{"id":20986,"date":"2012-02-29T14:42:05","date_gmt":"2012-02-29T14:42:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=20986"},"modified":"2012-02-29T19:54:17","modified_gmt":"2012-02-29T19:54:17","slug":"inscribing-african-descendant-identity-in-nineteenth-century-cuba-the-transculturated-literature-of-juan-francisco-manzano-and-gabriel-de-la-concepcion-valdes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=20986","title":{"rendered":"Inscribing African descendant identity in nineteenth century Cuba: The transculturated literature of Juan Francisco Manzano and Gabriel de la Concepcion Valdes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Inscribing African descendant identity in nineteenth century Cuba: The transculturated literature of Juan Francisco Manzano and Gabriel de la Concepcion Valdes<\/a> <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Michigan State University
\n2010
\n260 pages
\nPublication Number: AAT 3435282
\nISBN: 9781124337340<\/p>\n

Matthew Joseph Pettway<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

This dissertation explores how Juan Francisco Manzano<\/a> and Gabriel de la Concepcion Vald\u00e9s<\/a> (also known as Pl\u00e1cido) appropriated Hispanic literature to inscribe an African descendant subjectivity in nineteenth century proto-nationalist Cuban discourse. I revise Mary Louise Pratt’s notion of “intercultural texts” and \u00c1ngel Rama’s<\/a> “literary transculturation”, proposing “transculturated colonial literature” to trace the contradictions, re-significations, silences and shifts in the aesthetic and ideological function of Manzano and Pl\u00e1cido’s texts. As such, nineteenth century Afro-Cuban literature is analyzed as an active space of negotiation and exchange disputing racial and religious hierarchies to inscribe an Afro-Cuban religio-cultural subject. Through the analysis of Africa-based spirituality and race, I conclude that both Manzano and Pl\u00e1cido disrupted the aesthetic and ideological norms of the colonial status quo by producing what I consider to be the first instance of literary transculturation in Cuba.<\/p>\n

After the close reading of poems, letters, self-narratives, and court testimonies, my findings are twofold. First, the construction of a mulatto<\/a>-Catholic persona by writers of African descent is a politically driven representation legitimating their tenuous association with white cultural elites in charge of disseminating their literature. The portrait of Afro-Caribbean characters that emerges from their writings not only re-signifies racialized bodies but also functions as a disputation of the dominant colonial gaze. Secondly, Manzano and Pl\u00e2cido produced a transculturated religious subject embedded in Africa-based rituals, and able to subvert normative ecclesiastical practice through the construction of new meanings.<\/p>\n

My research contributes to Latin American studies by revealing that Manzano and Pl\u00e1cido’s literature does not amount to mimicry of white culture, instead their work juxtaposes Afro-Cuban and Hispano-Catholic practices, subverts the institutional authority of the Church and challenges colonial racial discourse while lending itself to sometimes contradictory but equally plausible interpretations. In this way, my project proposes a new way of reading Afro-Cuban colonial writing that privileges the construction of subjectivities over colonial strategies of subjugation.<\/p>\n

The comparison of Manzano and Pl\u00e1cido’s racial and religious self-inscriptions in early nineteenth century literature reveals important dissimilarities. Whereas Pl\u00e1cido’s lyrical persona avoided racial self-description\u2014only classifying as a pardo <\/em>in the course of legal proceedings\u2014Manzano identified with the unattainable inbetweeness <\/em>of a mixed-race identity. With regard to Africa-derived spirituality, Manzano’s lyrical voice and narrative persona renders a highly autobiographical account of apparitions, ancestral reunion and rituals to draw upon the power of spirits, while Pl\u00e1cido’s poetic voice does not refer to himself, instead portraying the Afro-Cuban confraternity as collective space for sacred practice that proclaims the judgment to befall colonial slave society.<\/p>\n

Order the dissertation here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Inscribing African descendant identity in nineteenth century Cuba: The transculturated literature of Juan Francisco Manzano and Gabriel de la Concepcion Valdes Michigan State University 2010 260 pages Publication Number: AAT 3435282 ISBN: 9781124337340 Matthew Joseph Pettway This dissertation explores how Juan Francisco Manzano and Gabriel de la Concepcion Vald\u00e9s (also known as Pl\u00e1cido) appropriated Hispanic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,838,1196,8],"tags":[673,9826,9825,9823,9822,9824,5403,9827],"class_list":["post-20986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latincarib","category-dissertations","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","tag-cuba","tag-gabriel-de-la-concepcion-valdes","tag-juan-francisco-manzano","tag-matthew-j-pettway","tag-matthew-joseph-pettway","tag-matthew-pettway","tag-michigan-state-university","tag-placido"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20986\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}