Transpacific Literary and Cultural Connections

Latin American Influence in Asia

Jie Lu, Martín Camps, Jie Lu, Martín Camps

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030557737
• Print ISBN:
  9783030557720

This critical interdisciplinary volume investigates modern and contemporary Asian cultural products in the non-westernized transpacific context of Asian and Latin American intellectual and cultural connections. It focuses on the Latin American intellectual, literary, and cultural influences on Asia, which have long been overshadowed by the dominance of Europe/North America-oriented discourse and by the predominance of academic research by both Asian and western intellectuals that focuses only on the West. Moving beyond the western intellectual paradigm, the volume examines how Asian literature, films, and art interact with Latin American literature and ideas to reexamine, reconsider, and re-explore issues related to the two regions' historical traumas, cultural identities, indigenous/vernacular traditions, and peripheral global-ness. The volume argues that Asian and Latin American literary and cultural endeavors are part of these regions' broader efforts to search for the forms of modernity that best fit their unique sociohistorical and sociocultural conditions. 

© The Author(s) 2020

J. Lu, M. Camps (eds.)Transpacific Literary and Cultural ConnectionsHistorical and Cultural Interconnections between Latin America and Asiahttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55773-7_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: Constructing a New Field of Inquiry: Latin America in Asian Literary and Cultural Studies

Jie Lu¹ and Martín Camps¹

(1)

Department of Modern Languages and Literature, University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA, USA

Jie Lu (Corresponding author)

Email: [email protected]

Martín Camps

Email: [email protected]

Keywords

Jesús BalmoriModernismoLos pájaros de fuegoJapanese empireFilipino nationalist discourse

End Abstract

Asia has been described in Latin American literature as exotic, but also as inspiring. This is especially true in the works of early modernists such as Rubén Darío, José Juan Tablada, Efrén Rebolledo, Gómez Carrillo, Aluíso de Azevedo, José Martí, and Juan del Casal. In her travelogue, Traveling Thousands of Miles in Mountains and Rivers, San Mao, a Taiwanese writer, describes Latin America’s spectacular natural scenery along with its populations, and views this part of the world as her spiritual home, an area where she can contemplate love, life, and human sufferings. Latin America’s literary influence in Asia, though neglected in academic circles, has been profound and began to intensify since the 1970s. This anthology brings Asian and Latin American scholars together to explore how Latin American concepts and imageries have inspired and influenced Asian writers whose countries share Latin America’s colonial and postcolonial experiences, including the pains and sufferings resulting from all forms of exploitation. These essays aim to make a contribution to Asian Studies by tracing the Latin American-Asian connections and by increasing its frames of reference, including the context of the Global South¹ and the diverse trajectories of globalization.

Theoretical Frameworks

Global geopolitical and geoeconomic reality has changed in this new millennium. Ariel C. Armony summarizes this change succinctly: “The center of gravity of the world’s economy is shifting toward emerging economies,” a shift that has been stimulated by Asia-Latin America interactions (Armony v.). Until the late 1980s, Japan was the only Asian country with significant political, economic, and demographic ties to Latin America. After its economic slowdown in the late 1980s and 1990s, Japan strengthened these relations, aware of new Asian competitors like China, South Korea, and India, which became involved in this market in 2000. These countries then hoped to diversify their economies and to strengthen their geopolitical position, while Latin American countries began to recognize the importance of Asia in their own global and economic aspirations. The Latin American-Asian connection is not only remapping the transpacific trade, but also influencing the Europe-U.S.-led globalization by creating trajectories other than those created during a colonial and post-colonial past. Thus, this century is witnessing intensified transnational links and networks between these two regions, far beyond those historically established by the West.

In contemporary geopolitics, a “reorientation” is taking place in which emerging economies are moving away from the “American model,” partially on account of increasing American isolationism and the vertical structure of imperil power, and developing ties with industrialized nations that are increasingly accepting horizontal relationships. Such new geoeconomic dynamics are reflected in a growing body of literature that analyzes the role that Asian countries have played in Latin American economies (in trade, investments, foreign policies, international relations, and geopolitical issues). These studies are typically undertaken from a Latin American perspective and tend to focus on topics such as China’s economic challenge to the United States in the region. They appear in major journals on Latin America published in the United States, Britain, and Latin American (Armony & Aníbal Pérez-Liñan). Citing specific cases, these studies raise general concerns about the Asian presence in Latin America. For example, the ever-expanding Chinese presence in the region is analyzed to determine whether China is following known patterns of transnational investment, migration, and diplomacy (Armony & Strauss 8), or it is offering “alternative and concrete examples of economic success and heightened global influence that are quite separate from the United States” (12). While China, Japan, South Korea, and India clearly represent different models of development, the question remains whether their experiences imply a new form of globalization.

Significant to the focus of our anthology is the fundamental concern, raised by these studies, regarding the presence of “benchmark” cases, predominantly referencing the United States, against which Latin American countries are measured and viewed (Armony & Strauss 12). For instance, in discussing public attitudes toward China’s presence in Latin America and in assessing China’s economic and soft power, the United States is used as the baseline (Carreras 2). Although Armony and Strauss have shown deep concern with America as the “benchmark,” their analysis of China’s role still uses the United States as the point of reference. The “known patterns” they mention refer to the economic and cultural patterns established in Latin America by the United States and Europe.

The use of the American paradigm in discussions of Asian-Latin American relationships raises the questions that have also been introduced by scholars of comparative literature, area studies, ethnic studies, and world literature. As Rey Chow observes regarding the field of comparative literature, Europe is the universal point of reference:

This hierarchical formulation of comparison, which may be named ‘Europe and Its Others,’ remains a common norm of comparative literary studies in North America today. In this formulation, the rationale for comparing hinges on the conjunction and; the and, moreover, signals a form of supplementation that authorizes the first term, Europe, as the grid of reference, to which may be added others in a subsequent and subordinate fashion…. The and thus instigates not only comparison but also a politics of comparison…. These other histories, culture, and languages remain, by default, undifferentiated—and thus never genuinely on a par with Europe—within an ostensibly comparative framework. (quoted in Kim 99)

If the West is used as the sole point of reference, it becomes “an invisible yet naturalized context” while the rest of the world is assumed to provide only “local and/or particular knowledge” (Kim 99). Consequently, in comparative or area studies, the “local” and “particular” are relegated to a second tier while the West’s universality is affirmed. In discussing European novels, Franco Moretti points out that the “movement [of influence] from one periphery to another (without passing through the center) is almost unheard of; that movement from the periphery to the center is less rare, but still quite unusual, while that from the center to the periphery is by far the most frequent” (112). Moretti’s point does not apply to European literature alone; it speaks to all comparative/area studies. Where Western categories dominate the “politics of comparison,” all alternative frameworks by which to understand global situations are precluded. Direct comparisons between the so-called “locals” or “particulars” of areas outside of Europe and North America are prevented. As a result, in the center-periphery relations that Stuart Hall calls the West and the rest, the periphery-to-periphery relations are “silenced, marginalized, and delegitimized” (Kim 106).

To confront the West’s dominant role in this “politics of comparison,” concerted efforts by scholars from multiple fields have begun to challenge centers/peripheries dichotomies and the hierarchical production of knowledge.² These efforts do more than simply activate a “dislocation” of current Western paradigms (Naoki Sakai’s word quoted in Kim); they suggest new epistemological approaches for the understanding of the changing global dynamics. The special issue on remapping the Transpacific that highlights less-explored Asia-Latin American “connections” and espouses hybrid and myriad ways of understanding the regions aims to “unsettle simplistic oppositions between universal and particular” and to move beyond “naturalized relationships” (Bachner & Erber vii). Broadening the Western canon for World Literature, Muller, Locane, and Loy regard the Global South as “the location where new visions of the future are emerging and where the global political and decolonial society is at work” (3). They regard the Global South as both a geopolitical and epistemological concept. This conceptualization is suggested by “the struggle and conflicts between imperial global domination and emancipatory and decolonial forces” (Caroline Levander and Walter Mignolo, quoted in Muller 3). Ignacio López-Calvo proposes that Asian-Latin American literature introduces the negotiation of plurality of identities beyond national and cultural boundaries, as well as the formations of different transnational identities based on the sociopolitical and economic circumstances (18); he calls for “planetary consciousness” as foundational elements for a critical model (4) or geopolitical paradigm that avoids Eurocentric assumptions.

The introduction to Sur/South Poetics and the Politics of Thinking Latin American/India indicates that “cultural South-South relationships,” including those within the Global South itself, are neglected (Klengel/Wallner 8). “The Global South” has become a shorthand for non-European and postcolonial societies and a region excluded from the Global North’s capitalist organization. The Global North has spun theories in which the South is assumed to be synonymous with uncertain development, unorthodox economies, failed states, and nations fraught with corruption, poverty, and strife. The South is rarely seen “as a source of theory and explanation for world historical events” (Comaro/Comaro quoted in Klengel & Wallner, 10).

In their examination of the cultural relationship between Latin America and India, Klengel and Wallner advocate “the ecology of knowledge.” This perspective emphasizes the plurality of heterogeneous knowledge and inter-knowledge, a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: Constructing a New Field of Inquiry: Latin America in Asian Literary and Cultural Studies
• Part I. Latin America and the Philippines in the Transpacific Connections
• Part II. Shared Issues of Identities, Traumas and Migrant Experiences Across Two Continents
• Part III. Magical Realism in Its Asian Turn
• Back Matter