review altschul geographies
TRANSCRIPT
8122019 Review Altschul Geographies
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 16
ltem xmlnsm=httpwwww3org1998MathMathML xmlnsmml=httpw
xmlnsxlink=httpwwww3org1999xlinkgtGeographies of Philological
Knowledge Postcoloniality and the Transatlantic National Epic
by Nadia R Altschul (review)
Juan Poblete
Early American Literature Volume 48 Number 3 2013 pp 783-787
(Article)
Published by The University of North Carolina Press
DOI 101353eal20130041
For additional information about this article
Access provided by University of California Santa Cruz (3 Feb 2014 1501 GMT)
httpmusejhuedujournalsealsummaryv048483pobletehtml
8122019 Review Altschul Geographies
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 26
Book Reviews 783
cago Worldrsquos Fair ostensibly a quadricentennial commemoration of the
Columbus voyages
Kolodny closes her study with an investigation of Indian perspectives on
the Viking colony While the shadowy presence of Norse colonists in east-ern Algonquian contact stories remains elusive she fruitfully establishes
striking juxtapositions between native Icelandic and Anglo-American
narratives She brings to light the figure of Joseph Nicolar a Penobscot
scholar who complied the folklore of his people in a self-published book
titled Te Life and raditions of the Red Man appearing in 1893 the same
year as the Columbian Exposition Te parallels between his scholarship
and Rafnrsquos seem evident especially in his attention to little-known origi-
nal sources he boasts that ldquono historical works of the white manrdquo wereused as sources for his chronicle (311) And in her reading of a wide range
of Wabenaki contact stories Kolodny points out the persistent elements of
prophecy that mirror the themes of Icelandic sagas of Vinland Yet when
visiting present-day Penobscot historians she finds that most have little
interest in the question of early native-Norse contacts seeing as these
indigenous storytellers already feel quite secure in the vast depth of the
American past with or without Vikings
Ultimately the elusive target that concerns Koldony remains the storyof how people become confident in their place in the world far more than
the specific search for Vinland Norsemen Anglo-Americans and natives
alike shared a common quest for a long and satisfying story to answer
never-ending questions about identity origin and destiny
983105983150983140983154983141983159 983116983145983152983149983105983150 Syracuse University
Geographies of Philological Knowledge
Postcoloniality and the ransatlantic National Epic
983150983105983140983145983105 983154 983105983116983156983155983139983144983157983116
Chicago University of Chicago Press 2012
248 pp
Tis excellent volume sets out to chart an interesting multilin-gual and ambitious territory How can we productively reread the national
philological traditions of Europe and more specifically their nineteenth-
8122019 Review Altschul Geographies
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 36
784 983141983105983154983116983129 983105983149983141983154983145983139983105983150 983116983145983156983141983154983105983156983157983154983141 983126983119983116983157983149983141 48 983150983157983149983106983141983154 3
century national epics from the viewpoint of the postcolonial periphery
in this case the work of Venezuelan polymath Andreacutes Bello (1781ndash1865)
Given its scope Geographies of Philological Knowledge exhibits not always
by design a tension between doing justice to its coverage of those nationaltraditions in a European context and doing the same for the complex
abundant and crucial work of Bello in the Latin American one An addi-
tional complication is the claim to intervene in postcolonial studies In this
study Altschul skillfully engages in original transnational and transfield
work while facing the risks of any study willing to cross these boundaries
Te book is divided into an introduction six chapters and a coda
Te introduction (ldquoCreole Medievalism and Settler Postcolonial Studiesrdquo)
clearly states the studyrsquos focus ldquothis book is concerned with a critique ofthe national philologies and the national epic through the medievalist
work of Andreacutes Bellordquo (7) Tis will require first mapping the nineteenth-
century evolution of the main European (mostly French and German)
national philologies as distinct from the subordinated and belated Span-
ish ones and second understanding the work of Bello as an instance of
criollo nationalism with repercussions for both the scholarly and national-
istic traditions of the colonial motherland and Spanish America Using the
w ork of Walter Mignolo on the coloniality of power and on interactionsbetween local histories and global designs Altschul asserts that Spain in
the nineteenth century was considered by the other European imperial na-
tions to be ldquoan exotic and backward lsquocolonialrsquo spacerdquo incapable of produc-
ing knowledge (10) According to the imperial narrative Altschul identi-
fies Spain could only produce culture not knowledge a culture moreover
heavily influenced by the impact of the Arab presence in the Peninsula
Tis double colonial-Orientalizing effect was the challenge to be overcome
by any Latin American criollo nationalist like Bello who was then forced
to come to terms with the claim of belonging to the West by virtue of a
form of European colonization the rest of the West considered backward
Altschul defines the relevance of Mignolorsquos concepts to her study by
modifying them with the help of postcolonial theory Following Mig-
nolo she defines Occidentalism as ldquothe cultural self- understanding of the
Americas as an extension of Europerdquo resulting in ldquoan intellectual internal-
ization of colonialityrdquo (13) Unlike Mignolorsquos view of postoccidentalism asthe epistemic going beyond the boundaries of the weltanschauung of Occi-
dentalism for Altschul the term as manifested in the nineteenth-century
8122019 Review Altschul Geographies
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 46
Book Reviews 785
practice of criollos like Andreacutes Bello refers to ldquoOccidentalist resistancesrdquo
or ldquoa form of struggle with coloniality that is carried out from within the
Occidentalist frame of mindrdquo and involves ldquoresistance to the metropolis
coupled with the internal colonialism of subjugated populations [Amer-indians and Afro-Americans]rdquo (13) Tis latter understanding comes for
Altschul from postcolonial theoryrsquos idea of the white settler as if the psy-
chic and cultural contradictions between internal and external colonial-
ism were not a crucial part of Mignolorsquos view or an integral aspect of Latin
American discussions on the concept of criollos ldquoSettler postcolonial
theory thus describes their position with the axiom that settler-colonists
are both colonized and colonizingrdquo (14) Armed with this otherwise well
known premise about Latin American criollos Altschul proceeds to de- velop the six chapters of her study
Te first chapter ldquoTe Global Standards of Intellectual and Disciplinary
Historiographyrdquo follows the trajectories of two famous German twentieth-
century husband-and-wife Hispanists (Yakov Malkiel and Maria Rosa
Lida) on the one hand and of nineteenth-century Spanish philolo-
gist Luis Galvaacuten on the other in a discussion of Bellorsquos scholarship on
El Cid Chapter 2 ldquoaken for Indians lsquoNativersquo Philology and Creole Cul-
ture Warsrdquo ambitiously sets out to bring neocolonialism as a category tobear upon Latin American studies and postcolonial studies by examining
a much later Chilean polemics It revolves around the alleged Germaniza-
tion of the country and some criollo reactions to it toward the end of the
nineteenth century At the time the two famous German philologists re-
ferred to above were brought in by the Chilean government to found the
Pedagogical Institute (from then on in charge of the education of Chilean
secondary teachers) and their arrival unleashed a significant nationalistic
backlash Although Altschul does not go into this they were in fact two
among many other German professionals enticed to come to Chile as part
of a much more encompassing effort at modernizing the Chilean state and
army In this chapter however Altschul does confirm through the analy-
sis of this philological dispute at the end of the nineteenth century what
criollos have known since Independence modernity is much more com-
plex than simply freeing oneself from the imperial metropolis when such
a metropolis has been effectively defined as retrograde and premodern bynew imperial European powers claiming to have the key to what is the
modern Chapter 3 ldquoNational Epic Denied European Assertions of the
8122019 Review Altschul Geographies
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 56
786 983141983105983154983116983129 983105983149983141983154983145983139983105983150 983116983145983156983141983154983105983156983157983154983141 983126983119983116983157983149983141 48 983150983157983149983106983141983154 3
lack of a Spanish Epicrdquo provides an instantiation of such imperial postur-
ing in the work of Ferdinand Wolf and other nineteenth-century French
and German philologists who deny Spain the right to a national epic (and
in the process deny the epic nature of the Poem of the Cid ) and to the formsof popular nationality thus entailed
In chapter 4 ldquoAndreacutes Bello and the Foundations of Spanish National
Philologyrdquo the book arrives at its ostensible core Bellorsquos philological
work and the ways in which it first negotiated his own place as a criollo
within European philological contexts and second had a deconstructive
effect on the possibility of any Spanish national philology Bellorsquos work in
Alstchulrsquos assessment is an accommodation effort geared toward present-
ing his own ideas about the Poem of the Cid (an imitation of French origi-nals in his view) and even more importantly his thesis on La Araucana
(1569ndash89)mdashAlonso de Ercillarsquos poem ldquorecounting the Spanish conquest of
the Mapucherdquomdashas an epic Chilean text Te latter hypothesismdashthe core of
chapter 5 ldquoDefining the Spanish American National Epic and Other Occi-
dentalist Resistancesrdquomdashis for Altschul an example of Bellorsquos ldquoOccidental-
ist resistancesrdquo also manifested in other philological and poetic writings
by the Venezuelan
Chapter 6 ldquoTe Spanish Orient in Bellorsquos Spanish American Occiden-talismrdquo seeks to explain this concept of ldquoOccidentalist resistancerdquo by con-
necting Bellorsquos erasure of Spainrsquos Muslim cultural influence (as pertaining
to Spanish medieval assonance which he saw as firmly rooted in European
sources) with his view of the inexorable disappearance of the Mapuche
natives from Chilean culture At stake in both cases was on the one hand
the challenge Bello faced of overcoming the dual colonization of Spain by
other European powers in the European nineteenth century (an exotic
still medieval country and a Muslim-inflected one) and on the other the
effort to produce a cleanly Occidental (meaning European-American)
genealogy for the Chilean people as seen by criollo eyes
Te main argument throughout this fine book is that nationalist Ger-
man nineteenth-century philology became globally influential in its ability
to create standards that managed to relegate Spanish philology and the
Spanish national epic to the secondary level of imitation and underdevel-
opment In this German- (and French-) influenced space the Poem of theCid produced by a people allegedly incapable of reaching the spiritual
8122019 Review Altschul Geographies
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 66
Book Reviews 787
heights of their European neighbors was deemed deficient and derivative
when compared to the German and French national epics Andreacutes Bello
devoted considerable time and energy to the writing of his study of the
Poem of the Cid and then to the one on ErcillarsquosLa Araucana Both of thesestudies involved challenges to Spanish national philology and European
single-nationality-based national epics Both of them can be read as ldquoOcci-
dentalist resistancesrdquo
Altschulrsquos valuable book makes at least two important contributions
Foremost to studies of Andreacutes Bello and Latin American national philolo-
gies she brings a detailed reconstruction of the heady mix of nineteenth-
century European philological nationalism and reconstructed imperial
trajectories that function as both some of the intellectual sources of Bellorsquosmedievalist work and the conditions of its possibility Finally to postcolo-
nial studies she brings a welcome interest in an expansion of the geopoliti-
cal and geoepistemological limits that have kept the field focused on the
Anglo-speaking world
983114983157983105983150 983152983119983106983116983141983156983141 University of California-Santa Cruz
Separated by Teir Sex Women in Public
and Private in the Colonial Atlantic World
983149983105983154983129 983106983141983156983144 983150983119983154983156983119983150
Ithaca Cornell University Press 2011
247 pp
It is safe to say that when Mary Beth Norton published her path-
breaking 1980 book Libertyrsquos Daughters Te Revolutionary Experience of
American Women 1750ndash1800 (Cornell University Press) she had no idea
that she had written the first (and chronologically last) part of a trilogy that
would examine gender constructs throughout early America Te second
book in that trilogy Founding Mothers and Fathers Gendered Power and
the Forming of American Society (Vintage 1996) reached back to the earli-
est days of colonization bringing to life a Filmerian world that was both
authoritarian and organic Separated by Teir Sex not only bridges the gapbetween these two monumental studies (it is a prequel to Libertyrsquos Daugh-
8122019 Review Altschul Geographies
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 26
Book Reviews 783
cago Worldrsquos Fair ostensibly a quadricentennial commemoration of the
Columbus voyages
Kolodny closes her study with an investigation of Indian perspectives on
the Viking colony While the shadowy presence of Norse colonists in east-ern Algonquian contact stories remains elusive she fruitfully establishes
striking juxtapositions between native Icelandic and Anglo-American
narratives She brings to light the figure of Joseph Nicolar a Penobscot
scholar who complied the folklore of his people in a self-published book
titled Te Life and raditions of the Red Man appearing in 1893 the same
year as the Columbian Exposition Te parallels between his scholarship
and Rafnrsquos seem evident especially in his attention to little-known origi-
nal sources he boasts that ldquono historical works of the white manrdquo wereused as sources for his chronicle (311) And in her reading of a wide range
of Wabenaki contact stories Kolodny points out the persistent elements of
prophecy that mirror the themes of Icelandic sagas of Vinland Yet when
visiting present-day Penobscot historians she finds that most have little
interest in the question of early native-Norse contacts seeing as these
indigenous storytellers already feel quite secure in the vast depth of the
American past with or without Vikings
Ultimately the elusive target that concerns Koldony remains the storyof how people become confident in their place in the world far more than
the specific search for Vinland Norsemen Anglo-Americans and natives
alike shared a common quest for a long and satisfying story to answer
never-ending questions about identity origin and destiny
983105983150983140983154983141983159 983116983145983152983149983105983150 Syracuse University
Geographies of Philological Knowledge
Postcoloniality and the ransatlantic National Epic
983150983105983140983145983105 983154 983105983116983156983155983139983144983157983116
Chicago University of Chicago Press 2012
248 pp
Tis excellent volume sets out to chart an interesting multilin-gual and ambitious territory How can we productively reread the national
philological traditions of Europe and more specifically their nineteenth-
8122019 Review Altschul Geographies
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 36
784 983141983105983154983116983129 983105983149983141983154983145983139983105983150 983116983145983156983141983154983105983156983157983154983141 983126983119983116983157983149983141 48 983150983157983149983106983141983154 3
century national epics from the viewpoint of the postcolonial periphery
in this case the work of Venezuelan polymath Andreacutes Bello (1781ndash1865)
Given its scope Geographies of Philological Knowledge exhibits not always
by design a tension between doing justice to its coverage of those nationaltraditions in a European context and doing the same for the complex
abundant and crucial work of Bello in the Latin American one An addi-
tional complication is the claim to intervene in postcolonial studies In this
study Altschul skillfully engages in original transnational and transfield
work while facing the risks of any study willing to cross these boundaries
Te book is divided into an introduction six chapters and a coda
Te introduction (ldquoCreole Medievalism and Settler Postcolonial Studiesrdquo)
clearly states the studyrsquos focus ldquothis book is concerned with a critique ofthe national philologies and the national epic through the medievalist
work of Andreacutes Bellordquo (7) Tis will require first mapping the nineteenth-
century evolution of the main European (mostly French and German)
national philologies as distinct from the subordinated and belated Span-
ish ones and second understanding the work of Bello as an instance of
criollo nationalism with repercussions for both the scholarly and national-
istic traditions of the colonial motherland and Spanish America Using the
w ork of Walter Mignolo on the coloniality of power and on interactionsbetween local histories and global designs Altschul asserts that Spain in
the nineteenth century was considered by the other European imperial na-
tions to be ldquoan exotic and backward lsquocolonialrsquo spacerdquo incapable of produc-
ing knowledge (10) According to the imperial narrative Altschul identi-
fies Spain could only produce culture not knowledge a culture moreover
heavily influenced by the impact of the Arab presence in the Peninsula
Tis double colonial-Orientalizing effect was the challenge to be overcome
by any Latin American criollo nationalist like Bello who was then forced
to come to terms with the claim of belonging to the West by virtue of a
form of European colonization the rest of the West considered backward
Altschul defines the relevance of Mignolorsquos concepts to her study by
modifying them with the help of postcolonial theory Following Mig-
nolo she defines Occidentalism as ldquothe cultural self- understanding of the
Americas as an extension of Europerdquo resulting in ldquoan intellectual internal-
ization of colonialityrdquo (13) Unlike Mignolorsquos view of postoccidentalism asthe epistemic going beyond the boundaries of the weltanschauung of Occi-
dentalism for Altschul the term as manifested in the nineteenth-century
8122019 Review Altschul Geographies
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 46
Book Reviews 785
practice of criollos like Andreacutes Bello refers to ldquoOccidentalist resistancesrdquo
or ldquoa form of struggle with coloniality that is carried out from within the
Occidentalist frame of mindrdquo and involves ldquoresistance to the metropolis
coupled with the internal colonialism of subjugated populations [Amer-indians and Afro-Americans]rdquo (13) Tis latter understanding comes for
Altschul from postcolonial theoryrsquos idea of the white settler as if the psy-
chic and cultural contradictions between internal and external colonial-
ism were not a crucial part of Mignolorsquos view or an integral aspect of Latin
American discussions on the concept of criollos ldquoSettler postcolonial
theory thus describes their position with the axiom that settler-colonists
are both colonized and colonizingrdquo (14) Armed with this otherwise well
known premise about Latin American criollos Altschul proceeds to de- velop the six chapters of her study
Te first chapter ldquoTe Global Standards of Intellectual and Disciplinary
Historiographyrdquo follows the trajectories of two famous German twentieth-
century husband-and-wife Hispanists (Yakov Malkiel and Maria Rosa
Lida) on the one hand and of nineteenth-century Spanish philolo-
gist Luis Galvaacuten on the other in a discussion of Bellorsquos scholarship on
El Cid Chapter 2 ldquoaken for Indians lsquoNativersquo Philology and Creole Cul-
ture Warsrdquo ambitiously sets out to bring neocolonialism as a category tobear upon Latin American studies and postcolonial studies by examining
a much later Chilean polemics It revolves around the alleged Germaniza-
tion of the country and some criollo reactions to it toward the end of the
nineteenth century At the time the two famous German philologists re-
ferred to above were brought in by the Chilean government to found the
Pedagogical Institute (from then on in charge of the education of Chilean
secondary teachers) and their arrival unleashed a significant nationalistic
backlash Although Altschul does not go into this they were in fact two
among many other German professionals enticed to come to Chile as part
of a much more encompassing effort at modernizing the Chilean state and
army In this chapter however Altschul does confirm through the analy-
sis of this philological dispute at the end of the nineteenth century what
criollos have known since Independence modernity is much more com-
plex than simply freeing oneself from the imperial metropolis when such
a metropolis has been effectively defined as retrograde and premodern bynew imperial European powers claiming to have the key to what is the
modern Chapter 3 ldquoNational Epic Denied European Assertions of the
8122019 Review Altschul Geographies
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 56
786 983141983105983154983116983129 983105983149983141983154983145983139983105983150 983116983145983156983141983154983105983156983157983154983141 983126983119983116983157983149983141 48 983150983157983149983106983141983154 3
lack of a Spanish Epicrdquo provides an instantiation of such imperial postur-
ing in the work of Ferdinand Wolf and other nineteenth-century French
and German philologists who deny Spain the right to a national epic (and
in the process deny the epic nature of the Poem of the Cid ) and to the formsof popular nationality thus entailed
In chapter 4 ldquoAndreacutes Bello and the Foundations of Spanish National
Philologyrdquo the book arrives at its ostensible core Bellorsquos philological
work and the ways in which it first negotiated his own place as a criollo
within European philological contexts and second had a deconstructive
effect on the possibility of any Spanish national philology Bellorsquos work in
Alstchulrsquos assessment is an accommodation effort geared toward present-
ing his own ideas about the Poem of the Cid (an imitation of French origi-nals in his view) and even more importantly his thesis on La Araucana
(1569ndash89)mdashAlonso de Ercillarsquos poem ldquorecounting the Spanish conquest of
the Mapucherdquomdashas an epic Chilean text Te latter hypothesismdashthe core of
chapter 5 ldquoDefining the Spanish American National Epic and Other Occi-
dentalist Resistancesrdquomdashis for Altschul an example of Bellorsquos ldquoOccidental-
ist resistancesrdquo also manifested in other philological and poetic writings
by the Venezuelan
Chapter 6 ldquoTe Spanish Orient in Bellorsquos Spanish American Occiden-talismrdquo seeks to explain this concept of ldquoOccidentalist resistancerdquo by con-
necting Bellorsquos erasure of Spainrsquos Muslim cultural influence (as pertaining
to Spanish medieval assonance which he saw as firmly rooted in European
sources) with his view of the inexorable disappearance of the Mapuche
natives from Chilean culture At stake in both cases was on the one hand
the challenge Bello faced of overcoming the dual colonization of Spain by
other European powers in the European nineteenth century (an exotic
still medieval country and a Muslim-inflected one) and on the other the
effort to produce a cleanly Occidental (meaning European-American)
genealogy for the Chilean people as seen by criollo eyes
Te main argument throughout this fine book is that nationalist Ger-
man nineteenth-century philology became globally influential in its ability
to create standards that managed to relegate Spanish philology and the
Spanish national epic to the secondary level of imitation and underdevel-
opment In this German- (and French-) influenced space the Poem of theCid produced by a people allegedly incapable of reaching the spiritual
8122019 Review Altschul Geographies
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 66
Book Reviews 787
heights of their European neighbors was deemed deficient and derivative
when compared to the German and French national epics Andreacutes Bello
devoted considerable time and energy to the writing of his study of the
Poem of the Cid and then to the one on ErcillarsquosLa Araucana Both of thesestudies involved challenges to Spanish national philology and European
single-nationality-based national epics Both of them can be read as ldquoOcci-
dentalist resistancesrdquo
Altschulrsquos valuable book makes at least two important contributions
Foremost to studies of Andreacutes Bello and Latin American national philolo-
gies she brings a detailed reconstruction of the heady mix of nineteenth-
century European philological nationalism and reconstructed imperial
trajectories that function as both some of the intellectual sources of Bellorsquosmedievalist work and the conditions of its possibility Finally to postcolo-
nial studies she brings a welcome interest in an expansion of the geopoliti-
cal and geoepistemological limits that have kept the field focused on the
Anglo-speaking world
983114983157983105983150 983152983119983106983116983141983156983141 University of California-Santa Cruz
Separated by Teir Sex Women in Public
and Private in the Colonial Atlantic World
983149983105983154983129 983106983141983156983144 983150983119983154983156983119983150
Ithaca Cornell University Press 2011
247 pp
It is safe to say that when Mary Beth Norton published her path-
breaking 1980 book Libertyrsquos Daughters Te Revolutionary Experience of
American Women 1750ndash1800 (Cornell University Press) she had no idea
that she had written the first (and chronologically last) part of a trilogy that
would examine gender constructs throughout early America Te second
book in that trilogy Founding Mothers and Fathers Gendered Power and
the Forming of American Society (Vintage 1996) reached back to the earli-
est days of colonization bringing to life a Filmerian world that was both
authoritarian and organic Separated by Teir Sex not only bridges the gapbetween these two monumental studies (it is a prequel to Libertyrsquos Daugh-
8122019 Review Altschul Geographies
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 36
784 983141983105983154983116983129 983105983149983141983154983145983139983105983150 983116983145983156983141983154983105983156983157983154983141 983126983119983116983157983149983141 48 983150983157983149983106983141983154 3
century national epics from the viewpoint of the postcolonial periphery
in this case the work of Venezuelan polymath Andreacutes Bello (1781ndash1865)
Given its scope Geographies of Philological Knowledge exhibits not always
by design a tension between doing justice to its coverage of those nationaltraditions in a European context and doing the same for the complex
abundant and crucial work of Bello in the Latin American one An addi-
tional complication is the claim to intervene in postcolonial studies In this
study Altschul skillfully engages in original transnational and transfield
work while facing the risks of any study willing to cross these boundaries
Te book is divided into an introduction six chapters and a coda
Te introduction (ldquoCreole Medievalism and Settler Postcolonial Studiesrdquo)
clearly states the studyrsquos focus ldquothis book is concerned with a critique ofthe national philologies and the national epic through the medievalist
work of Andreacutes Bellordquo (7) Tis will require first mapping the nineteenth-
century evolution of the main European (mostly French and German)
national philologies as distinct from the subordinated and belated Span-
ish ones and second understanding the work of Bello as an instance of
criollo nationalism with repercussions for both the scholarly and national-
istic traditions of the colonial motherland and Spanish America Using the
w ork of Walter Mignolo on the coloniality of power and on interactionsbetween local histories and global designs Altschul asserts that Spain in
the nineteenth century was considered by the other European imperial na-
tions to be ldquoan exotic and backward lsquocolonialrsquo spacerdquo incapable of produc-
ing knowledge (10) According to the imperial narrative Altschul identi-
fies Spain could only produce culture not knowledge a culture moreover
heavily influenced by the impact of the Arab presence in the Peninsula
Tis double colonial-Orientalizing effect was the challenge to be overcome
by any Latin American criollo nationalist like Bello who was then forced
to come to terms with the claim of belonging to the West by virtue of a
form of European colonization the rest of the West considered backward
Altschul defines the relevance of Mignolorsquos concepts to her study by
modifying them with the help of postcolonial theory Following Mig-
nolo she defines Occidentalism as ldquothe cultural self- understanding of the
Americas as an extension of Europerdquo resulting in ldquoan intellectual internal-
ization of colonialityrdquo (13) Unlike Mignolorsquos view of postoccidentalism asthe epistemic going beyond the boundaries of the weltanschauung of Occi-
dentalism for Altschul the term as manifested in the nineteenth-century
8122019 Review Altschul Geographies
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 46
Book Reviews 785
practice of criollos like Andreacutes Bello refers to ldquoOccidentalist resistancesrdquo
or ldquoa form of struggle with coloniality that is carried out from within the
Occidentalist frame of mindrdquo and involves ldquoresistance to the metropolis
coupled with the internal colonialism of subjugated populations [Amer-indians and Afro-Americans]rdquo (13) Tis latter understanding comes for
Altschul from postcolonial theoryrsquos idea of the white settler as if the psy-
chic and cultural contradictions between internal and external colonial-
ism were not a crucial part of Mignolorsquos view or an integral aspect of Latin
American discussions on the concept of criollos ldquoSettler postcolonial
theory thus describes their position with the axiom that settler-colonists
are both colonized and colonizingrdquo (14) Armed with this otherwise well
known premise about Latin American criollos Altschul proceeds to de- velop the six chapters of her study
Te first chapter ldquoTe Global Standards of Intellectual and Disciplinary
Historiographyrdquo follows the trajectories of two famous German twentieth-
century husband-and-wife Hispanists (Yakov Malkiel and Maria Rosa
Lida) on the one hand and of nineteenth-century Spanish philolo-
gist Luis Galvaacuten on the other in a discussion of Bellorsquos scholarship on
El Cid Chapter 2 ldquoaken for Indians lsquoNativersquo Philology and Creole Cul-
ture Warsrdquo ambitiously sets out to bring neocolonialism as a category tobear upon Latin American studies and postcolonial studies by examining
a much later Chilean polemics It revolves around the alleged Germaniza-
tion of the country and some criollo reactions to it toward the end of the
nineteenth century At the time the two famous German philologists re-
ferred to above were brought in by the Chilean government to found the
Pedagogical Institute (from then on in charge of the education of Chilean
secondary teachers) and their arrival unleashed a significant nationalistic
backlash Although Altschul does not go into this they were in fact two
among many other German professionals enticed to come to Chile as part
of a much more encompassing effort at modernizing the Chilean state and
army In this chapter however Altschul does confirm through the analy-
sis of this philological dispute at the end of the nineteenth century what
criollos have known since Independence modernity is much more com-
plex than simply freeing oneself from the imperial metropolis when such
a metropolis has been effectively defined as retrograde and premodern bynew imperial European powers claiming to have the key to what is the
modern Chapter 3 ldquoNational Epic Denied European Assertions of the
8122019 Review Altschul Geographies
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 56
786 983141983105983154983116983129 983105983149983141983154983145983139983105983150 983116983145983156983141983154983105983156983157983154983141 983126983119983116983157983149983141 48 983150983157983149983106983141983154 3
lack of a Spanish Epicrdquo provides an instantiation of such imperial postur-
ing in the work of Ferdinand Wolf and other nineteenth-century French
and German philologists who deny Spain the right to a national epic (and
in the process deny the epic nature of the Poem of the Cid ) and to the formsof popular nationality thus entailed
In chapter 4 ldquoAndreacutes Bello and the Foundations of Spanish National
Philologyrdquo the book arrives at its ostensible core Bellorsquos philological
work and the ways in which it first negotiated his own place as a criollo
within European philological contexts and second had a deconstructive
effect on the possibility of any Spanish national philology Bellorsquos work in
Alstchulrsquos assessment is an accommodation effort geared toward present-
ing his own ideas about the Poem of the Cid (an imitation of French origi-nals in his view) and even more importantly his thesis on La Araucana
(1569ndash89)mdashAlonso de Ercillarsquos poem ldquorecounting the Spanish conquest of
the Mapucherdquomdashas an epic Chilean text Te latter hypothesismdashthe core of
chapter 5 ldquoDefining the Spanish American National Epic and Other Occi-
dentalist Resistancesrdquomdashis for Altschul an example of Bellorsquos ldquoOccidental-
ist resistancesrdquo also manifested in other philological and poetic writings
by the Venezuelan
Chapter 6 ldquoTe Spanish Orient in Bellorsquos Spanish American Occiden-talismrdquo seeks to explain this concept of ldquoOccidentalist resistancerdquo by con-
necting Bellorsquos erasure of Spainrsquos Muslim cultural influence (as pertaining
to Spanish medieval assonance which he saw as firmly rooted in European
sources) with his view of the inexorable disappearance of the Mapuche
natives from Chilean culture At stake in both cases was on the one hand
the challenge Bello faced of overcoming the dual colonization of Spain by
other European powers in the European nineteenth century (an exotic
still medieval country and a Muslim-inflected one) and on the other the
effort to produce a cleanly Occidental (meaning European-American)
genealogy for the Chilean people as seen by criollo eyes
Te main argument throughout this fine book is that nationalist Ger-
man nineteenth-century philology became globally influential in its ability
to create standards that managed to relegate Spanish philology and the
Spanish national epic to the secondary level of imitation and underdevel-
opment In this German- (and French-) influenced space the Poem of theCid produced by a people allegedly incapable of reaching the spiritual
8122019 Review Altschul Geographies
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 66
Book Reviews 787
heights of their European neighbors was deemed deficient and derivative
when compared to the German and French national epics Andreacutes Bello
devoted considerable time and energy to the writing of his study of the
Poem of the Cid and then to the one on ErcillarsquosLa Araucana Both of thesestudies involved challenges to Spanish national philology and European
single-nationality-based national epics Both of them can be read as ldquoOcci-
dentalist resistancesrdquo
Altschulrsquos valuable book makes at least two important contributions
Foremost to studies of Andreacutes Bello and Latin American national philolo-
gies she brings a detailed reconstruction of the heady mix of nineteenth-
century European philological nationalism and reconstructed imperial
trajectories that function as both some of the intellectual sources of Bellorsquosmedievalist work and the conditions of its possibility Finally to postcolo-
nial studies she brings a welcome interest in an expansion of the geopoliti-
cal and geoepistemological limits that have kept the field focused on the
Anglo-speaking world
983114983157983105983150 983152983119983106983116983141983156983141 University of California-Santa Cruz
Separated by Teir Sex Women in Public
and Private in the Colonial Atlantic World
983149983105983154983129 983106983141983156983144 983150983119983154983156983119983150
Ithaca Cornell University Press 2011
247 pp
It is safe to say that when Mary Beth Norton published her path-
breaking 1980 book Libertyrsquos Daughters Te Revolutionary Experience of
American Women 1750ndash1800 (Cornell University Press) she had no idea
that she had written the first (and chronologically last) part of a trilogy that
would examine gender constructs throughout early America Te second
book in that trilogy Founding Mothers and Fathers Gendered Power and
the Forming of American Society (Vintage 1996) reached back to the earli-
est days of colonization bringing to life a Filmerian world that was both
authoritarian and organic Separated by Teir Sex not only bridges the gapbetween these two monumental studies (it is a prequel to Libertyrsquos Daugh-
8122019 Review Altschul Geographies
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 46
Book Reviews 785
practice of criollos like Andreacutes Bello refers to ldquoOccidentalist resistancesrdquo
or ldquoa form of struggle with coloniality that is carried out from within the
Occidentalist frame of mindrdquo and involves ldquoresistance to the metropolis
coupled with the internal colonialism of subjugated populations [Amer-indians and Afro-Americans]rdquo (13) Tis latter understanding comes for
Altschul from postcolonial theoryrsquos idea of the white settler as if the psy-
chic and cultural contradictions between internal and external colonial-
ism were not a crucial part of Mignolorsquos view or an integral aspect of Latin
American discussions on the concept of criollos ldquoSettler postcolonial
theory thus describes their position with the axiom that settler-colonists
are both colonized and colonizingrdquo (14) Armed with this otherwise well
known premise about Latin American criollos Altschul proceeds to de- velop the six chapters of her study
Te first chapter ldquoTe Global Standards of Intellectual and Disciplinary
Historiographyrdquo follows the trajectories of two famous German twentieth-
century husband-and-wife Hispanists (Yakov Malkiel and Maria Rosa
Lida) on the one hand and of nineteenth-century Spanish philolo-
gist Luis Galvaacuten on the other in a discussion of Bellorsquos scholarship on
El Cid Chapter 2 ldquoaken for Indians lsquoNativersquo Philology and Creole Cul-
ture Warsrdquo ambitiously sets out to bring neocolonialism as a category tobear upon Latin American studies and postcolonial studies by examining
a much later Chilean polemics It revolves around the alleged Germaniza-
tion of the country and some criollo reactions to it toward the end of the
nineteenth century At the time the two famous German philologists re-
ferred to above were brought in by the Chilean government to found the
Pedagogical Institute (from then on in charge of the education of Chilean
secondary teachers) and their arrival unleashed a significant nationalistic
backlash Although Altschul does not go into this they were in fact two
among many other German professionals enticed to come to Chile as part
of a much more encompassing effort at modernizing the Chilean state and
army In this chapter however Altschul does confirm through the analy-
sis of this philological dispute at the end of the nineteenth century what
criollos have known since Independence modernity is much more com-
plex than simply freeing oneself from the imperial metropolis when such
a metropolis has been effectively defined as retrograde and premodern bynew imperial European powers claiming to have the key to what is the
modern Chapter 3 ldquoNational Epic Denied European Assertions of the
8122019 Review Altschul Geographies
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 56
786 983141983105983154983116983129 983105983149983141983154983145983139983105983150 983116983145983156983141983154983105983156983157983154983141 983126983119983116983157983149983141 48 983150983157983149983106983141983154 3
lack of a Spanish Epicrdquo provides an instantiation of such imperial postur-
ing in the work of Ferdinand Wolf and other nineteenth-century French
and German philologists who deny Spain the right to a national epic (and
in the process deny the epic nature of the Poem of the Cid ) and to the formsof popular nationality thus entailed
In chapter 4 ldquoAndreacutes Bello and the Foundations of Spanish National
Philologyrdquo the book arrives at its ostensible core Bellorsquos philological
work and the ways in which it first negotiated his own place as a criollo
within European philological contexts and second had a deconstructive
effect on the possibility of any Spanish national philology Bellorsquos work in
Alstchulrsquos assessment is an accommodation effort geared toward present-
ing his own ideas about the Poem of the Cid (an imitation of French origi-nals in his view) and even more importantly his thesis on La Araucana
(1569ndash89)mdashAlonso de Ercillarsquos poem ldquorecounting the Spanish conquest of
the Mapucherdquomdashas an epic Chilean text Te latter hypothesismdashthe core of
chapter 5 ldquoDefining the Spanish American National Epic and Other Occi-
dentalist Resistancesrdquomdashis for Altschul an example of Bellorsquos ldquoOccidental-
ist resistancesrdquo also manifested in other philological and poetic writings
by the Venezuelan
Chapter 6 ldquoTe Spanish Orient in Bellorsquos Spanish American Occiden-talismrdquo seeks to explain this concept of ldquoOccidentalist resistancerdquo by con-
necting Bellorsquos erasure of Spainrsquos Muslim cultural influence (as pertaining
to Spanish medieval assonance which he saw as firmly rooted in European
sources) with his view of the inexorable disappearance of the Mapuche
natives from Chilean culture At stake in both cases was on the one hand
the challenge Bello faced of overcoming the dual colonization of Spain by
other European powers in the European nineteenth century (an exotic
still medieval country and a Muslim-inflected one) and on the other the
effort to produce a cleanly Occidental (meaning European-American)
genealogy for the Chilean people as seen by criollo eyes
Te main argument throughout this fine book is that nationalist Ger-
man nineteenth-century philology became globally influential in its ability
to create standards that managed to relegate Spanish philology and the
Spanish national epic to the secondary level of imitation and underdevel-
opment In this German- (and French-) influenced space the Poem of theCid produced by a people allegedly incapable of reaching the spiritual
8122019 Review Altschul Geographies
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 66
Book Reviews 787
heights of their European neighbors was deemed deficient and derivative
when compared to the German and French national epics Andreacutes Bello
devoted considerable time and energy to the writing of his study of the
Poem of the Cid and then to the one on ErcillarsquosLa Araucana Both of thesestudies involved challenges to Spanish national philology and European
single-nationality-based national epics Both of them can be read as ldquoOcci-
dentalist resistancesrdquo
Altschulrsquos valuable book makes at least two important contributions
Foremost to studies of Andreacutes Bello and Latin American national philolo-
gies she brings a detailed reconstruction of the heady mix of nineteenth-
century European philological nationalism and reconstructed imperial
trajectories that function as both some of the intellectual sources of Bellorsquosmedievalist work and the conditions of its possibility Finally to postcolo-
nial studies she brings a welcome interest in an expansion of the geopoliti-
cal and geoepistemological limits that have kept the field focused on the
Anglo-speaking world
983114983157983105983150 983152983119983106983116983141983156983141 University of California-Santa Cruz
Separated by Teir Sex Women in Public
and Private in the Colonial Atlantic World
983149983105983154983129 983106983141983156983144 983150983119983154983156983119983150
Ithaca Cornell University Press 2011
247 pp
It is safe to say that when Mary Beth Norton published her path-
breaking 1980 book Libertyrsquos Daughters Te Revolutionary Experience of
American Women 1750ndash1800 (Cornell University Press) she had no idea
that she had written the first (and chronologically last) part of a trilogy that
would examine gender constructs throughout early America Te second
book in that trilogy Founding Mothers and Fathers Gendered Power and
the Forming of American Society (Vintage 1996) reached back to the earli-
est days of colonization bringing to life a Filmerian world that was both
authoritarian and organic Separated by Teir Sex not only bridges the gapbetween these two monumental studies (it is a prequel to Libertyrsquos Daugh-
8122019 Review Altschul Geographies
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 56
786 983141983105983154983116983129 983105983149983141983154983145983139983105983150 983116983145983156983141983154983105983156983157983154983141 983126983119983116983157983149983141 48 983150983157983149983106983141983154 3
lack of a Spanish Epicrdquo provides an instantiation of such imperial postur-
ing in the work of Ferdinand Wolf and other nineteenth-century French
and German philologists who deny Spain the right to a national epic (and
in the process deny the epic nature of the Poem of the Cid ) and to the formsof popular nationality thus entailed
In chapter 4 ldquoAndreacutes Bello and the Foundations of Spanish National
Philologyrdquo the book arrives at its ostensible core Bellorsquos philological
work and the ways in which it first negotiated his own place as a criollo
within European philological contexts and second had a deconstructive
effect on the possibility of any Spanish national philology Bellorsquos work in
Alstchulrsquos assessment is an accommodation effort geared toward present-
ing his own ideas about the Poem of the Cid (an imitation of French origi-nals in his view) and even more importantly his thesis on La Araucana
(1569ndash89)mdashAlonso de Ercillarsquos poem ldquorecounting the Spanish conquest of
the Mapucherdquomdashas an epic Chilean text Te latter hypothesismdashthe core of
chapter 5 ldquoDefining the Spanish American National Epic and Other Occi-
dentalist Resistancesrdquomdashis for Altschul an example of Bellorsquos ldquoOccidental-
ist resistancesrdquo also manifested in other philological and poetic writings
by the Venezuelan
Chapter 6 ldquoTe Spanish Orient in Bellorsquos Spanish American Occiden-talismrdquo seeks to explain this concept of ldquoOccidentalist resistancerdquo by con-
necting Bellorsquos erasure of Spainrsquos Muslim cultural influence (as pertaining
to Spanish medieval assonance which he saw as firmly rooted in European
sources) with his view of the inexorable disappearance of the Mapuche
natives from Chilean culture At stake in both cases was on the one hand
the challenge Bello faced of overcoming the dual colonization of Spain by
other European powers in the European nineteenth century (an exotic
still medieval country and a Muslim-inflected one) and on the other the
effort to produce a cleanly Occidental (meaning European-American)
genealogy for the Chilean people as seen by criollo eyes
Te main argument throughout this fine book is that nationalist Ger-
man nineteenth-century philology became globally influential in its ability
to create standards that managed to relegate Spanish philology and the
Spanish national epic to the secondary level of imitation and underdevel-
opment In this German- (and French-) influenced space the Poem of theCid produced by a people allegedly incapable of reaching the spiritual
8122019 Review Altschul Geographies
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 66
Book Reviews 787
heights of their European neighbors was deemed deficient and derivative
when compared to the German and French national epics Andreacutes Bello
devoted considerable time and energy to the writing of his study of the
Poem of the Cid and then to the one on ErcillarsquosLa Araucana Both of thesestudies involved challenges to Spanish national philology and European
single-nationality-based national epics Both of them can be read as ldquoOcci-
dentalist resistancesrdquo
Altschulrsquos valuable book makes at least two important contributions
Foremost to studies of Andreacutes Bello and Latin American national philolo-
gies she brings a detailed reconstruction of the heady mix of nineteenth-
century European philological nationalism and reconstructed imperial
trajectories that function as both some of the intellectual sources of Bellorsquosmedievalist work and the conditions of its possibility Finally to postcolo-
nial studies she brings a welcome interest in an expansion of the geopoliti-
cal and geoepistemological limits that have kept the field focused on the
Anglo-speaking world
983114983157983105983150 983152983119983106983116983141983156983141 University of California-Santa Cruz
Separated by Teir Sex Women in Public
and Private in the Colonial Atlantic World
983149983105983154983129 983106983141983156983144 983150983119983154983156983119983150
Ithaca Cornell University Press 2011
247 pp
It is safe to say that when Mary Beth Norton published her path-
breaking 1980 book Libertyrsquos Daughters Te Revolutionary Experience of
American Women 1750ndash1800 (Cornell University Press) she had no idea
that she had written the first (and chronologically last) part of a trilogy that
would examine gender constructs throughout early America Te second
book in that trilogy Founding Mothers and Fathers Gendered Power and
the Forming of American Society (Vintage 1996) reached back to the earli-
est days of colonization bringing to life a Filmerian world that was both
authoritarian and organic Separated by Teir Sex not only bridges the gapbetween these two monumental studies (it is a prequel to Libertyrsquos Daugh-
8122019 Review Altschul Geographies
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 66
Book Reviews 787
heights of their European neighbors was deemed deficient and derivative
when compared to the German and French national epics Andreacutes Bello
devoted considerable time and energy to the writing of his study of the
Poem of the Cid and then to the one on ErcillarsquosLa Araucana Both of thesestudies involved challenges to Spanish national philology and European
single-nationality-based national epics Both of them can be read as ldquoOcci-
dentalist resistancesrdquo
Altschulrsquos valuable book makes at least two important contributions
Foremost to studies of Andreacutes Bello and Latin American national philolo-
gies she brings a detailed reconstruction of the heady mix of nineteenth-
century European philological nationalism and reconstructed imperial
trajectories that function as both some of the intellectual sources of Bellorsquosmedievalist work and the conditions of its possibility Finally to postcolo-
nial studies she brings a welcome interest in an expansion of the geopoliti-
cal and geoepistemological limits that have kept the field focused on the
Anglo-speaking world
983114983157983105983150 983152983119983106983116983141983156983141 University of California-Santa Cruz
Separated by Teir Sex Women in Public
and Private in the Colonial Atlantic World
983149983105983154983129 983106983141983156983144 983150983119983154983156983119983150
Ithaca Cornell University Press 2011
247 pp
It is safe to say that when Mary Beth Norton published her path-
breaking 1980 book Libertyrsquos Daughters Te Revolutionary Experience of
American Women 1750ndash1800 (Cornell University Press) she had no idea
that she had written the first (and chronologically last) part of a trilogy that
would examine gender constructs throughout early America Te second
book in that trilogy Founding Mothers and Fathers Gendered Power and
the Forming of American Society (Vintage 1996) reached back to the earli-
est days of colonization bringing to life a Filmerian world that was both
authoritarian and organic Separated by Teir Sex not only bridges the gapbetween these two monumental studies (it is a prequel to Libertyrsquos Daugh-