José F. Buscaglia-Salgado is the Director of the Program in Caribbean Studies and Associate Professor at the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, SUNY at Buffalo. He is the author of Undoing Empire. Race and Nation in the Mulatto Caribbean (University of Minnesota Press, 2003). |
How to cite this review: Buscaglia-Salgado, José F. "María de Guzmán. Spain’s Long Shadow: The Black Legend, Off- Whiteness, and Anglo- American Empire. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005". Dissidences. Hispanic Journal of Theory and Criticism. On line. Internet: 04/29/07 (http://www.dissidences/ ReviewGuzmán.html) |
| "All in all, the book is a self fulfilled prophecy. As it sets out to posit “Anglo-American” identity as an ethnicity, it ends up reinforcing the racial categorizations that sustain and secure “Anglo-American” dominance as a “divine” cast above all others in Usonian ideology and ethnocentric practices" |
| María de Guzmán Spain’s Long Shadow: The Black Legend, Off-Whiteness, and Anglo-American Empire Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. 372 pp |
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María DeGuzmán’s ambitious book studies the role played by what she calls “figures of
Spain” in the construction of “Anglo-American” identity. Looking into the production of
culture as ideology DeGuzmán sets out to reveal the scaffolding that supports the myths of
the Usonian nation and empire by looking at “Anglo-American” ideology under the lense of
ethnic, critical race, queer, psychoanalytic, and postcolonial critiques. She understands
figures of Spain in the widest possible terms to include historical and literary characters,
images and iconography, and rhetorical devices of every sort. Her main thesis is that “in
relation to Anglo-American culture. Spain functions as a virtual or mirror image, in front of
which, in a libidinal dynamic of identification and disavowal, Anglo –American culture,
despite its fragmentation and initial fragility, ascends towards a seemingly unified and
coherent imperial identity.” (xvii) This psychoanalytic approach is framed by a continuous
movement between Spain as “reassuring ideal” and as “fearful alter ego”, an operation that
tends to result in the positioning of the “Anglo-American” empire in a far and detached
place from the evils and excesses of European imperial traditions and terror. DeGuzmán
traces this movement from the earliest projects of the young republic to the latest stages of
the Usonian empire, paying particular attention to the War of 1898 fought against Spain and
over Cuba.
Chapter 1, “The Shadow of the Black Legend” focuses on Gothic “American” fiction to
uncover the ways in which the figures of Spain were darkened and racialized, beyond the
moral and political critique framed in the Black Legend, in order to contrast these to the
“whiteness” and moral superiority of the “Anglo-American” subject. Chapter 2, “Imperial
Visions: Moor, Gypsy, and Indian”, traces the movement through which the racialized
“darkness” already assigned to the figures of Spain became tied to the perceived dangers of
“racial” mixture, impurity, and degeneration, playing on “Anglo-American” anxieties
regarding miscegenation. Chapter 3, “Consolidating Anglo-American Imperial Identity
around the Spanish-American War”, deals with the way that figures of Spain and Spaniards
helped promote a reinvigorated sense of national identity, cutting across class and
geographic divides and, in turn, clearing the way for a guiltless sense of imperial destiny
built around the figure of the “Anglo-American” as the superior civilizer, the one whose
mission was devoid of all self-interest and absolved from any guilt. Chapter 4, “Sacred Bulls
of Modernism”, looks at the work of Usonian expatriates who during the first half of the 20th
Century came to look upon Spain as the last frontier and at Spaniards as primal and
authentic people, thereby approaching Spanishness for its therapeutic qualities in the midst
of a process of ideological questioning and self-doubting. Chapter 5, “(Post) Modern
Denaturalizations of Nationality”, tries to describe the line that separates “Spanish” and
“American” in current racial debates and ideological positioning in Usonian discourse, while
chapter 6, “Afterlives of Empires”, is a sort of manifesto of Latinidad.
The book is an important contribution as far as it identifies a corpus of works and ideological
constructs that heretofore had not been brought together into a full discussion of the way in
which Usonian imperialism grew at the expense of its vision of and engagement with the
imperial legacy of Spain in the New World. Yet, De Guzmán fails to link in a convincing way
the different trends, attitudes and periods she identifies and there is no cohesive argument
demonstrating the progression of “figures of Spain” into a deep-seated ideological
component of Usonian thought and discourse.
The reading of Charles Brockden's Wieland in the first chapter is quite promising. Yet, it
seems to stay at a purely epidermic level. Similarly, DeGuzmán’s critique of Poe tends to
depend rather heavily on a psychoanalytic critique in the face of strong and plausible
connections to the Black Legend which are either lacking in the original text or not fully
explored by the critic. Particularly disappointing is the presentation of Mellville's Benito
Cereno, a text that is so wonderfully rich and appropriately relevant to this discussion. De
Guzmán’s reading barely goes beyond pointing out the obvious differences between a binary
and a three-tiered system of socioracial categorization.
The discussion of the ambiguity felt towards Spain, and of the role figures of Spain played in
the production of the United States as the self-conceived anti-empire, is enhanced by the
introduction of pictorial works by Emanuel Leutze and Sargent. Yet, this discussion is also
tainted by the idealized notions of Spain held by the author, which tend to lean towards a
rather anti-heroic identification with the traditional “outcasts” of Spain (Moors, Gypsies,
Jews) and to promote idealization of entire periods in Spanish history under the banner of
“convivencia.” Moreover, the queer critique of Sargent's work is done against a diffuse
background that fails to account for the nuances of Andalusian musical cultures and the
complexity and gravity of bullfighting traditions. How much could this purported misreading
of Spain be attributed to the same ideological excess that De Guzmán denounces in “Anglo-
American” ideology and to the deep-rooted scars that such a discourse has left in the
Usonian—and in its “Latina/o-American”—imaginary?
Chapter 3 is perhaps the best and most compelling part of the book. Certainly it draws upon
a wide repertoire of images and figures of Spain and it is a good attempt at pinpointing how it
was that the United States came to position itself as the depository of Spanish imperial legacy
while absolving itself from any and all sins as a conquering power in the tradition of
European rapacity. The definitive book on this subject is still to be written. Yet, De Guzmán’
s contribution is a step in the right direction. At some point, future scholars in this area will
need to focus also on the role played by Cubans and Puerto Ricans in the construction and
propagation of the myth and realities of Spanish barbarity and despotism, and on their
complicity in the construction of the myth and allegories of “America” and “Columbia” as
protectors and redeemers of “lesser peoples” in the name of Liberty.
The fourth chapter also sheds light on possible routes for further inquiry, especially as it
pertains to scopic regimes and patterns of travel and consumption that have become
dominant modalities among Usonian “tourists.” As De Guzmán rightly argues, once Spain
had been perceived as vanquished and more precisely between the early 1920’s and late 1950’
s, Usonian modernist writers came to see the country as “a last frontier, a land to be
discovered.” (188) In that way, Spain and her peoples came to occupy a primary site “in
modernists’ contradictory quest to be moderns.”(190) No doubt this way of travel has
become enshrined in the era of mass tourism at the height of the Usonian empire and it is
particularly felt in the way in which middle-class Usonians come to reminisce about
Hemingway’s Cuba and in the way they approach the peoples in “less fortunate” parts of the
World, especially in the “Spanish” Caribbean, when they “go abroad.” Yet, I question
whether such modalities, as identified by De Guzmán in Stein and Hemingway, are not
more directly traceable to the practice of English piracy in the Spanish Main which, together
with De Guzmán's “Shadow of Spain”, is the other and perhaps the darkest —and still to be
named and uncovered—major point of support for Usonian imperial ideology and praxis.
I find DeGuzmán’s discussion of Richard Wright’s Pagan Spain to be particularly revealing,
evidencing the contradictions and the traps embodied in the person and the experience of
this “Anglo-Afro-American” who lived and loved Spain during the most devastating years of
the Franco dictatorship. More should have been said in this case about the hold and the
complicity in the production of ideology. Unfortunately, De Guzmán sees a much more
Manichaean relationship: “Although written by an African American, the text functions for
the most part as an expatriation of Anglo-American Gothic, a tool of Anglo-American
imperial ideology, and precludes the emergence of its writer's hyphenated subjectivity from
beneath the long shadow cast by that very ideology.” (232-3)
This last quote, in all its problematic set of enunciations, could stand as a summary of the
roblems produced by the logic behind the book's argument, problems that come to the
forefront in the fifth and sixth chapters as the critic tries to pronounce sentence on Usonian
imperialism from the vantage point of her own “hyphenated subjectivity.” Again, there is a
certain lack of competence on the part of the critic when it comes to addressing the
complexities of contemporary Spanish realities. The sixth chapter sadly devolves into a sort
of manifesto of Latinidad, anchored to the figure of García Lorca in a celebratory discourse of
queerness and of something like the “Judeo-Gypsy soul.” The chapter concludes with a
facile denunciation of the Aznar-Blair-Bush axis as constituted in the meeting of the three
leaders in the Azores on March 16, 2003.
All in all, the book is a self fulfilled prophecy. As it sets out to posit “Anglo-American”
identity as an ethnicity, it ends up reinforcing the racial categorizations that sustain and
secure “Anglo-American” dominance as a “divine” cast above all others in Usonian ideology
and ethnocentric practices. As De Guzmán aptly shows in various moments in the text, who
is to say that heralding as she does the “postcolonial prospects of Latinidad” is not simply
yet another way of reaffirming the supremacy of Usonian ideology by accepting its basic
premises, conforming to its modus operandi, and restoring its constitutive advantage vis
a vis Spain and “Spanishness.” That, in turn, should be an appropriate question to ask those
who think themselves at the vanguard of Latina/o studies and of other such popular
modalities of “ethnic-based” inquiry into the Long Shadow of the United States of America.
Spain” in the construction of “Anglo-American” identity. Looking into the production of
culture as ideology DeGuzmán sets out to reveal the scaffolding that supports the myths of
the Usonian nation and empire by looking at “Anglo-American” ideology under the lense of
ethnic, critical race, queer, psychoanalytic, and postcolonial critiques. She understands
figures of Spain in the widest possible terms to include historical and literary characters,
images and iconography, and rhetorical devices of every sort. Her main thesis is that “in
relation to Anglo-American culture. Spain functions as a virtual or mirror image, in front of
which, in a libidinal dynamic of identification and disavowal, Anglo –American culture,
despite its fragmentation and initial fragility, ascends towards a seemingly unified and
coherent imperial identity.” (xvii) This psychoanalytic approach is framed by a continuous
movement between Spain as “reassuring ideal” and as “fearful alter ego”, an operation that
tends to result in the positioning of the “Anglo-American” empire in a far and detached
place from the evils and excesses of European imperial traditions and terror. DeGuzmán
traces this movement from the earliest projects of the young republic to the latest stages of
the Usonian empire, paying particular attention to the War of 1898 fought against Spain and
over Cuba.
Chapter 1, “The Shadow of the Black Legend” focuses on Gothic “American” fiction to
uncover the ways in which the figures of Spain were darkened and racialized, beyond the
moral and political critique framed in the Black Legend, in order to contrast these to the
“whiteness” and moral superiority of the “Anglo-American” subject. Chapter 2, “Imperial
Visions: Moor, Gypsy, and Indian”, traces the movement through which the racialized
“darkness” already assigned to the figures of Spain became tied to the perceived dangers of
“racial” mixture, impurity, and degeneration, playing on “Anglo-American” anxieties
regarding miscegenation. Chapter 3, “Consolidating Anglo-American Imperial Identity
around the Spanish-American War”, deals with the way that figures of Spain and Spaniards
helped promote a reinvigorated sense of national identity, cutting across class and
geographic divides and, in turn, clearing the way for a guiltless sense of imperial destiny
built around the figure of the “Anglo-American” as the superior civilizer, the one whose
mission was devoid of all self-interest and absolved from any guilt. Chapter 4, “Sacred Bulls
of Modernism”, looks at the work of Usonian expatriates who during the first half of the 20th
Century came to look upon Spain as the last frontier and at Spaniards as primal and
authentic people, thereby approaching Spanishness for its therapeutic qualities in the midst
of a process of ideological questioning and self-doubting. Chapter 5, “(Post) Modern
Denaturalizations of Nationality”, tries to describe the line that separates “Spanish” and
“American” in current racial debates and ideological positioning in Usonian discourse, while
chapter 6, “Afterlives of Empires”, is a sort of manifesto of Latinidad.
The book is an important contribution as far as it identifies a corpus of works and ideological
constructs that heretofore had not been brought together into a full discussion of the way in
which Usonian imperialism grew at the expense of its vision of and engagement with the
imperial legacy of Spain in the New World. Yet, De Guzmán fails to link in a convincing way
the different trends, attitudes and periods she identifies and there is no cohesive argument
demonstrating the progression of “figures of Spain” into a deep-seated ideological
component of Usonian thought and discourse.
The reading of Charles Brockden's Wieland in the first chapter is quite promising. Yet, it
seems to stay at a purely epidermic level. Similarly, DeGuzmán’s critique of Poe tends to
depend rather heavily on a psychoanalytic critique in the face of strong and plausible
connections to the Black Legend which are either lacking in the original text or not fully
explored by the critic. Particularly disappointing is the presentation of Mellville's Benito
Cereno, a text that is so wonderfully rich and appropriately relevant to this discussion. De
Guzmán’s reading barely goes beyond pointing out the obvious differences between a binary
and a three-tiered system of socioracial categorization.
The discussion of the ambiguity felt towards Spain, and of the role figures of Spain played in
the production of the United States as the self-conceived anti-empire, is enhanced by the
introduction of pictorial works by Emanuel Leutze and Sargent. Yet, this discussion is also
tainted by the idealized notions of Spain held by the author, which tend to lean towards a
rather anti-heroic identification with the traditional “outcasts” of Spain (Moors, Gypsies,
Jews) and to promote idealization of entire periods in Spanish history under the banner of
“convivencia.” Moreover, the queer critique of Sargent's work is done against a diffuse
background that fails to account for the nuances of Andalusian musical cultures and the
complexity and gravity of bullfighting traditions. How much could this purported misreading
of Spain be attributed to the same ideological excess that De Guzmán denounces in “Anglo-
American” ideology and to the deep-rooted scars that such a discourse has left in the
Usonian—and in its “Latina/o-American”—imaginary?
Chapter 3 is perhaps the best and most compelling part of the book. Certainly it draws upon
a wide repertoire of images and figures of Spain and it is a good attempt at pinpointing how it
was that the United States came to position itself as the depository of Spanish imperial legacy
while absolving itself from any and all sins as a conquering power in the tradition of
European rapacity. The definitive book on this subject is still to be written. Yet, De Guzmán’
s contribution is a step in the right direction. At some point, future scholars in this area will
need to focus also on the role played by Cubans and Puerto Ricans in the construction and
propagation of the myth and realities of Spanish barbarity and despotism, and on their
complicity in the construction of the myth and allegories of “America” and “Columbia” as
protectors and redeemers of “lesser peoples” in the name of Liberty.
The fourth chapter also sheds light on possible routes for further inquiry, especially as it
pertains to scopic regimes and patterns of travel and consumption that have become
dominant modalities among Usonian “tourists.” As De Guzmán rightly argues, once Spain
had been perceived as vanquished and more precisely between the early 1920’s and late 1950’
s, Usonian modernist writers came to see the country as “a last frontier, a land to be
discovered.” (188) In that way, Spain and her peoples came to occupy a primary site “in
modernists’ contradictory quest to be moderns.”(190) No doubt this way of travel has
become enshrined in the era of mass tourism at the height of the Usonian empire and it is
particularly felt in the way in which middle-class Usonians come to reminisce about
Hemingway’s Cuba and in the way they approach the peoples in “less fortunate” parts of the
World, especially in the “Spanish” Caribbean, when they “go abroad.” Yet, I question
whether such modalities, as identified by De Guzmán in Stein and Hemingway, are not
more directly traceable to the practice of English piracy in the Spanish Main which, together
with De Guzmán's “Shadow of Spain”, is the other and perhaps the darkest —and still to be
named and uncovered—major point of support for Usonian imperial ideology and praxis.
I find DeGuzmán’s discussion of Richard Wright’s Pagan Spain to be particularly revealing,
evidencing the contradictions and the traps embodied in the person and the experience of
this “Anglo-Afro-American” who lived and loved Spain during the most devastating years of
the Franco dictatorship. More should have been said in this case about the hold and the
complicity in the production of ideology. Unfortunately, De Guzmán sees a much more
Manichaean relationship: “Although written by an African American, the text functions for
the most part as an expatriation of Anglo-American Gothic, a tool of Anglo-American
imperial ideology, and precludes the emergence of its writer's hyphenated subjectivity from
beneath the long shadow cast by that very ideology.” (232-3)
This last quote, in all its problematic set of enunciations, could stand as a summary of the
roblems produced by the logic behind the book's argument, problems that come to the
forefront in the fifth and sixth chapters as the critic tries to pronounce sentence on Usonian
imperialism from the vantage point of her own “hyphenated subjectivity.” Again, there is a
certain lack of competence on the part of the critic when it comes to addressing the
complexities of contemporary Spanish realities. The sixth chapter sadly devolves into a sort
of manifesto of Latinidad, anchored to the figure of García Lorca in a celebratory discourse of
queerness and of something like the “Judeo-Gypsy soul.” The chapter concludes with a
facile denunciation of the Aznar-Blair-Bush axis as constituted in the meeting of the three
leaders in the Azores on March 16, 2003.
All in all, the book is a self fulfilled prophecy. As it sets out to posit “Anglo-American”
identity as an ethnicity, it ends up reinforcing the racial categorizations that sustain and
secure “Anglo-American” dominance as a “divine” cast above all others in Usonian ideology
and ethnocentric practices. As De Guzmán aptly shows in various moments in the text, who
is to say that heralding as she does the “postcolonial prospects of Latinidad” is not simply
yet another way of reaffirming the supremacy of Usonian ideology by accepting its basic
premises, conforming to its modus operandi, and restoring its constitutive advantage vis
a vis Spain and “Spanishness.” That, in turn, should be an appropriate question to ask those
who think themselves at the vanguard of Latina/o studies and of other such popular
modalities of “ethnic-based” inquiry into the Long Shadow of the United States of America.
| (José F. Buscaglia, University of New York at Buffalo) |
| n |
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