The decentring of the historical subject in the contemporary imaginary of the independence process

 1 Work undertaken as part of the Conicyt Advanced Human Capital Insertion Project No. 79100004 (‘XIX Century, Independences and Representation: Intersecting Dialogues Between the Latin American Novel and Historiography’) and Fondecyt introductory project No. 11110361 (‘The Representation of the Subject in the Contemporary Collective Imaginary of the Independence Process’).

Abstract

This paper offers an analysis of several contemporary forms of the historical subject's representation – essays, novels, poems, comics, documentaries, films and soap operas – all of which contribute to shaping a new collective imaginary of the independence process in Latin America. All of these representations have in common the decentring of the historical subject. This operation can be verified in at least three variations: (1) the decentring of the figure of the hero, (2) the emergence of alternative heroes (popular heroes and heroines), and (3) the visibilization of marginalized historical subjects because of their ethnic origin (Amerindians, Afro-American, mulattos and mestizos).

Notes

 1 Work undertaken as part of the Conicyt Advanced Human Capital Insertion Project No. 79100004 (‘XIX Century, Independences and Representation: Intersecting Dialogues Between the Latin American Novel and Historiography’) and Fondecyt introductory project No. 11110361 (‘The Representation of the Subject in the Contemporary Collective Imaginary of the Independence Process’).

 2 Although Le Goff's position is conservative, he explicitly points out that ‘the history of history must be concerned not only with professional historical production but with a whole set of phenomena which constitute the historical culture, or rather the historical mentality, of a period’ (127–8). On the other hand, although he separates scientific history from other forms of historical thinking, he recognizes the validity of these other forms: ‘The object of history is indeed the diffuse sense of the past which recognizes in the productions of the imagination one of the principal expressions of historical reality, and notably of how people react to their past’ (128–9).

 3 ‘[C]onsideraré la obra histórica como lo que más visiblemente es: una estructura verbal en forma de discurso en prosa narrativa. Las historias (…) combinan cierta cantidad de “datos”, conceptos teóricos para “explicar” esos datos, y una estructura narrativa para presentarlos como la representación de conjuntos de acontecimientos que supuestamente ocurrieron en tiempos pasados. …[A]demás tienen un contenido estructural profundo que es en general de naturaleza poética y lingüística de manera específica, y que sirve como paradigma precríticamente aceptado de lo que debe ser una interpretación de especie “histórica”’ (9).

 4 ‘The philosophical, archaeological, and psychoanalytic de-centering of the concept of the subject has been led by Derrida, Foucault, Lacan, among others’ (159).

 5 According to Jorge Larraín (2005), Latin America is made up of a complex cultural conjunction in which, above all, the concept of modernism must be defined according to the context, and so it is not represented according to theoretical definitions generated in Europe or the USA. The same happens with postmodernism, which is of course derived from this particular modernism.

 6 ‘Irreductible a un simple agregado de agentes aislados, a un conjunto de adiciones de elementos simplemente yuxtapuestos, el campo intelectual, a la manera de un campo magnético, constituye un sistema de líneas de fuerza: esto es, los agentes o sistemas de agentes que forman parte de él pueden describirse como fuerzas que, al surgir, se oponen y se agregan, confiriéndose su estructura específica en un momento dado del tiempo. Por otra parte, cada uno de ellos está determinado por su pertenencia a este campo: en efecto, debe a la posición particular que ocupa en él propiedades de posición irreductibles a la las propiedades intrínsecas y, en particular, un tipo de participación determinado en el campo cultural’ (13).

 7 Chakrabarty makes a detailed analysis of Guha's original programme in ‘A Brief History of Subaltern Studies’.

 8 Following Kansteiner, Oriester Abarca states in relation to the permanence of historical events in the social memory that: ‘los eventos del pasado solo son recordados en un determinado escenario colectivo si se ajustan a los intereses contemporáneos. Las memorias ganadoras cambian su foco de la política de memoria, con sus escándalos y intrigas, a rituales y representaciones del pasado que se producen y consumen sin mayor desacuerdo hasta que son retadas y quizá derrotadas, casi siempre con el cambio generacional. Esta forma repetitiva de las representaciones son la columna vertebral de las memorias colectivas’ (132).

 9 This work belongs to a relatively abundant genealogy of Argentine film on the national hero. The most recent film in this line is San Martín, el cruce de Los Andes (2010), directed by Leandro Ipiña.

10 There is also an extended version of this documentary, entitled Mestizo, origen mestizo de San Martín, which reconstructs the image of the national hero by way of very similar strategies.

11 A possible explanation for the lack of representativity in non-academic discourses is Hernán Brienza's essay Valientes. Crónicas de coraje y patriotismo en la Argentina del siglo XIX (2010), which rescues ten historical characters who are ‘threatened by oblivion’, among them several popular figures.

12 Inucha represents a triple marginality: she is a woman, slave and Afro-American.