While nationalists associ- ate the learning of Castilian with progress and modernity, the Spanish friars see it as a challenge to their authority: For indeed, the word for "subversive," jilibustero, also refers to a pirate, hence to a thief. Blocked from disseminating Castilian, nationalists also become suspect. Rather than accept the position laid out for them as "natives," they insist on speaking as if they were other, and thus foreign to colo- nial society.
For the history of Melayu, see HenkJ. Maier, "From Heteroglossia to Polyglossia: Princeton Uni- versity Press, My understanding of the history of the language of nationalism in the Philippines has been influenced not only by the ways it seems to have differed from the history of the Indonesian language but also by the ways in which such dif- ferences have produced at certain moments instructive similarities.
Cornell University Press, , have been indispensable guides for thinking through the top- ics of language and politics in the Philippine case. Cited in Schu- macher, Making of a Nation, It is not they who are criminals, but the friars who accuse them. Over and over again, writers for La Solidaridad refer to friars as "unpatriotic Spaniards," hence the real filibusteros. In an article not atypical in tone and content, one writer asks: In fact who is the friar? Somebody egoistic, avaricious, greedy They have been assassins, poisoners, liars, agitators of public peace Look at the true picture of those great men From their perspective, the friars are subversives who stand in the way of a happier union between the colonial state and its subjects.
Yet neither the state nor the Church recognizes this fact. Authorities won't listen, or more precisely, they mishear, mistaking the ilustrado desire for Span- ish as his or her rejection of Spain. The delirious enumeration of cler- ical criminality in the passage above reflects something of a hysterical response to repeated miscommunications. Such alarm is understand- able, given the grave consequences of being misheard in the way of imprisonment and executions.
What is clear is that having a common language does not guaran- tee mutual understanding, but the reverse. Castilian in this instance is a shared language between colonizer and colonized. Yet the result is not the closer union that nationalists had hoped for, but mutual mis- recognition. Each imagines the other to be saying more than they had intended to.
Acting on each other's misconceptions, they come to exchange positions in one another's minds. Questions about language lead to suspicions, conflict, and violence. Rather than reconcile the Historically, as we have seen, it was the Spanish friars who had monopolized the ability of the self to speak in the language of the other, controlling the terms of translation by invoking a divinely sanc- tioned linguistic hierarchy. Conversion occurred to the extent that natives could read into missionary discourse the possibility of being recognized by a third term that resided beyond both the missionary and the native.
But by the late nineteenth century, this situation had been almost reversed. Nationalists addressed Spaniards in the latter's own language. The friars did not see in Spanish-speaking natives a mirror reflection of themselves. For after all, given the racial logic of colonialism, how could the native be the equivalent of the European? Rather, friars tended to see nationalists as filibusteros guilty of stealing what rightfully belongs to them and compromising their position as the privileged media of colonial communication.
In their eyes, nation- alists were speaking out of turn. Their Castilian had no authority inas- much as it was uttered outside hierarchy. From the friars' perspective then, nationalist attempts to translate their interests into a second lan- guage only placed them outside the linguistic order of colonial society. Thus were nationalists rendered foreign.
Speaking Castilian they appeared to be other than mere natives and therefore suspect in the eyes of Spanish fathers.
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Speaking Castilian produced strange and disconcerting effects. For nationalists, Castilian was supposed to be the route to modernity. Progress came, so they thought, in gaining access to the means with which to communicate directly with authorities and with others in the world. It followed that Castilian was a means ofleaving behind all that was "backward" and "superstitious," that is, all that came under the influence of the friars.
To learn Castilian was to exit the existing order of oppression and enter into a new more "civilized" world of equal representation. Castilian in this sense was a key that allowed one to move within and outside colonial hierarchy. Nonetheless, such movements came with certain risks. Speak- ing Castilian, one faced the danger of being misrecognized. We saw this possibility in the vexed relationship between nationalists and colonial authorities i.
Rafael tion, however, also carried over into Spain. Seeking to escape perse- cution, nationalists often fled abroad. Most gravitated to Barcelona and Madrid, which became centers of nationalist agitation in the s to the midS. In these cities, Filipinos found themselves reaching a sympathetic audience among Spanish liberals and other Europeans.
Their writings were given space in Spanish liberal newspa- pers. In Madrid and Paris, Filipino artists such asJuan Luna and Felix Resurrection Hidalgo won a string of prizes painting in the academic style of the period, which one might think of as speaking a kind of Castilian.
And in the pages of La Solidaridad, one reads of political banquets where nationalists addressed Spanish audiences and were greeted with approval and applause. Castilian seemed to promise a way out of colonial hierarchy and a way into metropolitan society. However, in other nationalist accounts we also see how this promise fails to materialize. Nationalists find themselves betrayed by Castilian in both senses of the word.
Out of this betrayal, other responses arise, including phantasms of revenge and revolution. It is to these successes and failures of translation and recognition and the responses they incur that I now wish to turn. The Limits ofAssimilation Reading once again the newspaper La Solidaridad, we get a sense of the attractions that Castilian and Spain held for Filipino nationalists.
An instructive example is the speech delivered in by Graciano Lopez- Jaena, one of paper's editors, during a political banquet in Barcelona. I7 He begins with a declaration of his own foreignness. He announces to the Spanish audience that he is "of little worth, accompanied by an obscure name, totally unknown and foreign to you, with a face show- ing a country different from your generous land, a race distinct from yours, a language different than yours, whose accent betrays me" That is, he comes before an audience and tells them in their language that "I am not you.
Jaena calls attention to the dif- ference of his appearance, aligning it with his accented Spanish, which Be indulgent toward me. Here, the native addresses the other in the latter's language. He appears as someone acutely conscious of his difference from those he addresses.
The audience hears and responds with approval. In this way, the native not only maps the gap between himself and the other; more important, he succeeds in crossing it. Tra- versing racial and linguistic differences, his "I" is able to float free from its origins and appear before a different audience. When the audience responds with a murmur of approval, it identifies not with the speaker but with his ability to be otherwise. The audience comes to recognize the native's ability to translate: The native defers to his audience-"I am nobody"-and that deference, heard in the language of the audience, meets with approval.
Recognized in his ability to get across, to keep his audience in mind, and to know his place in relation to theirs, the native can con- tinue to speak, now with the confidence of being able to connect. The contents of Lopez: Jaena's speech are themselves unremark- able and predictable.
The speech contains the usual call for reforms- economic, political, and educational-that would lead to the improve- ment of the colony. It extols the riches of the archipelago while lamenting the state's inability to make better use of them. And it invariably identifies the friar orders as the source of resistance to change in the colony. Finally, it calls on Spain to rid the colony of friars and devote attention to the development of commercial opportuni- ties in the Philippines and to the needs of its inhabitants.
What is worth noting is the reception he gets. As it appears in the printed version, the speech is punctuated by the sound of applause ranging from "mild and approving" to "prolonged and thunderous," particularly when he lauds Spanish war efforts in repulsing German attempts to seize Spain's Pacific island possessions. By the end of the speech, the audience explodes with "frenzied, prolonged applause, bravos, enthusiastic and noisy ovations, congratulations, and embraces given to the orator" Rafael In the course of his speech, Lopez: Jaena goes through a signifi- cant transformation.
He starts out an obscure foreigner, but by the lat- ter half of his speech, he begins to refer to himself as a Spaniard.
In criticizing the ineptitude of the colonial state and denouncing the ill effects of the friars, he says, "There are efforts to hide the truth. From being a mere native, a "nobody," "I" am now a Spaniard like "you. Using a language not his own, Lopez: Castilian in this case allows for what appears to be a successful transmission of messages, of which there are at least two: We can understand the fren- zied applause at the end of the speech as a way of registering this event. That a foreigner appears, proclaims his difference from and deference to his hosts in their own language, thereby crossing those gaps opened up by his presence; that an audience forms around his appearance, seeing in him one who bears a message, and recognizes his ability to become other than what he had originally claimed to be: It is the materialization of the fantasy of arriving at a common language that has the power to take one beyond hierarchy.
Although it begins with an acknowledgment of inequality, Castilian as a lingua franca allows one to set hierarchy aside. To become a "patriot" is thus inseparable from being recog- nized by others as one who is a carrier of messages and is therefore a medium of communication. It is to embody the power of translation. What happens, though, when there is no applause, or when the applause is deferred?
What becomes of the movement from a native "I" to a Spanish "I" when the sources of recognition are unknown or uncertain? Outside the banquet, such questions arose to confront nationalists in the streets of the metropole. We can see this, for exam- ple, in the travel writings of Antonio Luna. La Solidaridad regularly featured the travel accounts of Luna, who would later become one of the most feared generals of the Philippine revolutionary army in the war against Spain and would subsequently be enshrined as part of the pantheon of national heroes by the Repub- From The Places of History by Sommer, Doris.
As a student in Paris, he visited the Exposition of and under the pseudonym 'Taga-ilog" a pun on the word Tagalog, which literally means from the river , wrote of his impressions. He was fascinated by the exhibits from other European colonial possessions but felt acutely disappointed that the Philippine exhibit was poorly done.
In one arti- cle, he praises the exhibits from the French colonies. He is particularly envious of the displays from Tonkin, which show the regime's attempts at assimilating the natives through the teaching of French. Such exam- ples bring to mind Spanish refusal to spread its language in the Philip- pines. By comparison to those in the French colonies, ''We Filipinos nosotros filipinos are in a fetal and fatal condition. But we, Spaniards nosotros espafioles do not want to follow this path It behooves this race of ours-this race of famous ancestors, giants, and heroes-to think of greater things.
Our Filipinos already know the most intricate declensions of classic Latin; never mind if they do not understand a word of Castilian. And then in the next paragraph: We who had the fortune of receiving in those beautiful regions of the Philippines the first kiss oflife Later in that town, isolated from all cul- tures, we saw among 14, inhabitants a teacher without a degree, a priest who alone knew Castilian, a town with one deplorable school without equipment for teaching and without students.
IS There are at least three references invoked by the pronoun "we" nosotros in the passages above: What triggers this switch from one referent to another is the embarrassment and disappointment Luna feels in seeing the Philippine exhibit. Its crudeness and inadequacy become suddenly apparent when compared with the French exhibit. Rafael him to think of the latter as somehow superior in that it reveals what is lacking in the former. In this sense, we might think of "French" as that which encapsulates "Castilian. The invocation of "French" seems here to have the effect of joining the colonizer to the colonized in the Philippines, implied by the rapid changes of registers in Luna's ''we.
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Here, a different kind of assimilation is at work, one that con- trasts with the banquet scene. The audience in Lopezjaena's case responded to his speech and took note of his capacity to distinguish, then suture, differences. In Luna's case, the slide from "Filipino" to "Spaniard" and back is provoked by embarrassment, not applause. He sees the Philippine exhibit and imagines others seeing it, then com- paring it to the French, as he does. He thus becomes aware of another ''we," an unmarked and anonymous presence who wanders into the exhibits and sees him looking.
He is of course also part of that anony- mous ''we," who we could think of as the crowd. A crowd by definition is something that exists outside oneself. To become part of a crowd is to feel oneself as other. Siegel writes, 'The crowd One becomes like it and unlike oneself and one does so precisely by responding to it. Becoming alien to oneself and replying He finds himself not only split between "Filipino" and "Spaniard" but also between one who sees and one who is seen. Castilian addressed to Spaniards allowed Lopezjaena to reconceive hierarchy and set it aside, even if only momentarily.
In Luna's case, however, Castilian spoken, even to oneself amid a crowd, only produces a redoubling of his alienation. Assimilation occurs without recognition. He finds himself to be where he is not: Recognition fails him as he shuttles between identifications, unable to consolidate either one. One can translate, be understood by the other, yet find oneself unrecognized. Luna's dilemma in Paris becomes even more pro- Siegel, Fetish, Recognition, and Revolution, In one essay, he reports the follow- ing exchange with a Spanish woman: I am surprised that you speak it much as I do to posea tanto ramo yo.
Spanish is spoken in your country? Perhaps we are thought to be little less than savages or Igorotes; perhaps they ignore the fact that we can communicate in the same lan- guage, that we are also Spaniards, that we should have the same privileges since we have the same duties. Rather than arrive at its intended address, his message-that yes, "I," too, am a Spaniard; that "I" am not a savage-has been lost.
The self that speaks Castilian cannot get across. The native finds himself stranded in that "ahhh!!! On the streets, he discovers that "possessing" Castilian, as the woman put it, renders one an oddity, to which the only appropriate response is sus- picion. Her suspicion in turn, triggers his, as he finds himself assimi- lated into what he thinks is her image of him: Castilian as a lingua franca in this context draws him to anticipate misrecogni- tion. That is, he is forced to assume the place of the other where he appears as one who is relentlessly foreign.
Rather than embody the power of translation, Luna finds himself the target of insults.
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In another essay on his impressions of Madrid, he writes: Tag-ilog, "Sangre Torera," La Solidaridad, 1: Rafael My very pronounced Malay figure which had called extraordinary attention in Barcelona, excited the curiosity of the children of Madrid in the most glaring manner. There is the young girl chula , the young woman, or the fashionably dressed modistas who tum their heads two or three times to look at me and say in a voice loud enough be heard: How ugly iQue hororoso! Small and big boys In the theaters, in the parks, in gatherings everywhere, there was the same second look at me, the mocking smile Often, in thinking about these spontaneous manifestations, I asked myself if I were in Morocco, in the dangerous borders of the Riff, and I come to doubt that I lived in the capital of a Euro- pean nation.
He wonders if he is in Morocco rather than Madrid, that is, whether he is in a civi- lized society or among those it considers less so. Indeed, he starts to regard his body as if it were not his own, forced to see it as it is seen by others. He thus experiences it as excessively visible, the object of sec- ond looks, its difference too pronounced.
His mere appearance comes across as a provocation, almost an affront to those who see him and thus an invitation to respond. They do so not by hearing him speak or even by asking about his identity, but by supplying him with others. Called an assortment of names except his own, Luna finds himself assimilated into the category of the "foreign.
A crowd forms around his appearance, but it is one that sets itself against him. In Paris, he could at least disappear into the crowd and find a place in its anonymity. In Madrid, he is set upon by it. Being targeted by the crowd - being taken in by being taken apart-drives Luna to speak, but this time to a separate audience.
He ends his essay on Madrid with the following warning: We are told so much about her However, his message is no longer directed at Spaniards but to an audience that is absent from the streets of Madrid: Filipinos in the Philippines. It is as if the crowd enables him to find another address. Walking in Madrid, he cannot even recognize Spain, thinking that he might as well be in "Morocco," or at least the Morocco that exists in Spanish minds.
The image of Spain, so mystified in the colony, turns out to "melt" on contact with reality. The crowd's speech has the effect of dissipating the colonial aura.
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It returns Luna back to the very con- ditions that he had sought to escape: Jaena in the banquet, he, too, transmits mes- sages that he did not originally intend. However, rather than win recognition as one who embodies the power of translation, Luna finds himself made to embody excess. It is not surprising that amid these scenes of rampant misrecog- nition, he stops referring to himself as a Spaniard. He turns instead to an absent audience, the "Filipinos in the Philippines," thereby imag- ining an alternative destination for his words. He thus separates Castilian from Spain, appropriating the other's language not in order to return it to him but to set him aside.
In doing so, he assumes the position that had been imputed to him by colonial authorities. He becomes, that is, a filibustero who in talking Castilian chooses not to return it to its source. He begins to traffic in stolen goods. In address- ing "Filipinos in the Philippines" from Spain in Castilian, he estab- lishes for himself and others in his position a different route for the transmission of messages, one that in circumventing the mediation of colonial authority takes on a new kind of immediacy.
By shifting the locus of his address, Luna converts his foreignness into a constitutive element of his message. He is author of Modernity and Autochthony: He is also senior consulting editor for the Latin American Literary Review. His most recent book is The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective An expanded edition is forthcoming. She is author of The Translated World: Her most recent book is a translation of Federico Campbell's Tijuana: Ensayos sobre cultura y politica He is currently working on a book on late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Caribbean intel- lectuals.
His most recent book is Divided Borders: Essays on Puerto Rican Identity She has written widely on all major genres of Spanish Golden Age literature and on historical prose of the same period. Her book in progress, Tropics of Conquest, argues for the need to reread European and American texts as parts of a shared linguistic and cultural community. His most recent book is Dancing with the Devil: The present essay is part of a book in progress titled "Our Life'S Work": Mireles, and the Politics of Culture in Texas. Her most recent book, El genero gauchesco: Un tratado sobre la patria , will appear in English translation from Duke University Press.
El cuerpo del delito is forthcoming in Buenos Aires. Her most recent books are Between Civilization and Barbarism: El periodismo femenino en la Argentina del siglo XIX He is currently doing research on colonial and post- colonial Latin American poetry. His main research interests are Western expansion since , colonial legacies, and postcolonial thinking. He is author, most recently, of The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Her most recent book is AtFace Value: Autobiographical Writing in Spanish America She is currently working on a book about decadence, national health, and the construction of sexualities in turn-of-the-century Latin America.
Her most recent book is Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation She is cur- rently coediting the essays ofJean Franco and doing research on cul- ture and neoliberalism. He is the author of Contrading Colonialism: He is author of Desen- cuentros de la modernidad en America Latina , to appear in English translation from Duke University Press, and Paradoias de la letra , and is editor of Amor y anarquia: Los escritos de Luisa Capetillo He also codirected La promesa, a video documentary of reli- gion and politics in contemporary Cuba.
Her most recent books are La invenci6n de la cr6nica , jose Marti: Cronicas , and Ensayistas de Nuestra America: She is currently working on an edition of Fray Ser- vando Teresa de Mier's works. His most recent book is Um mestre na periferia do capitalismo: Machado de Assis A collection of writings has appeared in English translation under the title Misplaced Ideas: Essays on Brazilian Culture Gender, Sexuality, and Theatricality and Radical- izing Motherhood: Learn more about Amazon Giveaway. Juego de triunfos Spanish Edition. Set up a giveaway. There's a problem loading this menu right now.
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