By Tejal Patel
Cultural studies are a “nasty, complicated business,” according to a guest speaker who came to the University on Wednesday to give a lecture titled, “Latin America: Split State and Global Imaginaries.”
The Latin American and Caribbean Studies program sponsored the speech given by Román de la Campa, a visiting professor of comparative literature and literary theory at the University of Pennsylvania and former professor of romance languages at SUNY Stony Brook.
De la Campa began his speech by suggesting that he would “challenge the way we think about our problems.” He then went on to ask whether a Latin American nation is split and gave the example of Colombia’s narcotics traffic economy.
“Global capital no longer needs the nation in order to articulate citizenship,” de la Campa said. “People now acquire a sense of universal participation through the Internet. The production of culture articulates a sense of citizenship that is no longer relevant in the old ways.”
He suggested unprecedented migration is the most important aspect of a split-state. “Multitude is a concept that implies we no longer have people,” he said. “People used to be the subject that implied the construction of the nation. Multitude implies simply human capital leaving their national territories in search of financial capital.” De la Campa said this is not only happening in Latin America, but it is occurring in the United States as well.
“The truth of the matter is that even [President] Bush is attempting to create a bill to legalize or bring support to a migratory problem that has no solution.” De la Campa said the migrant workers are necessary to the economy and the same goes for outsourcing. He recommended that the solution to this is to go to school and teach what people do not know. According to de la Campa, this is not only happening in the U.S., but also in many other countries such as Argentina and Spain.
He sought to answer the question, “Has the Latin American state itself become a threat to the nation?” He gave the example of the ongoing migration of rural peoples to large cities in places like Mexico and Brazil, and then moved on to give his own thoughts and understandings on post-nationalism in Latin America.
“The post-national understanding of ‘Hispanism’ could perhaps begin by tracing the following contours: large-scale migration from half the Latin American nations to the U.S. and Europe today and the onset of Hispanic enclaves-a majority in major urban centers in the U.S.,” he said. “The shift within the nation-state equation is not an end of the nation, but rather, the result of dispersal.”
According to de la Campa, Hispanics in the U.S. have a long history, but it is barely studied in Latin America. This brought him to his next question and explanation: What happens when a Latin American moves to the U.S.?
De la Campa gave examples of two different authors who wrote about that subject. His first example was Ilan Stavans, a Mexican/American Jewish writer who wrote about his experiences growing up Latino in America. De la Campa suggested the book “offers a middle class sense of belonging.”
His next example was Gustavo Perez Firmat, author of “Life on the Hyphen,” whose book, according to de la Campa, “constructs a model of Cuban-American influence and reflection.”
De la Campa ended the lecture by showing examples from the writings of authors from various Latin American countries who write in a style that stands out.
“I thought it was really informative,” said Susie Perez, a senior film studies and production major. “I liked the way he spoke about a lot of different Latin American countries and not just one.”
Jade DiIonno, a senior secondary education and Spanish major who thought that it was an informative lecture, said, “It took an interesting twist on Latin American culture.”
Román de la Campa uses quotes from Latin American authors to support his argument.