The Ethics of Latin American Literary Criticism: Reading Otherwise (New Concepts in Latino American Cultures)

In "The Superstitious Ethics of the Reader" from Discusión, Jorge Luis Borges attacks what he considers to be a disastrous habit among modern-day readers, referring to the habit of mistaking acoustic, metric, and other purely external technicalities for sufficient proof of literary greatness. However sarcastic and seemingly unforgiving, though, this attack against "a superstition of style" clearly implies that its author, like many critics today, believes in the possibility of an "ethics of the reader" that would not be superstitious-one that by contrast would be, let us say, truthful, or enlightened, or genuine. 1 Does this mean that from this example among others, we are justified in seeking out an "ethics of Latin American literary criticism" by way of "reading otherwise," as the title of the present volume invites us to think? Based on Borges's own work, at least two critics-one of whom is included here as well-seem positively in favor of such an investigation. Let me briefly mention these examples, if for no other reason than that they illustrate what I consider to be two common models of answering the question about ethics, literature, and literary or cultural criticism in Latin America. Sylvia Molloy, for one, ends the introduction to her book Signs of Borges with the following suggestion: "Any reading of Borges should take into account the ethics that sustains it," to which she adds: "By ethics I mean the honest conduct and conveyance of a text, seemingly deceitful yet aware of its deceptions, admitting to its inevitable traps, confessing to the creation of simulacra it does nothing to conceal. If a return to Borges, to his entire text, is worthwhile, it is because that text upholds a constant and honest disquisition on writing, his own writing, the writing of others." 2 Aside from the brief reference to the practice of confession as well as the mention of notions such as honesty and self-awareness, two notions that we certainly have come to expect, in postromantic times at least, from any ethical and moral discussion, the most striking feature of this description without a doubt involves the role of textuality, as a peculiar form of simulacrum, now made part of a careful disquisition about self and others. The question of worth, if not exactly literary worth in the older sense of evaluative criticism, thus comes to depend on a new kind of textual honesty, intrinsic to writing as such: perhaps not to all writing, though this is not excluded either, but at least those few writers to whom a return is worth our while. No doubt closer to Maurice Blanchot than to Jacques Derrida or Paul de Man, who in any case are never mentioned by name in the book, Molloy's Signs of Borges (originally published in 1979) nonetheless in many regards stands as a high point of a certain deconstructive and more generally poststructuralist tendency in Latin American literary criticism. This tendency thus proves that the textual turn, despite frequent objections to the contrary, by no means ought to exclude a turn, or a return, to ethics-whether to an ethics of writing or, in a subtle slippage that seems to be openly embraced in the lines quoted above, to an ethics of reading as well. From a slightly different angle, but writing within a tradition that is perhaps not as far removed from the ethics of textual self-reflexivity promoted by Sylvia Molloy, Idelber Avelar too turns to Borges in a quest for what he prefers to call an "ethics of interpretation" in his article "The Ethics of Interpretation and the International Division of Intellectual Labor." Thus, before taking inspiration from Borges's short story "The Ethnographer," he proposes to inquire into and ultimately takes issue with the common notion that critical theory, particularly of the textual and deconstructive kind, in the tradition of what he also calls "post-phenomenological thought," would have entailed a "bracketing," a "demise," or even a total "eclipse" of all moral and/or ethical concerns. Avelar at the same time goes against the unexamined ethnocentrism of some of our time's most erudite and well-intended liberal critics and moral philosophers such as Wayne Booth or Martha Nussbaum, authors whose benevolent humanism cannot conceal the profoundly unequal and asymmetrical global situation in which their pleas for pluralism and cosmopolitanism risk sounding like a shrill provincialism. \* All translations from Portuguese to English, unless otherwise stated, are my own. Cover......Page 1 Contents......Page 8 List of Figures......Page 10 Acknowledgments......Page 12 Introduction: Reading Otherwise......Page 14 Part I: ETHICS, POLITICS, REPRESENTATION......Page 22 1 The Ethical Superstition......Page 24 2 Ethics, Perhaps......Page 38 Part II: ETHICS AND CULTURAL STUDIES......Page 56 3 Ethics and Citizenship in the Blogosphere: Academics Meet New Technologies of Online Publication......Page 58 4 Modernist Ethics: Really Engaging Popular Culture in Mexico and Brazil......Page 76 Part III: THE LIMITS OF LITERATURE......Page 116 5 A Few Notes on Constructed Worlds: The Contradictory Legacy of Past Decades......Page 118 6 Saying the Unsayable: Saer, or for an Ethics of Writing......Page 128 7 Infrapolitics and the Thriller: A Prolegomenon to Every Possible Form of Antimoralist Literary Criticism. On Héctor Aguilar Camín’s La guerra de Galio and Morir en el golfo......Page 160 Part IV: THE EXPERIENCE OF READING......Page 194 8 Ethical Asymmetries: Learning to Love a Loss......Page 196 9 Reading for the People and Getting There First......Page 214 List of Contributors......Page 230 A......Page 234 C......Page 235 D......Page 236 E......Page 237 G......Page 238 I......Page 239 L......Page 240 M......Page 241 O......Page 242 P......Page 243 R......Page 244 S......Page 245 U......Page 246 Z......Page 247

The last several decades have witnessed a reorientation of the political and a globalization of the cultural in Latin America, shifting literature's function as a homogenizing, citizen-forming institution to a more dispersed, fragmented, and (potentially) democratic and liberating practice. At the same time, and perhaps in response to this cultural shift, the field of Latin American literary studies has expanded to include cultural studies, postcolonial theory, performance studies, gender studies, Africana studies, and subaltern studies, at once expanding and disrupting the boundaries of literature, criticism, and of Latin America itself. In light of these dramatic transformations within a globalized Latin American culture, as well as within the field of Latin American literary studies itself, what value can we attribute to aesthetics today? Is a reconsideration of artistic creation a mere return to the hegemonic lettered city described by Angel Rama? Or can we begin to think about an "ethical potential" inscribed within the act of reading, that is, an encounter with otherness that irreversibly alters the reading subject?

The ethical superstition / Bruno Bosteels Ethics, perhaps / Gabriela Basterra Ethics and citizenship in the blogosphere: academics meet new technologies of online publication / Idelber Avelar Modernist ethics: really engaging popular culture in Mexico and Brazil / Esther Gabara A few notes on constructed worlds: the contradictory legacy of past decades / Sergio Chejfec Saying the unsayable: Saer, or for an ethics of writing / Gabriel Riera Infrapolitics and the thriller: a prolegomenon to every possible form of antimoralist literary criticism. On Héctor Aguilar Carmín's La guerra de Galio and Morir en el golfo / Alberto Moreiras Ethical asymmetries: learning to love a loss / Doris Sommer Reading for the people and getting there first / Francine Masiello This volume looks at the shifting role of aesthetics in Latin American literature and literary studies, focusing on the concept of 'ethical responsibility' within these practices. The contributing authors examine the act of reading in its new globalized context of postcolonial theory and gender and performance studies. Contributors to the volume: Erin Graff Zivin * Bruno Bosteels * Gabriela Basterra * Idelber Avelar * Esther Gabara * Sergio Chejfec * Gabriel Riera * Alberto Moreiras * Doris Sommer * Francine Masiello