Final Report: Project:

Anthropological literature in Chile. A

hybrid language for intercultural
communication. The project code is:
A / 13/0336, with funding from the
"Deutscher Akademischer
Austauschdienst" (DAAD)
Prof. Dr. Miguel Alvarado Borgoo
Goethe University Frankfurt am Main/Universidad
de Valparaso

Dear Sirs DAAD.

Through this report, I realize my work in Germany at the hearing that I made the months of
February and March 2014. I wish to present the following:
Thanks to this visit I am part of a team under the direction of Professor Dr. Roland Spiller, which
has been expressed in:
1. The publication of a book titled (in Germansthetische Analogien und transkulturelles
Verstehen in Lateinamerika Der flug des Calandria ), and That is on the Editorial NARR printing, as
a book Organized as part of a scholarly collection, by the Institute of Romance Philology at the
University of Frankfurt am Main.
2. I have translated and read a book by colleague Dra. Andrea Gremels, and have published a
scientific article in Spanish about the book in German (Andrea Gremels, (Kubanische
Gegenwartsliteraturin Paris zwischen Exil und Transkulturalitt1, Narr, Tbingen, 2014, 345 pp.
ISBN 978-3-8233-6846-5), Spanish and attached this copy, the Spanish indexed scientific journal
"La Torre Viceroy".
3. I published an article in the journal indexed in Scopus and Scielo "Literature and Linguistics"
attached the first page of the article.
4. I taught several academic conferences in Frankfurt am Main University.
5. Also accompanying text summary of the scientific findings of my research that summarizes the
book I published in Germany.
6. A collective book published in Brazil, edited by Dr. Eni Orlandi at the University of Campinas. 410
Linguagem, sociedade, polticas / organizado por Eni P. Orlandi. L755 Pouso Alegre: UNIVS;
Campinas: RG Editores, 2014. 230p. -- (Coleo Linguagem & Sociedade).ISBN: 978-85-61622-53-4
Appreciating the collaboration of DAAD, and relying on probation for a new project and presented
to continue my academic collaboration in research and teaching.
He says goodbye

Dr. Miguel Alvarado Borgoo

Professor Titular University of Valparaso
Chile

Synthesis scientific contributions made

by the project:

Literary anthropology in Chile

Prof. Dr. Miguel Alvarado Borgoo

Universidad de Valparaso, Chile
Introduction

Since the appearance of scientific anthropology in Chile a permanent transtextual bond with literature can be appreciated, and also expressive searches on
the part of Chilean anthropologists that have gathered in their professional and
academic practice both anthropologist and writer features, or they have appealed
to figures of speech characteristic of literature, which have been introduced in
their anthropological work: some of the most representative cases are those of our
last national award for social sciences and humanities Sonia Montecino and
authors like Andrs Recasens, Clemente Riedemann, Juan Carlos Olivares,
Carlos Pia, Francisco Gallardo, etc. It is about a barely well- known
phenomenon in the literary world and recognized as marginal in the world of
social sciences. In it converges the effort to report the cultural diversity in our
country with the simultaneous intention to use figures of speech from the social
sciences.

For authors like Ivn Carrasco (2003) it is anthropological literature,

that is to say, it is a type of literature that, emerging from anthropology, has

literary identity so much from both the stylistic and pragmatic perspective;
nevertheless, we accept the idea in a frontier literary type to define this textual
experiment but we choose to take it like a literary anthropology, since it is a
disciplinary mutation that goes beyond the limits of the traditional anthropology
but also that has been naturally taken as literature in the context of our country.

The only possible metaphor to begin this article maybe is Roland Barthes (1989)
that considers the speech of History like an occupation for scribblers. In our
case it can be said that the speech of literary anthropology is that of scribblers
that use other bordering writing forms, like the poetic anthropology, the ethniccultural literature, the experimental sociology, the ethnic history and the
experimental poetry.
This paper intends to differentiate specific literary anthropology from poetic
anthropology since blueprints of a writing type are seen in literary anthropology
which for the first time in Chile and Latin America unites an aesthetic literary root
intending to build a textual standard that without being neither literature nor
anthropology shows diversity in both the narrative and theoretical level and
aims to keep history.

Anything easy, anything for free

The nonexistence of a social space for the anthropological science in Chile during
the second half of the 20th century resembles the absence of a space for the
Chilean literature in the first half of the very 20th century. This literature entered
surprisingly causing the coexistence of huge pachyderms that could not cohabit in
the immense plain of Chile by that time. Today we are prone to believe that the
text doesn't emerge from a need for context, but rather of a collective desire that
materializes in science and literature, like it could be channeled through political or
religious means, and that each textual form is an expression of changes in
discursive wide formations and in some trans-cultural cases. But the text is
neither for free nor spread as isolated variable. The dream of identifying a "zero
degree": the language, the style and the writing (Barthes, 1989) in a verb-symbolic
way, belong together

with the illusion of recognizing the sense of a cultural

process, but it is in fact as naive as identifying the coherence of a historical

process, on the base of the metaphysical supposition of the identity between

reality and reason, an interpretive illusion like the best positivist historicism and of
the functionalist sociology that secured the development-driven illusion.
Rather, if the style is the reverberation of the personal mythology that according
to Roland Barthes (1989), makes and destroys contexts, and dialogues with sign
and social structure, it modifies them and it suffers them; This way, it maintains
a manipulating and paradoxically dependent bond that generates a writing that
from that entangled of the bond between work and writer, it creates an intricate
document and therefore beyond the personal mythologies and the dilettante
narcissism, the road to assume and to understand the experimental forms of
Chilean anthropology consists on taking it out of the narrow looking glass of
science. It should not be committed exclusively with literature in this process, but
rather it should be spoken about a

dynamic and intricate border writing.

Thinking from the sense can neither imply that our Literary Anthropology arises
from a thought of the totality, nor can be characterized in its origins and
development in an absolute way; each reader and hermeneutist will go
interpreting these texts, both the current ones and the future ones. So each
interpretation becomes a co - original creation, because from this starting point,
the exegesis of the anthropological literary project is an ontology form that turns
the interpreting system, not into an external observation device, but partly into
the wide question for the own observing system.
To

say something

on

the

work

of

representative

authors

of

Literary

Anthropology like: Sonia Montecino, Andrs Recasens, Clemente Riedemann,

Carlos Pia and Ivonne Valenzuela, just for mentioning some sainted, forces us
to wonder about the limits of science and literature, but also makes us see the
curvy way far from the big sociocultural tendencies of capitalism, it is possible to
see come out frontier" experiments; a frontier fixed by the Europe-centered,
scientific and literary western standards. This wide query regarding a

frontier

writing can open up to a much wider statement; there is a mutation in the writing

forms that surpass the Europe-centered standards. We hope to contribute with

some

initial elements

here,

beyond

the

experiments

of

some

Chilean

anthropologists. Like Gastn Bachelard (1987), it is presumed that all social

process happens "in the forest and not in the laboratory", therefore, the
appearance of the textual experiments of Chilean Anthropology are not caused
by a cultural planning or by an own will of a defined episteme, but rather keeps
art and science related, with the always captious correlation between the
interpretations of the culture in Latin America and the developments of literature.
This captious interpretation exists exactly because Anthropology in Chile and in
some measure in Latin America is a reduced social space. They are pragmatic
spaces that are interrogated about themselves, regarding speeches and during
the speech, in a vertiginous process of knowledge theory that is not certainly
known.
The group of works composed by the Anthropology Literary Chilean (from now on
referred as ALCH) consists on a type of initiating textual production of a
speech new genre, but it doesn't belong pragmatically neither to the scientific
nor the literary standard with exclusivity. Literary Anthropology is, based on the
persistent work carried out from the studies on Poetic Anthropology (Alvarado
2001, 2002, 2006, Crcamo 2007, Carrasco 2003), a specific derivation that is
removed from the disciplinary great mutation (Carrasco, 2002) that has meant the
dialogue between literature and anthropology in Chile and Latin America in the
last 40 years. The same concept of dialogue is a euphemism, since in this
mutation process the textual standards are questioned, without considering the
epistemological matrix of each discipline and of each genre; the dialogue means,
in some extent, the defeat of social sciences in front of literature. This
surrender was outlined explicitly by Jos Joaquin Brunner (1997) in the 40
anniversary of FLACSO 1. In spite of it, most of the Latin American social

was talking the other night to ngel Flisfisch and he suggested me to speak
in this occasion of sociology like a language that, after their classics and
conservatives, has no much to say to the world. I found that intuition interesting,

Sciences have ignored this call to humility, the disciplinary mutation is in the
middle of a consolidation process, surreptitiously, and to the way of a baroque
expression that uses marginal spaces inside the spaces of the traditional social
science, mainly at universities.
In previous publications we have proven the existence of the Poetic Anthropology
(2002a, 2002b) as a dimension of this mutation, the meta-language (Mignolo,
1986) of this Poetic Anthropology has a lot in common with postmodern
anthropology, but paradoxically, the very appearance of the postmodernism
concept came after the appearance of this poetic anthropology, and the
publication of the fundamental works of this trend (in the mid 70s from last
century).
Postmodernism is a cultural fashion that was functional to give meta-theoretical
basis to an original cultural trend, from an unnecessary and so strange justification
to us, Latin Americans as the troubles of polemic like empiricism or the
Cartesian trend. This out-of-context basis goes making sense to Poetic
Anthropology, taking the place that the theory has in traditional science. On the
other hand Literary Anthropology constitutes a group of works with different
characteristic; in a previous study we have demonstrated how ALCH owns a
tradition that goes back to the mid-20th century from Carlos Munizagas works
under the influence of the poet and anthropologist Alfred Metraux, having a lot of
work left to carry out regarding the relationship between surrealism and Latin

because it had to do with - in a sociological, abstract and general way; '"; I

wanted to say today, in the 40s anniversary of FLACSO. It is known that in their
origins sociology was hardly distinguished from other genres, they were
understood as an ideological-verbal universe differentiated from each other. In
the XIX century - their speech stayed intermingled inside the semantic field of
philosophy, history, literature and essay. As time went by it came to be a
separate, relative, object-related language and it was limited to an intellectual
profession. A possible hypothesis to explore is that, in that process, the sociology
kept and prolonged, some elements of the epic poem genre, attempting to set
itself apart from the evolution of the novel, its eternal competitor.
http://www.redalyc.org/revista.oa?id=815.

American anthropology. On the other hand, ALCH is fully alive in the works of
Andrs Recasens, Clemente Riedemann, Ivonne Valenzuela, Carlos Pia and
Sonia Montecino, and it possesses a coherence that provides it a family aura,
and through this it can already sustain our statement, regarding the existence of
an anthropological literary experimental standard, what involves the dynamic
development of a disciplinary mutation.
In the counterpoint between Literary Anthropology and Poetic Anthropology, we
see in the objective works of ALCH analyzed from the 90s and in the first
decade of the 21t century, a narration instance, but also of reflection: there is
the fundamental element that differentiate them, beyond the pragmatic
eventualities of the Chilean Poetic Anthropology (from now on APCH as Spanish
acronym), which has been developing in a parallel way under the wing of the
Fund Matta (from the donation of money carried out by the painter Roberto
Matta for these purposes).
Today it can be told the works of Literary Anthropology from those corresponding
to Poetic Anthropology (Alvarado, 2011); this way, the fundamental thing is to say
that two features prevail in the (ALCH): an audacity when narrating that it is
beyond the margins of the postmodern anthropology, and it turns the texts of this
trend into works with literary and scientific value, but it doesnt make it different
from Poetic Anthropology; the main macro-structural factor (understood as
basically thematic dimension) is the existence of a "will for the theory", an intertextual and meta- linguistic effort tied to the narration and determined to make a
theoretical reflection inside a creative original joining.
The above-mentioned allows to think that in the future, beyond the plausible
aesthetic style of Chilean anthropology, the attempt of making theory from the
periphery, will not only keep relationship with academic goals, but rather ALCH
will experience a complex bond with the Academy and marked distancings
and approaches will occur. Nevertheless in their identity it is a main feature: it

consists on the existence and persistence of a theoretical reflection (in a

Cartesian sense in some cases and post-meta-physic in others); which allows to
think that something can be clearly said about Literary Anthropology: which,
without abandoning an aesthetic search, tops creatively the lyricism of Poetic
Anthropology. It is about a heuristic power in the most textual and hermeneutic
sense in the concept.
In all this experimental anthropology (APCH and ALCH) a certain academic and
aesthetic value can be seen coming, it is an aspect associated to the audacity of
experimentation, that is not fully perceived and valued yet, not even for all the
anthropological circuits, and let alone for the literary ones; nevertheless, it is
believed that there is an undeniable value in what Literary Anthropology has
carried out at meta-linguistic level, since it allows us to speculate not only that the
cycle of the anthropological work that involves the scientific work, work that relates
reflection here and it evidences is completed academically; but that

in the

sociology field of knowledge: it is believe that it allows it to glimpse the possibility

that this ALCH has a role in Chilean society beyond the narrow circuit of the same
anthropologists: Andrs Recasens has influenced on the State of Chiles vision on
the craft fishing, Valenzuela has opened a different sensitivity regarding the
Atacamea culture of the 20th century and of the popular religiosity expressed in
the "animitas", Montecino is the main female theorist in Chile due to the pragmatic
impact of its works, marked by a literary look; her book Madres y Huachos is a
Decalogue for all interested on this genre, especially for women (She
Obtained the National Prize of Social Sciences and Humanities the year 2013).
This allows to think that Literary Anthropology neither mean, nor it will mean, a
radical rupture with anthropology in a classic sense and nor it will block the social
recognition of anthropologist's profession, but rather it will be a road; neither
assumed nor legitimated, by the whole scientific social community, of creative and
autonomous re-conversion of Chilean anthropology regarding the central
countries (Europe and North America). This in relation to what Chilean

anthropology is and especially in relation to what could "end up being" in its

dialogue with art and literature.

A populated solitude of letters

In the dialectics text-context the developments of the Chilean literature are part in
many occasions of the very effects of chance and absurdity; in 1842 the
Literary Chilean Society is founded by Jos Victorino Lastarria and other
Andrs Bello's pupils, shaping up to a literature of national stamp. After it,
they developed a gibberish series, except the realistic literature of Baldomero
Lillo, and some of the members of the literary community that meets in Tolstoys
colony of the commune of San Bernando, in the periphery of the capital of Chile 2.
Later on more than in a silence the poets and narrators at the beginning of the
XX century, are annihilated by the influence of the sonority as and
Rubn Daro's meta-language; nevertheless, they are also a form of aesthetic
silence that not only refused to the symbolist experimentation, but also, it
represented a semantics with little capacity for the result of the act of speech
beyond the loving fastidiousness or of the jingoistic dithyramb.
But inopportunely the miracle happens, the book "The Wailings" of Pablo de
Rokha appears whose first edition was sold bigger as paper to wrap meat at the
Central Market of Santiago, the book "Crepusculario" of Neruda is also published,
The Tolstoy Colony consisted on an artistic-community brief experience carried
out among the years 1904 and 1905, led by Augusto D'Halmar and closely
followed by Fernando Santivn and Julio Ortiz of Zrate. During decades, it
constituted a legend of the cultural Chilean life, until Fernando Santivn, in 1955,
published its work Memorias de un tolstoyano, revealing many data that
contributed to so much demythologize the project of the very Colony and its
pretended founder. It is so they have existed two interpretations up to now
regarding the Tolstoy tentative: a traditional and confident reading, on one hand,
and a suspicious one, on the other hand. (Galgani, 2006)
2

to fulfill this publication, Neruda had to sell the wristwatch given by his father to
him; and simultaneously the appearance of Vicente Huidobro's brilliant metalinguistic idea was born, it was an unclassifiable brilliant idea in the Chilean ambit,
an originality that resembled more like the visits from a French poet to Chile than
an experimental Chilean poet.
In the resource to the naive Cartesianism in the developments of our
anthropology, the first sketch is the delirious work of Nicols Palacios: Raza
Chilena that paradoxically served to the ideological necessities of the traditional
oligarchical right; field anthropology was, until the mid-20th century, a work
characteristic of exotic foreigners concerned about exoticism like Martin
Gusinde and Max Uhle. The abandonment of himself that Martin Gusinde carries
out had more significance, in Tierra del Fuego than the fieldwork of Chilean as
Aureliano Oyarzun, Thomas Guevara, Ricardo Latcham.
It can only be mentioned an authentic anthropology that intends scientific
approach in Chile with the appearance of the work: "Vida de un Araucano by
Carlos Munizaga Aguirre the year 1959. More than to make the historiography of
a trajectory is necessary to identify the points of articulation of the poetic
anthropology as postmodern rhyme and of Literary Anthropology simply as an
effort, an isolated point, to constitute a faithful anthropology to the tradition of the
social and literary national thought as well as, an emphatic appeal to the historical
memory: exactly it is in this last point where these frontier texts are invoked or
they avoid their identity and their sense.

Guilty forgetfulness and the appeal to the memory.

It is significantly contradictory that the Poetic Anthropology arises in the context of
the military Chilean dictatorship, that is to say, in the moment when more social

injustice

and political crimes took place in our country, then an alignment

effort appears to fly over the memory impressing through the expressive
capacity of the literature

more than to carry out an appeal to the urgency of the

circumstances; when at the late 80s, some Chilean anthropologists are defined as
postmodernist they don't do more than finding and using a post-metaphysics as
an alibi for its lack of historical commitment.
But if the memory is uncomfortably invited, it is in all effective ways, asking
us a systematic question regarding a textual system produced by some dozens
of authors and that it is unknown at international level; it is the poetic and literary
anthropology that appear in a simultaneous but defined way from completely
different moral distinctions. They are part of an expressive effort that far from
being a postmodernist manifestation, it is above all a conservative continuity of
the aesthetic analogy that is present in the writing regarding the otherness in
Latin America, it is chancy to use the word conservative, but far from founding or
originating the anthropological Chilean literary experiments, they are the
continuity of a type of aesthetic analogy, here we are presenting something much
more overwhelming: all exam of the Latin American reality produced from the mid19th century, has appealed to an aesthetics and therefore to a poetics, more than
to a system of coherent thought (in the sense of the western logos); Jos Mart,
and Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, they are founding records, one in advance in
each hemisphere of the planet, of the expressive necessities that arose from
the Nation State of the 19th century and that today they seem re-founded in the
multi-culturists troubles of the early 21st century. A "grade zero" exists for the
writing of the Latin American diversity, this it is the group of troubles of the
intellectual elites of the 19th century that as continuity they reappear at the end of
the 20th century; and it is more an expressive search than a rational attempt.

The verb of the imprecisions

In a recent congress of inter-cultural studies, we were surprised by the full
coincidence between our book Acculturations (2014) and the questions of the
union of Professors in Chile regarding the inter- cultural concept; it has a
relationship with the polysemic ambiguity with which the culture concept is used
today and with the fact that this ambiguity is projected at level of the multiplicity of
concepts that derives from this concept like: multi-culture, acculturation,
enculturation, etc. However, it is not only projected on a discussion or on some
theoretical uncertainty, but rather it has relationship with another phenomenon
that we could denominate as the sociology of anthropology; and more concretely
in a particular dimension of this sociology, which belongs together with an
almost obvious, but not for that reason less significant fact: anthropological
science, as most of social sciences, are an invention of European society and it
arises to unveil the complexities of modernity and industrialization, therefore they
are sciences produced by euro-centered minds, even in the USA case.
connect

the

conceptual

imprecision

with

the

aesthetic

If

we

experimentation,

the anthropological literary text is not able to be other thing but from the theory of
knowledge that thing which is lost and it is recovered already transformed into
another thing: an experimental, imprecise and emergent standard as it is the
characteristic of ALCH.
As well as Marvin Harris (2004), relates the effects in United States of the effects
of the emergence of anthropologists coming from the US working class, in Latin
America and Chile it can witness the appearance of local elites, first western and
then even indigenous that they have shaken the spectrum of the western world
with an anthropology that tries to be de-colonized, and therefore, to represent
another look of the sameness from a cultural accented relativism; it is certain that
they result limited to narrate from this aim point the rhetorical styles of the
traditional science; it is there where the forms of nationalized anthropology
appear and respond to expressive necessities and not to intellectual fashions as
postmodernism (how we have already outlined here); it is almost ridiculous that it

is about adducing a postmodern content when in fact it seemed rather to be

about a nostalgia for the expressive ways of literature. The ambiguity of the
culture concept seems to be a concomitant variable to understand the explosion
of metaphors characteristic of the poetic and literary anthropologies. From the
theoretical imprecision arise rhetorical of the imprecision that transformed in
experimental poetics and in a coherent, much more coincident way with the
history of the writing in Latin America than with the forms of contemporary eurocentered experimentation. But the imprecision can have effects and unsuspected
bonds: the expressive originality crosses and for moments it is opposed with
ethical validities.
The feature that characterizes the textual experimentation of ALCH is that: beyond
their meta- language, we see an appeal type to the sense that infiltrates amid a
nihilistic experimentalism, to the way of the interpretation that Heidegger (1996)
makes of the sentence "God has died", outlined by Nietzsche in Gaia science;
the metaphysics crisis is rather a crisis position and not a death record. The
coherence between the western European metaphysics crisis and the attempts of
topping the metaphysics in the anthropological Latin American speech, they
demonstrate the same impossibility of the liberation of the "sense" on the part of
any form of narration of the otherness. The escape of the ethical option
attempted by the poetic anthropology or the narrative of the 80s generation
represented in Chile by Alberto Fuguet, is so much expression of the desire of
nonsense, as of the same impossibility of being out of sense; because in this
escape from the ethical option the narration is captured in a rhetoric of the
description, far from being neural, it is a banner in the fan of the social and cultural
effects of capitalism, alone; any narration that tries to go by high topics as the
social inequity becomes a hollow sound, in an inert desert, but in which it
punishes the expectations, to the way of Juan Rulfo's ghosts.
The intention of escaping from the sense and of abandoning the metaphysics, it is
above all a kind of euro-centered ideal that nobody neither has demonstrated

that it is possible, nor it is something positive in the social plan; if it is about

escaping from the sense in metaphysical western terms that it was already
attempted 2600 years ago by Buddhism, most of the natural (archaic)
religions are neither sustained in a metaphysics of the good and of the wrong
nor in values that can be identified as universal, being confirmed the structuredriven notion that beyond the taboo of Incest, another principle that is universally
applicable doesn't exist. It increases the anxiety in the conservative sectors, while
the progressive world is tempted with a axiological relativism that makes it be
contradicted regarding the emancipatory ideal of the philosophical speech of
modernity; it is not possible to already narrate from a dithyrambic game between
the archaic utopia and the modernizing redemption, in both cases, the narration of
the diversity becomes a Philippic, either in a "sum against the heathens" or in a
"sum for the heathens", being configured a kind of anthropological" "Thomism that
of appealing hopelessly to the sense, it finishes giving up the same sense. This
way, of wanting to narrate the scandal we become scandalous narrators, and we
pass from the Cartesianism to an escape from the sense that tries to be
uncommitted narration; but we are western writers and the curse or the
blessing, according to who is looking, of the appeal to the sense infiltrated in our
narration falls on us, probably the only conclusion regarding this point, is that
neither the completely relativized commitment nor the absolute non-commitment
are something that can be carried out at least in our language.
From the field notebook until the most sophisticated ethnographic film, the aim
point will always be defined by the western culture and in this aspect it is the
language the bearer of a sense that denies any form of aseptic neatness in the
narration. Therefore, all construction of the otherness or the sameness, are
always an ethno-fiction, and all fiction is in Lacans terms (Lacan, 1984) the
encounter point between the imaginary thing and the symbolic thing, the
imaginary thing is the way in which the ethnographer narrator builds a vision of
what he wants to narrate, and the symbolic thing is the language taken to the plan
of elementary resource of the narration, neither ethnographic narration nor

anthropological ideology is possible outside of the language. The failure or the

deep hypnosis, are something that overcomes the vision of an observer for
unveiling the expectations, contradictions, limitations and also the altruism of a
narration type and of reflection that cannot put on one hand anthropology and
on the other hand fiction, because both things are the same thing. The ethnofiction (Auge, 1997) is built in the words and from the imaginary of the one who
narrates, as well as the ethnography. Both textual types could not arise from
another threshold.
The absolute of the memory
Today in Chile at September 4th of 2013, two texts are being prepared, more
specifically two speeches, one of the President of the Republic Sebastian
Piera, the other of the most probable winner in the elections of November,
the former president Michelle Bachelet, these speeches will both deal with a
punctual day, a space in which it seemed time was suspended, September 11
1973; both texts rotated around two axes that cross this axial moment of Chilean
memory: that of the past, adducing that the causes are there and that of the future
also assuming that the effects were there, in both speeches the clarity will get
lost in the extent that we come much closer to the present and we go away in
the past; but we know by far that any past remembering could speak of the
violence and barbarism of that moment, and that the future brings back the past
this month of September in Chile like a bewilderment rite. The past charges us,
makes act of presence, remembering pains, bitterness, blames.
The word pardon is a kind of sacral alibi, and ritually sacramental; the verb
"responsibility" is a mechanism of emptying to assume blames that vanish in the
bog of collective anguishes. But we should start from the supposition outlined by
Gaston Bachelar that in human sciences we are in the forest and this way the
flight of a butterfly in Chile, impacts in the stock market of Tokyo, and therefore all
those that breathed that axial day of 1973 have responsibility, but it doesn't mean
anything, it probes social life is a variable fact and the operation of the dichotomy

between the objective and the subjective, of that false dichotomy that makes
distribute responsibilities and conjure blames.

In summary,

there is not

guilty neither innocent to the moment to make a hermeneutic writing of

History only when the memory distills values, the blame and the damage they take
its place in the narration and in theory. The act of the pardon is rather the reinoculation the trauma awaiting more favorable circumstances, maybe waiting the
moment in which, for those who actually lived the coup dtat and later the
dictatorship would have the weight of a violent glaciation or an infernal eruption
that we suppose horrendous but there are prints left in a hard and unalterable
stone; the trauma will be landscape and meanwhile, and both presidential
speeches will waste words, not to explain, but to be politically correct with the
historical own block, as if the idea of half point was a key for the communicational
consents, (never communicative) this way, it is assumed neurotically that the
concept is not really a discursive order of the microphysics of power, but a
matter of resentful and neurotic people that the future idea eliminates. The political
official speech usually doesn't have future for memory; and memory, becomes a
leper inhabiting the vicinity of the community, where it is thrown foods like
expression of a blame very well channeled, a blame that is more a cord inside a
harmony that maintains the historical rhythm, no matter how unjust this rite is. It
is not the ethics of the memory what prevails today but the functionality of the
forgetfulness, and the remedy of the memory is a hollow space of sense, an
allegory without the impact of the result of the speech act, it is an inconvenient
visitor but recurrent, as the insane that is sent home in a holiday. Is able the
anthropology of sources to be a contribution for this stagnation in the prosecution
of the memory?

There is not honest Anthropology without historical memory

The overcoming on the part of Lacans psychoanalysis of the "clinic of the look",
has a n equivalent in
the
question
of
classic
ethnography.
When
anthropology discovers

that

the

informant

is deliberative and that in many

occasions she says what he or she believe that the ethnographer wants to listen;
two characters are integrated this way in scene: first the own ethnographers that
assumes their production as writing and then to the receiver as component of the
text, admitting that the readings of the reader of the anthropological text are not
those of the model archetypal reader, but all the possible forms of looks of
sociocultural landscapes that are derived of the possible infinite significant chains.
All anthropological literary attempt maybe follows Jean Genet's print, Jorge Luis
Borges or Juan Goytisolo, strolling between languages and cultural traditions;
with an existential, ethnographic and complex writing. The anthropological
literary effort is not new, as an attempt of narrating the otherness, for a specialist
in literature in any part of the world; the novel thing is that from Chile, with its
culturally insular character and in the same way, as avid society of the European
or North American last novelty, a textual genre is developed that is basically, and
without intendingto, in some cases, be elaborated or anticolonial type of text and
dissonant in respect to the early 20th century in Chile.
We should clarify that the attempt of this article doesn't consist in identifying
sources or origins to the evolutionist way, or to the way of a mono-genesis chain,
in which the lost links would be plentiful, the objective of these notes is not to
carry out a historiography of Literary Chilean Anthropology; it is not even to
establish an archaeology from it to the foucoulteana way; it is about something
different: to state the existence of a trans-disciplinary mutation in Chilean
anthropology that, from their origins by the mid-20th century, it tried to generate
an own voice fundamentally from the imitation of the British social classic
anthropology, until the permanent nexus with the literature
under the existence in inter-textual, rhetorical and semantic ways of literary origin.
However, the sense of this work is centered in the identification of the metalanguage of this trend basically to carry out a demonstration that can seem
elementary, but it is not: the existence of Literary Anthropology as statement is

based on our supposition, that a discursive genre that involves a mutation in the
textual standard of the anthropology exists; this mutation belongs together with
the efforts developed from Claude Lvi - Strauss from now on, in parallel with the
appropriation of the authors contribution like Michel Leiris or George Bataille
(Alvarado, 2011), but it possesses a notorious range of originality, it is a
phenomenon with a remarkable historicity since it has been developing for at
least 40 years in Latin America. It is a significant coincidence that the Coup dtat
happened 40 years ago in Chile.

The frontier is a place to opt

We already possess clarity regarding that the ethical accusation is present in
ALCH concerning the social cost of the values, far from postmodernism, there is
not nihilism here but a sympathizing feeling regarding the suffering of the other
one and from there to denounce this suffering, generated invariably for the social
cost of the values that capitalism, in this outlying case, implies for Chile. Also, it is
fundamental to highlight the existence of a desire of beauty in the writing that is
expressed through: heterosexual love, love to the landscape, search of the purity
in contexts of extreme opacity; this ethical same commitment becomes what
Pound would call in his Songs "love", it is a hopeful rescue of what goes beyond
the beauty and that it allowed the overcoming of the social cost of the values
(Alvarado, 2011), so much from a delirious lyricism, as well as the scribbler
impelled by practical objectives that are part from the tradition of social
intervention characteristic of the professional anthropology to universal level.
Associated to this semantic macro-structural development (Van Dijk, 1989) it is
seen in perspective the generation of a new vocabulary under the form of
neologisms in ALCH that produce ideal types in Webers way, those that will
have their root in literature but they will enlarge the narrative and interpretive

capacity of anthropology; these neologisms will tend, so much to a lexical wide

variety as to a semantic depth that will go from poetics to theory. It will involve in
mid-term the standardization of new metaphors, that will be not only narrative
instruments, but rather, from a theoretical well founded reflection, they will have
social influence sooner or later; this influence will allow them provide textcharacter to what hasnt been narrated yet by its novelty, and also to what didn't
require to be named for being so evident, and when being named it turns out this
naming in a new look from society like group, this it is the process that makes
essential the study of Literary Anthropology. In this process the language of
ALCH is well settled in an essential baroque style which articulates to the
metaphor assuming the use of

metaphors like a central point of the "supremacy

of the significant"; (Lacan, 1984) it not only for a matter of writing style, but also for
the necessity of exacerbation of the way that produce in an ostensible way to the
generation of narrative and interpretative categories that, to the way of Lezama
Lima (and their school of literary neo- baroque) (Sarduy, 1999), emanated of
the popular American Baroque and from the ecumenical project of Baroque, it
will be trafficked from classism of anthropology to the Baroque exacerbation of
language. New words will be generated to state new diversities and in this context
neologisms won't be an obstacle, but an instrument for the achievement of this
ethical utopia and fundamental technique of all anthropology, this is the
intercultural communication.
Concerning the plan of the contextual-historical incidence of ALCH, the opposition
among Baroque and classicism rebounds in the opposition among Baroque and
modernity; it bases its vision on the Latin American culture on the persistent
identification of a syncretism that makes of the Baroque not only a historical
landmark, but a reality that more than hybrid it is anthropologically syncretic, it in
the more classic meaning of syncretism: this is the product of the encounter
between two or more cultural forms that produce a third, which is not a replica of
their ways but a sensibility and a specific way of organizing the social and
productive

relationships.

Literary Anthropology

is

seen

as

a Baroque

sensibility, as semantic macro-structure and meta-linguistic epicenter, it can arise

from what Sarduy genially called the irregular pearl (Sarduy 1999). Baroque is a
cultural construction generated by a human group, at ideal level, but in our
interpretation we prefer to speak of a Baroque spirituality that produce what Ezra
Pound have called love, and that one makes life in the poetic option of our Literary
Anthropology: Baroque is neither the manifestation of the Latin Americans popular
groups, nor it is exclusively expression of what differentiates us culturally, socially
and economically from the societies of the central countries; it is a type of
spirituality that emanates from a Catholic root, but that secularization has
transformed into a aesthetics of exacerbation, and it is not only extracted at level
of the aesthetic products, but properly from a spirituality, understanding for
spirituality the conjunction among a psychic structure and its cultural patterns that
produce aesthetic forms from which is sought to make sense for the uncertainties
of the bond with the others. This spirituality is expression, not of the expectations
of the enjoyment simply, but of the desire like utopia and as goal; it is a love that
misses, idealize, overflows and contains.
Also, our position for Literary Anthropology consists, in the plan of the
responsibility that is about alter ego that receives diverse names: the
ethnographer, the scientist, the textual author, the fellow, the native, etc. or an
abstract us, nevertheless, all they represent what for e.g. Fernando Pessoa
(Alvarado, 2011) used under the form of its numerous heteronyms, it is
therefore about assuming that anthropologist when writing exposes a collective
imagination, a surprise and an attachment in front of lifestyles that meditates also
regarding them, writing in first person not even liberates that, instants after having
been written, the text become a free entity, where the anthropologist is a narrative
strategy, an semiotic identity, to say me is already to say other, the
anthropologist writer is a heteronyms system, hence more than the steal of the
speech or projection of the anthropologist's psyche, Literary Anthropology uses
and will use this resource in an insistent way, not as an evidence of a weakness
but like a form of expression of inter-texting, of the multiple hypo-texts that operate

in the anthropologist's writing, this will give freedom. The uncertainty on the origin
of the anthropological writing already exists, although many anthropologists
are not aware of the phenomenon. The essence of these reflections is based
on considering that ALCH is more than a "surrealism without unconscious",
(Clifford, 1986) thus it tops the textual postmodern experimentation, if it contains a
meta-language in process, ALCH is seen like the clear cultural and discursive
expression

of

psychic

and

social

conjugated

processes,

where

the

unconsciousness and the sociocultural event are amalgamated, and then

context and unconscious substratum of the text are what defines it.
As our phenomenon is accepted this way, we recognize Literary Anthropology as
autonomous, but it is sustained in two places: on one hand a symbolic system
nurtured from a Baroque meta-language, coherent with the development of
literature and of Latin American culture, the symbolic universe is exacerbated
therefore and diverse, but this exacerbation of the way, not like it is Gothic
degraded, but a Baroque that express a specifically Latin American rationality.
And this Baroque symbolism is amalgamated and seen psychoanalytically with
an universe of the imaginative that is the specific form that takes the
environment of that in this anthropology that Cortzar and Garca Canclini
(Alvarado, 2011) denominated as the fantastic; the fantastic is not what lacks
reality but what allows, from the overcoming of the empiric evidence, to assume
the absurdity and this way not to demand to the reality that is identified with the
rational thing, since the rationality that underlies is not a cultured rationality but a
Baroque rationality, it is an irregular pearl, according to Sarduy.
The imaginative defined from the fantastic and the symbolic defined from the
Baroque produces a reality that is far from being a "surrealism without
unconsciousness" it is a Baroque Latin American writing, which narrates the
reality, but that Baroque reality identified by the re-reading that makes Lacan
(1984) of Freud, in which the realness arises from the coalition between the
symbolic and the imaginary. Our Literary Anthropology is appropriate with its

cultural context and its historical aproach, it appeals this way to a radical
realism, but to a realism that is not devaluated in the sensitive evidence but
rather it is nurtured of the collective unconsciousness so that the fantastic defines
a reality that goes beyond the evidence.
If ALCH is defined hypothetically like a type of crossing" speech that is nurtured
so much from the scientific social speech and from literature, it will be stated that
the establishment of a more precise profile of this only can settle down from the
answer to two very similar questions in their structuring but dissimilar in the
answer type that they require, they are: Why ACHL is not itself another type of
anthropological speech, inside this immense variety?, and very related with the
above-mentioned, why this Literary Anthropology is not literature itself, with some
variants, but literature as such : on one hand it can be stated that this Literary
Anthropology is not literature because its reader and its model author (Eco, 1981)
are defined regarding the anthropological science and their big semantic
microstructures, it is configured in terms of Clifford and Marcus (Clifford and
Marcus, 1986) in an authors intention, it would be added from Eco that is about
model authors as much as empiric authors, which confers it a character strongly
auto-referential, as long as this model author is an anthropologist that defines his
position in the world and therefore in his work from his subject condition, it is
assumed this way and it is preached in implicit way as well as in explicit way that
anthropology would be a way of life. We recognize that the defined intention
concept from Clifford and Marcus refers to a theoretical intention, while Eco
speaks of textual evidence, nevertheless, this intention passes over the same
theoretical level to flood the composition of the text of ALCH. If anything were
known about contemporary anthropology, it would still be recognized a nonliterary intention in these texts.
From the above-mentioned consideration we see that the model author's
intention takes out to the anthropological literary text of the exclusive marks of
the literature, nevertheless, this intention is not enough to turn ALCH into an

exclusively anthropological text according to the standardization that this speech

possesses in normal science, according to Thomas Khun (1992). In what
concerns the model reader present in this speech, it can be stated that it is about
an archetypal individual (and thus uncontrollable) somebody with knowledge more
than elementary on anthropology, expert on some changes of this discipline in our
country that is defined from a critical posture in front of the Chilean reality in the
axiological environment, and that it bases their access to the text from the
acceptance a priori of the use of aesthetic-literary resources in the elaboration
of the anthropological speech. A curious, cultivated reader, that is able to go
from the experimental poetry to technical concepts in the field of social
intervention, going by the intra history of the anthropological union in Chile.
To differ even more the waters regarding the anthropological postmodernism, it is
pertinent to remember that the context of emergence of North American
postmodern anthropology is defined by the trend denominated generically as
Cultural Studies", which is defined from the inter-subject and the trans-subject,
this implies a context of reception expert on the rudiments of academic varied
subjects. It is not this the context in which ALCH arises historically, being
this

possible explanation so that these texts are read simultaneously in

some contexts like anthropology and in others as literature, not being still
achieved in our country to assume them as hybrid texts of an emergent genre. It
would be required the empiric readers to dominate areas like anthropological
theory, the ethnography, next to the theory and history of literature, that model
reader underlies in the texts of our Literary Anthropology, but as empiric reader,
to our view, in our country they don't exist out of academic reduced spaces, and it
cannot be assumed as postmodernism: neither there are a postmodern context of
emission and reception of ALCH nor there is such a widespread interdisciplinary
handling. The model reader's specific figure puts us in front of a type of texts
that are expression of a Baroque modernity, which arises in a very previous way
to postmodernism of the central countries and it is a peculiar type of cultural and
disciplinary mutation rather and not a mere copy of North American and

European trends; only after the emergence of the several works that compose
the corpus of analysis of our study is that some of its authors from APCH take the
lead with the postmodern trend, it allows to tell our Literary Anthropology from its
meta-language and picking up a distinctive element of its writing identity.
The model author on the other hand defines (assuming it as an aesthetic
literary resource) his position from what Marc Auge (1986) denominated as an
" interiorized other " that is constituted from a kind of aesthetic idealization
whose base arises from ethnographic antecedents, from the own field experience,
from the literature and from the own experiential and psychic reality of the
anthropologist writer. This model subject author is uncomfortable with many of the
molds of his own culture, his class and his scientific subject (obviously
anthropology, as practiced in Chile), and discovers in literature a group of textual
procedures, able to make a new another leave his path inside his discursive
construction. This way, this interiorized other is constituted in a self-conscious
subject in the way in that its sociocultural own acondicionamient leads it to look at
the culture, and therefore to develop the anthropological writing, which is
evidently out of the disciplinary limits, to be constituted in a type of hybrid text,
that is why we have denominated as cultural hermeneutics the group of
procedures developed by these model authors, which represent the whole
contingency of its empiric authors, and with that, the access to the interiorized
other is constituted basically in a form of reaffirmation of the oneself, in the
psychoanalytical conception of the "oneself" that Lacan (1984) outlines. There is
an exercise of tremendous self-reference in this hermeneutics that understands
the being of each culture like expression of the " oneself " projected in the "other"
one, that interiorized other is therefore, more than the search of the otherness,
ALCH is an encounter with the way in that the empiric author builds an another
one from the model author's procedures, the one that not appeals to a model
reader very different from the author.

Conclusions
In our initial position it was pointed out that the group of works composed by
ALCH consists on a type of initiating textual production of a new discursive
genre of frontier, as long as it doesn't respond pragmatically neither to the
scientific standard nor to the literary one with exclusivity. Regarding this initial
asseveration it is considered that in general terms the intensive reading of the
texts selected in different investigation processes in the last 20 years, and its
contextualization regarding literary and scientific standard, allows to affirm that
indeed we are in front of a textual hybrid and border genre, as long as
pragmatically it doesn't respond to the circuits of circulation of literature
neither

these

works

are

legitimated

by

the

anthropological

but

traditional

circuits, generating these texts its own circulation circuits and therefore circuits of
reception and reading. Institutional and cultural spaces like the Department of
Anthropology of the University of Chile, and diverse projects like Fondart and
Conicyt (Support Funds to the science of the State of Chile), they constitute
production spaces from where the texts summon their target audience, the one
which in agreement with the reader and the model author identified in each one of
the analyzed texts is above all an anthropologist or somebody with a sensibility
and an excellence for the textual experiment in front of the sociocultural diversity,
as well as with a certain level of knowledge regarding the developments of
literature and anthropological science.
The explicit and implicit meta-language of these texts excludes literature, as long
as there is not the intention of moving pragmatically in the literary environment on
behalf of its authors and let alone still it intends that the texts are taken as literary,
nevertheless,

this

meta-language

neither

coincides

completely

with

the

anthropological standard, as long as it feels the effect the very concept of

science and the possibility of accumulating truth from the reflection and the
presented writing: a textual hybrid genre has been born, but this it is a very
particular and innovative genre, and it is different from Poetic Anthropology; it is

an anthropological new textual way and not some new kind of literature, for what
its structural duality possesses its profile in the anthropology and its contours and
articulation base they are of literary character.
On the other hand, it is stated that in this new genre is interconnected the use of
macro-structural and inter-textual

elements

(from

literature

toward

anthropological literary text) and meta-linguistics, characteristic of literary and

scientific genres, which configures a generic identity that overcomes the plan of
the pragmatically functional, to configure a particular type of textual production,
which is possible to identify by means of the analysis of the text group that
conform the corpus of this trend and that it was not drained in this study. In what
concerns to this point it will be cautious to affirm that although literature confers
an expressive base to this Literary Anthropology, in what concerns at the intertextual level, to the generation of textual superstructures, to the present metalanguage in the trend, as well as its macro-structures and semantics, and mainly,
we have identified that they respond to the anthropological way of producing
a

text,

centered

therefore

in

the

thematic

of diversity. Besides that

specifically responds to the logic of the cultural devices production whose goal
is to produce a rupture in the scientific anthropological field, but not creating a
new way to make literature.
In the meta-linguistic field neither one of these works is recognized itself as a
literary text, rather it happens what Sonia Montecino defines like "crossing",
(Alvarado, 2011) where the use of the metaphor, the inter-texting of literary origin,
or imitating the narrative literary speech, the usage of thematic already used from
literature, they are rather instruments where these resources are used
fundamentally from the verification of the limits and the precariousness of the
anthropological traditional speech. In the level of the textual macro-structures,
these come basically from the anthropological traditional environment, it has been
demonstrated this way from the reiterated verification of the keeping of the rite
like topic axis in each one of the analyzed texts, more than taking topics of

literature, they took problems of anthropological character, then to discover that

in an extent these scientific problems have already been addressed from a
literary point of view and with it is raised it a fundamental process of
appealing to literature like expressive source, nevertheless, the textual macrostructures are basically anthropological. It is therefore when authors like Carlos
Pia (Chronicles in a wide and literary sense) use narrative strategies of the story,
or Andrs Recasens uses the textual lyrical type, or Sonia Montecino uses the
testimonial genres and the literary essaying, its approach to these textual
types is defined from an instrumental plan, therefore the macro-structure of
anthropological kind allows the use of textual superstructures of literary kind that,
justified by the meta-language of the anthropologist misled in an unconnected
world that requires of literature to express what tries to express what we
have understood as fantastic.
This anthropological base of the textual new genre is reaffirmed in the way that
have been defined in each one of the texts, model authors and readers that
circulate in anthropological circuits, none of these works from pragmatics they are
directed to a massive public, and we believe that the stranger attempt of Moon
with Waning by Sonia Montecino, instead of transforming the text into an object
of massive consumption, turns it into a caricature, it converts a text of the author's
self-reference regarding its encounter with the otherness of a Machi (chaman), in
a text of a fabricated exoticism, not for the author but for the para-text that
accompany the book like a product in a market. The pragmatic configuration
of

this

discursive

new

genre

makes

it

acquire

this

creation

habitus

(Bourdieu, 1995) that is evidenced this way in the works that compose it, in this
dialectics between text and context, cultural devices that express the disillusions
and marginality of a group of professionals that as long as empiric authors
operate on their texts, coloring to that shade between committed and painful in
front of so concrete phenomena as: poverty or political violence, nevertheless
they are far from conforming a type of anthropological or politically literary
committed text, but rather they express those disillusions in front of a logical

history that supposes that the social reality can be described rationally since it
is rationally organized. It is therefore that from the model author navigating in
their uncertainty, it is seen like it manufactures a model reader, and it
tried to provoke the pleasure with a capital letter in the model author
according to Barthes
textual

(1989)

that

involves

the

identification

with

the

author's uncertainties that are sociologically from the empiric author, the

anthropologist writers create this way their audience, as long as the text
creates its reception context, this is from an intellectual circuit, where the
uncertainties and the doubts prevail, and also a way of avoiding the questions
for the sense, or also a possibility to find the dodging answers, it is this strong
resource to diversity.
The "other" is a mirror where the model reader will depict his doubts, and the
enjoyment

is

achieved

when

more

certainty exists

regarding

constant

anthropological, each one of these texts depicts some encounter type with
some
other, but an encounter that is generated, from the production of the exoticism,
but from an encounter from the uncertainty in those that the other,
the fisherman, the
machi, the popular urban fellow, the animita, etc. it is a source of certainties,
an archetypal model that gives the model author the certainties that their
characters or narrators look for so hopelessly, hence the reception environment is
manufactured in each one of these texts, from the basic premise that in the
encounter with the other will be answers in front of the uncertainties that neither
its class nor its culture, without its scientific discipline, are provided to the
anthropologist writer, and that neither they gave to the one who receives the text,
whether this person is an anthropologist or not, it is enough to share the
uncertainty to be an appropriate receiver.

Bibliography
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Linguistics and Literature, an semiannual publication of the Department of Humanities

at the University, Universidad Catlica Cardenal Ral Silva Henrquez. Dedicated to
stimulating research in the sciences of language and literary theory, especially the
literature on the Chilean and Spanish, Chile. It is open to partnerships of universities
and scholars from abroad.
All the contents of this journal, except where otherwise noted, is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution License
Universidad Catlica Silva Henrquez
General Jofr #462
Santiago - Chile
Tel.: (56-2) 24601134
Fax: (56-2) 26354192
literaturalinguistica@ucsh.cl

Literatura y Lingstica N 30
ISSN 0716 - 5811 / pp. 57- 82

La antropologa Literaria. Apuntes tericos sobre

su poblada soledad y su historicidad*
Miguel Alvarado Borgoo**
Resumen
Este artculo se adentra en la Antropologa Literaria Chilena (ALCH) para describirla
como un gnero textual emergente, mutante y original, surgido en Chile en los ltimos
40 aos. A propsito de este fenmeno cultural transdisciplinario, que propone un cruce
entre ciencias sociales y literatura, nuestra hiptesis consiste en afirmar la existencia en
esta textualidad de frontera, de un gnero emergente dotado de una metalengua propia,
la cual evidencia sus contornos expresivos e identidad textual. Su estudio constituye el
acercamiento cientfico a un fenmeno vivo, de notables dimensiones culturales, a la vez
que de una envergadura social nada desdeable por su espritu y prcticas transgresoras,
al movilizar la lengua, los sujetos culturales y sus contextos sicosociales en constructos
estticos de alta originalidad y valores expresivos, lo cual representa mutaciones textuales
y disciplinarias interesantes para las ciencias humanas.
Palabras clave: Antropologa, Literatura, antropologa literaria

Summary
This article delves into the Chilean Literary Anthropology (ALCH) to describe it as a textual
genre pop, mutant and original, emerged in Chile in the last 40 years. A purpose of this
transdisciplinary cultural phenomenon that suggests a cross between social sciences and
literature, our hypothesis is to assert the existence in this "border textuality" of a gifted
emerging genre of metalanguage itself, which shows contours and expressive textual
identity. Their study is the scientific approach to a living phenomenon, remarkable cultural
dimensions, while a negligible social scale by his spirit and transgressive practices,
mobilizing the language, cultural subjects and aesthetic contexts psychosocial constructs
high originality and expressive values??, representing disciplinary texuales mutations and
interesting to the human sciences.
Keywords: Anthropology, Literature, literary anthropology

**

Este artculo fue el en el contexto de la investigacin: 20013-2014. Goethe-Universitt

Frankfurt am Main. Bajo el patrocinio del Dr. Roland Spiller. Chile- Alemania. Beca del:
Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (D.A.A.D). Ttulo del proyecto: Anthropological
literature in Chile. A hybrid language for intercultural communication. Agradecimientos a
Valentina Lira y Ana Iris Martnez. En calidad de profesor titular del Instituto de Filosofa de la
Universidad de Valparaso y de su Convenio de desempeo en Artes, Humanidades y
Ciencias Sociales y humanidades d esta misma universidad.
Antroplogo y socilogo, Doctor en Ciencias Humanas con mencin en Literatura y Lingstica,
postdoctorado en Filologa Romnica Universidad de Gttingen, y en Estudios Transculturales
Goethe Universitt Frankfurt del Meno, Alemania. Profesor Titular de la Universidad de
Valparaso, Chile. miguel.alvarado@uv.cl

La antropologa literaria / Miguel Alvarado Borgoo

Introduccin
Durante las ltimas cuatro dcadas hemos visto aparecer en nuestro
pas textos originales, dismiles y en algunos casos desconcertantes,
surgidos desde campos como el cientfico y el literario. Poseen ellos
caracteres heterogneos y son sus contextos de formacin espacios
culturales como el periodismo, la etnoliteratura, la literatura etnocultural,
la poesa experimental, las ciencias humanas y sociales, etc. En este
artculo daremos cuenta del surgimiento de un tipo textual original
bastante desconocido para los circuitos acadmico y literarios; esto es
los textos de la usualmente denominada antropologa potico-literaria
chilena1; ellos representan un desafo desde el punto de vista de su
clasificacin y anlisis, lo cual nos permite pensar en el desarrollo de una
mutacin discursiva en un sector especfico de la ciencia social chilena:
para algunos es antropologa potica o antropologa narrativa, a nosotros
nos interesaremos en este artculo en una expresin puntual de esta
mutacin disciplinaria, muy original de nuestro pas: La antropologa
Literaria Chilena.
Desde la aparicin de la antropologa cientfica en Chile podemos
apreciar un permanente vnculo transtextual con la literatura, y tambin
bsquedas expresivas por parte de antroplogos chilenos que han reunido
en su prctica profesional y acadmica las condiciones de antroplogo
y de escritor, o que han recurrido a recursos expresivos propios de la
literatura, los cuales se han introducido en su obra antropolgica:
algunos de los casos ms representativos son los de nuestra ltimo
premio nacional de ciencias sociales y humanidades Sonia Montecino
y de autores tales como Andrs Recasens, Clemente Riedemann, Juan

El corpus completo de esta antropologa potico literatura en su versin de la antropologa potica

y la antropologa literaria, an no ha sido definido, especialmente debido a que ao, y a veces mes
a mes, aparecen nuevas obras que puedan ser incluidas en este canon emergente y de frontera, por
lo pronto existe cierto acuerdo en los investigadores del tema, dentro de los que me encuentro, que
las obras fundamentales de este canon son las siguientes: Balada de un nio y el perro y Pueblos de
mar. Relatos etnogrficos, de Andrs Recasens; Crnicas de la otra ciudad, de Carlos Pifia; Diarios
de campo/de viaje, y Etnografas Mnimas, de Daniel Quiroz (ed.); El umbral roto. Escritos en
antropologa potica, de Juan Carlos Olivares; La revuelta; Luna con Menguante. Biografa de una
machi y La olla deleitosa. Cocinas mestizas en Chile, de Sonia Montecino; Karra Maw'n y Huekufe
en Nueva York, de Clemente Riedemann; Metales pesados y Alto Volta de Yanko Gonzlez; Registro
fotogrfico y Etnogrfico. Fotografia y Poesa. Atcamenos del siglo XX, de Ivonne Valenzuela y
Juan Pablo Loo; Valenzuela, Ivonne. Gracias por el favor concedido. Las Animitas de Evaristo
Montt, Elvira Guillen y Juana Guajardo. Antofagasta: Imprenta Ercilla; Antropologa. Cruzando a
travs, de Francisco Gallardo; De todo el universo entero, de Claudio Mercado y su informante Luis
Galdames; La Imaginacin Araucana, de Pedro Mege; Ritos de muerte en la Isla de Lemuy, de Yuri
Jeria, entre otros.

81

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a obsesin que escribi este libro, la mano que lo atraviesa, est definida por la testarudez por un luto, este
es el duelo de una comunidad casi desconocida de escritores viviendo el primer exilio sistemtico del siglo XXI,
es el taciturno y barroco luto de los literatos cubanos en
Pars, viviendo una melancola luminosamente opas. Este
libro es el desborde de un obituario espiritual, a la manera
de la devocin de Marguerite Yourcenar por el luto de
Adriano, frente a Antnoo (entre otros lutos del remoto
emperador) o al luto del barroco, la perla barroca del Escorial: palacio y tumba.
La devocin al luto, es oscuridad, aislamiento, y del
mismo modo llamado a la renovacin de la luz y del entendimiento. Esta devocin del punto oscuro de la espiritualidad humana, no es posesin del mundo latino, sino
que da cuenta de un estado anmico de devocin por esa
luminiscencia oscura, que de lo romance va a lo germnico, que de lo sudamericano va a lo europeo, que del
logos va intencionadamente al brillo de la oscuridad barroca, en definitiva y concretamente que desde el oscuro
ms refulgente: Jos Lezama Lima. Lezama en este libro
ilumina a la escritura del exilio cubano. Lo que este libro
de Andrea Gremels enuncia es un ngulo de la luz negra
que desde Lezama todo lo alumbra.
El libro de esta filloga alemana Kubanische Gegenwartsliteratur in Paris zwischen Exil und Transkulturalitt, es del
mismo modo un interesante estudio inscrito en la lgica
de la filologa ms clsica alemana, y a su vez un intento
transdisciplinario de desbordar las demarcaciones de lo
literario, tanto en el plano de lo terico como en el de lo
metodolgico, es por tanto una escritura audaz y difusa
(felizmente difusa) sobre unas demarcaciones estticas y
sociales siempre estrechas:lo cubano, la lengua castellana, el castellano de Cuba, Cuba como territorio, el anhelo de Cuba, la utopa/distopa desgarrada del regreso, el
Pars de los exiliados, el Pars Ciudad Luz, el Pars lleno
de precariedades; por ello su interpretacin (la que aqu
intentamos) debe hacerse desde esa misma ptica transdisciplinaria que supera las disciplinas, leemos as este libro como un llamado a las necesarias lecturas posibles,
en las cuales los artefactos culturales, especialmente las
1

Revista de Libros
de la Torre del Virrey
Nmero 3
2014/1
ISSN 2255-2022

Andrea Gremels, Kubanische

Gegenwartsliteratur
in Paris zwischen Exil und
Transkulturalitt1,
Narr,
Tbingen, 2014, 345 pp.
ISBN 978-3-8233-6846-52

Palabras clave:
literatura cubana
literatura exilio
transculturacin

1. Literatura cubana en Pars, entre el

exilio y la transculturacin.
2. Este reflexin se ha elaborado
en el contexto de la permanencia
del autor como profesor visitante
en Alemania, en Instituto de Filologa Romnica de la Goethe-Universitt Frankfurt am Main, ello
en el contexto de un proyecto de
Investigacin sobre comunicacin
transcultural, siendo el Dr. Miguel
Alvarado el Investigador principal
y responsable, el cdigo del proyecto es: A/13/0336, Titulo del
proyecto: Anthropological literature in Chile. A hybrid language for
intercultural communication.
3. Jos Lezama Lima, La expresin
americana, Letras Cubanas, La Habana, 2010, p.10.

obras literarias, se juegan la existencia y reconocimiento

en los lmites, no solamente de los cnones o de los gneros textuales, sino tambin en las remarcaciones de las
nacionalidades, los territorios, los estilos de vida, los gneros sexuales, los grupos etarios. Este libro de Andrea Gremels es por tanto una bella alegora de las demarcaciones
que a su vez analiza, es la extraa pasin de una alemana
y su entorno acadmico por una cultura tan distinta a la
propia, motivadas evidentemente las lecturas de los textos
cubanos parisienses por un deseo de diferencia. Es literatura de la literatura, que desentraa una metalengua an
imprecisa, an no identificada, desde un mtodo an en
construccin.
El libro est escrito en una lgica que parte desde lo
conceptual hasta lo especfico de textos y testimonios,
lo fundamental a nivel conceptual son aqu las preguntas
tericas y metatericas que asaltan a la autora textual, ello
al momento de acceder a este objeto especfico tan difuso:
la literatura del exilio cubano en Pars, asumida como un
producto de la inevitable transculturacin, Gremels parece querer analizar desde la imprecisin del exilio visto
como catstrofe y la adaptacin asumida siempre como
temor del escritor a la obsolescencia, por tanto la supuesta
adaptacin es vista por Gremels como un cavidad mutante e inconclusa.
La literatura cubana, antes y despus de sus muchos
exilios, es literatura occidental, pero estimulada por el Caribe, es la escritura del Caribe, una circunstancia mucho
ms compleja que el mero exotismo, donde todo tiende
a ser demasiado, un exceso desde el lenguaje, superndose
la pura funcin designativa de la letra, donde los mismo
estudiosos de esta literatura deben travestirse en un estar
sin estar, como si el mito mismo del caribe fuera una certidumbre de absoluta cotidianidad y resiliencia () Todo
tendr que ser reconstruido, intencionado de nuevo, y los viejos mitos,
al reaparecer de nuevo, nos ofrecern sus conjuros y sus enigmas con
un rostro desconocido. La ficcin de los mitos son nuevos mitos, con
nuevos cansancios y terrores. ()3: en alguna de sus acepciones la literatura es mito, como ejercicio de dar sentido al
mundo, sentido que pretendemos encontrar, aspiramos,
como Lezama requiere, y como Gremels amorosamente
2

intenta, desentraar la razn de los mitos reanudados e

indciles desarrollar la sensatez necesaria para la representacin del exilio y de la identidad trnsfuga; sentido
que se vuelve nuestra coartada para concebir este libro
sobre desarraigo, transculturalidad y escritura, tan alemn
en la lectura de Gremels y tan aorante de una cubanidad
intangible.
Es complicado discutir en una revista de lengua espaola las propuestas generales de un texto cuya publicacin
el ao 2014 ha sido realizada en lengua alemana, en el
centro de Europa continental (cuna indudable del racionalismo metafsico), a pesar de estas distancias, el sentido
aorado (capcioso e instalado interpretativamente en Latinoamrica) emerge accesible en la lectura de la lectura
que hacemos; sustentado en la necesidad tica del gesto
contracolonial, anlogo a la contracolonialidad propia del
guio de Andrea Gremels, autora de este largo ensayo, antes tesis doctoral, dirigida en la Universidad de Frankfurt
por el Profesor Roland Spiller.
Andrea Gremels edifica su inventio y mito de la literatura cubana del exilio, con los recursos de una interpretacin eurocentrada pero suspicaz e ideolgicamente
reticente respecto del riesgo cierto de pensar desde la
colonialidad en su interpretacin del fenmeno literario
que le apaciona. Gremels considera adems este sistema
textual como la literatura de una dispora afrancesada; de
esta manera, ms que registrar, interpreta, basndose en
aproximaciones tericas y existenciales de una alteridad
nueva. Su metodologa parte en una mica (como fonmica etnogrfica de los textos y del habla de los autores)
que, como el tipo de pensamiento alemn desde el que se
sita, apela ante todo a una metafsica, es decir, a un sentido, nunca palabra absoluta. Sin embargo, arraigada nuestra autora en la certidumbre de encontrarse frente a una
literatura occidental, situada fenomenolgicamente fuera
del mismo Pars, la autora se convierte en autora textual,
en un yo que es un t en la apuesta por la comprensin
intercultural. Comprensin hermenutica, crtica y condescendiente respecto de la transculturacin que expone y
analiza en este libro, transculturacin tan paradojalmente
adaptativa: contradictoria, silenciosa y silenciada; trans3

El libro de esta filloga

alemana es un interesante estudio inscrito en la
lgica de la filologa ms
clsica alemana, y a su
vez un intento transdisciplinario de desbordar las
demarcaciones de lo literario

Es literatura de la literatura, que desentraa una

metalengua an imprecisa,
an no identificada, desde
un mtodo an en construccin. La literatura
cubana, antes y despus
de sus muchos exilios, es
literatura occidental, pero
estimulada por el Caribe

culturacin con medio siglo y ms de tradicin, donde la

literatura es sntoma de una soledad comunitaria generada
en la prdida de confianza en la historia.
La devocin de Andrea Gremels por la diferencia, su
fascinacin por la otredad, se manifiesta en este libro en la
prctica de describir y percibir lo diferente, sin idealizarlo,
pero hechizada por esa diferencia, rescatando del mbito
de lo invisible una escritura que no victimiza ni exotiza
autor o texto, simplemente demostrando lo eternamente
humano del acto de escribir, crear escritura frente al sufrimiento colectivo y psquico que siempre ser producto del
desarraigo; rescatando la horizontalidad del contacto, y la
adscripcin. La identificacin con la diferencia opera y se
disemina ms por erotismo como representacin de un
deseo de otredad, que por coherencia con algn programa
de investigacin, se trata de resaltar lo atvico e imprescindible que poseen los textos y los autores estudiados,
en un tratamiento sistemtico y seducido respecto de un
fenmeno ocurrido en territorio francs, pero profundamente latinoamericano.
Es una gesto de superacin del texto usual escrito en
Europa sobre lo surgido de Amrica Latina, traducido
siempre tardamente, y donde la noticia sobre Latinoamrica es transmitida cuando ya es una suerte de etnohistoria
de nuestra tradicin; se trata de dar cuenta del acaecer de
una literatura que, por muy parisense que se pueda pretender, es literatura latinoamericana y se encuentra en pleno desarrollo: autores como Nivaria Tejera, Gilda Alfonso, Eyda Machn, William Navarrete, Zo Valds, Miguel
Sales, Lira Campoamor, Jos Trianas, ya no nos podrn
ser ajenos porque este libro se empecina en describir sus
obras, y la especfica dialctica que se juega entre la subjetividad de este conjunto de personas trasplantadas y el
ngel de la historia (Benjamin) que las transpone.
Desde la etnografa literaria realizada por la autora,
con la innovacin metodolgica que conlleva (rapport,
entrevistas, observacin semi-participante, elicitacin,
anlisis contextualizado de textos orales y escritos), podemos comenzar a entender los bordes de esta literatura hispanoamericana, con la eficiencia de los especialistas
europeos, pero tambin con la especificidad de lo taxati4

vamente sudamericano; as como los etnlogos europeos

informaban en lengua inglesa, francesa o alemana de los
estilos de vida de las sociedades arcaicas de Latinoamrica, este libro que comentamos da cuenta de una forma de
americanismo latino en dispora, que en muchos aspectos
y espacios, es una escritura incomprendida.
Reconocemos este estudio sistemtico y emptico realizado por una colega acadmica de Frncfort, y tambin
le agradecemos la posibilidad (que esta recensin implica)
de reapropiarnos del acervo cultural de nuestra tradicin
sudamericana y ms cercana al Cabo de Hornos que al
Ro Bravo, y desde nuestra lengua, en una lectura que es
siempre parcial y carente de la pragmtica que origin el
estudio; ello, para que el exilio sea latinoamericanamente
una circunstancia histrica comn pero que no desemboque en la maldicin de la distancia. As, este libro puede
liberarse de ser un instrumento colonial de conocimiento
para ser un aporte desde otra lengua y otra tradicin hacia nuestra autocomprensin. Lo ha querido su autora y
la lectura del libro de Gremels es un ejercicio de dilogo
intercultural, o al menos es su ingenua y afable pretensin.
Todo pensamiento es de la misma forma un pensamiento situado y una ambicin, a veces rechazada, por
pensar la totalidad, es una ilusin simpre presente que
situndonos desde el fragmento podemos vislumbrar el
mundo, desde el texto visto como un aleph(borgeano
sin duda, espejo y centro de todas las cosas) desde donde
se nos habla de la tensin esencial entre la escritura y sus
mundos.
La autora requiere de herramientas que no llevan a la
clasificacin sino a un particularismo, el cual confa an
en que desde la induccin podr generarse un acercamiento a los textos de frontera cultural, los cuales, lejos
de ser tan excntricos, responden al eje concntrico de
la permanente transculturacin, al mandato esencial de
pensar desde la alegora permanente a lo heterogneo: no
porque el exilio cubano en Pars sea tan exclusivo o especfico, (aunque sea el primer exilio de Occidente del siglo
XXI), sino simplemente porque responde al sino de numerosas escrituras contemporneas, alegoras siempre de
la imprecisin, el riesgo y de la tensin conflictual entre el
5

La devocin de Andrea
Gremels por la diferencia, su fascinacin por la
otredad, se manifiesta en
este libro en la prctica
de describir y percibir lo
diferente, sin idealizarlo,
pero hechizada por esa
diferencia

4. Con la venia del lector indica, especialmente si es dado a los

estudios sociolgicos, nos permitiremos usar por primera vez el vocablo transculturacin, a sabiendas
de que es un neologismo. Y nos
atrevemos a proponerlo para que
en la terminologa sociolgica pueda sustituir, en gran parte al menos,
al vocablo aculturacin, cuyo uso
se est extendiendo actualmente.
Fernando Ortiz, Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azcar, Ciencias
Sociales, La Habana, 1983, p.86.
5. ngel Rama, Transculturacin narrativa en Amrica Latina, El Adariego, Buenos Aires, 2008

arraigo y el desarraigo; escrituras que tipolgicamente son

clasificables pero cuyas metalenguas son evidencia de una
transformacin del canon literario occidental.
Al momento de introducir el texto y por ello iniciarlo,
Gremels hace una delimitacin de los niveles en los que se
mueve la investigacin e inmediatamente sorprende que
no se busque una categorizacin filolgica, al menos lo
que para nosotros en Latinoamrica es esa delimitacin
estricta, pero que tampoco se apele a la lgica de los estudios culturales, sino que antes de referirse al texto se
busque la dimensin fundamental de su contexto, el de la
transculturacin ubicndose de inmediato en una doble
tradicin, es decir en una transdiciplina: entre las fronteras
disciplinarias de la antropologa cultural y los lmites de la
filologa.
Hay un eco evidente del concepto de transculturacin
en la acepcin antropolgica generada por Fernando Ortiz4 y de texto transcultural como lo asume ngel Rama,
desde su demostracin terica de los cuatro momentos
que Rama identific5: prdida, seleccin, redescubrimiento e
incorporacin, que no se mueven como un proceso lineal,
sino como el juego entre momentos que simultneamente operan en el canon, incluso en la especificidad de una
obra puntual. As, estos textos van desde la recuperacin
del habla local y mestiza, hasta el afrancesamiento, simpre
buscando decir algo sobre la vivencia del exilio, pero experimentando la transculturacin a nivel del texto, porque
estos textos del exilio cubano no son un canon sino un
sistema de bsquedas textuales para Andrea Gremels.
Raudamente, sobreviene el cuestionamiento acerca de
la identidad desde una perspectiva que no es solo etnolgica ni filolgica, sino desde una lectura que mira con buenos ojos al psicoanlisis y con ello adopta una visin multidimensional de la identidad, partiendo por la existencia
del yo y sus variantes, su posible negacin en el anlisis
de una obra literaria, un yo diluido en la transtextualidad
de la escritura. Sin duda ello responde al estilo un tanto
culturalista crtico propio de algunos los estudios literarios
contemporneos, pero tambin es una bsqueda que responde a la heterogeneidad de la literatura especfica que
6

intenta Gremels analizar: la cubana del exilio, abordada

desde muchos lmites y del mismo modo constituida desde tantos desbordes.
Pero el uso del concepto de cultura reviste aqu una
espesura y un tenor particular, se refiere ms bien al modo
adaptativo en que se define un estilo de vida mutante y de
alguna manera eficiente en la experiencia vital de los autores exiliados, y no a un culturalismo ideologizado, (que
desde la identificacin entre la dinmica del valor cultural y
la dinmica de la estructura socioeconmica cae en el mismo vaco infrtil en que cay en su momento el anlisis de
clase o el de la especificidad histrica); sin duda el concepto de transculturacin posee una reminiscencia y un fundamento, a lo menos parcial, en la antropologa cultural, y
especficamente en el funcionalismo de Malinowski6, que,
mediatizado y situado en la especificidad latinoamericana,
desterritorializada, desde la definicin de Ortiz hasta Gilles Deleuze, aplicado por Gremels a la transculturacin
cubana afro-caribea, nos habla de la funcionalidad del
valor respecto de la estructura; pero la Dra. Gremels no se
somete nunca a este culturalismo cmodo y polticamente
correcto, no al menos en las versiones de aquella idea de
la cultura de la pobreza de Oscar Lewis, que termina
responsabilizando a los pobres de la pobreza, como si la
relacin centro-periferia, planteada para y desde Latinoamrica por la Teora de la Dependencia, fuera un anlisis
sin asidero en el contexto de la globalizacin.
Es probablemente el influjo de la filologa clsica y de
la misma escuela de Francfort el que salva a Gremels en
este libro de un culturalismo determinista y lo hace utilizar
el concepto de transculturacin desde un horizonte transdiscplinario que se interesa ms por la dialctica texto/
contexto, que por los modos en que los valores potencian
las relaciones de dominacin; no se trata de una filologa
estructuralista descontextualizada, pero tampoco de una
contextualizacin puramente culturalista, (que en lo profundo no es un abordaje del contexto, sino una coartada
que independiza al concepto de cultura para obnubilarnos
e invisibilizar las relaciones de dominacin socio estructurales).

6. La transculturacin es un
proceso en el cual siempre se da
algo a cambio de lo que se recibe;
es un toma y daca (...), un proceso en el cual ambas partes de la
ecuacin resultan modificadas. Un
proceso en el cual emerge una nueva realidad, compuesta y compleja;
una realidad que no es una aglomeracin mecnica de caracteres,
ni siquiera un mosaico, sino un
fenmeno nuevo, original e independiente. Bronislaw Malinowski, Introduccin, en Fernando
Ortiz, Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco
y del azcar, Ctedra, Madrid, 2002.

Es probablemente el influjo de la filologa clsica

y de la misma escuela de
Francfort el que salva a
Gremels en este libro de
un culturalismo determinista y lo hace utilizar el
concepto de transculturacin desde un horizonte
transdiscplinario

Los escritores cubanos del exilio son herederos de una

tradicin cultural depositada y enraizada en un lenguaje
que genera obras resistentes y mutantes, en donde segn
nos lo presenta este libro, estilo de vida e ideologas nunca
son abandonadas. El absurdo de la historia y sus esquirlas
los hicieron quedar en la periferia del socialismo para pasar a la periferia del capitalismo, un capitalismo glamoroso
pero excluyente: aqu, en este libro de Gremels, Pars no
es siempre una fiesta.
Desde esta precariedad existencial los autores en sus
obras y en sus testimonios (feliz rescate del libro y su estilo metodolgico) apelan a un estilo de vida constituido
desde un mundo de la vida desmedrado, ello desde la
especfica situacin de un exilio prolongado, motivado
por diversas razones, pero que tiene como eje valrico la
crtica a la revolucin cubana y el anticastrismo; posteriormente, la autora hace una alusin directa a los escritores seleccionados y a los criterios de representatividad,
con lo cual no se convierte en un estudio de casos, tan
comn en los fichajes sociolgicos, sino en el intento de
abordar un sistema de textos especficos, que se distingue
por la transculturacin, el exilio, la cubanidad; pero todo
ello en el contexto de un proceso en muchos casos difcil de adaptacin, de precariedad, olvido, aislamiento, en
resumen: de oneroso silencio impuesto o autoimpuesto,
sin que la adaptacin sea una conciliacin gozosa, es ms
bien la circunstancia que desemboca en un procedimiento funcional: de esta manera en el aislamiento de Pars
y en Pars, se deriva y genera un producto esttico que
va ms all de lo indispensable funcionalmente, para que
as esta literatura sea simultneamente para Gremels un
mecanismo adaptativo y un prodigio cultural digno de
salvamento, porque no todo exilio genera un sistema tan
rico de textos.
Dos circunstancias parecen marcar la ruptura de autores y obras: por una parte el silenciamiento en Cuba, por
otra el aislamiento en Pars; ambas circunstancias constituyen a esta literatura como una potica del silencio del exilio,
silencio que no es la ausencia de la palabra, sino que la
situacin existencial y contextual de la no comunicacin:
pica de una palabra dicha en medio de un desierto, muy
8

propia de toda dispora, una escritura enunciada en el

despoblado, leda por los compaeros de ruta pero siempre, con resonancias bblicas voz en el desierto, es decir,
palabra del silencio, el silencio no es entonces la palabra
ausente sino la palabra no enunciada, la expresin de la
incomunicacin, escritura de la ausencia del lector, un lector ideal que aunque parezca el receptor de una arenga al
pueblo cubano, representa ante todo un dilogo interior
y una apelacin al deseo de exotismo del lector europeo,
que si se es optimista, podr destinar unos instantes a esta
escritura del desgarramiento: entre este optimismo y este
desencanto se desarrolla la lectura de Gremels.
De manera etnolgica la autora apela a un criterio de
demarcacin, para Gremels la existencia de Pars y la vida
en Pars, ms que el origen nacional, parece ser la esencia
general de los autores analizados, ello desde el cuestionamiento de la actual situacin de Cuba junto a la aoranza
de una cubanidad que se sabe irremediablemente perdida;
de este modo la autora define un criterio de inclusin en el
conjunto de obras analizadas y autores interpelados.
El asilamiento da lugar a una Cuba desconcertante,
irreal, o ms bien real en la unin entre lo imaginario y
lo simblico (muy lacaniano). Gremels establece lneas de
demarcacin que separan la identidad del destierro de la
conciencia del sujeto occidental desterrado pero vuelto a
la metrpoli cultural imaginada. Hay una reminiscencia
del peregrinaje en el desierto, los cuarenta aos de splica,
de esperanza, de conflicto, el estropicio se produce en la
distopa, no hay un diseo mental de la tierra prometida
en los textos ni en el habla de los entrevistados. As, la
paradoja reside en que no es Cuba la imaginada sino el
mismo Pars, y la adaptacin siempre una dimensin, un
vrtice, o ms bien un deseo que, como toda pulsin, es
siempre un objeto nunca alcanzado, un deseo en definitiva nunca conseguido.
La construccin del yo se fundamenta textual y vitalmente en la carencia, pero tambin se busca la identidad
en algo que se escapa (Pars) y en algo que no existe ya (la
Cuba del recuerdo), as la prdida ms fundamental del escritor es el lenguaje y por ello el lenguaje, segn Gremels,
se vuelve rebuscado justamente como recuperacin de
9

Por una parte el silenciamiento en Cuba, por otra

el aislamiento en Pars;
ambas circunstancias
constituyen a esta literatura como una potica del
silencio del exilio

Si para Andrea Gremels el habla en este

lenguaje es una forma de
resistencia, es fundamentalmente por el recurso de
la memoria

un habla imposible en Cuba e irreal en Pars, un lenguaje

perdido y luego recuperado en la adaptacin transculturadora, un lenguaje que perdi su significado territorial,
geogrfico y que encuentra este ansiado significado en la
pasin de la aoranza, una lengua literaria que podemos
asumir como un espaol especfico del exilio cubano, la
prdida del habla obliga entonces a crear artificiosamente
una lengua que se constituye en la aoranza ms que en la
pragmtica.
Si para Andrea Gremels el habla en este lenguaje es una
forma de resistencia, es fundamentalmente por el recurso
de la memoria, pero no una memoria del recuerdo sino
un memoria que es ante todo imaginacin: el multilingsmo es tanto una amenaza como un recurso. La nocin
que usa nuestra autora de soldadura es extremadamente
adecuada, las voces estn rotas y son reunificadas desde
un gesto que es firme pero grotesco, es la soldadura que
se realiza en un fuego, en una fragua, llena de ansiedad e
incomunicacin.
Para nuestra autora hay resistencia y posicionamiento,
pero finalmente estamos frente a una apelacin a la conciencia de la derrota, luego de 50 aos nada puede ser
reconstruido, el gran lmite es una distopa, una utopa
que no puede ser acariciada, una anti-utopa cuyas energas utpicas son imprescindibles y por ello la distopa
es textual y testimonialmente una falta, la maldicin de
la distancia fsica y sentimental es combatida por esta
distopa (un tanto contra utopa, en este caso producto
del agotamiento del encanto de la utopa), que resuelve
la soledad desde un desorden inevitable, que hace uso
de una verstil entropa como relacin entre sistema y
entorno. Cuba es el paraso perdido, pero determinado
por un nihilista realismo, por la conciencia del tiempo,
la lejana y la imposibilidad del logro de la utopa pura:
de alguna manera Cuba ya no existe. Para Gremels, el
ltimo exilio del siglo XX de Occidente tiene como crisis la localizacin, la ubicacin; se sufre en la imposibilidad de los territorios, si todo territorio es imaginario,
se hace insoportable lo imposible, incluso en el difuso
espacio de los sueos.
10

El todo mundo de douard Glissant7 no es una profeca sino un deseo, formulado luego de recorrer los extramuros y de encontrar en ellos el propio fundamento,
el origen de todo lo dicho por un autor, por los autores.
Hablar del ltimo exilio del siglo XX y del primero del
XXI, debe ser simultneamente el feliz encuentro con un
tema original y del mismo modo clsico, pero es tambin
un demostracin de la fascinacin por la diferencia, que
no solo vive la autora de este libro, ese deseo del otro, de
lo otro, ya desterritorializado, ya dejado del fundamento
de la isla o de la tierra o de la lengua, es alteridad en Pars
o en la Habana Vieja, es un destello de eso que mantiene
a Cuba de pie a pesar de estar tan pobre y tan descontextualizada, un pas que defiende valores que para algunos,
o quizs muchos, son restos arqueolgicos de una modernidad romntica. Lo ms inaudito es trabajar con aquellos
que deploran el estado de cosas en la isla, que aoran la
circunstancia del agua que circunda como deca Jos
Lezama Lima, esa cubanidad que se da en una fabricacin
del recuerdo y que debe traspasar a la propia lengua, el sujeto en ese todo-mundo recuerda sabores, olores, clima, e
intenta mantener una lengua que invariablemente se ver
trastocada, como la autora identifica: ese todo mundo es
el sujeto desraizado, trasplantado que en el dolor de la
dispora ampla una mirada, eso es un testimonio moral
de que el desarraigo jams impedir la pertenencia ni la
generacin de los productos creativos de esa herencia.
Desde un punto de vista psicolgico y psicopatolgico la aculturacin es un doloroso proceso, pero mantener
un lenguaje que apela a la transculturalidad, como en este
libro de Andrea Gremels es un esfuerzo loable, aunque
simpre incierto Qu deseo hay tras este libro? Probablemente la fascinacin de la extraeza, pero no la fascinacin de la isla pobre y mendicante, sino el hechizo de este
conjunto de obras escritas por parisienses que no son
parisenses, que en un plano metalingstico deploran la
misma europeizacin, quizs no porque acaezca una comunidad imaginaria en Pars, tampoco porque como en
otros exilios latinoamericanos vivan en la forma del gueto,
sino por la evidencia de la construccin de una identidad,
una identidad de frontera heterognea, pero an ms una
11

7. Trait du Tout-Monde (Potique

IV), Gallimard, Pars, 1997.

8.

Me morir en Pars con aguacero,

un da del cual tengo ya el recuerdo.
Me morir en Pars -y no me corrotal vez un jueves, como es hoy, de otoo

Csar Vallejo, Piedra negra sobre

una piedra blanca.
9. Joel Cano, La isla de los quizs,
Editorial Siruela, Madrid, 2002

identidad de la yuxtaposicin, donde el yo desfigurado

esta dialcticamente escindido entre el eterno refugiado y
el occidental que regresa de alguna manera a la metrpoli
francesa, perdida por el peso de la aculturacin barroca y
luego moderna.
Todos los escritores que Gremels estudia pareciera que
quieren ser Lezama, pero Lezama nunca quiso salir de
Cuba, ni siquiera abandonar su Habana; el otoo de Pars
no es el otoo de los parisienses trasplantados, su opacidad, su melancola su bsqueda de identidad distpica
como muy bien la autora da a entender; no se trata de
escribir desde un momento de tristeza, a la manera de Vallejo: me morir en Paris con aguacero8, la soledad demostrada
por Octavio Paz para el ethos latinoamericano y el barroquismo practicado y caracterizado por Lezama, representan esa isla de los tal vez9 en Europa o en Latinoamrica;
se trata de un exilio lleno de furia anticastrista, pero tambin donde la escritura, desde el hambre, el aislamiento,
y la sospecha europea, hizo mutar el ethos caribeo, en
un ente plenamente sudamericano en el afrancesamiento,
no hace falta nacer en Pars para ser afrancesado, ni hace
falta vivir en Cuba para ser escritor cubano, y no parece
quedar ms que la autenticidad de una construccin yuxtapuesta, donde luchan enconadamente dos fuerzas: la de
la cubanidad y la del europeizamiento, pero ello no es una
novedad del exilio cubano, es un dato consustancial a la
cultura latinoamericana.
En el exilio punzante, la escritura, independientemente de su calidad dispar, ya ha echado races, ya hay un
sistema de textos como la autora nos demuestra, y esta
entrpica relacin entre los textos no surge sino desde
una identidad dividida pero, Qu identidad no est hoy
dividida? La transculturacin literaria es aqu para Andrea Gremels un modo de performance y de automatizacin de lo barroco: es evidente en el testimonio de los
autores cubanos un yo sacrificial y expresivo, el barroco
dramtico que permanece es la huella de la lengua; el
odio a Fidel Castro y al rgimen cubano, es una forma
de resistir y de reinventar la identidad sin perder el hilo,
sin perder la marca del vestigio.
12

Este libro de Gremels es original, porque descubre un

canon emergente no situado, sobre todo por su aproximacin transdiscplinaria donde de la primaca del texto
se recupera con fuerza la dialctica entre el contexto y el
sujeto, no es el sistema o la estructura, lo que prima, segn Gremels y muy al estilo de Glissant. De esta extraa
manera este libro, en un sentido hermenutico, es un ensayo europeo, en sus experimentaciones metodolgicas
hay una intuicin etnolgica, que evidentemente no niega
su carcter como texto filolgico muy alemn, tambin es
un libro de antropologa de la literatura, no es un ensayo
antropolgico literario, sino en un espacio de una antropologa de la literatura que en los tres niveles de todo
trabajo etnolgico: busca establecer una data de campo
desde una mica casi intuitiva, pero mica testimonial al
fin, dando cuenta de regularidades y finalmente dialogando con el concepto de transculturacin, no imitando a
Fernando Ortiz o a ngel Rama, sino tomando sus categoras a nivel operativo, intentando no desligarse del texto
y sus contradicciones.
El valor de este libro es ensanchar de manera transdiscplinaria el concepto de transculturacin, dando cuenta
que la transculturacin literaria no es un hecho emprico,
sino un escenario mental depositado en lo verbo simblico lleno de contradicciones; en los textos, en la mica de
los autores y sin duda en los niveles interpretativos de la
autora, que pasa por diversas etapas que finalmente terminan mezclndose al revisar la bibliografa terica, fijndose de manera muy afortunada en el concepto de yo y sus
sutilezas tericas, que demuestran su carcter social y no
natural, tambin en el concepto de transculturacin y desde all rebasar los lmites del instrumental filolgico para
ir hacia el instrumental etnogrfico, no solo como anlisis
de discurso, sino como examen y reflexin de la simultaneidad de los sintagmas, incluidos los silencios, reparando
en lo dicho y en lo no dicho, detectando autores textuales
que experimentan identidades divididas; Gremels examina y presenta una pasin poltica, el odio al castrismo, que
es del mismo modo un soporte metafsico, es el punto
donde la autora vacila, haciendo a la lectura europea de
la autora titubear en su europesmo, se describe entonces
13

Este libro de Gremels

es original, porque descubre un canon emergente
no situado El valor de
este libro es ensanchar de
manera transdiscplinaria
el concepto de transculturacin

una transculturacin desarrollada en suelo europeo, descrita y analizada por una europea, pero en textos y escritores que no son europeos de modo que esta investigacin
es tambin un ejercicio de radical extraamiento: ni los
textos son textos que mantengan la cubanidad del tambin afrancesado Alejo Carpentier, ni tampoco la autora
escribe desde un instrumental clsico europeo filolgico.
Es notable que una filloga logre algo (una interpretacin cultural desde los textos) que, hasta donde conozco,
la etnologa alemana no ha alcanzado, en la paradoja de
la antropologa posmoderna, al intentar una hermenutica clsica desde un etnologa muy moderna y norteamericana; para describir escrituras de cruce, de conflicto,
de desarraigo y de mestizaje voltil. Los autores cubanos
habitan el territorio del lenguaje, y en ese territorio se
desgarran, sosteniendo al anticastrismo como superestructura semntica, en un nivel de angustia, que lejos de
medir el arraigo se vuelve afrancesamiento performativo,
demostrando la persistencia de un instrumento psquico:
ser francs en Pars, o ser cubano en Francia, es entonces
una variante del ser cubano, contradictora pero autntica, la autenticidad se demuestra en el arraigo logrado, un
arraigo de rabia y de descentramiento; Gremels elicita ese
centro, dado por la sospecha frente a la cultura europea
y el arraigo de esa escritura en un cubanidad metafsica
y adolorida, pero sin duda permanente: desde Jos Mart
y su latinoamericanismo libertariamente afrancesado, tan
antiguo como el exilio de Francisco de Miranda, o como
la generacin literaria del 1842 compuesta por los discpulos chilenos de Andrs Bello, o desde los ms recientes
exilios de los sesenta y setenta, producto directo de la cadena golpista de esas dcadas en Latinoamrica.
Andrea Gremels nos muestra la lgica de la transculturacin, no es un episodio, es un caso cualitativamente
demostrativo del sujeto doliente que termina al fin adaptndose a su dolor, adaptacin a la opacidad que pasa a
ser introducida en el estilo de vida y en la vida mental. Ni
anticastrista ni procastrista es este libro, es simplemente
una demarcacin antropolgica y filolgica de la universal
capacidad de sujetos y de artefactos escriturales de vivir
el dolor del exilio, desde una aculturacin que es ya una
14

identidad, aunque la mica no la reconozca enraizada. No

se trata de que lo estudiado en este libro sea solo una forma de literatura del exilio cubano, ni es literatura francesa
de la adaptacin cultural: es una literatura cubana puesta
en un lapsus histrico que dura medio siglo, y que desde
el dolor del extraamiento, sigue haciendo uso del lenguaje como un instrumento adaptativo, la metfora tiene la
eficiencia funcional (a la manera de la definicin que le
asigna Ricoeur), como un hacha para talar a la intemperie
o un pedernal para hacer fuego, es eficiencia simblica
que se despliega porque a pesar del dolor del desarraigo,
de la expulsin, del exilio econmico o cultural, se sigue
creando literatura cubana, de una manera quizs ms frrea y cohesionada que la que se hace hoy en la propia
Cuba, porque es una literatura libre en su soledad, y es
bien explorada y difundida por Andrea Gremels en esta
transdiscplinaria antropologa de la literatura y probablemente desde el propio desarraigo de Andrea.
Miguel Alvarado Borgoo

15

099314 Frankf. Stud. 7 - Borgono.qxp_099314 Frankf. Stud. 7 - Borgono Umschlag 02.12.14 13:52 Seite 1

Analogas estticas y comprensin transcultural

Este es un libro erudito y novedoso, en tanto es sustancialmente transdisciplinario y juega en los lmites de las formas
de escritura: usa formas discursivas del canon cientfico, y
tambin echa mano de las estrategias textuales de la literatura. Ofrece, particularmente a lectores interesados en los
cambios culturales de Latinoamrica, una visin profunda
que descifra y no solo describe, la novedad cultural producida en el Sur del Mundo; nos habla de: antropologa
literaria, tambin nos describe replanteamientos de la teologa de la liberacin y fundamentalmente desarrolla una
teora respecto de los modos de la comprensin cultural de
Amrica Latina, para ello desarrolla tericamente el concepto de "analoga esttica. Esta obra es parte de una
nueva forma de escritura que conecta la literatura y las ciencias humanas de forma transdisciplinaria y transcultural.
As, este texto es una expresin de las bsquedas de muchos
intelectuales latinoamericanos en trnsito entre la cultura
europea y la periferia latinoamericana, sin perder de vista
su fundamento en Amrica del Sur. De este modo la periferia pasa a ocupar el centro desde una reflexin y una escritura innovadora.

Alvarado Borgoo

Frankfurter Studien zur Iberoromania und Frankophonie

Frankfurter Studien zur Iberoromania und Frankophonie

Miguel Alvarado Borgoo

Analogas estticas
y comprensin
transcultural
latinoamericana
El vuelo de la Calandria

099314 Frankf. Stud. 7 - Borgono.qxp_099314 Frankf. Stud. 7 - Borgono Titelei 02.12.14 13:53 Seite 1

Frankfurter Studien zur Iberoromania und Frankophonie 7

099314 Frankf. Stud. 7 - Borgono.qxp_099314 Frankf. Stud. 7 - Borgono Titelei 02.12.14 13:53 Seite 2

Frankfurter Studien zur Iberoromania und Frankophonie

Herausgegeben von Roland Spiller und Sabine Hofmann

099314 Frankf. Stud. 7 - Borgono.qxp_099314 Frankf. Stud. 7 - Borgono Titelei 02.12.14 13:53 Seite 3

Miguel Alvarado Borgoo

Analogas estticas
y comprensin
transcultural
latinoamericana
El vuelo de la Calandria

099314 Frankf. Stud. 7 - Borgono.qxp_099314 Frankf. Stud. 7 - Borgono Titelei 02.12.14 13:53 Seite 4

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen
Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet ber
http://dnb.dnb.de abrufbar.

Umschlagabbildung: Mauricio Bravo: Sin ttulo (Muelle), de la serie Je ne suis pas

Francis Als. Archivos para pensar nuestra derrota.
Fotoperformance. Residencia en Casa Nekoe, Valparaso, 2014.

Este libro fue escrito en el contexto del desempeo del autor como Profesor Titular
del Instituto de Filosofa de la universidad de Valparaso, adscrito como investigador
jornada completa de Convenio de Desempeo en Artes, Humanidades y Ciencias
Sociales de la misma Universidad. El financiamiento de la investigacin respectiva
corresponde a la ejecucin del proyecto aprobado por la Deutscher Akademischer
Austauschdienst (D.A.A.D), titulado: Anthropological literature in Chile. A hybrid
language for intercultural communication

2015 Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG

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Printed in Germany
ISSN 1868-1174
ISBN 978-3-8233-6930-1

Programa de Ps-Graduao em Cincias da Linguagem PPGCL

Universidade do Vale do Sapuca Univs

Reitor
Flix Carlos Ocriz Bazzano

Editor Responsvel
Ernesto Guimares

Vice-Reitora
Maria Aparecida Silva Mariosa

Capa
Guilherme Carrozza

Coordenao do PPGCL
Eni de Lourdes Puccinelli Orlandi

Editorao
Ana Cludia Fernandes Ferreira
Guilherme Carrozza

410
L755

Linguagem, sociedade, polticas / organizado por Eni P. Orlandi.

Pouso Alegre: UNIVS; Campinas: RG Editores, 2014.
230p. -- (Coleo Linguagem & Sociedade).

ISBN: 978-85-61622-53-4

1. Linguagem. 2. Sociedade. 3. Polticas. 4. I. Orlandi, Eni P. II.

Ttulo.

La antropologia literria como textualidad de frontera

Apuntes sobre su poblada soledad
Miguel Alvarado Borgoo85
Universidad de Valparaso Chile

El nio lanza el trompo y el trompo/ Cae siempre en el

centro del mundo.
Octavio Paz.

Introduccin
La inexistencia de un espacio social para la ciencia antropolgica en Chile durante la segunda
mitad del siglo XX, se asemeja a la ausencia de un espacio para la literatura chilena en la primera mitad
del mismo siglo XX, literatura que irrumpi sorpresivamente dando lugar a la coexistencia de inmensos
paquidermos, que, no obstante, no pudieron convivir en la inmensa llanura del Chile de entonces. Hoy
tendemos a creer que el texto no surge de una necesidad del contexto, sino ms bien de un deseo
colectivo que se cristaliza en ciencia y en literatura, como podra canalizarse a travs de puentes
polticos o religiosos, y que cada forma textual es expresin de cambios en formaciones discursivas
amplias y en algunos casos transculturales. Pero el texto no es gratuito ni se despliega como variable
aislada. El sueo de identificar un grado cero: la lengua, el estilo y la escritura (Barthes, 1989) de
una forma verbosimblica, se corresponde con la ilusin de reconocer el sentido de un proceso
cultural, pero ello es en realidad tan ilusorio como identificar la coherencia de un proceso histrico,
sobre la base de la suposicin metafsica de la identidad entre realidad y razn, una ilusin
interpretativa al mejor estilo del historicismo positivista ms ingenuo y de la sociologa funcionalista
que afianz la ilusin desarrollista.
Ms bien, si el estilo es la reverberacin de la mitologa personal que segn Roland Barthes
(1989), hace y desase contextos, y dialoga con signo y estructura social, los modifica y los sufre; As,
mantiene un vnculo manipulatorio y paradjicamente dependiente, que genera una escritura, que
desde lo intrincado del vnculo entre obra y escritor, da lugar a un documento intrincado y por tanto
ms all de las mitologas personales y los narcicismos diletantes, el camino para asumir y entender
las formas experimentales de la antropologa chilena consiste en sacarla del sayo estrecho de la
ciencia, pero tampoco en este proceso comprometerla exclusivamente con la literatura, sino que

85

Chileno, Antroplogo y socilogo, Doctor en Ciencias Humanas con mencin en Literatura y Lingstica,
postdoctorado en Filologa Romnica Universidad de Goettingen, Alemania. Investigador de Convenio de
desempeo de la Universidad de Valparaso, Chile.

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