Global Hispanophone

[PARAGRAPH 1]: One of the major challenges in researching literary translingualism in the Philippines emerges from the discomforts of applying the current scholarly models to the specificities of linguistic diversity in this former colony of Spain and the U.S. in Southeast Asia. If, as Kellman posits, literary translingualism encompasses texts “written in a language other than the author’s primary language” (“Does Literary Translingualism Matter?” 109), any endeavor to investigate translingual literature in the Philippines will have to resolve first how a language achieves primacy. Should primacy always refer to the author’s L1? Can it also be an author’s dominant L2? What happens when an author is a simultaneous bilingual and thus has multiple L1s? Alternatively, if by translingual literature we mean texts “written in a language not native to the author, in two languages, or in a mix of languages” (Kellman and Lvovich 152), we need to figure out how an author becomes native to a language. A straightforward response cannot always be had in the Philippines, a linguistically plural society where code- switching is widely used as a mode of discourse (Thompson 1– 2). Implicit in such models is the widely held belief that monolingualism is the default mode of authoring literature (Wiggin 488). Translingual literature is hence thought of as a marked piece of writing in somebody else’s tongue or in a babel of tongues, or what Kellman calls as monolingual translingualism and ambilingualism, respectively ( The Translingual Imagination 19). But what happens if the linguistic borderlines that should contain literature are fluid to begin with? Does writing in a language that by definition is a composite of languages make one a translingual author?

This book studies a selection of works of Philippine literature written in Spanish during the American occupation of the Philippines (1902-1946). It explores the place of Filipino nationalism in a selection of fiction and non-fiction texts by Spanish-speaking Filipino writers Jesús Balmori, Adelina Gurrea Monasterio, Paz Mendoza Guazón, and Antonio Abad. Taking an interdisciplinary approach that draws from Anthropology, History, Literary Studies, Cultural Analysis and World Literature, this book offers a comparative analysis of the position of these authors toward the cultural transformations that have taken place as a result of the Philippines' triple history of colonization (by Spain, the US, and Japan) while imagining an independent nation. Engaging with an untapped archive, this book is a relevant and timely contribution to the fields of both Filipino and Hispanic literary studies.

During the second half of the 19th century, several Cuban independentists were deported to Fernando Poo, an island in the Gulf of Guinea. Some memoirs describing their travel and their stay on the island were published later on, in New York and Havana. Although they  have  been  read  as  historical  sources  about  Cuban  independence,  as  sociolinguistic  sources for Spanish language in Equatorial Guinea or as ethnographic sources about Cuban influence in local Guinean dances, the article considers that they are an expression of a colonial gaze by colonial subjects. Cubans independentists saw local Africans as savages who were in need of civilization, applying on them the same colonial mindset they wanted to overcome in their homeland, therefore promoting Spanish colonialism in Africa.

This essay explores the possibilities and potential pitfalls of the Global Hispanophone by placing this emergent category in dialogue with recent developments in Hispanic studies and with ongoing debates in comparative literature about the status of the globe (or the world) as an analytic framework. Drawing on these debates, the essay examines the politics, hermeneutics and aesthetics of multilingual hip-hop, focusing on Khaled, a Spanish rapper of Moroccan descent, whose work weaves between languages (most notably, Spanish and Moroccan Arabic) and musical idioms. Khaled’s multilingual performances challenge hegemonic positions of race, class, religion and place of origin. They also highlight transnational networks of solidarity between marginalized groups in Europe and the United States. Using Khaled’s music as an illustrative example, this essay outlines a tentative vision of the Global Hispanophone, one that focuses on language practices rather than on geography. In what follows, the Global Hispanophone describes the tension between Spanish as a language of imperial power and Spanish as a language that spawns creative responses to power, often through nonstandard uses that throw into question the borders (geographic, cultural and even linguistic) of the language.

El Tratado del Pardo (1778) establecía que el territorio subsahariano que hoy conocemos como Guinea Ecuatorial entraba en el circuito colonial hispano como jurisdicción del virreinato del Rio de la Plata. En aquel entonces ese vínculo entre Sudamérica y Africa no fue mas que legislativo. Sin embargo, desde la perspectiva del presente, el Tratado del Pardo pone de manifiesto la emergente organización económica a nivel global de aquel tiempo. En tal alineamiento, este territorio del Africa subsahariana, además de formar parte de circuito geopolítico colonial hispano, jugaba ya un papel primordial en la economía global: era fuente de mano de obra. Este tipo de participación económica fue adquirido a partir de las expediciones esclavistas portuguesas del siglo XVI.

Resumen: El libro propone una revisión del estudio de los orígenes del imperio español en el siglo XVI a partir de una perspectiva global. La tesis central de esta investigación es que para llegar a entender en toda su complejidad la historia colonial de Hispanoamérica es preciso examinar con detenimiento el proceso de intercambio transoceánico y global entre diversas regiones geográficas del mundo en el siglo XVI. El imperio español fue global en su extensión y en su alcance debido a que inauguró vías de contacto, intercambio y comunicación entre áreas distantes del globo: Europa, África, América y Asia.

Seis estrellas y una leyenda en castellano: Unidad, Paz y Justicia, son incorporadas al escudo nacional de Guinea Ecuatorial en torno a un esbelto arbol de seda de algodón.  La armonía que sugiere la leyenda es enfatizada por la entidad del árbol a nivel visual y, a nivel del discurso oficial, es transmitido con la conceptualizacion de una identidad nacional hispano-africana, o hispano-bantú. Sin embargo, en la observación de la configuración de este binomio cultural, sobresale el esfuerzo por contener dentro del mismo su múltiple valor étnico (los seis grupos étnicos que habitan [Guinea Ecuaotrial]) además de la presencia española, de migrantes de países aledaños y, a partir de los años noventa, de la fuerte presencia internacional a raíz de las inversiones petroleras. ... (201-202)

In 1964, Mexico and the Philippines commemorated the fourth centenary of Miguel López de Legazpi and Andrés de Urdaneta’s 1564 expedition from New Spain to the Philippines. Celebrations, which were held in Mexico and the Philippines, included gift exchanges, the inauguration of monuments and lectures by politicians, diplomats and scholars from both nations. This transpacific encounter resonates with Enrique Dussel’s call for more “transversal” dialogues between intellectuals from the so-called peripheries of the world. However, participants in this collaboration were not forming a new transperipheral network. Instead, they were returning to a transpacific intercolonial link that had operated from 1565 to 1815: the Manila-Acapulco galleon trade. This article focuses on the work of Mexican philosopher and diplomat Leopoldo Zea, one of the main organizers of the 1964 celebrations. While my argument is that reading José Rizal and planning the 1964 events contributed to Zea’s formulation of a vision of solidarity between nations of the so-called Third World, my ultimate objective is to rethink the “global” character of Philippine literature in Spanish through an examination of the cultural residues of the transpacific galleon trade.

KEYWORDS: Transpacific, intercolonial, Rizal, Zea, Manila-Acapulco

This book studies a selection of works of Philippine literature written in Spanish during the American occupation of the Philippines (1902-1946). It explores the place of Filipino nationalism in a selection of fiction and non-fiction texts by Spanish-speaking Filipino writers Jesús Balmori, Adelina Gurrea Monasterio, Paz Mendoza Guazón, and Antonio Abad. Taking an interdisciplinary approach that draws from Anthropology, History, Literary Studies, Cultural Analysis and World Literature, this book offers a comparative analysis of the position of these authors toward the cultural transformations that have taken place as a result of the Philippines' triple history of colonization (by Spain, the US, and Japan) while imagining an independent nation. Engaging with an untapped archive, this book is a relevant and timely contribution to the fields of both Filipino and Hispanic literary studies.

Ellison, M. L. (2018). Lewis, Marvin A. Equatorial Guinean Literature in its National and Transnational Contexts. University of Missouri Press, 2017. 252 pp. TRANSMODERNITY: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, 8(1). Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2w0663tn

In this article, I propose an understanding of the Global Hispanophone as a dynamic of (dis)entanglement, taking as points of departure a global history of science perspective, as well as feminist and decolonial science and technology studies. Discussing conceptual thinking on issues such as the circulation and noncirculation of knowledge and objects in colonial contexts, I develop a number of suggestions with regard to how scholars might study the entanglement (relationality) of different entities in cultural contact zones. I further explore how the hybridity resulting from such entanglement is often rendered invisible by processes of what I call “disentanglement” (denial of relationality). I also suggest how Global Hispanophone studies might trace the ways in which entanglement is prevented from occurring in the first place. While this article focuses on the (dis)entanglement of scientific knowledge, its premise is that this dynamic can also be explored in regard to other forms of knowledge beyond the field of science.