciĂłn de los archivos de una instituciĂłn, dicha instituciĂłn puede adelantarse continuamente hacia mejores representaciones de la historia y la cultura que celebra. Es una pregunta que promueve investigaciones sobre el legado del colonialismo en las instituciones contemporĂĄneas. De hecho, es necesario preguntarse sobre la categorizaciĂłn del mismo tema de estudio, segĂșn plantea James FernĂĄndez cuando señala que: The places assigned to âLatin Americaâ and âSpainâ in Hispanic studies are linked in complex ways and are subject to constant shifting. These places are neither natural nor necessary; they cannot be designated as coordinates of latitude and longitude, nor as branches and sub-branches of a genealogical tree (FernĂĄndez 136). FernĂĄndez llama la atenciĂłn al hecho de que los lugares estudiados con el hispanismo no tienen una conexiĂłn intrĂnseca, por eso hay que cuestionar los contenidos del centro cultural. Es importante reconocer quiĂ©n estĂĄ siendo representado en la colecciĂłn y desde quĂ© punto de vista. No se puede pensar solo en los objetos fĂsicos, sino tambiĂ©n en la programaciĂłn, los conferenciantes invitados y los empleados del centro cultural. ÂżQuĂ© historias reciben prioridad? ÂżSe estĂĄ presentando una versiĂłn eurocĂ©ntrica de la historia? ÂżSe le da prioridad a la historia de la asimilaciĂłn en AmĂ©rica Latina? Hay que tratar de recuperar las âluchas que [se] habĂan sumergido en el olvidoâ (Restrepo 10). En un mundo mĂĄs y mĂĄs interconectado (algo que transcurriĂł en parte a travĂ©s de las universidades), el papel de la universidad no debe ser educar desde un punto de vista de autoridad completa sobre los lĂmites del conocimiento y de la historia. Aunque las universidades fundan centros culturales, en ocasiones, por razones diplomĂĄticas y muchas veces econĂłmicas, tambiĂ©n existe el imperativo moral de presentar de forma justa a la poblaciĂłn que intenta representar. Si un centro cultural intenta ser representativo del mundo hispanohablante, lo mĂĄs importante es que se aproxime a esa representaciĂłn de forma crĂtica. 207
BibliografĂa Communications, NYU Web. âAbout NYUâ. NYU, New York University. Red. FernĂĄndez, James D. ââLongfellowâs Law:â The Place of Latin America and Spain in U.S. Hispanism, circa 1915â. En Kagan. Richard L Spain in America: The Origins of Hispanism in the United States. Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2002. Frank, David John y Meyer, John W. âThe University as a World Institutionâ, en The University and The Global Knowledge Society. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2020. Resina, Joan RamĂłn. âWhose Hispanism? Cultural Trauma, Disciplined Memory, and Symbolic Dominanceâ. En Moraña, Mabel. Ideologies of Hispanism. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2005. Restrepo, Eduardo âDecolonizar la universidadâ. En Barbosa, Jorge Luis y Pereira, Lewis. InvestigaciĂłn cualitativa emergente: reflexiones y casos. Sincelejo (Colombia): Cecar, 2018. Schrum, Ethan. âInstruments of Technical Cooperationâ: American Universitiesâ Institution Building Abroadâ. En The Instrumental University. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019.
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CĂłmo revitalizar una instituciĂłn cultural bicentenaria Miguel Caballero VĂĄzquez Entrevista con Luis Arroyo, nuevo presidente del Ateneo de Madrid En mayo de 2021, ganĂł las elecciones a la Junta de Gobierno del Ateneo de Madrid un grupo de personas que se habĂan hecho socias recientemente con el fin de revitalizar esta instituciĂłn cultural bicentenaria. El Ateneo naciĂł en 1820, al calor del liberalismo decimonĂłnico. A pesar de sus importantes carencias originales (exclusiĂłn de las mujeres, elitismo), fue clave en la creaciĂłn de una esfera pĂșblica democrĂĄtica en España desde entonces hasta la II RepĂșblica. Sin embargo, en los Ășltimos años el Ateneo ha ocupado una posiciĂłn secundaria en la vida cultural de la capital y del paĂs. El grupo que recientemente ha asumido su gobierno le diagnosticaba una muerte lenta por irrelevancia si no habĂa un giro radical en su gestiĂłn y programaciĂłn, para volver a convertirlo en cumbre de la excelencia en los debates artĂsticos, cientĂficos y culturales. Los socios de las candidaturas opuestas, con muchos mĂĄs años de pertenencia a la instituciĂłn, acusan a este grupo y a su nueva Junta de Gobierno de retratar injustamente al Ateneo como una instituciĂłn en decadencia y de querer modificar el reglamento para patrimonializarla. Esta entrevista con el nuevo presidente del Ateneo, Luis Arroyo, busca aclarar esta situaciĂłn. Se hace, ademĂĄs, en el contexto de otro aniversario, el del veinticinco cumpleaños del Centro Rey Juan Carlos I de España de la Universidad de Nueva York. El objetivo es indagar en la polĂtica de las instituciones culturales para conocer el nuevo proyecto del Ateneo en el momento en que se da su cambio de gobierno y las celebraciones de su segundo centenario, y que esta conversaciĂłn sirva, por contraste, para reflexionar sobre el aniversario del Centro Rey Juan Carlos I de España. Algunos de los temas que estĂĄn en debate son el lugar de la sociedad civil organizada en la promociĂłn cultural, la definiciĂłn de servicio pĂșblico, la caracterizaciĂłn de la excelencia, y el lugar de la empresa privada en la financiaciĂłn de las instituciones culturales.
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Caballero VĂĄzquez: En mayo de 2021 se celebraron las elecciones de la Junta de Gobierno del Ateneo de Madrid y ganĂł el Grupo 1820 que usted encabeza. Usted es sociĂłlogo y se dedica a la comunicaciĂłn polĂtica. Le acompañan personas del mundo de la empresa, de la universidad y de las artes. ÂżCĂłmo se forma este grupo? Arroyo: Todo empieza en una conversaciĂłn familiar con mi hijo, que es abogado y economista de 26 años, y mi pareja [Pepita MarĂn, CEO de We Are Knitters y miembro del Consejo de AdministraciĂłn de PRISA], una empresaria dieciocho años menor que yo y, por lo tanto, cercana en edad a mi hijo. Ambos compartĂan la insatisfacciĂłn por la situaciĂłn actual de los debates pĂșblicos, los cuales estĂĄn polarizados, simplificados, saturados por las redes sociales que no aclaran nada. En ese contexto proponen la creaciĂłn de un grupo de debate, y mĂĄs adelante se nos ocurre la idea del Ateneo. Como me he dedicado a la comunicaciĂłn polĂtica, yo ya conocĂa esta instituciĂłn, aunque de paso. La he visitado cuando he acompañado a ministros y presidentes [Arroyo ocupĂł diferentes puestos en los gabinetes de comunicaciĂłn de los ministerios del gobierno de España del presidente del Partido Socialista JosĂ© Luis RodrĂguez Zapatero (20042011)]. AsĂ que decidimos visitarla los tres, y nos hicimos socios inmediatamente. QuerĂamos reconstruir ese espĂritu de debate y comenzamos a llamar a gente de confianza para compartirles la idea y animarlos a que se hicieran socios del Ateneo. Si uno quiere tener un impacto en una instituciĂłn como esa, la Ășnica forma es contar con un volumen de socios importante que respalden el proyecto. Esa posibilidad estĂĄ en el reglamento, se trata de una casa muy democrĂĄtica, todo se decide por mayorĂa. En el grupo inicial estaban, por ejemplo, el diplomĂĄtico Juanjo Herrera de la Muela, que fue consejero de asuntos culturales del consulado de Nueva York durante varios años. Otro diplomĂĄtico, Carmelo Angulo. El que fuera Secretario de Estado de Cultura, JosĂ© MarĂa Lasalle. La actual directora del diario El PaĂs, Pepa Bueno. BuscĂĄbamos tambiĂ©n gente de distintas generaciones, porque cuando llegamos nosotros la media de edad de los miembros del Ateneo era de 70 años. Caballero VĂĄzquez: ÂżCuĂĄles son las prioridades de su proyecto? Arroyo: En un principio, nosotros formamos un grupo de doscientas personas, con el objetivo claro de entrar en la organizaciĂłn, que era la forma mĂĄs efectiva de revitalizar el Ateneo. Somos altruistas, pero no idiotas. Para cambiar las cosas sabĂamos que debĂamos estar en la Junta de Gobierno. NecesitĂĄbamos una masa crĂtica que ganara las elecciones limpiamente. Claro, la direcciĂłn anterior se dio cuenta y reaccionaron con temor. Pero tambiĂ©n es verdad que es una instituciĂłn fascinante y muy democrĂĄtica, y que nadie nos dijo que no. Lo que sĂ hicieron fue 210
subir la cuota de inscripciĂłn de 60 a 100 euros. Perjudicaron a algunos jĂłvenes, pero a nosotros no nos afectĂł demasiado. Cuando ganamos las elecciones, la bajamos a 50 euros. Pepita y yo llegamos hasta esta victoria electoral tras un largo año de trabajo intenso, de muchas horas y algo de dinero. Tenemos la suerte de que nuestras profesiones nos permitieron contar con ese tiempo, y que los medios de comunicaciĂłn y algunas instituciones se interesaron por nuestro proyecto. De lo primero que hicimos fue nombrar a un gerente, pues esta instituciĂłn tiene dos siglos y nunca ha tenido uno. Los empleados estaban locos, no sabĂan a quiĂ©n responder. Esta figura del gerente es clave porque maneja el dĂa a dĂa de la instituciĂłn. Nos llegaron ciento treinta y siete currĂculums. Entrevistamos a siete, y la plaza fue finalmente para RaĂșl Asenjo, que venĂa de ser Asistente de DirecciĂłn ArtĂstica del Teatro de la Zarzuela. Caballero VĂĄzquez: ÂżQuĂ© diagnĂłstico hace, pues, de la historia del Ateneo y de su situaciĂłn actual? Arroyo: El Ateneo fue la instituciĂłn cultural mĂĄs relevante de Madrid y en buena medida de España desde finales del siglo XIX hasta la Guerra Civil. El edificio que hoy ocupamos es de 1885, un momento de esplendor. Nace vinculado al liberalismo, pero al liberalismo clĂĄsico decimonĂłnico, no al de hoy, de personajes como Macron o Esperanza Aguirre. Siempre ha habido una preponderancia de lo progresista entendido en un sentido amplio. Era un lugar que practicaba la libertad de creencias, de expresiĂłn y de discusiĂłn. Y por supuesto era el lugar de la excelencia y de la vanguardia. Yo no puedo compararme con los presidentes del Ateneo de esa Ă©poca porque eran figuras ilustrĂsimas e invitaban a conferenciantes de primera categorĂa. En el Ateneo dieron conferencias Einstein, Marie Curie, la Madre Teresa de Calcuta. Han intervenido todos los presidentes de la RepĂșblica y de los gobiernos democrĂĄticos. De hecho, despuĂ©s de la guerra, y, aunque Falange controlaba el Ateneo, la instituciĂłn siguiĂł manteniendo relativamente viva la llama de cierta pluralidad. Franco la usĂł para justificarse ante los Estados Unidos desde la evidencia de una asociaciĂłn que presentaba como libre, aunque esa libertad tuviera muchas limitaciones. Pero sĂ es verdad que en los años 40-50, para el contexto en que estaba, era una instituciĂłn que se mantenĂa viva. TambiĂ©n hay sospechas de que pudiera ser un escondite de nazis, aunque eso aĂșn no estĂĄ confirmado. No obstante, en los Ășltimos años sĂ que vivĂa un perĂodo de decadencia, y por eso nuestro proyecto es recobrar esa excelencia que lo caracterizĂł en el pasado. Caballero VĂĄzquez: Su candidatura y su incipiente gestiĂłn han recibido crĂticas de otros ateneĂstas que llevaban mĂĄs tiempo en la instituciĂłn. Primero, le reprochan la campaña que ha hecho mostrando un Ateneo no democrĂĄtico, cerrado y decadente, cuando en realidad la victoria de su grupo en las 211
elecciones, dicen, muestra precisamente que el Ateneo sĂ era una instituciĂłn abierta, en el que incluso socios recientes pueden llegar a acumular mucha influencia y capacidad de gestiĂłn. Segundo, que de alguna manera estĂĄ intentando patrimonializar el Ateneo, privatizarlo, a travĂ©s de cambios en el reglamento que harĂan pasar al Ateneo de un modelo social a uno corporativo. ÂżCĂłmo responde a esas crĂticas? Arroyo: Yo trato de ser objetivo. Es cierto que nos encontramos tres crisis al llegar: carencia de socios, quiebra econĂłmica y crisis de gobierno. Se demuestra por datos. A principios de los años 80, el Ateneo tenĂa siete mil socios. Cuando llegamos nosotros hace un par de años, contaba sĂłlo con unos mil ochocientos. Son nĂșmeros objetivos, incuestionables, que hablan de la pĂ©rdida de interĂ©s y relevancia. Los socios se van muriendo y no se renuevan. AdemĂĄs, de esos mil ochocientos, en las juntas participaban unos quince o veinte. Y, con todo mi respeto para todas las profesiones, no eran precisamente catedrĂĄticos, sino gente que llevaba allĂ muchos años y que habĂa hecho del Ateneo un modus vivendi. Es muy atractivo, porque claro, es un lugar con salas histĂłricas, en el que uno se siente conectado a grandes personalidades del pasado. Ese grupo vio nuestra llegada como una amenaza a su modus vivendi, y es comprensible, yo lo entiendo. Pero es que al Ateneo si no se le da vida, se muere. Ellos presentaron cuatro candidaturas y nosotros presentamos una y ganamos casi por mayorĂa absoluta. Con respecto a la crisis econĂłmica, el Ateneo tiene una deuda de un millĂłn y medio de euros con la AdministraciĂłn debido a unas obras que se llevaron a cabo hace una dĂ©cada y que no se justificaron correctamente. Ahora estamos negociando esa deuda con el Ministerio de Cultura. AdemĂĄs, tenemos unas pĂ©rdidas de entre cien mil y ciento cincuenta mil euros anuales. Las subvenciones, cuotas y alquileres no dan para cubrir todos los gastos. Con respecto a la crisis de gobierno, nosotros no somos dictadores, pero es verdad que en las juntas cada mes se montan unos buenos follones, gente que arranca el micrĂłfono, que nos insulta. Si hasta la figura del gerente cuestionan. Es lamentable. La otra crĂtica es la de privatizar el Ateneo. Lo primero que hay que entender es que el Ateneo es, y ha sido siempre, una sociedad absolutamente privada. Eso quiere decir que, aunque tiene importantes subvenciones y ha sido nombrada bien de interĂ©s cultural, pertenece exclusivamente a sus socios y rinde cuentas ante ellos en las juntas que se celebran cada mes. Antes de ser Junta de Gobierno, nosotros fuimos socios dos años y asistimos a las juntas generales. Hay que entender tambiĂ©n que este modelo de junta mensual funcionarĂa bien para la alta burguesĂa del siglo XIX o para personas mĂĄs ociosas en la actualidad, pero que es un ritmo que casi nadie puede aguantar hoy en dĂa. Aun asĂ, hay que dejar claro que donde antes eran veinte personas 212
en las reuniones, ahora somos entre ciento veinte y ciento cuarenta, de las cuales ochenta son nuestras y por eso ganamos las votaciones. Si es una dictadura, es una dictadura de la mayorĂa. Pero somos muy flexibles a la hora de aplicar el reglamento. Es cierto, no obstante, que queremos cambiar ciertas reglas. Un proceso de transformaciĂłn de una instituciĂłn cultural como Ă©sta es lento. La Junta de Gobierno estĂĄ formada por once miembros. Se renuevan seis un año y cinco el año siguiente. Ahora mismo el Grupo 1820 tiene seis miembros en la Junta de Gobierno, pero gobernamos junto con otro grupo que tiene cinco. Esto de los dos grupos estĂĄ bien como idea, pero es muy inoperante, te instalas en la continua crisis de gobernanza. Por eso quisiĂ©ramos una modificaciĂłn del reglamento para que se eligieran juntas de once miembros con mandatos estables de cuatro años. Con mandatos tan cortos como los de ahora, ademĂĄs, es que nadie se fĂa de ti para poder pedir dinero, invertir en tu proyecto. Me parece de sentido comĂșn alargar esos mandatos y que sean de grupos de once. La situaciĂłn de ahora mismo implica estar todo el tiempo de campaña, con gobiernos muy inestables. Caballero VĂĄzquez: SĂ puede verse en los Ășltimos eventos organizados que el Ateneo estĂĄ abierto a colaborar con empresas como Mahou. Estoy pensando en los eventos de âLa caña del Ateneoâ. ÂżCĂłmo concibe, entonces, la relaciĂłn entre el Ateneo y las empresas privadas? ÂżEs la promociĂłn de la cultura de empresa algo que tambiĂ©n estĂĄ interesado en promover el Ateneo? Arroyo: Lo que hace especial al Ateneo es que es una sociedad privada, que pertenece sĂłlo a sus socios. No tiene grandes benefactores corporativos. Es verdad que recibe subvenciones de las instituciones pĂșblicas y esto va a seguir siendo asĂ. Pero tambiĂ©n es cierto que la mayorĂa de las grandes instituciones culturales tiene grandes sponsors corporativos, como el Centro Rey Juan Carlos I de España de la Universidad de Nueva York, que tiene a La Caixa [El Centro Rey Juan Carlos I de España tuvo como sponsors fundadores a corporaciones como Caixa dâEstalvis i Pensions de Barcelona, Caja de Ahorros y Monte de Piedad de Madrid, The Coca-Cola Foundation, FundaciĂłn Coca-Cola España, FundaciĂłn RamĂłn Areces, FundaciĂłn Tabacalera, S.A., Grupo Endesa, Iberdrola, S.A., Morgan Stanley Group, Pfizer Inc, RENFE, y TelefĂłnica de España, S.A., y a donantes individuales como Milton y Carroll Petrie, y el embajador de Estados Unidos en España George Argyros. Tras la fundaciĂłn del Centro, gracias a estas donaciones, es la Universidad de Nueva York la que cubre la mayorĂa de los gastos del funcionamiento del Centro.] Nosotros vamos a colaborar con empresas, pero las empresas no van a estar en la Junta de Gobierno. Las decisiones las van a seguir tomando los socios. Ahora, es ridĂculo que se pueda alquilar una sala a TelefĂłnica para un evento por seis mil euros y sin embargo no podamos hacer 213
un acuerdo con TelefĂłnica para que nos pongan el wifi a cambio de colocar una plaquita en el edificio que señale esta colaboraciĂłn. Nunca nos vamos a llamar Ateneo Mahou, pero sĂ podemos albergar eventos de Mahou como âLa caña del Ateneoâ. Eso sĂ, la empresa tiene que informar de a quiĂ©n invita a esos eventos para que nosotros demos el visto bueno y nos aseguremos de que el evento nos beneficia a ambos, a la instituciĂłn y a la empresa. Por ejemplo, vamos a colaborar con Mutua Madrileña, que nos va a reparar la biblioteca, porque se encuentra en un estado lamentable. Y vamos a trabajar tambiĂ©n con El Corte InglĂ©s, que nos va a proporcionar la decoraciĂłn de la casa, porque la excelencia hay que cuidarla tambiĂ©n en el ambiente. Ya no estamos en el siglo XIX donde los socios eran alto burgueses que pagaban de su bolsillo. Ni vamos a pedir dinero a los alto burgueses de hoy en dĂa. Pero sĂ necesitamos patrocinadores para que esos proyectos se lleven a cabo. Caballero VĂĄzquez: Cuenta el escritor AgustĂn de FoxĂĄ (con cierto espanto, porque no era precisamente un liberal) que en los años 30 se impartĂan en el Ateneo conferencias sobre vegetarianismo, psicoanĂĄlisis o derechos humanos. ÂżEn quĂ© sentido asumirĂĄ ahora las manifestaciones culturales mĂĄs vanguardistas del momento, como ya hizo en el s. XIX y principios del XX? Es decir, ÂżquĂ© lugar les darĂĄ, por ejemplo, a las propuestas de cultura feminista, antirracista, el movimiento trans, o el ecologista en su agenda cultural? Arroyo: El Ateneo tiene que estar a la vanguardia. En los Ășltimos tiempos se hablaba mucho de los muertos y muy poco de los vivos. Es decir, se hacĂan muchos actos sobre el XIX, sobre GaldĂłs, sobre la RepĂșblica, y todo eso estĂĄ muy bien porque tambiĂ©n es una manera de reivindicar la historia bellĂsima del Ateneo. Pero, insisto, hay que estar a la vanguardia. Elevar el nivel de la conversaciĂłn desde la Junta de Gobierno y desde las Secciones. El problema es que nuestro grupo quizĂĄs se ha relajado un poco y en las recientes elecciones a Secciones los otros grupos se han organizado mejor y han ganado muchas. Nosotros nos hemos quedado fuera de algunas importantes. La SecciĂłn de Literatura tiene que traer a las vanguardias literarias, pero no hemos ganado nosotros esa SecciĂłn y, sinceramente, tampoco confĂo mucho en como ha quedado configurada. Nuestra propuesta es recuperar el concepto de cĂĄtedra de finales del XIX y principios del XX. Traer al Ateneo a diez maestros, diez figuras de vanguardia de cada SecciĂłn. Pero no de vanguardia madrileña o española, sino mundial. Por ejemplo, desde la SecciĂłn de Arquitectura traer a diez maestros de la arquitectura mundial y que en esa lista haya un equilibrio nortesur, hombres-mujeres, jĂłvenes-mayores. Ahora mismo estamos trabajando en una CĂĄtedra de 214
Derechos Humanos para traer a diez maestros de ese campo. En el cine, imagino trayendo a Tarantino y Woody Allen, a los directores coreanos que estĂĄn haciendo un trabajo interesante, a la Ășltima directora africana que estĂ© despuntando. Son cĂĄtedras caras, pero estamos inventando una fĂłrmula para que los maestros lo tengan fĂĄcil para venir. Les damos un perĂodo de seis meses para que elijan fecha, los queremos rodear de un grupo de alumnos distinguidos, que se reĂșnan con autoridades. Cosas de sentido comĂșn. La excelencia es un criterio subjetivo, pero es imprescindible que al Ateneo lleguen los ilustres. La excelencia llamarĂĄ a la excelencia. Es un proceso lento, claro. Por eso necesitamos tambiĂ©n perĂodos de gobierno mĂĄs largos. Necesitamos estabilidad de gobierno para recuperar lo excelente. Caballero VĂĄzquez: ÂżQuĂ© lugar imagina para el Ateneo dentro de Madrid, primero de su barrio, el Barrio de las Letras, y segundo en relaciĂłn a otras instituciones culturales vecinas como el Instituto Cervantes, la Casa de AmĂ©rica, La Casa Encendida, El CĂrculo de Bellas Artes, El Matadero, etc.? Arroyo: El Ateneo es la representaciĂłn de la sociedad civil mĂĄs pura. La Casa Encendida hace un trabajo fenomenal, pero estĂĄ controlada por una fundaciĂłn. El Instituto Cervantes pertenece al estado español y no vamos a competir con ellos en impartir clases de español, obviamente. El CĂrculo de Bellas Artes es probablemente la instituciĂłn mĂĄs parecida a nosotros, pero tiene en el patronato a autoridades y corporaciones que sĂ mandan mucho. Los socios pintan poco en las grandes decisiones. El objetivo es que el Ateneo conserve esa identidad de sociedad civil con la que naciĂł. En el preĂĄmbulo de su creaciĂłn, en 1820, se estipula que el objetivo es proporcionar ilustraciĂłn de manera altruista a travĂ©s de las artes, las ciencias y las letras. Era un club de hombres, porque al principio eran todos hombres, que se reunĂan para cultivar la conversaciĂłn, la literatura, el debate, el disfrute. SeguĂa el modelo britĂĄnico, pero era menos elitista, mĂĄs plural y mĂĄs pobre, pero de una belleza espectacular. Gente que se reĂșne porque sĂ. Es obvio que luego cada uno tenĂa su vanidad, pero fundamentalmente venĂan a reunirse y a ilustrarse. Eso lo tienen La Casa Encendida y El Matadero, pero ambos cuentan detrĂĄs con instituciones privadas o pĂșblicas. AquĂ no, aquĂ somos socios individuales. El Ateneo es perfectamente compatible con todas estas instituciones y de hecho tenemos relaciones excelentes con todas ellas, sobre todo con el CĂrculo. Con el Instituto Cervantes menos, pero tambiĂ©n. Hace poco me llamĂł Luis GarcĂa Montero para ver si podĂamos colaborar acogiendo una ceremonia de entrega de premios de derechos humanos, y por supuesto lo hicimos.
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Caballero VĂĄzquez: El Grupo 1820 hace referencia a la fundaciĂłn del Ateneo en su nombre. ÂżQuĂ© rol tendrĂĄ la celebraciĂłn del bicentenario en el nuevo posicionamiento del Ateneo? Arroyo: Es cierto que el Bicentenario se celebrĂł formalmente en el año 2020. Se constituyĂł una comisiĂłn presidida por uno de los socios mĂĄs antiguos, el abogado Antonio Garrigues. Pero se hizo casi nada, fue un acto muy deslucido, en el que ni el alcalde de Madrid estuvo presente. AdemĂĄs, cayĂł la pandemia, lo que condicionĂł muchĂsimo el trabajo. Por eso, nada mĂĄs llegar nosotros a la Junta de Gobierno hemos solicitado una enmienda a los presupuestos del estado para declarar el bicentenario bien de interĂ©s pĂșblico, lo que implica una desgravaciĂłn muy importante. Y lo hemos conseguido. Tenemos buenas relaciones con el ministerio y la enmienda se aprobĂł por unanimidad. AdemĂĄs, el estado es generoso con las fechas y nos ha dado tres años. Vamos a celebrar un bicentenario a la altura de lo que el Ateneo se merece. Renovar algunas de las estructuras del edificio para hacerlo mĂĄs seguro frente a los incendios. Llevaremos a cabo mejoras en el SalĂłn de Actos, redecoraremos La CacharrerĂa y la GalerĂa de Retratos. Incluiremos retratos de mujeres, porque sĂłlo existĂa el de Emilia Pardo BazĂĄn. Hace poco incorporamos el de Carmen Laforet, que nos lo ha pagado AcciĂłn Cultural Española con motivo del centenario del nacimiento de la escritora. ÂżSabes que Laforet escribiĂł parte de Nada en la biblioteca del Ateneo? Se vienen tambiĂ©n los de Clara Campoamor, MarĂa Zambrano, Victoria Kent, Carmen MartĂn Gaite, Carmen de Burgos, Blanca de los RĂos. Y Almudena Grandes, claro. Los camerinos del salĂłn de actos estĂĄn llenos de muebles. Hay que habilitarlos para que cuando llegue un pianista se sienta cĂłmodo. Son cosas muy obvias, de sentido comĂșn. Pero claves para recuperar la excelencia.
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âOrientalismâ in the Alhambra:
Examining Western Perceptions of the Alhambra and the Fountain in the Court of the Lions Maya Mau âThe Orient was Orientalized not only because it was discovered to be âOrientalâ in all the ways considered commonplace by an average nineteenth-century European, but also because it could beâthat is, submitted to beingâmade Oriental.â Edward Said, Orientalism, 1978. Introduction Based on its historic relationship to the rest of Europe, one might mistake the famed Alhambra in Granada for being located in the Middle East. When Charles V arrived at the Alhambra in the sixteenth century, he built a palace next door to establish dominance over it, conveying that he was powerful enough to do anything he wished to his surroundings (Brothers 79). Three centuries later, Washington Irving used the word âOrientalâ to mystically refer to the palaceâs features, creating an image of the fortress as dilapidated glory, a metaphor for the Muslim presence in Spain (Irving, âThe Court of Lionsâ). Throughout the history of Alhambra scholarship, visitors have emphasized its anomalousness and defined it by its relationship to the West. Lack of scholarship about the Alhambra in Arabic contributes to the cultural biases that permeate the field (Robinson lecture). This prevents the West from understanding the Alhambra as possessing an identity unrelated to its relationship to Christian Europe, thus contorting the Western perception of the Alhambra. The Alhambra has captured the imagination of Christian European visitors since its creation. It is in a unique position as the biggest Islamic structure in Western Europe, a relic of the Granada which once flourished as a Muslim stronghold on the Iberian peninsula. As such, almost all scholarship on the Alhambra is from the perspective of scholars with a Western educational background. Many researchers have fallen into the trap of letting biases about Islamic culture distort their analyses of the Alhambraâs history, art and poetry. Throughout history, Western visitors have described the Alhambra as a structure to be dominated, exoticized, placed in a European context rather than understood as possessing an independent identity. Thereforeâ despite the preservation of its design, artwork and poetryâthe Alhambra has historically been 217
resigned to an existence of being âOrientalized,â a phenomenon described in Saidâs famed Orientalism. The sixteenth and nineteenth century approaches differ, however, in that sixteenth century visitors imposed Western and Christian styles on the Alhambra and its landscape. Later, nineteenth century visitors would choose to emphasize the Alhambraâs decayed grandeur as a sign of a decayed East for the rest of the world to see. The âOrientalistâ lens through which visitors have traditionally analyzed the Alhambra has deep roots which continue to skew scholarship in the contemporary era. âOrientalismâ Edward Saidâs Orientalism revealed intense biases within Western scholarship of non-Western cultures. In Orientalism, Said details the dynamic between the âOccidentâ (the West) and the âOrientâ (the East). He developed his theories to describe the relationship between Europe and the Middle East, which applies to the Alhambra, as Granada and the Middle East share Islam as their dominant religion. Orientalism was revolutionary because it forced Western scholars to consider the biased lens through which they and others perceived and interpreted non-Western culture. Said draws distinctions between three different registers of the word âOrientâ: the academic field, the style of thought based on East v. West, and the Western style of having authority over âthe Orientâ (Said, âIntroductionâ). The first usage describes Eastern Studies in Western universities, encapsulating the study of Islamic art such as the Alhambra. The second use explains that, from the perspective of Western scholarship, the âOrientâ is everything that the âOccidentâ is not. The romanticization of the Alhambra, as a means of establishing a difference from Western architecture, demonstrates this binary perspective. The last-mentioned employment of âOrientâ explains how the West perceives the âOrientâ and its history as defined by its submission to the âOccidentâ (Said 14). As such, Said believes the West conceptualizes everything relating to Eastern culture through an âOrientalistâ filter, consciously or not, even though aspects of the East possess identities that can be understood in their own contexts. Other scholars have noted the effect of âOrientalismâ on discussions of the Alhambra, revealing the limitations of the Westâs interaction with Muslim Spain. In âVersions and Visions of the Alhambra in the Nineteenth-Century Ottoman World,â McSweeny notes that the Alhambra has been âdigested,â âinterpreted,â and âdisplayedâ for the purpose of Western entertainment (McSweeny 46). In âOrientalism and Architectural Culture,â Bozdogan discusses how nineteenth century architects drew meticulous sketches of the Alhambra for the purpose of recreating it in the West (Bozdogan 54). For example, a lion court was replicated for the 1900 Paris Exposition (Irwin 175). This reveals a shortcoming in Western thought: Western audiences have been unable 218
to understand Eastern art in the culture in which it was created, instead falsely assuming that it was created to entertain the West. This perspective positions the West as superior to the East. In Orientalism, Said describes âthe web of racism, cultural stereotypes, political imperialism, dehumanizing ideologyâ which people of Islamic heritage are subjected to if members of Western civilization (Said 25). By virtue of (in the eyes of the West) being relegated to an existence of Western entertainment, the Alhambra has historically received attention from the West through such a lens. This has characterized the way in which the West has documented the Alhambra through artwork and literature, also affecting how the rest of the Western world romanticized the palace and its history. Saidâs theories are therefore highly relevant to analyzing the scholarship of the Alhambra. The Sixteenth Century Approach to the Alhambra The approach of Charles V to Granada and letters from Andrea Navagero, a Venetian ambassador who visited the Alhambra in 1526, show that the âOrientalistâ approach to the Alhambra and Granada is deeply ingrained in history. In âThe Renaissance Reception of the Alhambra,â Brothers describes the way in which discussions surrounding the Alhambra have been âanchoredâ by comparisons to Italian and Spanish art since the sixteenth century (Brothers 80). The manner in which Charles V renovated the Alhambra so that he could admire it while satisfying his needs and desires reveals his attitude that the palace existed to please him rather than to serve as a significant relic of Spanish Muslim culture. His grandparents, the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, had lived in the Palace of the Lions (and the Palace of Comares) under the same conditions as the Nasrids had, showing that it was well fit for human habitation (Willmert 157). However, between 1528 and 1533, Charles V added living spaces to enable access to areas of the Alhambra which he liked the most, especially the Court of Lions. As the centerpiece of the Court of Lions and arguably its most iconic feature, the fountainâs accessibility was facilitated through Charles Vâs renovations. Though he did not cause damage in creating access to the Court of Lions, neither did he engage with the artwork (Brothers 84), reflecting an attitude that the art done by Islamic artists should be made accessible to a Catholic monarch, but that such imperialistic leaders are not obligated to understand the artâs cultural roots. The partly Italian Renaissance style in which Charles V decorated his rooms further establishes his imperialist mindset. By altering the Alhambra to suit his needs, Charles V asserted his power over the fountain in the Court of Lions, one of the Alhambraâs most iconic features. Charles V subsequently built his own palace next to the Alhambra, dominating its landscape and further revealing his intention to alter Granada without care for its cultural background. The palace that he and his wife, Isabella of Portugal, built was done in a classical 219
Greek and Roman style, which was in vogue in Europe at the time (Loukomski 119). The optics of building a Renaissance-style palace next to an Islamic cultural relic speaks for itself; Charles V believed that he was improving, rather than merely appreciating, the Alhambraâs landscape by altering it, leaving his imprint as a Catholic monarch who lauded Greco-Roman style. The palace has received a lot of attention in the context of the Italian Renaissance but less so in relation to Granada (Brothers 80.). This is due to the fact that, from a Western perspective, the palaceâs importance comes from the fact that it Westernized the surroundings of the Alhambra. By building the palace, Charles V left his mark on Granada, literally surrounding Alhambra with European culture (RipollĂ©s 1065). Thus, the act of creating the Alhambra established Charles Vâs dominance of the Alhambra, Catholic dominance of Islam, and âOccidentalâ dominance over the âOrientâ (in Saidâs terms). The trend of framing Charles Vâs palace and the Alhambra in terms of European style and history is consistent with the phenomenon of âOrientalismâ that Said described. Andrea Navageroâs approach to the Alhambra also reveals an imperialist mindset. Though Brothers describes Navageroâs descriptions of the Alhambra as âfactual contentâ from a âwell-educated humanist,â Navageroâs bias still shines through his writing (Brothers 79). When Navagero looked at and wrote about the Alhambra, he described it in terms of features he knew of from classical literature. These comparisons may well have been valid, but to focus on the resemblance of the Alhambra to European art entails a neglect of its identity as Islamic art. Navagero writes that the Alhambra is only missing âsomeone to appreciate it, and enjoy it,â revealing his inability to comprehend the Alhambra in the context in which it was created (Brothers 81). When he visited Granada in 1592, there were few changes since the Christian reconquest of 1492, meaning that it is unlikely that the still-numerous Muslim population did not appreciate or enjoy the Alhambra (Brothers 79). It is unclear whether Navagero was referring to appreciation of the Alhambra up-close or from afar, but his statement nevertheless neglects the fact that the Muslim population of Granada still valued the Alhambra. Like Charles Vâs âOrientalistâ imperialism, Navageroâs writings show how the Alhambra can serve Christian and Western purposes and thus a lack of appreciation for the Alhambraâs Islamic roots. Together, the treatment of the Alhambra by Charles V and Navagero reveals that they approached the Alhambra with an imperialist frame of mind, considering how best to leave their mark at the expense of, and without particular care for, Nasrid history. In line with ideas from Saidâs Orientalism, their interactions with the famed Islamic fortress reveal their perspective that Islamic art is intended to provide entertainment to Catholic spectators rather than exist independently in a Granadan context. 220
The Nineteenth Century Approach to the Alhambra Three centuries later, Gerhardtâs paintings of the Alhambra and Irvingâs Tales of the Alhambra reveal that the âOrientalistâ approach to the Court of Lions continued to prevail in the nineteenth century. Both used depictions to create an image of a fantastical, crumbling palace with remnants of art that was once glorious. Together, they were foundational to nineteenth century Europeâs perception of the Alhambra, as most people never visited Granada. Gerhardtâs paintings, c. 1861, portray a skewed version of the Court of Lions, using unnatural colors to illuminate the fountain and create an atmosphere of mysticism. Gerhardt drew the Court of Lions both at night and day. In his painting at nighttime, he uses a dark palette along with light colors to illuminate the fountain. In this way, he emphasizes how natural light illuminates the beauty of the Court of Lions (Robinson presentation). This has the effect of romanticizing the Alhambra, framing it as picturesque remains of a once-glorious palace. In his painting of daytime, he uses earthy colors to depict the landscape as disheveled and unkempt (Robinson presentation). However, pictures reveal that in reality the light hits the courtyard evenly. This suggests that Gerhardt intentionally depicted the Alhambra differently from what he saw, seemingly using his artwork to convey the misfortune of the Nasrids. Irving took a similar approach to the Court of Lions in Tales of the Alhambra, published in 1832. The collection of stories recounts Irvingâs interactions with eccentric characters who he encountered when visiting the Alhambra. In his sketch entitled âThe Court of Lions,â Irving writes, âThrough the ample and fretted arch of the portal I behold the Court of Lions, with brilliant sunshine gleaming along its colonnades and sparkling in its fountainsâ (Irving). By emphasizing the visual impact of nature, specifically sunshine, on the fountain (and colonnades) in the Court of Lions, Irving uses tools similar to Gerhardt to illuminate specific qualities and create an aura of mysticism. Irving later writes, âIt needs but a slight exertion of the fancy to picture some pensive beauty of the harem, loitering in these secluded haunts of Oriental luxuryâ (Irving). He pointedly uses the word âOrientalâ to describe the âluxuryâ which once prevailed in the Court of Lions, showing his inability to remove his Western-centric perspective from his portrayal. Many scholars have examined the romanticism with which Irving wrote about the Alhambra and compared it to other âOrientalistâ concepts and accounts. In âOrientalizing Southern Europe?â Bolufer describes Tales as an example of representing the relationship between the âOrientâ and âOccidentâ as that between a sensual woman and rational man (Bolufer 463). Thus, through Boluferâs lens, Irving emphasizes natural illumination and the word âOrientalâ to posit the Alhambra as a seductive feminine in contrast to the Christian viewerâs masculine susceptibility. In âIntroductionâ of The Alhambra, Grabar discusses Irvingâs 221
retrospective recounting of the way in which Boabdil, the last Nasrid ruler, dramatically wept as the Catholic monarchs and their entourage entered the Alhambra and gazed at the brilliant inscriptions and painting with awe (Grabar 18). This image of the Alhambra created by Irving and his contemporaries shaped its âOrientalizedâ image that was developing in the Western Christian world. In âRomance of the Moorâ from The Alhambra (2004), Irwin describes the âpicturesqueâ nature of the characters in Irvingâs vignettes, saying that this âalerted the English Reading world to the glories of the Alhambraâ (Irwin 138, 150). From Irwinâs standpoint, Irving saw the decadence of Spanish Muslim culture as leading to its downfall in a dreamlike fashion. Irwin noted the tendency of Protestant observers to compare past glories to a run-down present, as Irving did through his writing (Irwin 139-41). Gerhardtâs and Irvingâs approach to the Alhambra involved altering reality to impose a spiritual atmosphere on the Court of Lions through visual and literary depictions. Their projection of preconceived notions and attitudes on the Alhambra shaped the way in which the rest of Europe visualized the Court of Lions, thus perpetuating the âOrientalistâ attitude with which the Alhambra was perceived. Conclusion The sixteenth and nineteenth century approaches are both characterized by Western dominance over the Alhambra and the fountain in the Court of Lions, a phenomenon described in Saidâs Orientalism. However, they vary in several ways. The sixteenth century approach is about noninteraction with the palaceâs roots and physical alteration. Charles V and Andrea Navageroâs imperialist frames of mind led Charles to leave his mark on its surroundings, imposing the point of view of empire on the Alhambra without care for its contextual importance. The nineteenth century approach, on the other hand, is distinguished by artistsâ alteration of the Alhambra and iconic features, such as the fountain in the Court of Lions. Specifically, they used language and visuals to exaggerate the Alhambraâs physical condition and depict Granadaâs downfall. This then shaped the Alhambra in the imaginations of other Europeans, who appropriated the Granadan style to develop other designs that served Western interests. This historic mindset of âOrientalismâ continues to pervade the work of scholars in the contemporary era who study the Alhambra, but has the palace been relegated to a mere existence of being exoticized and glorified without being understood, as Said proposed the entire âOrientâ has? In the conclusion of The Alhambra, Grabar advances the question as to whether the Alhambra is actually magnificent or if it has merely been over-exoticized in the imaginations of the Christian world due to the tradition of describing it in an âOrientalistâ fashion, concluding that both are accurate (Grabar 203). 222
Evidently, it is possible to escape the trap of biases into which historic visitors fell. For example, the inscriptions (and translations) give the Alhambra a means of speaking for itself. These inscriptions come straight from the Muslim scholars who were peripheral to power during the Alhambraâs construction. In âThe Court of Lionsâ in Reading the Alhambra, Puerta provides translations, the type of script and objective information about the courtyard. For example, when he discusses the fountain, Puerta shares factual information such as the number of verses etched onto the fountainâs bowl (12) and the generally agreed-upon authorâs intentions (Ibn Zamrak honored Muhammad V) (Puerta 168). By focusing on facts, Puerta does not contribute to the fallacious Western perception of the Alhambra. Additionally, the architectural design provides first-hand insight into the minds of those who commissioned and created the Alhambra. For example, in âThe Eye of Sovereignty,â Ruggles describes the way in which the view from the tower across from the Lindaraja garden spacially connected the Court of Lions to Muhammad Vâs living quarters. The bowl is carefully placed and carved, its surroundings intricately and symbolically designed to revolve around it. The architecture speaks for itself in revealing that everything was painstakingly placed for the use of the Nasrid rulers who would reside in the palace. It is the descriptions and analyses of the poetry and artwork that lead Western audiences away from the Alhambraâs Muslim significance. By relying too much on preconceived notions of Granada as a Spanish Muslim regime that fell from grace, scholars have been unable to understand its importance from the point of view of the people who conceived of and created it. With a lack of scholarship in Arabic about it, the Alhambraâs Islamic origins have thus far prevented it from being completely accurately studied in the context of the Granada that it was created in, thus submitting itself to being âOrientalized,â just as Said proposed. However, as scholarship of the Alhambra has evolved towards more self-awareness, the preservation of its text and artwork creates potential for more exploration into what the Alhambra meant, both in the context in which it was created and what it can tell us about the Muslimsâ presence in Europe.
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Bibliography Bozdogan, Sibel. âOrientalism and Architectural Culture.â Social Scientist 14, no. 7 (1986): 46â58. Web. Brothers, Cammy. âThe Renaissance Reception of the Alhambra: The Letters of Andrea Navagero and the Palace of Charles V.â Muqarnas 11 (1994): 79â102. Web. Grabar, Oleg. The Alhambra. The United States of America: Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data, 1978. Irving, Washington. âThe Court of Lions.â In Tales of the Alhambra. 1832. Reprint, Project Gutenberg, 2015. Web. Irwin, Robert. âThe Romance of the Moor.â In The Alhambra, 133â86. Harvard University Press, 2004. Loukomski, Georges. âThe Palace of Charles V at Granada.â The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 84, no. 494 (1944): 119â24. Web. McSweeney, Anna. âVersions and Visions of the Alhambra in the Nineteenth-Century Ottoman World.â West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture 22, no. 1 (2015): 44â69. Web. Puerta VĂlchez, JosĂ© Miguel. âThe Palace of the Lions.â In Reading the Alhambra: A Visual Guide to the Alhambra through Its Inscriptions, First edition., 147â71; 206â35. Granada: The Alhambra and Generalife Trust; EDILUX, 2011. ARTH 1132: FWS: Seeing, Reading, and Writing the Alhambra, Professor Cynthia Robinson, Cornell University. Handout. RipollĂ©s, Carmen. âRelocating the Spanish Renaissance: Charles V, the Torre de La Estufa in the Alhambra, and the Islamic Past.â The Electronic Sixteenth Century Journal: The Journal of Early Modern Studies 50, no. 4 (2019): 1063â1100. Web. Robinson, Cynthia. âCORNELL FWS Washington Irving.â Powerpoint Presentation, Cornell University, September 2, 2021. Robinson, Cynthia. Lecture. ARTH 1132 FWS: Seeing, Reading, and Writing the Alhambra, Cornell University. 18 Nov 2021. Said, Edward. âIntroduction.â In Orientalism. 1978. Reprint, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 2014. Web. Willmert, Todd. âAlhambra Palace Architecture: An Environmental Consideration of Its Inhabitation.â Muqarnas 27 (2010): 157â88.Web.
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Cultural Power and Memorial Art:
Kiluanji Kia Hendaâs âPlantation - Prosperity and Nightmareâ Yagmur Akyurek In the central downtown area of Ribeira das Naus in Lisbon, Portugal, there stands a public art piece memorializing enslaved persons in Portuguese-colonized lands. The memorial was built with a budget of 180,000 euros and was made to mimic a plantation. The artist behind the piece, Kiluanji Kia Henda, built 540 black aluminum sugar canes, each one three meters high. Between the canes, there are regular intervals for visitors to walk through and in the center is a small amphitheater and meeting ground intended for street shows, music performances, academic dialogues, and theater readings. The memorial, which was erected in 2018, also has an Interpretive Center, used for exhibits, lectures and discussions, with regular programming, and an educational service that includes guided visits. There are some fundamental questions one must ask when considering the erection of a monument: why was the monument built, by and for whom, where and how to display it, and how does its very existence call into question the tenets of public commemoration? In this case, the memorial was commissioned by the local government of Lisbon. Djass, the Lisbon Association of Afro-descendents, proposed the memorial to the Participatory Budgeting of Lisbon, and it then won the City Hall arts initiative. Is it the governmentâs place to decide where and when individuals must engage or re-engage with historical legacies? Is a public engagement with these themes more conducive to healing and change than a private one? What is the relationship between institutional power and the construction of public memorials? Kiluanji Kia Hendaâs âPlantation â Prosperity and Nightmareâ was the first slavery memorial to be built in Portugal. The Angolan artist says he intends to âaddress the memory of slavery as the presence of an absenceâ (Kia Henda). The area in which the memorial stands, apart from being a bustling downtown neighborhood, was identified by historians as a zone where ships docked after having transported enslaved people who had been abducted from Portuguese-occupied African territories. The history of this particular strip of land will go unknown to many, and in this way, the memorial functions as a sort of nonsite, a reckoning displaced, a looming erasure. 225
In Portugal, conversations about slavery and cultural recognition of systemic racism are sparse due to the countryâs unique form of denial. Beatriz Dias of Djass says: There is an entire fabrication around the discoveries that reify some of the national identity myths. The myth of Luso-tropicalism, that the Portuguese are a people with a natural propensity for miscegenation, a capacity for dialogue and mixing with indigenous populations from occupied African countries, the myth of Portugalâs civilizing mission, that Portugal played a crucial role in the civilization of populations, contributed to them being able to come out of the darkness, the obscurantism they were in and to be enlightened, to rise up to the level of European civilization, fighting primitivism and making those people more technologically developed, more civilized, and, above all else â and I think this is the deepest root of Portuguese denial â the idea that Portuguese colonialism was a benign colonialism, and that, therefore, Portugal was a good colonizer. (Dias) Portuguese cultural institutions, then, no doubt work in actively shaping and disseminating this national denial. How can cultural institutions better shape communal ethos, and how do we see monuments as part of a broader reckoning with how cultural power is acquired? There is cultural power in the connections between symbols and systems of justice. A continued melding of the institutional, the communal, the symbolic, and the personal undercut official narratives while making room for unacknowledged histories. The memorial as a public art piece, with its disruption of the urban design, presents the space of the monument as divided instead of homogenized, revealing the oppositions in society which institutions work to hide. It seems, then, that public art memorials open up the landscape for cultural change in broad, compelling ways. Noel Carroll, a philosopher of contemporary art, asks: But if art, properly so called, must be intended primarily to aesthetic experienceââexperience valued for its own sake and not for social utilityââwhere does that leave memorial art, art dedicated first and foremost to discharging social functions, art that would not succeed on its own terms if indeed it was valuable primarily or exclusively for the intrinsic value of the experience it afforded? (Carroll) I believe that memorial art is a key participant in the continuous reconstruction of our collective future. It reminds present generations of the events and values that created the current social order and honors the people who were victim to state sanctioned violence, colonialism, and slavery. When building a piece built to ensure meaningful interaction with these ideas of memory, subjugation and historical legacy, an aesthetic connection to the materiality of the piece can only strengthen the relationship between viewer and memorial. In Kiluanji Kia Hendaâs memorial, the act of walking between each metal sugar cane and being able to trace its linear layout serves as a blend of simulation and real, bearing sensory witness to notions of memory, slavery, and labor. The cold, sterile nature of the aluminum elicits the ânightmareâ quality of Portugalâs past, while the 226
vertical positioning of the sugar canes points upwards towards a beckoning future. The memorial as an art piece is able to do what most historical structures can not: interrogate what weâve inherited from the past through physical, visual, and interactive methods. In section 94 of Minima Moralia, Theodor Adorno writes, âthe coming extinction of art is prefigured in the increasing impossibility of representing historical eventsâ (Adorno 143). Perhaps the real question is not how art can represent historical events, but how it can forge new histories. At its base, art is a force for contemplation. Monuments and statues occupy important capital in a cityâs cultural domain though they donât always serve as sources for such reflection. A purely utilitarian statue of a leader triesââand failsââto represent figuratively the body of the man as a way to reveal the legacy of the man, often offering little outside of simulacrum. Beatriz Dias of Djass speaks to the future of cultural institutions: We want to create a museology community where curatorship of the exhibitions are made in partnership and coordination with associations that are locally based and with the Afro-descendent social movement, in a way that will not only allow us to construct a fluid dialogue with the communities, but also a robust narrative that confronts the national hegemonic narrative, where these communities are always depicted as subaltern in the production of knowledge and we want to dispute this narrative. (Dias) The plural multiplicities of identity and history must be acknowledged in cultural dialogues. Monuments and memorials may mark places to look and gather, but more importantly they must point to what people must do. Sites of cultural powerâlike the statue, monument, memorial, public art pieceâmust enact communal change through public engagement. Bibliography
Adorno, Theodor W. Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life. London: Taurus, 1951. Carroll, NoĂ«l. âArt and Recollection.â Journal of Aesthetic Education, vol. 39, no. 2, University of Illinois Press, 2005, 1-12. Web. Navarro Fernandes, Gisele. âIn Conversation with Beatriz Dias. Memorial in Lisbon: Recovering History That Was Made Invisible.â Contemporary &. Web. âSlavery Memorial in Lisbon Will Be Completed in the 1st Quarter of 2021.â VerAngola, 9 Nov. 2020. Web.
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Pequeños nativos y bellezas renegridas:
The Museum of the Old Colony de Pablo Delano Nelson Rivera
Cartel para la exposiciĂłn realizada en el Atrio del King Juan Carlos I en 2017
Excepto la caricatura, todas las fotos que aparecen en este artĂculo pertenecen a la instalaciĂłn conceptual de Pablo Delano, The Museum of the Old Colony, como se realizara en el Atrio del King Juan Carlos I Center en NYU en 2017.
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ÂżA quĂ© temer? ÂżA quĂ© se teme? ÂżQuiĂ©nes son los yanquis para temerles? ÂżPor quĂ© temerles? âPedro Albizu Campos, 8 de abril de 1950, Cabo Rojo. TUSA. âMacha ColĂłn
En una caricatura publicada en 1898 en el Cincinnati Post, observamos una fila compuesta por criaturas sub-humanas, entre las que se destaca una que bosteza aparatosamente durante la lectura de un texto titulado âHow to Become a Good Americanâ. Este espĂ©cimen aparece identificado como âPuerto Ricoâ. La imagen sintetiza la percepciĂłn que de los puertorriqueños se tiene en los Estados Unidos. La imagen tambiĂ©n concreta el reto que a partir de 1898 enfrentarĂĄn los puertorriqueños, y particularmente los artistas, de crear una autoimagen fidedigna para impugnar las falsificaciones degradantes del colonizador. Ante la imposiciĂłn de la dictadura colonial, los artistas puertorriqueños responderĂĄn con la celebraciĂłn de su cultura, con una definiciĂłn propia en oposiciĂłn a la del colonizador, con la creaciĂłn de estrategias pictĂłricas Ăștiles en la lucha por la descolonizaciĂłn. 229
Estos creadores post 1898 levantan su trabajo sobre una sĂłlida zapata. La clase artĂstica e intelectual puertorriqueña de entre siglos fue una sumamente culta, con figuras excepcionales tales como Eugenio MarĂa de Hostos y RamĂłn Emeterio Betances, por mencionar tan solo dos intelectuales y activistas de alcance internacional, entre tantos otros. Para el 1898, el arte en Puerto Rico ya habĂa experimentado la presencia de dos grandes maestros sin parangĂłn en el resto de LatinoamĂ©rica, JosĂ© Campeche y Francisco Oller. El primero ya pintaba en San Juan antes de la fundaciĂłn de los Estados Unidos de AmĂ©rica. Al segundo le toca vivir el trauma de la invasiĂłn y la subsiguiente imposiciĂłn de un gobierno militar. Para este momento, sin embargo, Oller era un artista maduro que, ademĂĄs de haber dado la obra fundacional del arte puertorriqueño, El velorio (1893), ya habĂa creado escuela. Por ello, los artistas de las dĂ©cadas subsiguientes no desarrollarĂĄn su obra en un vacĂo, que no sea aquel de la ausencia de instituciones que apoyen su quehacer. Para contrarrestar la imagen fabricada por el conquistador estadounidense de la âcriatura sub-humana puertorriqueñaâ, los artistas ofrecieron respuestas de una variada creatividad. Por un lado, una obstinada celebraciĂłn del paisaje y el paisanaje; por otro lado, un persistente diĂĄlogo formal con todas las variantes del arte occidental, en una irrebatible demostraciĂłn de que el arte puer-
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torriqueño forma parte de esa tradiciĂłn. Añådase a lo anterior la constante introducciĂłn en pinturas y esculturas de figuras y eventos histĂłricos como testimonio de una voluntariosa colectividad que rehĂșsa anularse. En todas estas manifestaciones plĂĄsticas advertimos la misiĂłn consciente de negar la imagen colonizadora de una colorida islita tropical poblada por ânativosâ salvajes e ignorantes. Al mismo tiempo, se reitera la necesidad de mirarnos sin las grĂngolas impuestas por el invasor. En esas celebraciones de los puertorriqueños que es nuestro arte, se hace obligatorio compartir el espacio crĂtico, para devolverle a los espectadores la responsabilidad de las imĂĄgenes, en un proceso de descolonizaciĂłn del pensamiento. Una ojeada somera a nuestro arte del siglo veinte revela una postura crĂtica hacia la existencia de los puertorriqueños, inmersos en un degradante sistema colonial. Menos urgente, sin embargo, es
la mirada hacia el colonizador. Si bien encontramos imĂĄgenes en las que aparecen figuras âusualmente monstruosasâ de poder estadounidense, el Ă©nfasis estĂĄ puesto en las consecuencias de ese poder sobre los puertorriqueños, no en los poderosos. La diferencia aquĂ es significativa. Recordemos que en dos de las obras mĂĄs valiosas de la crĂtica colonial âDiscurso sobre el colonialismo de AimĂ© CĂ©saire y Retrato del colonizado de Albert Memmiâ sus autores inician la discusiĂłn con sendos retratos del colonizador, antes de abordar a sus colonizados congĂ©neres. Ambos escritores reconocen que, puesto que es el colonizador quien crea al colonizado, no se puede retratar a Ă©ste Ășltimo sin retratar antes al primero. En el arte puertorriqueño, sin embargo, no son frecuentes estos retratos. La diferencia podrĂa deberse a que tanto CĂ©saire como Memmi dirigen sus obras a lectores mayormente 231
europeos, por lo cual devolverle al colonizador su propia imagen es un proyecto crucial; el arte puertorriqueño, en cambio, estĂĄ creado para un pĂșblico mayormente puertorriqueño, por lo cual definir a los congĂ©neres resulta una tarea mucho mĂĄs urgente que la de ocuparse de los invasores. Para nuestros artistas, colocar un espejo frente al colonizador para que Ă©ste pueda reconocerse, no ha sido una prioridad. Hasta ahora. La situaciĂłn es conocida: los âaborĂgenes nativosâ se apropian de la cĂĄmara del antropĂłlogo para documentarlo. Es esa la estrategia utilizada por Pablo Delano en su instalaciĂłn fotogrĂĄfica The Museum of the Old Colony. En vez de retratar y denunciar al colonizador, el artista se silencia y le cede la palabra al imperialista, para que Ă©ste manifieste su racismo, su sexismo y misoginia, en toda su ostentosa arrogancia. Delano se apropia de las fotografĂas tomadas en Puerto Rico por estadounidenses a principios del siglo veinte y las coloca en su âmuseoâ, para revelar la mentalidad del colonizador tal cual Ă©ste la define. Como resultado, en las imĂĄgenes presentadas por Delano se cumple la sentencia de CĂ©saire, cuando escribe que la colonizaciĂłn âtrabaja para descivilizar al colonizador, para embrutecerlo en el sentido literal de la palabra, para degradarlo, para despertar sus recĂłnditos instintos en pos de la codicia, la violencia, el odio racial, el relativismo moralâ (15). El artista colonial no tiene necesidad de denunciar nada, pues el colonizador, borracho en su prepotencia, a travĂ©s de sus fotos y textos acusa abiertamente y sin complejos su propia degradaciĂłn y miseria. Pablo Delano es un artista nacido, criado y educado en Puerto Rico, y residente en los Estados Unidos. Por dĂ©cadas ha realizado un trabajo sĂłlidamente plantado en sus raĂces puertorriqueñas, cuyo consumo ha sido usualmente estadounidense con poca presencia en la isla. 232
El hecho de que su trabajo haya estado dirigido a un pĂșblico extranjero quizĂĄs explica el que, contrario a sus colegas en Puerto Rico, Delano decida volcar su mirada hacia los colonizadores. Como forastero, posee una distancia crĂtica que le permite observar aquello que para un estadounidense no serĂa evidente, mucho menos aceptable. Delano se encuentra aquĂ ante una poco envidiable tarea, la de ventilar los trapos sucios de sus conciudadanos, tan renuentes a aceptar sus miserias, tan dados a
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pensarse como âbuenos vecinosâ con benĂ©volos designios. Exhumemos aquĂ las palabras del general Nelson A. Miles, al dirigir la invasiĂłn a Puerto Rico en 1898: âEsto no es una guerra de devastaciĂłn, sino una guerra que proporcionarĂĄ a todos, con sus fuerzas navales y militares, las ventajas y prosperidad de la esplendorosa civilizaciĂłnâ. Para Miles, para el poder estadounidense, la invasiĂłn es un âregaloâ a los puertorriqueños, por estimarse ellos como âpueblo civilizadorâ, âdĂĄdivaâ a la humanidad. Quitarle la venda a esa deplorable ceguera, mostrarle al emperador que efectivamente anda desnudo, es la faena que Delano se ha impuesto. The Museum of the Old Colony utiliza una estrategia muy conocida del arte puertorriqueño, aquella manejada por Oller en El velorio, en la que el artista entrega a los espectadores la tarea de ensamblar partes autĂłnomas, en lo que en otras ocasiones hemos llamado una estrategia descolonizadora. Descolonizadora, porque entrega el poder decisional a los espectadores en vez de imponerlo desde afuera; descolonizadora porque estimula a sus espectadores âquienesquiera que Ă©stos seanâ a utilizar recursos crĂticos usualmente adormecidos; descolonizadora, porque aspira a que el mismo opresor reconozca su crimen e inhumanidad, en un proceso no muy distante de las estrategias de lucha de un Gandhi. Como en el caso de Gandhi, este proceso resulta poderoso para el colonizado, quien al reconocer las desgracias e inferioridad moral del colonizador, puede entonces despojarse de 235
su temor a enfrentarlo. La selecciĂłn de fotografĂas que hace Delano para su âmuseoâ muestra la imagen que el hombre blanco construye de aquellos que considera son inferiores y de su propiedad. El retrato que de ellos hace es, inevitablemente, el suyo propio. Estas imĂĄgenes son el autorretrato involuntario e inconsciente del opresor, quien en su prepotencia no exhibe pudor alguno al destapar su miseria moral, mostrarse racista, sexista, misĂłgino. Particularmente penosas resultan las imĂĄgenes de los niños, a los que el invasor les reserva su mĂĄs maligna mirada. A estas imĂĄgenes, se le añaden los textos. La presencia de textos escritos ha sido constante
en el arte puertorriqueño. (Casi como si no tuviĂ©ramos fe en las imĂĄgenes y confiĂĄramos mĂĄs en la palabra.) De las plegarias de agradecimiento caligrafiadas por Campeche en sus pinturas, a la denuncia del colonialismo por Oller en su retrato de Baldorioty de Castro, a la extensa producciĂłn de grabados y portafolios literarios (Lorenzo Homar, Antonio Martorell, Consuelo Gotay), hasta la producciĂłn mĂĄs reciente (Elsa MelĂ©ndez, Osvaldo Budet), el arte puertorriqueño ha incorporado el texto en una apuesta a la palabra como instrumento de reafirmaciĂłn de una historia comĂșn. The Museum of the Old Colony de Delano se une a esa tradiciĂłn, con un nuevo giro: las palabras, al igual 236
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que las imĂĄgenes, son las del colonizador. Las mujeres son descritas como âdusky bellesâ y âmuscular half-breedsâ; a otros sujetos se les describe con frases tales como âlittle nativesâ y âSpanish white trashâ. El poder utiliza esas palabras a partir de su prejuicio de que los colonizados, por causa de una supuesta âsimplezaâ e âinsuficienciaâ intelectual, no podrĂĄn comprenderlas. La instalaciĂłn de Delano da al traste con tal desvarĂo, pues transforma las armas del agresor en instrumento de su propia fulminaciĂłn, para asĂ hacer cumplir el dictum, âodia la opresiĂłn, teme al oprimidoâ. Las fotos escogidas por el artista para su instalaciĂłn/ready-made ofrecen tambiĂ©n otras revelaciones. Desde los ejemplos iniciales, la violencia aparece como basamento de todo un orden de vida. Las imĂĄgenes de la comunidad puertorriqueña son apuntaladas con aquellas en las que se muestra cĂłmo el ejĂ©rcito y la marina estadounidenses, junto a la policĂa insular, mantienen a raya a los ânativosâ. El paisaje, la educaciĂłn, los eventos sociales, la existencia toda, quedan bajo el hecho concreto de la represiĂłn. No hay estado colonial sin violencia, y en esta instalaciĂłn la violencia define la vida colonizada de los puertorriqueños, cuyo destino parece ser negarse a sĂ mismos, para convertirse en servidumbre del conquistador. The Museum of the Old Colony es un proyecto artĂstico de investigaciĂłn histĂłrica que ha estado en desarrollo durante varios años. Cada presentaciĂłn que Delano hace del mismo cambia, 238
tanto en la selecciĂłn de imĂĄgenes como en su cantidad y ordenaciĂłn. Se han expuesto dos versiones, en Trinidad y Tobago y en Argentina. La versiĂłn que ahora se exhibe en el Centro Rey Juan Carlos I de España, en New York University, prescinde del espacio de la galerĂa de arte para ocupar los pasillos y salas de estudio, como invasiĂłn de la cotidianidad de aquellos que utilizan ese espacio. De este modo, Delano nos recuerda que la violencia del coloniaje, el racismo y el sexismo, continuamente nos acompaña. En estos neoliberales tiempos de juntas de control, mantenernos vigilantes y en actitud crĂtica es la misiĂłn de esta pieza, que Delano añade a la preciada tradiciĂłn de arte anti-colonial puertorriqueño. Obras citadas: CĂ©saire, AimĂ©. 2006. Discurso sobre el colonialismo. Madrid: Akal. MĂ©ndez Saavedra, Manuel. 1992. 1898: La Guerra Hispanoamericana en caricaturas. San Juan: GrĂĄfica Metropolitana.
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Publicado en 80grados, 10 de marzo de 2017. Publicado (en inglés) en el catålogo de la exhibición The Museum of the Old Colony, Hampshire College Art Gallery, 2018.
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Creative Writing and Investigations 242
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Poemas David Rosales Loisaida El Lower East Side, Loisaida, como dicen los neoyorquinos. Una esquina de San Juan en Nueva York con sus empanadas de carne, de plĂĄtano, de hongos importados. La capital del delicatessen judĂo, el campeĂłn del bocadillo de pastrami, con pepino encurtido, pan de centeno. El barrio que huele a la basura de un apartamento abandonado, lleno de hormigas rojas y moscas oportunistas. Que huele a galleta dulce atrapada en la chaqueta de un adolescente A mĂ, me gusta el olor, porque cuanto peor huele, mĂĄs baja la renta. El vientre de la isla, donde se extienden cuatro avenidas al este se extiende abajo, con las torres plateadas rodeadas por los edificios de ladrillos medio desintegrados. Donde el hombre mexicano de la bodega sabe todo, A lo mejor te ve, cuando compras un chicle antes de una cita. A lo peor te ve, cuando solo deseas un chopped cheese a las cuatro de la mañana.
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La orquesta de la ciudad El soundtrack de Nueva York de verdad no incluye a Frank Sinatra ni a Jay-Z Cuando dejas los Airpods en casa te das cuenta que la ciudad canta Con el honk de las bocinas El rumble de los camiones aparcados El beep. beep. beep. del camiĂłn de basura. El wee-oo wee-oo de los bomberos
Los sonidos de la gente suenan como
El cling cling del timbre de la bici
las flautas y trompetas
dĂĄndole una advertencia al peatĂłn
âExcuse me sir, could you spareâŠâ dice el vagabundo
Todo en su ritmo irregular a sus horas impredecibles âBueno, sigo trabajandoâ Algunos dĂas forman el ritmo perfecto Otros, es una sinfonĂa del desastre,
dice el constructor con su casco amarillo y los pantalones manchados
de la distracciĂłn
âNo way cabrĂłnâ
de esconder mis orejas en la almohada
dice el puertoriqueño con su cigarro y su Spanglish Los olores entran para completar la estética Como el arte de un ålbum La sal del harbor mezcla con el swish de las olas El vino en el restaurante de afuera que pasas en el camino El olorcillo de humo en las calles ocupadas En total forma una orquesta, los semåforos y las leyes son el conductor del gran teatro de la ciudad de Nueva York.
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La especie invasiva ÂżLa ciudad no tiene naturaleza? Su base de roca y sus edificios cubren las colinas, la ciĂ©nega con plantas acuĂĄticas, ramas, cangrejos azules, ostras, tortugas de Diamondback terrapin, notarĂas por la forma de diamantes de su caparazĂłn. La Isla de los Gobernadores, el defensor de la bahĂa El ojo de aire fresco en una nube de contaminaciĂłn. No se dan cuenta que la isla de Manhattan Se formĂł en cuadras con rascacielos grises precisamente porque era tan perfecta, Como Lycorma delicatula, La mosca azul y roja con puntos, La matĂ© con un squish bajo mi bota, Su sangre como una banana pudriĂ©ndose, Porque es una especie invasiva. Desde que los humanos llegaron a la isla, Las tortugas se fueron a una esquina en Jamaica Las otras especies casi han desaparecido, Eran la comida famosa de Nueva York, ya no comemos ostras del Hudson Los peces tienen plĂĄstico en las branquias, metal en el corazĂłn. No estoy seguro de quiĂ©n es la especie invasiva. 246
Queer Excesses of Professional Wrestling Hazel Bolivar In 1957, Roland Barthes published Mythologies, within which an essay titled âThe World of Professional Wrestlingâ opens by asserting that âthe virtue of all-in wrestling is that it is the spectacle of excessâ (23). The essay that follows this evocative opening line has served as a foundational text in analyses of the performance of professional wrestling and has directed scholars to grapple critically with the significance and symbolic meanings within the physical grappling of wrestling. The relationship between the mythic spectacle of ancient theater and the modern-day spectacle of professional wrestling Barthes lays out provides useful insight into the unique intricacies of the performance and business of professional wrestling, and the way a spectator can relate to viewing such a performance. Barthesâ naming this spectacle as âexcess,â however, leads me to create a connection between the spectacular performance of professional wrestling and the excessive category of queer, and in doing so I wish to inquire how performance in professional wrestling may generate new possibilities for queer performances and performers. Contemporary LGBT independent wrestling shows, such as Game Changer Wrestlingâs (GCW) event titled âEffyâs Big Gay Brunch,â serve as a solid base to anchor an analysis of these possibilities. Yet, looking to these events I do not strive to uncover in which ways professional wrestling can be made queer by LGBT practitioners. Instead, I find queer potentialities hidden in plain sight within various elements of professional wrestling, from the grandeur of the characters and costumes, to the violent yet carefully intimate movement of bodies, to the new relationships a spectator can have to the brutality in the ring as it reflects the brutality of the world. All of these sites of the excess of the wrestling spectacle offer the potential to be read as sites of queerness that can be mobilized not only for the good of enriching the lives of LGBT wrestlers and wrestling fans, but also for the reimagining of the wrestling ring as a potential battleground for the advocacy of queer life. The mythic position of the professional wrestler that Barthes explores points to the symbolic position they take, both through their embodiment as a character and their position within the circles they inhabit. On October 10, 2020 at the Marion County Fairgrounds in Indianapolis, GCW hosted the first ever Effyâs Big Gay Brunch, an independent wrestling event made to celebrate and highlight the work of LGBT professional wrestlers. The main event on the match card was a clash between Sonny Kiss, a gender fluid wrestler currently signed to the major promotion All Elite Wrestling (AEW), and Cassandro, perhaps the most well-known exĂłtico wrestler, which can be defined simply as a performer in Mexican lucha libre who wrestles in drag. 247
The story behind this matchup is summed up by queer wrestler Billy Dixon while commentating the match when he notes that âCassandro is wrestling the product of his hard workâ; in other words, this match symbolized a meeting between a legendary veteran in the realm of LGBT wrestling history, and a contemporary legend who embodies a carrying of the torch that Cassandroâs career ignited to light up the possibilities for LGBT wrestlers to exist visibly within the ring. A lineage appears, then, as Sonny Kiss energetically makes his way to the ring in glittering pink, feminine ring gear followed by Cassandro, who steps to the ring to Gloria Gaynorâs âI Will Survive,â his arms regally spread apart and dressed also in a glittering pink robe. Confetti surrounds him as Billy Dixon on commentary exclaims âleyenda, leyenda, leyenda.â As fans bow down to Cassandro making his way to the ring, in celebration of the ways in which his career pioneered the widening of queer visibility in wrestling, one element of professional wrestlingâs queer excess opens up â the potential for mobility through being a professional wrestler. Anthropologist Heather Levi focuses her work on the cultural significance and phenomena of lucha libre in Mexico, and in many works within her research explores the unique positioning of the exĂłtico within professional wrestling. To begin to understand the gendered significance of the exĂłtico inhabiting lucha libre, one must recognize the seemingly incommensurable difference between the symbolic position of homosexuality within culture and the representation of machismo in lucha libre. If to embody machismo is to succeed in performing the role of the masculine, and lucha libre, in an oversimplified and not fully accurate definition, serves culturally as a site of competition between men seeking to prove their masculinity at the expense of their opponents, then homosexuality does not fit cleanly into the realm of lucha libre. This is because, when it comes to the homosexual subject, there is a cultural belief that âthe man who allows himself to be penetrated... is guilty of having failed to defend himself, having allowed himself to be exploitedâ (Levi, World of Lucha Libre 152). In this openness to penetration and thus openness to the feminine, the symbolic homosexual seemingly fails at even qualifying to compete within the ring of lucha libre, yet exĂłticos like Cassandro âdisrupt the identification of gender-crossing with penetrability and submissionâ (Levi, Fighting Queens 276). As a result of this disruption, âin the arena, the gender work of the joto is transformed into the gender play of the exĂłtico. Like the masks worn by other wrestlers, the exĂłticoâs drag conceals his personal, quotidian identity behind a mythic oneâ (Levi, Fighting Queens 282). Drag in this realm becomes one of many means of creating a type of character, much like the rudos/heels (bad guys) or tĂ©cnicos/faces (good guys), yet character building is not the only function that the exĂłtico plays. By carving a space within the machista realm of lucha libre for the symbolics of homosexuality to compete, the 248
exĂłticos both challenge the assumed powerlessness of homosexuality and femininity against the machismo that punishes them, as well as create new possibilities for LGBT people to move socially. Given the success of exĂłticos, such as Cassandro, and of those who followed in his footsteps, including Sonny Kiss, âthe exĂłticos represent lucha as a means of upward mobility for themselves as homosexualsâ and as such âlucha libre [offers] a way past the limited options available to themâ (Levi, Fighting Queens 281). This new potential for mobility is reminiscent of the work and new possibilities within drag culture, much like Dorian Corey says in Paris is Burning in regard to categories such as âexecutive realness:â âIn real life, you canât get a job as an executive... [but] in a ballroom, you can be anything you want... youâre showing the straight world that âI can be an executive. If I had the opportunity, I could be one because I can look like one.ââ I make this analytical connection to drag balls because of the shared capability of LGBT independent wrestling spaces and drag balls to assert the importance and capability of its members. The celebration of Cassandro as he makes his way to the ring as a legend is reminiscent of the legendary status placed onto houses and mothers/fathers within drag spaces, and highlights the world making potentiality within professional wrestling for people of minoritarian subjectivities to advocate for their importance and find a space where their performances are celebrated. Much like those walking in the âexecutive realnessâ category, there is a negotiation at play for homosexual subjects to embody the masculinity they are kept out of, yet instead of centering the capability of passing within the realm of masculinity, the exĂłtico chooses to wear a costume that is in excess of masculinity yet still assert their capability to take up space in a machista performance. Levi points to the agency at play in the performance of the exĂłtico by stating that âthey âreallyâ wrestle, and, rejecting the outward signs of manhood, they still claim the power to challenge the masculinity of âotherâ men. They âhave pantsâ, but they opt to wear a dress to the arenaâ (Fighting Queens 282). With this agency, wearing glitter, and standing as legends within the space they enter, Cassandro and Sonny Kiss are capable of stepping into the squared circle to begin with, yet once they hear the sound of the bell, new forms of queer excess emerge as they compete and move their bodies. Unlike the competition of a sport such as martial arts, where the object of the match is to test oneâs skills against another, the performance of professional wrestling is an intimately collaborative choreography between the participants that has embedded in it an emphasis on care and pleasure. It is often thought within the competition of a wrestling match âbetween two machos, [that] the winner, in the words of one spectator âmakes [the loser] his womanâ. In this sense, lucha libre provides a spectacular affirmation of the equation between being a man and being on topâ 249
(Levi, Fighting Queens 278). This masculine embodiment of âbeing on top,â is not one that is forced, rather, âin wrestling, a man who is down is exaggeratedly so, and completely fills the eyes of the spectators with the intolerable spectacle of his powerlessnessâ (Barthes 24). To fulfill this spectacular imperative of professional wrestling, the participants must engage in âsellingâ the moves of their opponent. âSellingâ is a professional wrestling term for exaggerating the pain that one is in so as to convey the story of the match and to convey to the audience the power of their opponent. Sonny Kiss and Cassandro scream out in pain, wince, and struggle throughout their match, as is customary for a professional wrestling match, and since this is a general practice in professional wrestling, it may seem that no difference is made when Sonny Kiss and Cassandro engage in it, and perhaps there is not, yet there is an intimacy that is made more apparent for me in their choreography of simulated violence. On violence in professional wrestling, Barthes notes that âonly the image is involved in the game, and the spectator does not wish for the actual suffering of the contestant; he only enjoys the perfection of an iconography. It is not true that wrestling is a sadistic spectacle: it is only an intelligible spectacleâ (27). This creation of the wrestling spectacle is done with special care so as not to inflict permanent corporeal harm, which is an act that can be read within itself as a practice of care between bodies in motion and the pleasure taken in using bodies to create an affective performance for spectators; this performance, then, is one I read as a site of excessive feeling and potential queer practice. The performance of a match is not only generative through the creation of narrative, but through the intimacy that can be present between the performers as they utilize their bodies skillfully and painfully for the spectators looking on. An analysis of the experience of the body is then necessary to gain further insight into the ways in which the excesses of professional wrestling can open up new possibilities for queer practice, which is where a reading of Amber Jamilla Musserâs work in Sensual Excess: Queer Femininity and Brown Jouissance within the context of the professional wrestling spectacle provides potential avenues to find new meanings within wrestling. Two important frameworks Musser offers that enable alternative understandings of Barthesâ conception of wrestling being a âspectacle of excessâ include her focus on deep listening as it relates to the Lacanian psychoanalytic concept of feminine jouissance, as well as her use of Lacan to conceptualize brown jouissance. The psychoanalytic concept of jouissance is utilized in Musser to define different relationships between subjects and objects as they come together. Feminine jouissance is a form of jouissance that Musser defines as a relation that centers âbeing with the Other, a process that includes dwelling in the opacity of Othernessâ (79). The Other (which Musser relates throughout 250
her analysis to motherhood) here stands in contrast to the sovereign subject, and I assert that within the realm of the wrestling match, there is a certain Otherness that can be attributed to an opponent within the ring, when the relationship between opponents is not one based in domination, as is often thought to be the case in readings of lucha libre, but rather of intimacy. Musser, while analyzing a sex scene within a narrative film between an unwitting mother and a daughter, notes that the scene âdoes not consist of dialogue until the end, which means that its choreography is one produced through deep listening, which, I argue, is what characterizes this form of feminine jouissance. [The character] gets pleasure from attending to the m/Otherâs body and learning its rhythms. She is open to the Otherâs alterityâ (79). In some ways similar to the performance of sex, the performance of wrestling is one that is in many ways improvisational in terms of which specific moves occur, and the choreography is illegible to the onlookers because of this fluidity of movement during a match. Wrestlers simulate violence in a way that inspires an affective response from their spectators, and there is a sense of pleasure that can be read in this sensual use of bodies towards affective ends. Returning to the match between Cassandro and Kiss, a move that can serve as an example of this relation is a âsuicide diveâ that Cassandro performs onto Sonny Kiss. A âsuicide diveâ is a professional wrestling move that requires the performer of it to run from one end of the ring to the other, and jump through the ropes, diving onto their opponent. The move requires careful coordination between the two wrestlers because the opponent must be in the right place so as to catch the person performing the dive and soften their impact onto the floor. Kiss catching Cassandro can be read plainly as a practical means of keeping both performers safe, yet there is a weight I read into this act given the relation they have to each other. There is a certain motherhood that Cassandro embodies within his legendary status in the history of the exĂłticos, similar to the status of a house mother in the drag scene, and this match serving as a celebration of his career and the way in which his work paved the way for wrestlers such as Kiss also point to this mother status. Kissâs catching of Cassandro, and Cassandroâs ultimately winning the match, can be read as an obligation to an Other, a kinship in the context of the match that challenges a reading of an individualized sovereign subjectivity within the performance. This intimate care is even more imperative given the age of Cassandro, as a commentator during the match read into the pained look on Cassandroâs face while entrapped in Kissâs hold as âall [of ] the miles Cassandro has traveled, all of the injuries.â There are two facets to the performance of professional wrestling that are opened through Musserâs conception of deep listening: first, the careful and intentional use of a body in order to produce the pleasure of creating a performance 251
that generates feeling for spectators, and second is the intimate consideration for each otherâs bodies so as to preserve them and their ability to continue the work of performing. These elements point to an excess of intimacy and of feeling between performers in a wrestling ring, yet this excess can be further analyzed within the context of Kiss and Cassandroâs positionalities as queer of color performers. In a 2014 article for The New Yorker profiling the career of Cassandro, William Finnegan documents the story of Cassandro entering the business of professional wrestling as a gay man and becoming a legendary exĂłtico. In reflecting on his childhood, Cassandro âremembers being brutally punished, at a very young age, for playing patty-cake, a girlâs game, with a like-minded boy at school. His parents, particularly his father, were mortified by his effeminacyâ and as a result, âboys in the neighborhood, including [his] own relatives, used [him] as a sex toy.â This brutal violence and objectification are commonplace within the realm of queer of color life, a life that is demarcated by threats and acts of violence and abjection. Therefore, it may seem strange at first why one who inhabits the realm of âqueerâ and âof colorâ would give themselves over to a performance that inflicts pain onto the body and makes on the visual object of violence and harm when the world that they inhabit already push them to brutal margins of exitance. Musser, in her analysis of feminine jouissance, continues to develop the concept by putting it into conversation with abjection, or of understanding the body as inhabiting a racialized objecthood that denies a body subjectivity. This relationship between feminine jouissance and abjection makes possible an understanding of what Musser calls brown jouissance, which is âabout pleasure, abjection, and embracing alterityâeither oneâs own or that of the Other. When we see the ways that brown jouissance is related to both feminine jouissance and abjection, we see that it can reveal modes of pleasure that can attach to experiencingâ (88). Within brown jouissance there is âa space where there is pleasure in embodiment and the radical possibilities that being an object providesâ (87). This embracing of abjection and alterity must be understood, however, as being agential in its practice. The performance of professional wrestling has particular possibilities within it for queer of color participants because it can create a new relationship between to existing within a brutal world by having the performance within the ring be one that allows the performer to have agency over the violence they participate in and their use of their body and the care they have for otherâs bodies. While describing a match he saw Cassandro compete in, Finnegan recounts that âCassandro had cracked a rib. But it was such a ridiculously dangerous dive that he could hardly expect to come away from it unhurt. He later admitted as much to me. âI just felt like I had to do something special, like Iâd let the crowd down.ââ Cassandroâs willingness to risk his body for the 252
crowd highlights that though there are new relationships to brutality possible for the performers of professional wrestling, the imperative for the performers is first and foremost for the spectators of the performance. Brutality in the performance of wrestling is most dramatically on display in a genre of wrestling such as âextreme rulesâ or âdeathmatchesâ or âlucha extrema,â among other names. What connects these types of matches is the use of weapons, including light tubes, barbed wire, and thumbtacks in order to perform levels of violence that exceed what is typical for a traditional match. Within the context of Cassandroâs career, Finnegan writes of an experience he had watching a lucha extrema match in Ciudad JuĂĄrez, remembering that âafter half a dozen matches, broken glass from the light tubes was everywhere, and the blood pouring off the wrestlers was real. It was hard not to see the festivities as a communal exorcism, considering what JuĂĄrez has endured in recent yearsâa scorched-earth street war between rival drug cartels that killed more than nine thousand people in one four-year stretch.â This connection between the brutality of the performance and the brutality that surrounded the geographical location of the match make more apparent the stakes at play in the performances of violence within professional wrestling and make more legible the reasons why performers put their bodies in harmâs way in order to enact these affective spectacles. The work of the professional wrestler reminds me of the way in which Barthes concludes his essay on professional wrestling by asserting that âin the ring, and even in the depths of their voluntary ignominy, wrestlers remain gods because they are, for a few moments, the key which opens Nature, the pure gesture which separates Good from Evil, and unveils the form of a Justice which is at last intelligibleâ (32). The justice that is unveiled, however, can be a means of collectively mourning the injustices faced by minoritarian communities by presenting within the ring, at least for a moment, agency over the display of unjust brutality. Looking more closely to the lucha extrema match in Ciudad JuĂĄrez, it is important to consider who the victims of such violence are in order to understand more deeply how it is that the display of brutality in a wrestling match is capable of enacting an exorcism of the pains of such violence. Melissa Wright, in her essay âNecropolitics, Narcopolitics, and Femicide: Gendered Violence on the Mexico-U.S. Border,â puts into context the governmental responses to the murders in Ciudad Juarez, which include a large number of women who are targeted as workers in the public sphere. The brutality of the women killed by femicide is made more painful by the responses of the government and its officials, who rationalize their murders by stating that âgirls who live double lives often end up dead; that was a normal chain of events, so the lack of investigations and convictions was not a problem given that there was not anything wrong with the violenceâ (714). 253
Women are blamed for their deaths by the state and considered disposable as a result, a disposability that is often attached to womanhood, queerness, blackness, and minoritarian identity in general terms. Professional wrestling, through the exorcism Finnegan describes, has the potential to soften if only for a moment an audienceâs relationship to brutality by intentionally inhabiting a performance of brutality with all of the agency afforded to the performers by being on a stage and embodying within themselves both the excessive legendary characters they play, and the abjected target of brutality they intimately understand. Within this agency is also the capability to present within the wrestling ring, a space where the exĂłtico can âappropriate and undermine the manhood of their opponents. They defend themselves, the one thing of which maricones are, by definition, thought to be incapableâ (Levi, World of Lucha Libre 157). Through these performances it is possible for homosexual or feminine performers to gain power and agency through their performances that allow them to creatively utilize the same machismo that brutalizes them to negotiate new relationships to the brutality they are subjected to, not only for themselves, but for the audiences who come to witness the spectacle of excess. As is true with various mediums of performance, professional wrestling has the capability to be utilized by queer performers as a means of advocating for themselves and their power. Wrestling, however, has within its excessive nature many possibilities for queer embodiments and performance. Through the agential possibilities of creating new communities and legends within the space of independent wrestling promotions, the physically intimate embodiments that are at play and the relationship between spectacle and audience, the queer potentialities that surround professional wrestling offer an unconventional means for minoritarian subjects to engage in a practice that offers alternative means of mobility where often few are present. I know that for myself as a queer wrestling fan, my viewing of professional wrestling in all of its excess offered for me new ways to imagine myself as powerful, even when the performers where not necessarily queer in identity. I remember when I was a child dressing up as the professional wrestler The Undertaker for Halloween, with a long wig and black trench coat. Perhaps in looking back at pictures of myself in that costume, I can recognize that though I would be almost a decade away from coming into my queer identity, my love for wrestling offered me a means of understanding the power of performance and of world building. I hope then, as LGBT independent wrestling promotions grow, and more queer performers enter major promotions, such as Sonny Kiss, more queer people will find a love for the excesses of professional wrestling, and perhaps even see within its excess a celebration of their own queerness.
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Bibliography Barthes, Roland. âThe World of Wrestling.â Steel Chair to the Head: The Pleasure and Pain of Professional Wrestling, by Nicholas Sammond, Duke University Press, 2005. Project MUSE. Web. âEffyâs Big Gay Brunch.â FITE, Flipps Media Inc., 10 Oct. 2020. âEffyâs Big Gay Brunch 2.â FITE, Flipps Media Inc., 10 Apr. 2021. Finnegan, William. âThe Man Without a Mask How the Drag Queen Cassandro Became a Star of Mexican Wrestling.â The New Yorker, 1 Sept. 2014. Levi, Heather. âA Struggle Between Two Strong Men?â The World of Lucha Libre: Secrets, Revelations, and Mexican National Identity, by Heather Levi, Duke University Press, 2009. â. âLean Mean Fighting Queens: Drag in the World of Mexican Professional Wrestling.â Sexualities, vol. 1, no. 3, 1998, 275â285. Musser, Amber Jamilla. Sensual Excess: Queer Femininity and Brown Jouissance. New York: New York University Press, 2018. Paris Is Burning. Dir. Jennie Livingston. The Criterion Collection, 1990. Web. Wright, Melissa W. âNecropolitics, Narcopolitics, and Femicide: Gendered Violence on the Mexico-U.S. Border.â Signs, vol. 36, no. 3, 2011, 707â731. JSTOR. Web.
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Nevvie J.D.
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Thereâs a spiny pink seashell on the windowsill that emits the caressing calm of the sea when you press it close to your ear. Itâs the loveliest little shell, and thatâs why I put it on my windowsill and didnât let it get tossed into the pile of rocks and shells that weâve collected over time. Mother used to love collecting rocks and shells, and she always used to tell us that we should spend our time at the beach finding keepsakes and collecting memories instead of swimming. I think that she was often worried about us swimming ever since the Incident. She used to worry about us sometimes! And Father does now, too. But at least he doesnât let his worry keep us from going into the sea when the opportunity presents itself on lazy summer days when the air is humid and tense, and thereâs the feeling of work to be done before fall kicks in and no time to do it. Next to the seashell, thereâs a joint figurine of the Three Kings clutching their presents in their arms, their thin bodies cloaked in traditional dress. They stand sort of hunched over, as though theyâre looking down to an imaginary baby Christ laying beside the Virgin Mary in the manger. I always thought they looked rather forlorn for a trio of people looking at our Savior. But I donât know too much about it, because Father never wanted us to look into religion too much anyhow. Behind the Kings, I keep a little pendant with the letter âNâ on it. I would never let Mother see because I know it would have made her depressed and anxious all over again. Thereâs no string in the pendant, I never got the chance to add one. I made it myself, can you believe that? Charlie is always saying I should delve more into the world of art and creativity because science isnât for girls, but I get so tired of all these friendship bracelet packets when I donât have anyone to make anything for. But I made the little pendant as a little birthday present, and I added a little letter âNâ so that it would be personal. Mother sold our beach house last year. A lovely, quaint beach house situated somewhere on the East Coast. I donât imagine us going back to that beach again, even though Father complains that the only place heâs ever felt untroubled is sitting on the porch of our old house. When he said that, I thought for sure that Mother would make her typical disapproving faceâitâs the one she makes whenever Father says something that contradicts a decision of hersâbut she just smiled sadly and agreed that it had been one of her favorite places in the world as well. She brought me to help her close up the house and gather all our things. Fatherâs always working on something or other, and it involves a lot of yelling over the phone. I canât remember where Charlie was that day, but he must have been somewhere because Mother never liked to hire a babysitter unless the person was known by the family very wellâI guess she wouldnât want to take any more chances like last time. I am glad I got to see the house once before we left forever and left our set of keys under the mat by the front door. 257
We all had our own rooms in our old beach houseâthree stories, more spacious than you could imagine. When we arrived after the long drive, I wasted no time and marched straight up the staircase to my room, the first door to the left with a heavily bejeweled door that spelled out my name in sticky white gems. The inside of my room was the same as it always had been, except I suppose some dust had begun to settle down on different pieces of furniture. My duvet was a bright, shimmery pink even though I told Father Iâd wanted a pale green, like the green that the walls in my room back in the city are painted. I didnât want much from the room, to be honest. It was all pink and frilly, and there were little games for little girls and an assortment of pink tutus and pink tiaras and pink slippers with pink unicorns dancing on their sides. There was always a fuss about pink, and Charlie says that pink is what my favorite color should be, but I donât really understand why my favorite color should be anything. I donât think I really have a favorite color, anyhow. It seems odd, but choosing a favorite of anything is always a troublesome subject for me, and even with colors I canât make a firm decision between blue or green. But those are boysâ colors, Charlie protests whenever the subject comes up. He seems to think a lot about colors, and a lot about a good many other things as well. But I donât blame him for placing my choices under his observant eyes, because every now and then I would catch him sitting on the pink bedspread under the pink canopy in my old room at our old beach house. Sometimes he looked like he wanted to say something to me about it, back when we used to sit together in the pink armchair next to the pink lava lamp. I think he must have known that Iâd seen him in my room and he wanted to explain himself. But he never did say anything. Perhaps one day he will. All I really wanted from my old room was to get the little brown box from under my bed. This box had acquired a very tall layer of dust by the time we arrived. Mother bought it for me at a fair a few years ago, one of those school fairs where they have activities like painting boxes. I thanked her for the box, thanked her many times over since I know that Father believes that showing gratitude is the correct thing to do, but I never did paint it. I saw the other children sitting at the table making messes with paint and stickers and those plastic, sticky jewels that you can put on thingsâI saw this and I knew I just didnât want to have a box that looked all messy and disorganized. Charlie didnât get a box because Father says that painting isnât anything for a boy to get into unless itâs a hobby or a side project. Father never has time to paint, and I wonder if maybe heâs jealous that Charlie had a chance to. There wasnât all that much in the box, just a few things that I would prefer not to have displayed on the windowsill in my room back home. There was a beautiful little magnet of a 258
mermaid, closing her eyes and listening to the waves rippling out in the sea (or at least thatâs what I thought she was doing, Iâm sure Charlie would have had a different opinion). There was a red golfball from the time we played mini-golf as a family for Charlieâs birthday a few years ago. It rolled away from the course and I picked it up and hid it in my pocket and pretended to have lost it. I wanted to keep it, keep it like Mother kept rocks and shells. There was this quartz stone that Father says helps headaches if you put it on your forehead and lay down on your back. There was a little butterfly hair clip that I found when I went diving in the ocean, and it has precious gems embedded in it. Iâve never and never will wear it in my hairâit never seemed right to do so before, and itâs impossible to do so now. But it was a wonderful little thing to look at. And then thereâs the letter. The letter âNâ from our Christmas collection. We keep a letter for everyone in the family, and they all fit in this giant sleigh ornament. The letters are made out of the same material that wine corks are made out of, I thinkâat least, they feel like the same material. Father has a collection of wine corks in a drawer in the kitchen, the one next to all the sharp and dangerous knives, and when he isnât home I like to look at all of them and look at their faded labels. Some have names of wine companies, others are just numbers or years, and others have pictures of grapes or other wine-related things on them. I donât know what makes them so collectible, but Father likes to place greater sentimental value to inanimate objects now, I suppose. I made sure to inspect all my irreplaceable items before putting them back in the brown box and shoving the box into my backpack in the hallway while Mother was gathering things from other rooms. She always takes a while packing, and Father always makes it a big joke, but I donât mind waiting because Father says that patience is a good way to discipline oneself. So I sat in the miniature rocking chair in the living room and waited. There were some nice board-games on top of a bookshelf, but none that I ever enjoyed playing as a family. Father always gets upset when he loses, and Mother never understood the point of the games and made jokes about how ridiculous the idea of playing games is. I stared at the board-games that we rarely ever played and wondered if the new owners would use them when they settled down in our home like the dust in my room. I wonder if they would end up selling the house, too, if some sort of curse will start to follow the house. I like to think that I know all about curses because Iâve read about them in the chapter books that Mother brought home for me when she used to stop by the library after a long day of work. She always encouraged us to read, but Charlie doesnât like it. He didnât like the books that Mother brought home for him and so she stopped bringing them for him. Mother came down the stairs later that afternoon with a lot of rouge dabbed on her cheeks. Her face looked painted over, resembling a perfect little pink dollâor at least, thatâs what I thought 259
when I saw her coming down the stairs. She was carrying some clothes in her arms and her legs were all wobbly. Father says that itâs impolite not to help someone when their body has turned unstable, especially a lady, but I didnât run to help Mother because I felt as though I was in some sort of trance. She walked over to the dining room table and I finally decided to stand up and accompany her in case she was still feeling wobbly. She didnât say anything to me, but she began to tremble slightly and I remember the sight of her bottom lip quivering. The rest of her face remained placid and calm, caked in a protective layer of porcelain makeup. Without saying a word, she handed me some of the clothing in her arms and I started to fold it. Father taught me how to fold and said that every good girl must learn the skill at some point in time if she wants to be respectable. Charlie always asks me to fold for him when we go on trips because he never learned how. I donât mind, I actually think itâs quite fun. Itâs just a repetitive hand motion that doesnât take much thought, and if Iâm sly about it I can do it while watching TV, although Father would never let that happen if I did it when he was home. I think he doesnât believe in multitasking. All the clothing was a gentle purple color, a lilac or lavender shade, I couldnât tell the difference. There was a dress in my pile that I used to wear to sleep before I grew too old for it, and there was a small hat that would fit the head of a small child. I watched Motherâs face carefully, inspecting it for wrinkles or creases as my hands methodically moved over her violet trinkets of the past. She didnât make a sound, nor did her expression change. Her lip ceased quivering and she bent over her own pile of clothing, while her hands were folding the cloth just like mine were. Iâve never painted my face with her makeup, but I know other children at my school who drown themselves in their motherâs cosmetics. They come with their puckered red lips and their outrageously shaded eyebrows and the boys all say how silly they look. Charlie asks me all the time why Iâve never attempted to plaster my face with Motherâs eyeshadow and lipsticks and eyeliner. He asks me so often I sometimes wonder if heâs actually asking me if I could put makeup on, and learn how to do it and do it often. But it doesnât interest me in the least. Mother took my pile of folded purple clothes and placed it on top of hers. She began to watch me as well, I seem to recall, looking at my face like I was looking at hers. Then, just before she reached for my hand to walk back out to the car and drive away forever, she stared right down into my brown eyes and whispered tenderly: âYou are my little angel, you know that? My little angel.â I didnât look around the house one last time before we left that day, but I did ask Mother why she didnât take any of her bottles of shells from the house. She didnât answer. I stopped watching her then, it seemed rude to stare, as though I was intruding on her own personal 260
monologue. She locked the front door and put the keys under the mat, and walked me over to our black car (âBlackâs the only practical color,â is what Father says). I knew it would be a long drive home, and I hadnât brought a book or anything but I didnât want to find myself waking up when the city lights poked holes through my windows and found the light-sensitive spots in my eyes. Mother didnât want to listen to musicâshe never wanted to listen to anything on the radio, so we both sat quietly in the car. I wondered if this would be my car when I grew up, or if it would be Charlieâs, or if we would have to share it. I wanted to ask Mother if we could go to the beach before leaving, but she looked so much like an ancient China doll that I refrained from doing so. She stopped the car on the side of an abandoned road and told me she had to run off and do something, and that she would be right back. I noticed that she was clutching the little lilac or lavender hat in one of her hands. She cracked open the window on my side and left me the car keys in case I got hot, but she told me very strictly not to wander into the road or do anything foolish. She kissed me on the forehead and waved a hurried goodbye in my direction before running down the road. She disappeared from my sight in what seemed to be seconds. I realized that sheâd been wearing so much lipstick that there was a vibrant imprint of her lips on my forehead. I tried to rub it off with my sweatshirt, but the lipstick only smudged on my forehead and ended up leaving a mark on my sleeve. I slowly pulled the brown box out of my backpack, which lay humbly at my feet, and I retrieved the letter âN.â It felt smooth in my hands, and I let my fingers run over it. Charlie says I should paint my fingernails more often, but Iâm only good at painting my left hand and I donât like it when my right hand is a sloppy, unkempt mess. I snapped âNâ in half without thinking, and immediately was overcome with a crippling remorse. I shoved the pieces back inside my brown box and rapidly buried it in the bottom of my bag. It was a very abandoned road, indeed, and I donât think anyone drove or walked or ran past me the whole time I was sitting there. Father was furious when I finally got home, the kind of furious that gets very frightening because he turns very silent. Mother used to call that âinternalizing,â and she said that it was just something that happened to everybody and that I shouldnât think about it too much. Father didnât say a word to me that entire evening, and Charlie seemed too confused and afraid to ask me any sort of question. He did sleep in my bed that night, though, and he ended up asking me with his impertinent, nasal voice: âBut why didnât you do anything?â He never asked me that again after that night, and I donât let my mind dwell on those inconsiderate words of his that often. When I think about our last day with the house, I like to 261
think more on images and actions. Thereâs this beautiful image I have of Mother running all the way down to the beach and slipping her shoes off, leaving them on the sand. As I go to sleep every night now, I watch her hesitate for a simple but profound moment before wading into the cold water and letting her body get used to the temperature. I can see her swimming out, far out, still clinging to the violet hat in her hand. I can see her head disappearing under the water, just like a mermaidâs would. I can see her head bobbing back up to the surface and looking towards the shore, her makeup now gone and poisoning the animals that swim past her decaying soul. But Iâm afraid that I canât see her sinking down againâthe last thing I can picture is her shivering face looking towards the shore. I suppose it must have been very difficult for her. I suppose that every night she was waking up in cold sweats; âNevvieâ whispered in her ears like an unstoppable, tormenting lullaby. I know this must have been what she was thinking of as the nights plunged forward, I know because âNevvieâ has been whispered into my ear, tooâI assume it is some ghost or omniscient power. I believe that it must have come from my spiny pink seashell, the one on my windowsill that I picked up from the shore without having to look very hard for it on the day when I broke Motherâs specific instructions to stay in the car. It had been hours since sheâd disappeared into the mist, swimming away to that rock that little Nevvie had had a goal of reaching, and I did so want to visit the beach once more. I still wonder why Mother decided not to take me with her, seeing as we both had the same destination in mind. Because, you see, I too wanted to sink beneath the chilly water just like a mermaid, but children are never allowed to go as far as they want with any activity or project, and someone prevented me from reaching the finish line just like they always do. But I did get to keep my angelic little seashell, and I held it in my delicate fingers as the car with the flashing lights drove me back home to the city. And when I got my bag back, the one I had left in the car, I threw out the entire brown box immediately. I couldnât seem to look at any of my old things, especially not my âN.â Some things just arenât meant to be held onto forever, even if they make it their business to stay in your mind until the end of time, whenever that may be.
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En la esquina Lourdes DĂĄvila A Mami Ya la habĂa visto antes de que bajara la ventanilla por primera vez. Pasaba casi todos los dĂas por la esquina, casi siempre sola, casi siempre bien vestida, casi siempre muy concentrada en guiar el carro, ensimismada en sus asuntos como todos los que negaban mi existencia, con un ensimismamiento falso de clase media atendiendo a lo suyo. TenĂa esa edad indefinible entre los sesenta y los setenta y cinco y la soledad tardĂa de quien ha criado a muchos hijos que se han ido yendo con el tiempo. DebĂa ser bastante miope, porque llevaba espejuelos con lentes muy gruesos. Pero era bonita. HabĂa algo en ella que, tras la cortina social impuesta, delataba tardes de relajamiento frente al mar, mañanas de cafĂ© y periĂłdico, intensas pasiones (legales), cariños profundos, risas y curiosidad compartidas con sus seres queridos. Algo en ella que parecĂa haber conquistado la casi imposible libertad de quien siguiĂł siempre las reglas y un dĂa cualquiera, sin darse cuenta (quiĂ©n sabe, quizĂĄ sĂ se dio cuenta) descubriĂł el espacio entre regla y regla y lo atravesĂł para quedarse allĂ, imperceptible ante los demĂĄs. O quizĂĄ todo esto me lo invento hoy, ahora que escribo mientras escucho en la cama de hospital el adagio de violĂn de Samuel Barber, y la tristeza y la melancolĂa me la trae aquĂ, donde estoy irremediablemente solo en mi Ășltimo viaje. La habĂa visto no verme, no vernos, es decir, que sabĂa que ya me habĂa visto a mĂ, a mi esposa y a mis dos niños. Pero yo creo que al principio no querĂa verme. Yo por mi parte la negaba (imposible decir cuĂĄnto puede negarse a alguien en quien comienza a pensarse todo el tiempo), igual que a todos los otros que pasaban sin vernos, que nos convertĂan en monstruosidad al voltear la cara si nos fijĂĄbamos en ellos. ÂżY por quĂ© no? Yo era definitivamente lo otro, el fracaso social, la enfermedad culpable de fin de siglo, el reverso de su vida perfecta, planchada y sin problemas. Ellos eran Alturas del Remanso, trabajos seguros, hijos responsables, cuenta de ahorros, inversiones, iglesia los domingos. Y aunque ahora escribo por ella, para ella, aunque ahora escribo porque tengo algo que decirle y no puedo irme sin decĂrselo, sĂ© que al principio la odiĂ© secretamente como odiĂ© al resto: ellos eran los privilegiados, los que podĂan asumir indiferencia ante el dolor ajeno, dejĂĄndose llevar en el ir y venir constante del implacable trĂĄfico de sus vidas. Ellos: injuriosa y nauseabunda repeticiĂłn de una familia que me habĂa abandonado en aquella esquina.
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Pero sin aquella esquina, sin todo lo que significaba aquella esquina, no la habrĂa conocido, no la habrĂa espiado en la luz mientras pasaba con mi lata de cambio y usaba a mi mujer y a mis niños para protegerme de mi vergĂŒenza y manipular sentimientos. Una esquina es como cualquiera otra (lo sabrĂ© yo que juguĂ© con tantas otras antes de terminar en aquella), pero esa peligrosa esquina marcaba el tĂ©rmino entre la seguridad cerrada de la urbanizaciĂłn y la apertura vertiginosa de la avenida. Yo sabĂa que ese mĂnimo espacio âese enlace entre el resguardo propio y la selva donde confluĂan el trĂĄnsito de la urbanizaciĂłn, el colmado, el mall, los cines, la panaderĂa y demĂĄsâ conjugaba la posibilidad momentĂĄnea de la pena. Ese no espacio habĂa llegado a ser yo. Yo era el muchacho de la esquina. Ya no era David, hijo de una familia con dinero que alguna vez tuvo una vida perfecta, planchada y sin problemas, trabajos seguros, hijos responsables, cuenta de ahorros, inversiones, iglesia los domingos. Y ella, ella solo era una mujer mĂĄs que salĂa de su casa, una mujer mĂĄs que iba de camino, que pasaba por la esquina y me veĂa sin querer verme, hasta que un dĂa ya no pudo mĂĄs y abriĂł la ventana. Yo por mi parte habĂa perdido mi apuesta con mi esposa; una mujer sola en Puerto Rico, de unos setenta años, no le iba a abrir nunca la ventana a un muchacho con SIDA. DespuĂ©s de todo, podemos hacer cualquier cosa los drogadictos, Âżno? QuiĂ©n sabe por quĂ© se decidiĂł ese dĂa, quizĂĄ vio algo en televisiĂłn, quizĂĄ leyĂł algo en el periĂłdico sobre alguna catĂĄstrofe, quizĂĄ leyĂł un libro muy triste o un libro muy alegre, quizĂĄ olvidĂł comerse su avena por la mañana y tenĂa un poco de hambre y de sueño, quizĂĄ pretendiĂł reparar en ese momento algĂșn recuerdo privado del pasado. O alguna carencia del presente. De quĂ© vale especular. Ella abriĂł la ventana, me dio unos chavos, me pidiĂł que me cuidara. Y quizĂĄ su voz, quizĂĄ simplemente el hecho de que hablara, de que me otorgara presencia con su voz, calmĂł de repente en mĂ años de odio y de cinismo. En ese momento, ante la necesidad de dinero y de dulzura, supe que algĂșn dĂa echarĂa al piso para siempre mi muralla. No sĂ© tampoco en quĂ© momento ocurriĂł la inversiĂłn, no sĂ© en quĂ© momento fui yo el que empecĂ© a preocuparme por ella, ahora que siempre bajaba la ventana al verme, ahora que siempre tenĂa preparado el dinero para darme, ahora que me preguntaba por mis sĂntomas, que me observaba perder peso, que era mi mejor y mi peor testigo. No sĂ© cuĂĄndo pero le pedĂ tambiĂ©n a ella que se cuidara, que no le abriera la ventana a nadie, que asegurara el pestillo de la puerta antes de salir de su casa. Pero mucho antes de que me ausentara por un tiempo de la esquina ya habĂa comenzado a quererla, a imaginarla en su casa, en la soledad de sus dĂas y tardes interrumpidas por algĂșn viaje necesario o innecesario a alguna parte. 264
SĂ© que cuando por fin regresĂ© a la esquina, ya sin mujer (la muerte) ni hijos (el hurto familiar), era como si ella me hubiera estado esperando siempre, y quĂ© maravillosa su sonrisa, ese dĂa cuando abriĂł la ventana antes de lo usual (se veĂa que ella no cabĂa en sĂ de tanto esperar) para decirme que me habĂa extrañado, preguntarme cĂłmo estaba, y cĂłmo de repente no me importaba ser sĂłlo el muchacho de la esquina, porque ella estaba allĂ para nombrarme, para acariciarme con sus palabras. SĂ© que le expliquĂ© lo del carposi, sĂ© tambiĂ©n que no tenĂa que explicarle nada porque las llagas eran dolorosamente visibles en mi frente y en la comisura de mis labios. SĂ© que comenzĂł a comprarme nĂ©ctares porque se me hacĂa difĂcil beber, y los nĂ©ctares no eran agrios, sĂ© tambiĂ©n que el primer dĂa compartiĂł lo que se habĂa comprado para ella, pero ya despuĂ©s comenzĂł a comprarme cosas solamente para mĂ, pan sobao fresco de la otra esquina, jugos. SĂ© que comencĂ© a coger la guagua mĂĄs temprano, sĂ© que ahora mi vida se iba en ese mĂnimo momento compartido en la esquina. SĂ© que un dĂa le expliquĂ© que me faltaban veinte pesos para un antibiĂłtico que podĂa comprarme en la farmacia y ella sin mĂĄs sacĂł los chavos como si le hubiera pedido un nĂquel, y esa noche en mi catre me lo tomĂ© y llorĂ© mucho mientras pensaba en ella. SĂ© que un dĂa en la guagua la vi montarse y me sorprendĂ mucho, despuĂ©s de todo ella era clase media (alta), carro automĂĄtico con aire, pelo arreglado cada semana en el Beauty Parlor, uñas limadas y pintadas, zapatos de cuero, ropa elegante. Yo estaba sentado atrĂĄs, levantĂ© los ojos porque la guagua parecĂa haberse detenido, y era porque ella estaba allĂ, una mujer no acostumbrada a coger guagua, forcejeando con su cartera y su monedero, buscando el cambio. Impresionante cĂĄmara lenta donde ella se revelaba fuera de su medio, incĂłmoda y nerviosa, sudada de pies a cabeza, como pidiendo un milagro. Me levantĂ© con trabajo, la saludĂ© y le preguntĂ© si necesitaba algo, si podĂa completarle el cambio, pero despuĂ©s de un tiempo que a ambos nos pareciĂł eterno, y mientras yo extendĂa mi mano con cambio suficiente para coger un taxi, ella encontrĂł lo que le faltaba y me pidiĂł que guardara mi dinero. Nos sentamos juntos, me bajĂ© en la esquina, y la vi alejarse para siempre. SĂ© que todavĂa pasarĂĄ todos los dĂas por la esquina. SĂ© que quizĂĄ algunos dĂas se sentirĂĄ muy sola, que algunos dĂas su familia irĂĄ a visitarla, a la hora del almuerzo, para irse despuĂ©s corriendo a su casa. SĂ© que de cuando en cuando se preguntarĂĄ dĂłnde estoy. SĂ© que nunca le agradecĂ del todo lo que hizo por mĂ. Pero lo que no sĂ© es si ella sabe, supo, de alguna manera, que la quise mucho, que me fui orgulloso de que me considerara su amigo, de ser, para siempre, su muchacho de la esquina. Era eso lo que tenĂa que decirle: David la quiere y se acordarĂĄ siempre de usted, le agradece el amor y la alegrĂa con que sembrĂł el espacio mĂnimo de su Ășltima esquina. 265
Haitiana Angerville Bam-bo-le-an-te Chito, chito arriba la vid. ÂĄOh! Bam-bo-le-an-te del vino. A. dio a luz aunque nunca conociĂł el amor, embarazada como objeto de la lujuria, pobre hija ahorita pobre mamita. Chito, chito arriba la vid. ÂĄOh! Bam-bo-le-an-te del vino. E. esconde sus ojos en el parque, mirando los ĂĄrboles al lado de los niños, durmiendo debajo del tobogĂĄn nunca jamĂĄs serĂĄ libre. Chito, chito arriba la vid. ÂĄOh! Bam-bo-le-an-te del vino. I. dejĂł la escuela por deglutir unas pastillas, por repetir el mismo error de decir cuĂĄnto le gustarĂa sufrir. Chito, chito arriba la vid. ÂĄOh! Bam-bo-le-an-te del vino.
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O. fue despedido por robarle a los ricos, por trabajar duro hacia la depresiĂłn, condenando su propio espĂritu al infierno. Chito, chito arriba la vid. ÂĄOh! Bam-bo-le-an-te del vino. U. perdiĂł la consciencia suya, antes de perder la vida suya, y el nombre y la memoria suyos, y el miedo de su propio bu. Chito, chito arriba la vid. ÂĄOh! Bam-bo-le-an-te del vino.
La hija naturaleza La Hija Naturaleza se quita la lagaña de los ojos mientras el mundo practica el amanecer con ella.
Hay tierras que oĂr, aguas que oler, fuegos que saborear, vientos que tocar y ver. Un
raspado del oĂdo que te da picor pela las capas de la Tierra. Los granos de la mugre se derrumban los agujeros silbantes como las rocas gruñen hacia las colinas susurrantes. Las piedras tintinean en el barro con puntas asĂ como la arena chisporrotea en una duna enorme. Los bosques de los ĂĄrboles chirrĂan con âÂĄĂĄrbol cae!â asĂ como las raĂces se quedan sin aliento por los troncos tiritando. La aspiraciĂłn de un olorcillo por una nariz inspirando las olas pequeñas de las aguas. Los rĂos eructan mientras corren asĂ como las cascadas sudan paradas. El hielo fuerza su excremento como una nube orina en sus chaparrones. Las gotas de lluvia hacen la miel en el perfume como los charcos flotan en la colonia de Padre Tiempo. Un giro rĂĄpido de la lengua chamusca la punta de la llama de un fuego. La piel es cenizas amargas como una quemadura es una chispa dulce. Una vela es una pimienta tĂmida como la cera es una sal fundida. El calor es un apretĂłn de un limĂłn como un humo es el arroz quemado. Un dedo estĂĄ conchabado con un ojo para encontrar el viento. La brisa: el tornado. La respiraciĂłn: la poluciĂłn. El frĂo: la mordida. El oxĂgeno: el diĂłxido de carbono. La Hija Naturaleza cierra sus ojos mientras el mundo practica el anochecer con ella. 267
Por ti No hay nada como una huella que camine por ti cuando tus tobillos se tuercen y tus uñas del pie y tus juanetes penetran a cada paso. ÂĄQuĂ© milagro tener rodillas que rozan por ti cuando tus muslos relinchan y tus piernas tiemblan y tus espinillas se fracturan! Es bueno que los metales bailen por ti cuando tu ritmo pasa por el quirĂłfano y tu pelvis se rompe bajo la presiĂłn y el meneo de tus caderas. Es hermoso que la pared se levante por ti cuando tu columna se desmorona como una columna de polvo y tu espalda se dobla como una regla rota de madera. ÂĄQuĂ© mĂĄgico tener puntas de los dedos que llevan las bolsas por ti cuando tus hombros se caen y tus codos mellan y tus palmas se ampollan! No hay nada mejor que un fĂ©retro que envejezca por ti para que tĂș vivas hasta que mueras en un cuerpo que fue hecho para ti.
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La hora âTu corazĂłn late con la vidaâ. No, mi pecho palpita por la hipertensiĂłn. Es un copa de vino debajo de âEs la hora de desvestirte,
una catarata hirviendo.
pero quieres despellejarte,
Conoce solamente las incisiones
esperas desaparecerteâ.
de los puntos, pero nunca aprende de
No, es la hora de arrancarse
las cicatrices de las incisiones.
la camisa de fuerza.
La caja torĂĄcica como la boca de
Quiero tener la piel del color
una serpiente asfixia y se traga todos
de la silueta de una sonrisa
los pulmones que ya se ahogan con
de medianoche.
el oxĂgeno e inhalan el fuego.
Espero viajar con el viento para esconderme en las fibras
âTus ojos brillan con tu bellezaâ.
del camaleĂłn.
No, mi cara huele a fealdad. Sus
manchas
muestran
mi
condiciĂłn
âTu mente pinta sus sueñosâ.
monstruosa.
No, mi cerebro me hierra mis pesadillas.
Su sinuosidad es mi perversidad.
Sus demonios son mis fantasmas,
Los dientes se manchan como el barro.
Sus miedos son mis fobias.
La boca apesta como
Vandaliza las paredes con alucinaciones.
un mojado beso no solicitado.
Mi cabeza suda por la zozobra y
Mis labios son mĂĄs tensos que
se entierra por la depresiĂłn.
el pinchazo de la pinza
Las neuronas se mienten a la cara y
para que una mueca alegre y
se apuñalan en la espalda
una sonrisa triste sean
con la aguja desafilada de
gemelas perpendiculares.
la conspiraciĂłn que paraliza. âEs la hora de ver mĂĄs allĂĄ de su desnudezâ. No, es la hora de vestirme.
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Senior Honors Theses 270
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Senior Honor Theses-Spring 2022 Department of Spanish and Portuguese The award winning theses can be read online by clicking on the thesis title
Department of Spanish and Portuguese Award for Overall Academic Achievement and Originality in an Honors Thesis
Social Hygiene, the Ecophobic Unconscious, and Memory in La Reserva EcolĂłgica Costanera Sur and Freshkills Park Rachel Moorman-Minton, Spanish Mentors: Jens Andermann and Mitra Rastegar
This thesis examines and compares the beliefs underpinning the formation of dump sites and the subsequent creation of park spaces at what is now the Reserva EcolĂłgica Costanera Sur in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Freshkills Park on Staten Island in New York City. I focus first on the use of the spaces as dump sites, analyzing the discourse established by the respective governments about these sites. I then discuss the so-called parquizaciĂłn or âparkificationâ of the spaces that has taken place more recently, analyzing this transformation in light of broader urban park histories in both cities. I particularly focus on the view of the human-nature relationship expressed in the wastedumping and park-making actions, making use of the works of scholars such as Simon Estok, Susan Signe Morrison, and AndrĂ©s Barreda. I also discuss the surprising agency of the matter and how that impacted both government language and broader cultural beliefs about the sites. My thesis also touches on the way that memory of the spaces is inscribed and interpreted in their current forms, specifically regarding the intrinsic connection between the Reserva and the last Argentine dictatorship. Using the critical framework provided by Estok and other authors, I argue that at the root of all these spatial reconfigurations within the Freshkills and Reserva sites is the desire for controlâover the material, the environment, the people of the city, and the very perception and memory of the sitesâas well as the fear of losing it.
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Department of Spanish and Portuguese Award for for Distinction in the Honors Thesis
A Writer Who Translates: Federico Falco as Co-Author in His Translation of Deborah Eisenbergâs Your Duck Is My Duck Marguerite Alley, Spanish Mentor: MarĂa JosĂ© Zubieta
In my thesis, I explore the confluence of creative writing and literary translation through the work of US short story writer Deborah Eisenberg, as translated into Spanish by Argentine short story writer Federico Falco. By examining, via close reading, the stories in Falcoâs 2015 collection 222 patitos y otros cuentos alongside his 2020 translation of Eisenbergâs story collection Your Duck Is My Duck, I identify key syntactical and thematic differences that indicate moments where the translator asserts his visibility as a writer in the text, thus providing evidence for the subjectivity and creativity intrinsic to the act of translation. How does Falcoâs own experience as a writer influence his interpretation and adaptation of Eisenbergâs work? Using a theoretical framework provided by scholars like Lawrence Venuti, Jeremy Munday, and Chantal Wright, I investigate the degree to which a writerâs creative voice and subjective experience influence their interpretation and adaptation of a source text, while also noting the ways in which changes in the publishing industry have brought the theory and practice of translation to the fore. Translated literature has recently gained more of a foothold in the English-speaking market through the work of independent and academic presses disrupting the hegemonic control of the major publishing houses. Translation theory, in turn, has also progressed to a point where the translator has become more of an acknowledged presence than ever before, as the line separating translation from creative writing grows ever thinner. Based on these factors, I conclude that modern translators, especially those with creative writing backgrounds like Falco, become something closer akin to co-authors, contributing to the construction of a hybrid work.
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How Social Mobilizations Impact Writing: Contemporary Mexican Feminism and the Tsunami Anthologies Sam Golden, Spanish Mentor: Laura Torres-RodrĂguez
My thesis is focused on answering this question: How have the feminist protests in Mexico within the last few years impacted Mexican feminist writing? I am focusing on two anthologies of women writers: Tsunami (2018) and Tsunami II (2020). Gabriela JĂĄuregui is the editor of both, and also wrote the prologues for both collections. Between their publication dates, Mexico has seen an unprecedented intensification of womenâs mass protests, collective actions, and strikes that have captivated the public debate and the collective imagination. In analyzing them, I have found the feminist writing to mirror these changes, especially in the form of a transformation from an individual notion of authorship and ownership to a collective subject and voice. The increasing feminist mobilizations have created a more expansive and experiential understanding of what âwritingâ can include: performance, songs, visual objects, gesture, graffiti, and more. These are all things that can be incorporated into protests, and many have been used creatively in protests in different parts of Latin America, especially in recent years. I am using the concept of one of the writers, Marina Azahua, to guide my analysis and construct an original theoretical framework: the concept of âgestural testimonyâ, or âtestimonio gestual.â Using the ideas of philosopher Carrie Noland in Agency and Gesture, I am arguing that the second anthology gives more emphasis to other gestural, experiential, and collective forms of inscription.
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Regresar: Private Lives and the Shining Path Conflict in PerĂș, a film Deborah Shonack, Spanish Mentor: Enrique del Risco
Starting in 1987, the domestic terrorist group the Shining Path in Peru shifted its focus from the countryside to the capital, Lima, a shift that those living in Lima didnât really feel until 1989. The Peruvian governmentâs Truth and Reconciliation Commission dedicated itself to investigating the human rights abuses committed in the decades of the eighties and nineties; its report, completed in 2003, was the product of an extensive research covering the start of the Shining Path, its activities throughout the period, and the impact the violence both from the Shining Path and the military had on different regions in Peru. While the Commission focused on reconciling with the violence and trauma of the Shining Path conflict, my interest lies in what peopleâs lives were like outside of the conflict, both in Lima and in Puno where the Shining Path had a greater impact. When hearing stories about this time from my family, what stuck with me the most is how much life my family was able to experience despite living in a country with ongoing conflict and violence. As a filmmaker, the intersection of the horrors of the conflict and the daily life present in the oral histories Iâve heard from my family, of life continuing amidst conflict, greatly interests me. Iâve chosen to dive into this intersection through the exploration of friendship in my feature film script, which combines months of research on the conflict and life during 1986-1987 in Chosica, Lima, and Juli, with interviews with family members and family friends who have shared their experience about living through this time. With writing the first draft of this script, I explored what it means to lose a friendship in the midst of conflict.
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Raising Resistance: Womenâs Histories of Abortion, Infanticide and Estupro (Rape) in Late Colonial Mexico (1690-1821) Ingrid Trost, Latin American Studies. Mentors: Rebecca Goetz, Zeb Tortorici
This thesis analyzes five criminal cases of alleged abortion, infanticide, and gender-based violence in approximately the final century of Spanish colonialism in Mexico, 1700-1821. I argue that the desire for maintenance of the status quo on behalf of the state and community guided the process and outcome of criminal trials relating to the young female body and to reproduction. I trace the politics and enforcement of family and gender norms, intersections between the law and the young female body, and the impact of class and race on perceived criminality or culpability. My work intersects with critical historical scholarship on women, gender, abortion, and infanticide in colonial Mexico. Research by scholars such as AsunciĂłn LavarĂn, Nora Jaffary, Richard Boyer, Kathryn Burns, Marisa Fuentes, and Tina Campt have proven to be indispensable. By presenting historical review in the context of close-reading case analysis, I demonstrate the practical impact of ephemeral and socially developed concepts like socially perceived honor, morality, and acceptable family structure. For example, in the case of Maria Thomasa Muro I trace how existing racial and gendered hierarchies in the early nineteenth century informed court procedure through invasive physical and emotional examination. Feminist and decolonial principles of narrative history-telling and varied methods of resistance guide my case analysis, thesis construction and presentation.
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Biographies Yagmur Akyurek is a senior at Gallatin studying the intersection of literature, linguistics, and visual culture, with an emphasis on how literary and visual narratives can inform a sense of place. Hailing from Massachusetts, she is interested in how communities are shaped by their surrounding physical environment. She enjoys writing poetry and crocheting Marguerite Alley (she/they) is a senior from Durham, North Carolina majoring in Spanish and minoring in creative writing. Their fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in New Ohio Review, The Louisville Review, Chautauqua, Pigeon Pages, Bodega, and elsewhere. They plan to pursue graduate studies in translation. Johmmiry Almonte is an undergraduate Dominican Afro-Latinx student majoring in Social Work and double minoring in Spanish and Italian. Sheâs interested in the concept of unlearning preconceptions taught not only by ethnic homes but society as well; particularly preconceptions based on racism (including colorism and texturism), sexism (including machismo), homophobia and transphobia, among others. As a Washington Heights native, sheâs witnessed the shift that gentrification has caused and the debilitating grip on the neighborhoodâs core. Though there are currently various unsettled aspects of their life, they are certain of wanting to pursue poetry and become a poet. Haitiana Munah Angerville is a CAS senior at New York University in Class of â22 where she majors in Romance Languages concentrating in Spanish and French; she also completed a minor in Web Design and Computer Programming. She has a love-hate relationship with her brain yet an obsessive affair with her mind. Creative writing, the love of language, and poetry all awakened in her when she picked up her first pencil, as she likes to believe. Reading, as of now, lulls her to sleep during the day and night, but she strives to be a more active, passionate and dedicated academic and leisure reader to spice up her life and her lifeâs work. She is proud to say that she also writes in English and bold to say the same in French. Haitianaâs goals after graduation are to explore literary translation; editorial roles and (self-)publishing; the science and research of learning in the classroom, online and by oneâs self; and the world as she longs to travel outside of her Harlem, Manhattan, New York City bubble of a hometown to answer her multilingual calling. 277
Montse Armengou MartĂn was the King Juan Carlos Chair in Spanish Culture and Civilization Spring 2017. Armengou is a distinguished Spanish journalist and investigative documentary filmmaker. She has worked at TelevisiĂł de Catalunya (TV3) since 1985. Through her work as a documentary filmmaker, Armengou has unearthed and presented new evidence about the social history of repression in Spain during the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco (1936-1975) in Spain. She is the co-director, with Ricard Belis of Los niños perdidos del franquismo (Francoâs Forgotten Children, 2002), Les fosses del silenci (Graves of Silence, 2003), and El convoy de los 927 (927 on the Train to Hell, 2004, about the Spanish victims of the Holocaust). More recently, she has directed two high-profile documentaries. Abuelo, te sacarĂ© de aquĂ (2013) chronicles the history of the Valle de los CaĂdos (the âValley of the Fallenâ), a fascist mausoleum in the middle of Europe honoring dictator Franco and established as a representation of democratic reconciliation. Los internados del miedo (The Institutions of Fear, 2015) investigates and documents the abuse and enslavement of children in state-owned, catholic orphanages during the dictatorship and part of the democratic transition. Armengouâs documentaries have received numerous awards, including Premio Nacional de Cultura de Catalunya; Grand Prix FIGRA (France); Best Director, Human Rights Film Festival, Barcelona, 2003; Prix Liberpress (Radio France International, Paris); Bronze Medal, New York Film Festival; Prix International du Documentaire et du Reportage MĂ©diterranĂ©en; Best Use of Archival Footage, Memorimage; First Prize, IFTA; and First Prize, Catalan Womenâs Association. Armengouâs documentary work has also been published in book form and has become a resource for human rights agencies and activists. Her work has been used, cited, and discussed by several United Nations units, including the Special Rapporteur on the Promotion of Truth, Justice, Reparation, and Guarantees of Non-Recurrence, and the Working Group on Forced Disappearances. Elizabeth Baltusnik is a second-year student double-majoring in Urban Design & Architecture Studies and Spanish. She is focused on historic preservation and adaptive reuse through sustainable practices. During the Fall 2021 semester, Elizabeth enrolled in SPAN-UA 360: âInstitutions, Archives, and Peopleâ which involved a special focus on university-supported centers and the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center in particular. For her final project, Elizabeth chose to combine her two disciplines to research the historic building that houses the Center.
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Hazel Bolivar is a graduate of New York Universityâs Tisch School of the Arts, where she majored in Film & Television and minored in Gender & Sexuality Studies. She is particularly interested in television writing and exploring transgender identity through art and performance. Nicole Bula is a freshman in the Film and Television program at NYUâs Tisch School of the Arts. Miguel Caballero VĂĄzquez (PhD Princeton University, 2017) is Assistant Professor at the Spanish and Portuguese Department, Northwestern University. Currently finishing a book manuscript on monumentality, conservationism and iconoclasm titled The Monument of Tomorrow. Conservation and the Avant-Garde in the Spanish Civil War. He also has an online activist project on HIV-AIDS called ASS (Amor, Sexo y SerologĂa), which he plans to turn into an academic project soon. He is interested in psychoanalysis, the relations between literature, philosophy and the arts, medical humanities, and museum studies. Pedro Cardim (Lisbon, Portugal, 1967). Professor at the Department of History of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, where he specializes in the history of the Iberian World between the sixteenth and the early nineteenth centuries. He is the author of numerous works on early modern Iberia, as well as on the Portuguese and the Spanish colonial rule in the Americas. His most recent publication (co-authored with Nuno Monteiro) is: Political Thought in Portugal and its Empire c.1500-1800, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Sam Cordell is a designer and photographer based in New York City. He graduated NYUâs Gallatin School of Individualized Study in 2021 with a major in Interdisciplinary Design, studying the intersections between cultural anthropology and the history of modernism in architecture and design. If he isnât lost in an antique store searching for design inspiration, you can find him at the airport pursuing his deep passion for aviation working toward his Instrument Rating. Lourdes DĂĄvila is Clinical Professor and Associate Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at NYU. She is also the founder and managing editor of Esferas. Her research is dedicated to the study of the intersection of photography and dance with literature and politics. Her first book, Desembarcos en el papel. La imagen en la literatura de Julio CortĂĄzar was published with Beatriz Viterbo in 2001. She has published works on the writers Diamela Eltit, Eduardo Lalo, and Leonardo Padura, among others, and on the dancers 279
Martha Graham, JosĂ© LimĂłn and Marie Bardet. Lourdes danced with the Lucinda Childs Dance Company from 1992 to 2000, where she worked as assistant to the choreographer. She also danced with Ballets de San Juan, Joyce Trisler Danscompany and David Gordon. j.d. is a Puerto Rican writer, actress and singer born and raised in New York. She is a member of NYUâs Tisch Class of 2026, where she will study dramatic writing and psychology. Lead roles with Pied Piper Community Theater productions include The Tempest, Shrek!, Oklahoma, Baker Street Irregulars and, most recently, Urinetown, The Musical. Pablo Delano was born in 1954, in the âunincorporated territory of the United Statesâ known as Puerto Rico. He was raised on a hillside just outside the capital city of San Juan. As a child, he enjoyed climbing a huge FlamboyĂĄn tree and savoring a spectrum of fresh fruits including mangos, acerolas, and delicious pink guavas. After completing high school, he relocated to the U.S. East Coast to study art. He holds a B.F.A. from Tyler School of Art / Temple University and an M.F.A. from Yale University, both in painting. In New York, he initially pursued a career as a painter, but quickly turned to photography, a skill he had learned from his father, the photographer Jack Delano. Photography seemed at that time to offer a more satisfying, interactive, and visceral connection to the world. Various substantial projects grew out of his early work done on the Lower East Side, including commissions from the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs and the Ellis Island Immigration Museum. One unifying thread was a consistent interest in the life of Latinx and Caribbean communities. In 1996, Delano accepted a teaching position at Trinity College, in Hartford, where a colleague offered the opportunity to travel to Trinidad and Tobago, in the Southern Caribbean. Fascinated by that nationâs process of post-colonial nation building, he returned countless times over the next 10 years, ultimately producing a book of black and white photographs titled In Trinidad. During his first years at Trinity College Delano also began collecting archival images from Puerto Rico, and conceptualizing the project that would ultimately grow into his conceptual art installation titled The Museum of the Old Colony. In 2019, Delano was appointed Charles A. Dana Professor of Fine Arts. James D. FernĂĄndez (Brooklyn, 1961) has been teaching at NYU since 1995. His research, teaching, publications and public humanities projects have focused on the conversion of 280
experience into narrative, whether in the genre of autobiography in Spain, historical accounts of US participation in the Spanish Civil War, or the tales told by Spanish immigrants and their descendants in order to make sense of their experience. His most recent work on Spanish emigration to the US in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries has resulted in a major exhibition, which is currently touring Spain: Emigrantes invisibles: españoles en Estados Unidos, 1868-1945. Samantha Golden is graduating from NYU in May of 2022, double-majoring in Spanish and Psychology. Her thesis examines the relationship between contemporary Mexican feminist writing and protests. She will be starting law school in the fall of 2022, with hopes of becoming a lawyer to represent women who are domestic violence victims, trafficking victims, sexual abuse victims, and asylum seekers. Odi Gonzales, born in Peru, is an award-winning poet, translator, researcher in Andean Oral Tradition (XVI-XXI centuries), and professor in Peru and the US. Gonzales is the author of seven poetry collections. He has also written research books, and a trilingual Quechua, Spanish, English Dictionary. Since 2008, GonzalesâClinical Assistant Professorâteaches Quechua Language and Culture, and AntropologĂa Linguistica Andina at New York University. Jo Labanyi came to NYU in 2006 after a career in the UK. She is the founder of the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies and of the Journal of Romance Studies. She was elected to the British Academy in 2005. She held the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Chair of Spanish Culture and Civilization at NYUâs King Juan Carlos Center in Fall 2002 and directed the Center from 2008 to 2014. A specialist in the cultural history of modern Spain, her fields of research are literature, film, gender studies, popular culture, memory studies, and the history of emotions. Her co-edited volumes include A Companion to Spanish Cinema (Blackwell, 2012) and Engaging the Emotions in Spanish Culture and History (Vanderbilt UP, 2016; Spanish translation 2018). Her most recent book is Spanish Culture from Romanticism to the Present: Structures of Feeling (Legenda, 2019): a collection of 24 essays from over her career. She remains fond of her contribution to Oxford UPâs Very Short Introduction series (Spanish Literature, 2010). Her co-authored Cultural History of Modern Literatures in Spain (Polity) will appear in 2022. She is currently completing a co-authored oral history of cinema-going in 1940s and 1950s Spain, and a monograph on 1940s Spanish cinema entitled âReading Cinema under Dictatorship.â
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Juan JosĂ© Lahuerta is the Director of the GaudĂ Chair at the Barcelona School of Architecture, and he has been a professor in the Istituto Universitario di Architettura, in Venice, holder of the King Juan Carlos Chair of Spanish Culture and Civilization at New York University (2011-2012), Senior Curator of the Picasso Museum of Barcelona, and Chief Curator of the National Museum of Art of Catalonia. He has published books on art and architecture, among them Antoni GaudĂ. Architecture, Ideology and Politics (1992); Le Corbusier. Espagne. Carnets (2001); Religious Painting. Picasso and Max Von Moos (2015); Photography or Life: Popular Mies (2015); On Loos, Ornament and Crime (2015); Antoni GaudĂ. Ornament, Fire, and Ashes (2016), Arte en la Ă©poca del infierno (2021). He is a member of the scientific committee of the Milan based review Casabella, and founder and director of Mudito & Co., an independent editing house based in Barcelona. Jill Lane has been attending events at the King Juan Carlos Center since its founding, having received her PhD in Performance Studies from NYU in 2000. She returned to NYU as faculty in 2006, and is now Associate Professor of in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese and at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS), and is immediate past director of CLACS (2012â2021). Maya Mau is in the Class of 2024 at Cornell University studying Industrial and Labor Relations with minors in Business, Information Science, and Law & Society. She was born in China but grew up in New York City. At Cornell, she is involved with activities at a social impact consulting club, the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, Cornell Law School, and will be serving as the Editor-in-Chief for the Fall 2022 semester of The Workplace Review, the ILR Schoolâs undergraduate journal. Beyond the classroom and the workplace, she enjoys culinary arts, freelance journalism, politics, and travel. Jordana Mendelson is Director of the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center and a professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at New York University. She is the author of Documenting Spain: Artists, Exhibition Culture, and the Modern Nation 1929-1939 (2005) and co-editor of Postcards: Ephemeral Histories of Modernity (2010) . She has curated or co-curated MirĂł i ADLAN (2021), Encuentros con los años 30 (2012), Revistas y Guerra 1936-1939 (2007), Other Weapons: Photography and Print Culture during the Spanish Civil War (2007), Margaret Michaelis: FotografĂa, Vanguardia y RepĂșblica en la Barcelona de la RepĂșblica (1998). She serves on the advisory committee of the Archivo Español de Arte and Culture & History, is a member of the Editorial Board of Modernism/Modernity, and is currently the Editor of the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies. 282
Christine Mladic Janney is a documentary filmmaker and media anthropologist whose work explores photography, digital technologies, archives, race and ethnicity, and migration in Peru and the US. She holds a PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology and an Advanced Certificate in Culture and Media from New York University. Along with Ros Postigo and Juan Carlos BelĂłn, she is a co-founder of the Centro de investigaciĂłn y estudios para la fotografĂa (CIEFO, ciefo.org), an organization dedicated to the study, conservation, and dissemination of Peruvian photography. Rachel Moorman-Minton is a senior at NYU, double majoring in Global Liberal Studies and Spanish with a minor in Teacher Education. After graduation, she is interested in working in an educational position in a GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) institution or in nature education. Aside from her academic pursuits, she is an avid birder. Josep M. Muñoz (Barcelona, 1959) is a historian. By profession, he is an editor, publisher and translator. He received his Ph.D. with distinction (Premi extraordinari de doctorat) in contemporary history in 1995 from the Universitat de Barcelona. He was a member of the cabinet of Mayor Pasqual Maragall (1987-1995) and Director of Cultural Services of the MACBA (Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona), 1995-1999. He is currently the Director of the cultural magazine LâAvenç (2000-present). Muñoz is the author of Jaume Vicens i Vives (1910-1960). Una biografia intel.lectual (1997) and editor of Els quatre presidents: entrevistes a Tarradellas, Pujol, Maragall i Montilla (2010) and Ălbum Jaume Vicens i Vives: 1910-1960 (2010). Mary Ann Newman is a translator from Catalan and Spanish. She has published fiction by Quim MonzĂł, essays by Xavier Rubert de VentĂłs, and poetry by Josep Carner. For Private Life, a 1932 Catalan classic by Josep Maria de Sagarra (Archipelago Books), she won the Premi J. B. CendrĂłs 2017 from Ămnium Cultural and the North American Catalan Society Prize 2017. She was awarded the Creu de Sant Jordi in 1998. She is currently Executive Director of the Farragut Fund for Catalan Culture in the U.S., a member of the board of the Catalan Institute of America, and President of the Jury of the Premi Internacional Catalunya. Cristina Pato is a musician, writer, educator and producer, and has been hailed as âa virtuosic burst of energyâ by The New York Times. Her professional career is focused on exploring the role of the arts in society through teaching and producing. Cristina has served as artist-in-residence at New York University (NYU), Harvard University, and the University of California, 283
Santa Barbara. In addition, she collaborated for over fifteen years with The Silkroad Project, the non-profit organization founded by cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Since 2017, Cristina writes a weekly column titled âThe Art of Restlessnessâ for Spanish newspaper La Voz de Galicia for which she was awarded the XVII AfundaciĂłn Journalism Prize: FernĂĄndez del Riego. Cristina divides her time between New York City and Galicia and shares her life with photographer Xan PadrĂłn. Mary Louise Pratt is Silver Professor (emerita) in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at NYU, where she taught from 2002-2014. Her most recent books, Los imaginarios planetarios (Editorial Aluvion 2017) and Planetary Longings (Duke UP, forthcoming 2002) reflect the transdisciplinary knowledgemaking discussed here. Jorge Ribalta (Barcelona, 1963) is an artist, researcher, and independent editor and curator. He has had solo exhibitions in the Zabriskie galleries in New York (1994, 2000, 2005) and Paris (1996); Estrany-De la Mota (Barcelona, 1998); Casa sin Fin (CĂĄceres and Madrid, 2010, 2012, 2015); angelsbarcelona (Barcelona, 2012, 2016) and Elba BenĂtez (Madrid, 2019). In recent years his solo exhibitions have been shown in CRP Nord-Pas de Calais (Douchy-les-Mines, France) and Linea di Confine (Rubiera, Italia). His Monumento mĂĄquina was housed in 2015 and 2016 in the Centro Guerrero (Granada), the FundaciĂłn Helga de Alvear (CĂĄceres) and the WĂŒrttembergischer Kunstverein (WKV) in Stuttgart. Jorgeâs retrospective Todo es verdad. Ficciones y documentos (1987-2020) is on display at the FundaciĂłn Mapfre, Madrid, from February until May 2022 and will be at the Museo de la Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona, from September 2022 to March 2023. He has participated in numerous group shows, including: New Photography 10 (MOMA, New York, 1994), Fragments (MACBA, Barcelona, 1996), Sets and Situations (MOMA, New York, 2000), Playgrounds (Museo Reina SofĂa, Madrid, 2014), La bestia y el soberano / The Beastt and the Sovereign (MACBA and WKV, Barcelona and Stuttgart, 2015), Ficciones y territorios. Arte para pensar la nueva razĂłn del mundo (Museo Reina SofĂa, Madrid, 2016) and the current Vasos comunicantes. ColecciĂłn 1881-2021 (Museo Reina SofĂa, Madrid, 2020). Nelson Rivera is the author of Sucio DifĂcil: Piezas para el teatro (Isla Negra, 2005); Visual Artists and the Puerto Rican Performing Arts, 1950â1990 (Peter Lang, 1997); Con urgencia: escritos sobre arte puertorriqueño contemporĂĄneo (EDUPR, 2009); Hinca por ahĂ: escritos sobre las artes y asuntos limĂtrofes (CallejĂłn, 2016); Cathy Berberian: Entrevistas (Riel, 2019). 284
Ana Leonor Romero is an Argentine historian. She holds a PhD in History from the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA). She is a researcher at the Instituto de Historia Argentina y Americana âDr. Emilio Ravignaniâ (UBA/CONICET) and teaches at Universidad de Buenos Aires and at NYU Buenos Aires. Currently, she is the Director of the Journal PolHis, Revista BibliogrĂĄfica del Programa Interuniversitario de Historia PolĂtica. She is a member of Taller de Historia Global. Relaciones Transnacionales en las AmĂ©ricas (based at Universidad de San Andres), and takes part in the research project History of Parliaments in Latin America (based at University of Oxford). She has participated in several research projects and published articles in specialized journals. She has received the Emile Lousse Essay Prize 2016 (International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions) for her article co-written with Laura Cucchi. Her current research focuses on the intellectual exchange between Argentina, Spain, and the United States and the role of Congress in Argentina at the end of the nineteenth century. David Rosales is a writer, personal trainer, co-owner of Roman Fitness Systems, and editor of Pro Hockey Strength, the official website of NHL strength coaches. Originally from Vermont, David lives in New York City and studies at New York Universityâs Gallatin School. He loves books, pop-punk music, Vermont maple syrup, and heavy split squats. You can catch up with him at his website or on Instagram. Vicente SĂĄnchez-Biosca is a Professor of Communication and Visual Culture at the University of Valencia, Spain and held the King Juan Carlos Chair at NYU during the Spring semester of 2013. He held a Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1991. He is the author of many books about the image (montage, the avant-garde, the Spanish Civil War, the Holocaust, and Cambodian genocide). Since 2016, he has directed a research group on perpetrators of mass violence. His latest book is La muerte en los ojos. QuĂ© perpetran las imĂĄgenes de perpetrador (Alianza, 2021) in which he considers the visual production of those who are authors of violent acts or complicit with the performative value of those acts which produce the humiliation and dehumanization of their victims.
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Sophie Slade (she/her) is a senior at NYU graduating this May, 2022 with a BA in International Relations and Spanish, and a minor in Peace and Conflict Studies. She is also an MA candidate in International Relations through NYUâs Accelerated BA/MA Program. Her concentration is in bottom-up approaches to peacebuilding and international development, and their intersections with migration and border politics. She is passionate about Hispanic studies, culture, and dance, and hopes to incorporate them in her chosen career. She was also participant in Jordana Mendelsonâs class âInstitutions, Archives, and People.â Francesc Torres (Barcelona, 1948) worked as an apprentice in his fatherâs printing workshop and trained as a graphic artist. In 1967, he moved to Paris to continue his art studies at the Ăcole des Beaux Arts and began producing work with a non-functional, industrial appearance and followed the strategies of Minimalism in its formal and material basis. He later worked on posters for the May â68 movement of workers and students until it collapsed under the force of de Gaulleâs conservative government. He moved back to Spain to do his military service. Shortly after he moved to Chicago and then to New York, where he has lived since 1974. He has had numerous solo exhibitions in institutions such as the International Center of Photography (New York), the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina SofĂa (Madrid), the Institut Valencia dâArt Modern (Valencia), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, List Visual Arts Center (Cambridge, USA), Sala Rekalde (Bilbao), Arizona State University Art Museum (Tempe, Arizona), Queens Museum of Art (New York) and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art (Ithaca, New York). Zaskia Torres is a second-year undergraduate student at New York University, double-majoring in International Relations and Spanish. In the fall semester of 2021, she enrolled in Jordana Mendelsonâs course âInstitutions, Archives, and Peopleâ where students researched how institutional histories are recorded, archived, and written with a special focus on universitysupported centers and the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center at NYU. Zaskiaâs final project consisted of an interview with the 2009 AndrĂ©s Bello Chair, Dr. James Dunkerely. Ingrid Trost graduated from NYU in May 2022 with a BA in Latin American Studies. She served as the undergraduate representative at the King Juan Carlos Center for the 2021-2022 school year, as well as working as an associate editor for NYUâs Esferas since her first year. In her current work, she prioritizes increased access to and diversity in academic institutions.
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MarĂa JosĂ© Urrutia is a senior at New York University studying International Relations and Public Health at the College of Arts and Science, as well as an MA Candidate for Bioethics at the School of Global Public Health. She also enjoys writing about culture, art, and films. She was also a participant in Jordana Mendelsonâs class âInstitutions, Archives, and People.â Devon Vazquez Forester is a junior majoring in Spanish and Portuguese as well as International Relations. This past semester she enjoyed learning under the direction of Jordana Mendelson in the class âInstitutions, Archives, and People,â focusing on the role of global institutions, learning about hispanismo, and researching past directors and chairs of the KJCC. Following the completion of her senior year, Devon plans to attend graduate school in pursuit of her passion for Latin American and Caribbean studies. Thomas Zenteno is a transfer student currently in his fourth year as an SPS student pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Hotel and Tourism Management with a concentration in Marketing and Revenue Management at NYU.
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