The hemispheric muse. A conversation with Antonio Barrenechea
10.13125/américacrítica/2953
Antonio Barrenechea is an Associate Professor at the University of Mary Washington, in Fredericksburg, Virginia, where he was hired to design a teaching curriculum in the Literatures of the Americas in 2005. He holds a PhD in comparative literature from Yale University and is the author of various essays on both North and South American literature, and, most recently of America Unbound: Encyclopedic Literature and Hemispheric Studies, his first book, published last year by the University of New Mexico Press. Professor Barrenechea, who is currently spending the year as a resident fellow at the Institut Américain Universitaire in Aix-en-Provence, France, recently gave a lecture at Sapienza University entitled “Hemispheric Studies Beyond Suspicion”. After his talk, we conversed for about an hour about some of the issues he raised in his talk, and especially about his book, which I think is one of the most interesting and effective interventions in the field of hemispheric studies, and in particular in the field of literary hemispheric studies. What follows is an edited version of the transcript of the conversation we had in my office on April 28, 2017.
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Antonio Barrenechea
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The hemispheric muse. A conversation with Antonio Barrenechea
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Antonio Barrenechea
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University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg
2532-6724
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urn:nbn:it:unica-20543
The hemispheric muse. A conversation with Antonio Barrenechea
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                                        2017 América Crítica. Vol. 1, n° 1, giugno 2017




                                                        THE HEMISPHERIC MUSE
                     GIORGIO MARIANI INTERVIEWS ANTONIO BARRENECHEA
                          Università La Sapienza – University of Mary Washington




    Antonio Barrenechea is an Associate         Américain     Universitaire     in Aix-en-
Professor at the University of Mary Wash-       Provence, France, recently gave a lecture at
ington, in Fredericksburg, Virginia, where      Sapienza University entitled “Hemispheric
he was hired to design a teaching curricu-      Studies Beyond Suspicion”. After his talk,
lum in the Literatures of the Americas in       we conversed for about an hour about
2005. He holds a PhD in comparative liter-      some of the issues he raised in his talk, and
ature from Yale University and is the au-       especially about his book, which I think is
thor of various essays on both North and        one of the most interesting and effective
South American literature, and, most re-        interventions in the field of hemispheric
cently of America Unbound: Encyclopedic         studies, and in particular in the field of lit-
Literature and Hemispheric Studies, his first   erary hemispheric studies. What follows is
book, published last year by the University     an edited version of the transcript of the
of New Mexico Press. Professor Bar-             conversation we had in my office on April
renechea, who is currently spending the         28, 2017.
year as a resident fellow at the Institut

KEYWORDS: HEMISPHERIC STUDIES; AMERICA UNBOUND; ENCYCLOPEDIC LITERATURE; INTERVIEW.




This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Giorgio Mariani – Antonio
Barrenechea
The hemispheric muse
2017 ⎸América Crítica. Vol. 1, n° 1, giugno 2017: 229-242
DOI: 10.13125/américacrítica/2953
230                                               GIORGIO MARIANI – ANTONIO BARRENECHEA




                                              never experienced before. After each of
                                              my classes, I would say to myself: “this is
   GM: In your talk, you have traced the
                                              what I want to specialize in going for-
emergence and consolidation of hemi-
                                              ward!” From my contact with professors
spheric literary studies in the US. I won-
                                              and graduate students, I realized that
der how you would position your study
                                              there were endless possibilities for carv-
in relation to the work that has preceded
                                              ing out a life of learning. I grew up in a
yours, and how your project originated.
                                              working-class family in New Jersey and
Please feel free to frame your answer in
                                              was the first to attend college. By con-
any way you please.
                                              trast, my peers would return from
   AB: As an undergraduate at Fordham
                                              abroad, where they had spent a year
University, I right away declared a major
                                              studying Italian literature; they not only
in Comparative Literature. I knew this
                                              knew their Dante, but had read the phi-
was more broad-ranging than English
                                              losophy of Benedetto Croce and had seen
and I wanted to learn as much as I could
                                              the films of Pasolini. Yet, this was only
about the literary world out there. Post-
                                              part of a whole. They also had a work-
colonial studies was prominent in the US
                                              ing command of at least one other tradi-
in the 1990s, and I completed many cour-
                                              tion. I see comparative literature as this
ses in that field. At the same time, I was
                                              international field in which one learns to
lucky to find a mentor in George W.
                                              be at home in multiple linguistic and lit-
Shea, a Classics professor who taught me
                                              erary traditions. This grounding is what
to appreciate the longue durée of Western
                                              make the “comparative” meaningful.
letters. I think that this tension between
                                                 Then it came time to write my PhD
new and older academic paradigms has
                                              thesis. I had been drawn to big novels
stuck with me ever since. After college, I
                                              since reading Don Quixote in college. En-
applied to Yale’s graduate program in
                                              cyclopedic books are difficult in that they
Comparative Literature. I wanted to
                                              point the reader in a myriad of geo-
study postmodernism and poststruc-
                                              graphical and conceptual directions.
turalism, but I was also drawn toward
                                              They resist assimilation yet also insist on
Yale’s humanist tradition. I was met with
                                              a knowledge base. For me, this meant
an ethos of learning at Yale that I had
                                              reading deeply in traditions that were


                      2017 América Crítica. Vol. 1, n° 1, giugno 2017
THE HEMISPHERIC MUSE                                                                 231


central to US and Latin American cul-          self-critical ethics—was not sufficiently
tures. So, I ended up writing a disserta-      learned beyond US culture. Over and
tion on encyclopedic novels of the Amer-       over again, a predictable castigation of
icas. Although I engaged plenty of criti-      US imperialism would substitute for the
cism, I only later became aware that           harder act of reading in the literary
there was an academic phenomenon               canons of Spanish American and Brazil-
called “Hemispheric Studies,” and that         ian literature. As a result, all Latin
the novels I had worked on could be seen       American literatures were treated as a
from this perspective. I managed to get a      minority category of “America.” Well,
job at my current university after spend-      this is rubbish to anyone who has ever
ing one year at Barnard College, where I       sat-in on a single course in a Spanish and
had been asked to put together a two-          Portuguese department. To ignore the
semester survey of New World litera-           work of Mario Vargas Llosa, a greatest
tures from the pre-Columbian age to the        Peruvian writer of his generation, and in-
present. I was lucky that the University       stead focus on a marginal US author be-
of Mary Washington offered me a posi-          cause he or she wrote a novel in which a
tion to design a Literatures of the Ameri-     character crosses into Mexico seems
cas curriculum, thus allowing me to con-       shortsighted. It became clear to me that
tinue this work. My scholarship also           the seminar was invested in a US hemi-
took shape thanks to several summer in-        spheric imaginary, rather than any com-
stitutes, and a National Endowment for         parative “hemispheric” field of study
the Humanities seminar at Columbia             that could start from any point on the
University on “Hemispheric American            Americas map. I am not saying, of
Studies.” This was especially formative        course, that we should not study US mi-
for me, as it helped me realize that there     nority authors. What I am saying is that
were key differences between what              we should be much more aware of work
many hemispheric studies scholars were         produced outside the US, which likely
doing and what I myself had been pur-          influenced the work of those writers in
suing. Most of all, I was struck by a kind     the first place.
of resistance to a hemispheric disorienta-        My book, America Unbound, grew out
tion. The seminarians—the majority of          of a dissatisfaction with this narrow US
them Americanists—were interested pri-         approach, but also as an attempt to re-
marily in texts that they could read in re-    spond by reading hemispheric differ-
lation to the US and with an implicit po-      ences through the lens of comparative lit-
litical aim that—while steeped in a noble      erature. The book begins with a first


                       2017 América Crítica. Vol. 1, n° 1, giugno 2017
232                                                GIORGIO MARIANI – ANTONIO BARRENECHEA


chapter frame in which I reinterpret           anonymous reader criticized my work to
Moby-Dick as a different type of “great        the tune that hemispheric studies had
American novel.” Melville provides an          now moved beyond literature. I soon re-
anchor for an inquiry into America as          alized that this was part of the problem,
hemispheric object of study. The next          and that I needed to articulate my vision
three chapters—on Carlos Fuentes’s Terra       of literature more forcefully in my book.
Nostra, Jacques Poulin’s Volkswagen Blues      I am not suggesting one should ignore
and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the       other archives, but when you leave litera-
Dead–deal with individual novels within        ture behind, you leave language behind.
particular regional and local contexts, as     This is one of the central concerns of the
well as hemispheric ones. While I want-        book, beginning with the world “litera-
ed these chapters to be useful for schol-      ture” in the title.
ars researching the individual works, I
also realized that I could read the hemi-          GM: In your book, while you focus on
sphere, and hemispheric studies, through       literary works, the larger historical/theo-
these novels. The book follows multiple        retical framework is very much indebted
trajectories – literarily, historically, and   to the work of Herbert Bolton, who was a
geopolitically—as these issues are them-       historian. I wonder whether you could
selves brought to the forefront by fiction     tell us more about why Bolton’s work
that reimagines a long span of history.        proved to be so important to you, and in
And, of course, the classic question for       what ways, as well as, perhaps, why his
all scholars of hemispheric cultures           figure has been marginalized for quite a
looms large in the book: “how do we            while.
practice hemispheric studies as US-based           AB: Bolton was a history professor
academics writing in English without be-       from UC Berkeley who rose to promi-
ing imperialistic?” This question re-          nence during the 1920s and 1930s. He
mains crucial, but I also fear that today      had been among the first of US historians
our debates have reached the point of          to consult colonial archives in Spain and
over-self-flagellation. My simple answer       Latin America at a time when Protestant
is this: engage other cultures; if you are     historians were perpetuating an anti-S-
serious about interdisciplinary work you       panish bias in print. Bolton even dared
can try to read literature from the            to expand Frederick Jackson Turner’s fa-
ground up and engage other traditions. I       mous “frontier thesis” to Spain’s Catholic
see no other way. I remember that, while       pioneers and to Latin America’s forefa-
America Unbound was under review, an           thers. He championed research into


                       2017 América Crítica. Vol. 1, n° 1, giugno 2017
THE HEMISPHERIC MUSE                                                                  233


what      he    called    the    “Spanish      Bolton’s work was typically Eurocentric
borderlands” of the US and is today re-        for the 1930s (and paid insufficient dues
membered mostly as a precursor of US           to Native Americans and Africans), he
Border Studies. Yet, it is his 1931 presi-     remains the founder of Hemispheric
dential address to the American Histori-       Studies.
cal Association, entitled “The Epic of
Greater America,” that is his most vision-         GM: One important feature of your
ary work. Here, he called for the study        book is its concern not with studying the
of America as a great world civilization       literatures of the Americas, but also with
that had experienced parallels of Euro-        teaching them.
pean contact, colonization, and na-                AB: My research and teaching have al-
tion-building. In other words, Bolton’s        ways gone hand in hand, and perhaps
America was the Western Hemisphere; it         this is another aspect that differentiates
included several nations, geographies,         America Unbound from other works in the
and languages, and did not limit itself to     field. The final chapter of the book pro-
the preferred story of European immi-          vides a summation—and critique—of the
gration into the United States. Bolton         development of Hemispheric American
was progressive for the era, but unfortu-      Studies as a field in the US. But I also
nately he did not have a feel for the hu-      proposes a fix through a comparative
manities. This is why he may have been         pedagogical map with Bolton as figure-
ignored by literary studies, but I suspect     head. While at UC Berkeley, Bolton
his amplification of America also proved       taught a two-part survey course on the
too challenging for academic specializa-       history of the Americas (known as “His-
tions at the time. Edmundo O’Gorman,           tory 8”). He later published his annotat-
the Mexican historian and philosopher,         ed course syllabi as History of the Americ-
complained that Bolton’s thesis was al-        as: A Syllabus with Maps. The three syl-
most inhumane as it dealt with larger          labi I propose at the end of my book
historical and economic forces while           —“New World Writing in the Colonial
leaving behind spiritual complexities of       Period,” “Literature and Nation-Building
culture. He had a point, even if O’Gor-        in the Americas,” and “Hemispheric Fic-
man’s own critique was largely motivat-        tion of the Global Age”—is a Bolton-in-
ed by an anti-US policy ethos that he di-      spired sequence that I designed for un-
rected at Bolton. O’Gorman’s invective         dergraduates at the University of Mary
ensured that Bolton was not taken seri-        Washington, a small public liberal arts
ously by Latin American scholars. While        institute near Washington, DC. It is a


                       2017 América Crítica. Vol. 1, n° 1, giugno 2017
234                                               GIORGIO MARIANI – ANTONIO BARRENECHEA


practical guide to conceiving the Americ-     ing you called “the self-flagellating
as as a literary continuum in which texts     mode.” Instead, you focus on the objec-
are placed in two and three way dia-          tive, undeniable interconnections of the
logues. Despite the waning popularity         literary field—you insist on what I
of humanities survey courses, my litera-      would call a hemispheric intertextuality
ture of the Americas sequence stresses a      that in a sense precedes our critical de-
breadth of learning from pre-Columbian        bates about cultural imperialism, cultural
codices to contemporary fiction. Bolton       appropriation, US exceptionalism, and so
is not perfect but he provides an opening     on. These notions are of course useful
and I am glad to take my students             and important, but you try to let the texts
through it. As a result of reading litera-    speak for themselves, and when I say
ture from throughout the Americas, my         this I don’t mean to suggest you cultivate
students gain an appreciation for several     any naïve belief in the “purity” or objec-
substantial traditions. I think this is im-   tivity of the text. I’m thinking instead of
portant so as to avoid nationalistic views.   what in your lecture this morning you
Students interested in contemporary US        have referred to as the critical potential
hemispheric politics cannot afford to dis-    of literature.
pense with such reading.                          AB: I think you have described well
                                              the approach I try to follow in my book.
   GM: In building your book around           The practice of reading specific books in
your scholarly as well as teaching inter-     order to fit them into a paradigm one
ests, I think you sketch a remapping of       wishes to espouse is a methodology-first
the field of American literary studies,       approach. Mine is a literature-first ap-
both North and South, that is more radi-      proach, and this means there will be
cal and daring than other “remappings”        plenty of false starts and disorientations.
I am familiar with in the tradition of        I work from the ground up, learning
American studies, even the most innova-       what the different literary traditions of
tive American studies I would say. The        the hemisphere have to teach me even
emphasis in recent US-centered Ameri-         while retaining a critical viewpoint. In
can studies tends to be and has been for      this sense, my work is more aligned with
a long time, very polemical, but in-          the pioneers of hemispheric literary stud-
escapably tied to very US-based preoccu-      ies, such as Vera Kutzinski, Lois Parkin-
pations. I have the impression you have       son Zamora, and Earl Fitz. Back in the
chosen to go down a different path,           1980s and 1990s, these scholars also re-
avoiding what in your lecture this morn-      garded the literatures of the Americas as


                      2017 América Crítica. Vol. 1, n° 1, giugno 2017
THE HEMISPHERIC MUSE                                                                   235


a field—a vast and ungraspable one, but a      and nations, and at the same time draw
field nonetheless. One must be dedicat-        connections for a broader hemispheric
ed to a lifetime of reading to get any-        picture. And, for me, all this is only
where near the whole. The literature I         made possible by sticking to a literature-
have written on in America Unbound pre-        first approach, by using literature itself
cedes the rise of hemispherism in the          as a critical tool.
academy. But, most importantly, it is the
encyclopedic works themselves that call           GM: One thing that struck me about
out for more reading, more struggle, and       the book, and which is not necessarily
more understanding. As a humanist, it is       standard practice, is that whenever you
my hope that replacing political invec-        quote passages from Spanish or French,
tive with literary insight can help us         you are careful to quote the original first,
make better hemispheric neighbors, in-         and then the translation. I saw it as a
side and outside the academy. But we           gentle way to remind the reader that if
must first be willing to return to litera-     one wants to study the literature of the
ture. The truth remains that literature is     Americas it would be nice to have a
unique among the arts in its embodiment        working knowledge of at least these lan-
of linguistic differences. One of the pub-     guages. And along these lines, even
lishers who read a synopsis of America         though your critical bibliography is
Unbound wrote to me: “what you’re do-          mostly (though by no means exclusively)
ing here is not hemispheric studies, it’s      in English, you do have references to
world literature.” Perhaps it’s true be-       some secondary works not written in
cause I don’t practice hemispheric stud-       English, and this made me wonder if
ies as currently defined. I am someone         your approach to hemispheric studies is
with an unorthodox approach simply be-         as new to these non-US traditions as it is
cause I see “America” as an international      in the field of US-based hemispheric
disciplinary object. Its literary cultures     studies.
are interrelated and yet have their own           AB: As far as the first point is con-
distinctive histories and languages. My        cerned, I would espouse a committed
adoption of this huge—and admittedly           ethic of reading rather than some unreal-
impractical—paradigm is what makes             istic model of accomplishment. Even if
me feel like I’m always playing catch-up       one can’t become fluent in all of these
with one or another writer from Canada         languages, one should at least try learn-
or Argentina. I want to have a conversa-       ing them in some rudimentary form. I
tion with specialists on specific regions      realize that this undermines academic


                       2017 América Crítica. Vol. 1, n° 1, giugno 2017
236                                                GIORGIO MARIANI – ANTONIO BARRENECHEA


expertise as we understand it, and may         haps because of its own bilingual roots in
strike some as downright amateurish.           French and English. Still, Latin Ameri-
Still, I believe that it would be better if    can scholars remain wary of hemispheric
this commitment underpinned the work           studies for good reason. Given the
of all scholars of “trans-national,” “post-    present configuration of the field and its
national,” and “inter-American” litera-        US-centered perspective, I don’t blame
tures. With my students, I often use           them. It is for this reason that many of
original sentences as part of class lecture.   the non-English sources in my bibliogra-
Although the vast majority of these stu-       phy deal with single novels and national
dents are reading in translation, the act      traditions without crossing to the other
of dissecting and translating a single un-     Americas. I don’t know whether my
familiar line of poetry can be eye-open-       book will ever be translated into Spanish,
ing for them. They get to feel both the        but it would be nice to see that happen,
weight of the linguistic strangeness and       and to then register the responses from
the empowerment of decoding back into          Latin American scholars. I hope that my
their native language. At the very least,      grassroots interdisciplinarity can build
the exercise serves to remind them that        bridges.
reading a translation means missing an
integral part of how that author inter-           GM: I’d like to go back to the “big
prets his or her reality. As for the recep-    books” you discuss in your study. These
tion of hemispheric studies outside the        encyclopedic narratives seem to have
US, I think it’s worth remembering that,       provided you with a solid base for your
before the boom, Latin American litera-        hemispheric approach.
ture was also divided along national              AB: Yes, big books capture the multi-
lines. It was only after the 1960s that we     ple and complex realities of different
get a kind of internationalization, a          places and ideas of the Americas. It’s a
broadening of identity and of critical         great way to approach a Boltonian sub-
horizons that was the direct result of         ject. The hemispheric novel—the Summa
writers traveling abroad and seeing the        Americana, as I call it in my book—juxta-
possibility of a pan-Latin American ap-        poses epistemologies and intersects time-
proach. It was a pathway that was              line through baroque intertwinings. One
pushed along by several US journals            thing I love about encyclopedic books is
during the Cold War. Unlike Latin              that they demand a challenging and
America, Canada has been more embrac-          long-term relationship with the reader.
ing of the hemispheric paradigm, per-          There is also a physical aspect of the big


                       2017 América Crítica. Vol. 1, n° 1, giugno 2017
THE HEMISPHERIC MUSE                                                                   237


book that fascinates me—its magnificent        er, one can imagine the trials and tribula-
scale almost compels physical contact.         tions of human life in the Americas over
It’s kind of like the monolith in Stanley      centuries. These long books are keen on
Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey! The           challenging the reader to continue ex-
process of reading a big book, and the         ploring an intertextual chain of texts that
marks the reader leaves on the text over       provides a view of a bigger and broader
time, complement the many layers that          hemisphere. I’m not suggesting that fic-
the authors have placed into them.             tion can displace “hard” historical
Moby-Dick is a whale of a book and the         knowledge, but novels can help you see
blueprint for the big novel of the Americ-     how histories have developed. An ency-
as (one that went unrivaled for a centu-       clopedic narrative contains a built-in li-
ry). In Terra Nostra, I love the way that      brary with many labyrinths. Some short-
Fuentes weaves major archival docu-            er texts work this way, too, but big books
ments documenting the conquest of the          just seem to offer more opportunities.
New World. Inside this textual whirl is
the span of centuries; there’s a Homeric          GM: I wonder whether you would
grandeur in the end results. Terra Nostra      agree that your encyclopedic novels are
is, to me, the great literary monument of      also in part historical novels, or post-
Latin America—an astonishing work of           modern historical novels, though I’m not
art that invokes the sublime in a specific     sure whether Linda Hutcheon’s category
political context without ever losing its      of historiographic metafiction would ap-
universal human dimensions. Further-           ply.
more, while Silko’s Ceremony is more              AB: Well, yes. The novels I analyze in
manageable to teach than Almanac of the        America Unbound, are historical novels in
Dead, Almanac achieves a materiality that      that they are largely set in the past. But
Ceremony does not have. Almanac wants          at the same time they dramatize what it
to be an indigenous codex, and with its        means to reach back to that past, so that
fragmentation, its maps, it becomes mat-       they contain multiple timelines and sto-
ter in the reader’s hands. As one keeps        rylines within simultaneous fictional
turning Poulin’s pages, Volkswagen Blues       worlds. They are therefore meta-reflex-
feels like a scrapbook from a journey          ive in ways that traditional historical fic-
through the Americas in search of a            tion (the output of James Fenimore
dream, a kind of Quebecois updating of         Cooper, for instance) is not. In addition,
Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. When you           they all vie for the title of “Great Novel
look at these encyclopedic works togeth-       of the Americas.” What I mean is that


                       2017 América Crítica. Vol. 1, n° 1, giugno 2017
238                                               GIORGIO MARIANI – ANTONIO BARRENECHEA


there is a sense of masterful performance        AB: I juxtapose The Heirs of Columbus
inscribed within the text themselves.         with other texts. I might ask students to
These “masterworks” challenge us to           read some Mayan poetry, or a letter by
conceive of them as literary magna opera      Columbus. In the case of Vizenor’s nov-
wherein America is the great muse. We         el, it’s useful to discuss the Columbian
might say that Greater America and the        quincentenary, as this event produced
Great American Novel intersect here. At       similar anti-celebratory political works
the same time, the authors expand cate-       throughout the Americas. When teach-
gories of artistic prowess to the non-        ing Native American texts, I try to create
West. Being in Italy for the third time       a constellation that balances the familiar
now, I am reminded of the premium             and unfamiliar. I highlight the connec-
placed on beauty here. Simplistic cri-        tions, as well as the reinventions, the
tiques denigrating beauty and art as out-     retellings of stories. Obviously, Almanac
dated have yet to account for the awe-        of the Dead is a book that one can’t in-
some feeling I get when I stand before a      clude in a survey course, but I have
baroque sculpture by Bernini, or a paint-     taught it in a senior seminar. Even so, it’s
ing by Caravaggio. Italy is a land full of    not an easy read, and not simply because
capolavori; here we come face to face with    of its size. It’s an angry book with lots of
humanity’s greatest achievement—its art.      violence and lots of blood. So I make
                                              sure to devote plenty of class time to the
   GM: One nice feature of your book is       Popol Vuh and the Mesoamerican codices.
the final section on your experience          These are also steeped in blood in sup-
teaching the literature of the Americas.      port of a cosmic equilibrium that defies
Your syllabi are very interesting. They       US ecological Indian stereotypes. Stu-
also suggest that sometimes one needs to      dents come to appreciate Silko’s incorpo-
go for shorter works rather than the big      ration of these first Native American
books you like. So, for example, in teach-    holy books into her own Almanac.
ing Native America you also ask your
students to read a novel like Vizenor’s          GM: Oh yes, let me just say that I love
The Heirs of Columbus, which is much          this part of your Silko chapter. I too, as
shorter than Almanac of the Dead, though      an admirer of Ceremony, on first reading
not necessarily an easy read, at least in     Almanac was taken aback a bit. I didn’t
my own teaching experience. How do            quite know what to make of all this
you teach a text that students might find     blood and violence, and your illustration
a bit baffling?                               of how Silko was clearly inspired by the


                      2017 América Crítica. Vol. 1, n° 1, giugno 2017
THE HEMISPHERIC MUSE                                                                239


images available in the ancient codices        ning of our conversation, concerning
(some of which are reproduced in your          your formation as a scholar. You were
book) provides one of the best and most        educated at Yale, perhaps the most dis-
convincing explanations for making             tinguished place for comparative litera-
sense of this complex text.                    ture studies, the university where Eric
    AB: I discovered this connection while     Auerbach taught and where the philo-
filling gaps in my knowledge of Native         logical approach was very strong, and it
American literatures. The codices were         seems to me that you owe something to
the first books of the Americas, and so I      that illustrious tradition but you have
started there, although our collective         moved into a territory that the old Euro-
knowledge of them remains incomplete           pean or Eurocentric comparatists did not
even today. Still, I wanted to engage in-      cover: you have become a comparatist
digenous literary cultures in a serious        specializing in the literatures of the
and extended way, and so I sat there try-      Americas. I wonder whether at the be-
ing to make sense of them. I also had an       ginning of you career you were encour-
opportunity to analyze copies in muse-         aged to move in that direction or
um settings around the world (the high-        whether there was some skepticism on
light was a private viewing of the only        the part of your mentors.
existing copy of the Popol Vuh, housed at         AB: I remember that there was some
the Newberry Library in Chicago). As I         skepticism at Yale surrounding the seri-
was explaining before, encyclopedic nov-       ousness of inter-American literary stud-
els keep the reader on guard. They de-         ies. This may have had to do with the
mand an open attitude that is the oppo-        fact that a new hemispheric approach
site of the methodology-first approach.        was coming out of English and American
We look up to them, not down on them;          Studies at the time, and comparatists
and perhaps this is what kept me search-       didn’t want to move there. You see, Lit-
ing for answers without succumbing to          eratures of the Americas had grown out
the usual complaints about Silko’s book.       of comparative literature in the 1980s
I also think that my willingness to follow     and 1990s, but the hemisphere went na-
Silko’s own notions of non-US based in-        tional again when the field was overtak-
digeneity helped. Almanac is truly pan-        en by Americanists in the 2000s. This is
indigenous literature.                         the Hemispheric Studies that we know
                                               today. The lecture you heard, which just
  GM: I’d like to end by circling back to      won a best essay prize from the Interna-
some of the things you said at the begin-      tional Association for Inter-American


                       2017 América Crítica. Vol. 1, n° 1, giugno 2017
240                                                GIORGIO MARIANI – ANTONIO BARRENECHEA


Studies, traces the development of the          their focus from Europe to the Americas.
field along two directions—an older “lit-       No need to throw out the baby with the
erature”-based track, and a newer “stud-        bathwater! I suppose that my affinity for
ies”-based track that is skeptical of litera-   these pioneers is another testament to
ture. So, I would say I have retained the       my intellectual formation. I value post-
frame of mind of the comparatists who           colonial critiques of culture; I place the
worked across different cultures and lan-       highest value on the literatures of the
guages, even though they had switched           world.




                       2017 América Crítica. Vol. 1, n° 1, giugno 2017
                                    2017 América Crítica. Vol. 1, n° 1, giugno 2017




GIORGIO MARIANI
Giorgio Mariani is Professor of American Literature at the “Sapienza” University
of Rome, Faculty of Leters and Philosophy. He has served as President of the In-
ternational American Studies Association (I.A.S.A.), from 2011 to 2015. His work
has concentrated on nineteenth-century American writers (Emerson, Melville,
Stephen Crane, and others); on contemporary American Indian literature; on lit-
erary theory; on the literary and cinematic representation of war. He has pub-
lished, edited, and co-edited several volumes. His essays and reviews have ap-
peared in many journals, including American Literary History, Studies in American
Fiction, Fictions, RIAS, RSA Journal, Stephen Crane Studies.Nuov Corrente, Zapruder,
Leviathan, Letterature d'America, A.I.O.N., Acoma, Studi Americani. With Donatella
Izzo he edits the American Studies series of the Sapienza UP, and with Donatella
Izzo and Mauro Pala he edits the series "Le Balene" published by La Scuola di
Pitagora. He is co-editor-in-chief with Donatella Izzo and Stefano Rosso of Aco-
ma. Rivista internazionale di studi nord-americani.


                                                                   Giorgio Mariani


                                                     Università la Sapienza, Roma


                                                      giorgio.mariani@uniroma1.it




                                                                Received: 01/06/2017
                                                                Accepted: 07/06/2017
                                                                  Online: 30/06/2017




This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Giorgio Mariani – Antonio
Barrenechea
Interview
2017 ⎸América Crítica. Vol. 1, n° 1, giugno 2017: 229-242
DOI: 10.13125/américacrítica/2953
