• Corpus ID: 199521809

TRANSMODERNITY: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World

@inproceedings{Joaquin2014TRANSMODERNITYJO,
  title={TRANSMODERNITY: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World},
  author={Nick M. Joaquin and Fernando N. Zialcita and Ateneo de Manila and Traducci{\'o}n de Beatriz {\'A}lvarez},
  year={2014}
}

• Nick M. Joaquin, F. Zialcita, +1 author Traducción de Beatriz Álvarez
• Published 2014
• Art

Scholars of Latin American Orientalism have argued that Orientalism from Latin America, because of its peripheral position, does not harbor imperialist intentions but rather a desire for South-South allegiances. Nonetheless, contemporary depictions of Asia and Asians continue to be deeply stereotyped and Orientalist. This paper examines the functions of the Orientalist imaginary in present-day Latin America, especially as consumers and producers have become aware of Orientalism’s discursive power. Analyzing three Asian-themed novels by César Aira, this article argues that there is a momentous convergence of Orientalism and de-Orientalism in contemporary culture which at once dehumanizes and accepts Asia. abstract aspects, however, Reber underscores the importance of examining the representations of contemporary culture and the “political dimensions” of Aira’s works (374-75). She contends that while Aira’s texts “may not explicitly insert themselves into a recognizable or realistic rendition of everyday life, they nevertheless unmistakably ground themselves in the fact of global culture in the local Argentine context” (375). The novels we examine here exemplify Reber’s arguments: they are both an inquiry on narrative (specifically, the possibilities and limitations of Orientalist narrative) and a rendering of Orientalism’s political and real-life dimensions globally and locally. Una novela china , El pequeño monje budista , and El mármol each takes us through different phases of Orientalism that Said described: invention, confrontation, and sympathetic identification (Said 116-20). But unlike classic Orientalists, Aira’s contemporary writings bear a self-awareness of their own Orientalism, and, the author’s attempts to de-Orientalize them, however unsuccessful, mark the texts. The novels, then, serve a triple function: as Orientalist texts, as de-Orientalist projects, and as meta-critiques of both Orientalism and de-Orientalism. I argue that these novels reveal a momentous convergence of Orientalism and de-Orientalism in contemporary culture, much as Levinson warned in his 1997 essay “The Death of the Critique of Eurocentrism: Latin Americanism as a Global Praxis/Poiesis.” The merging of these previously opposing impulses re-signify each of these operations while continuing to marginalize the East. If for Said, the critical labor of de-Orientalism was not a mere denunciation of Orientalist representations but rather a fundamentally postmodern destabilization of fixed identities and metanarratives, de-Orientalism at the wake of an increased awareness of Orientalism incites a search for a “true” and fixed, albeit anti-Orientalist, identity. Propelled by a rejection of Orientalism, Aira’s novels search for the possibilities of a real or non-Orientalist representation of Asia and Asians. In the process, however, they find themselves in an