Caribbean EmaNation(s): The Question of History in Alejo Carpentier\'s El Siglo de las luces i

Central to the Latin American novel is the question of history as both a thematic concern and a structural principle. At the heart of this fictional interest is the question of the cultural and historical identity of Latin America and its place in world history. The Discovery of America, or rather its appearance on the world stage, was both a revelation and a revolution, for, as O'Gorman's The Invention of America demonstrates, not only did it reveal the real picture of a/the world up to then conceived of as a relatively small " dwelling " place but, in so doing, also created a challenge to the dominant orthodoxies and ideologies. In other words, having made its appearance within a Western intellectual environment dominated by a Christian world view, America had to be represented and its existence accounted for in terms of the Biblical master narrative of the Creation and Redemption. Thus, because of the challenge they represented to such established truths as Adam's ancestry and the universal diffusion of Christ's teachings 1 , the Amerindians not only had, but were from the start called upon, to conform to a prescribed 2 type. The ideological stance which marks this first confrontation was crucial and determining in later " encounters " between Europe and what has come to be called the New World. Undertaken within a colonial enterprise, these encounters were essentially " monologic " (Hulme, 9) and, as such, they not only suppressed the native voice but also produced−or, to use O'Gorman's term, " invented " −an America commensurate with the expansionist needs of the growing European capitalist states. Hence the succession of conquests was accompanied and reinforced by an arsenal of historical pretexts and justifications legitimizing supposedly " Civilizing Missions. " These pretexts testify to the " competition among warring versions of 1 O'Gorman offers a detailed discussion of the relationship between the circumstances of the " Discovery, " the intellectual background of the period, and the evolution of the geographical conceptions of the world (esp. Chapter 2 " The Cultural Horizon " : 49-69). The main thrust of the discussion here is that Columbus' project was undertaken within and governed by an essentially Biblical conception which limited the world to the Orbis Terrarum (the Island of the Earth) precluding thus the possibility of any orbis alterius (antipodal lands) and, by extension, of the existence of other species of human beings, a view which represented a challenge to the Christian belief in the unique ancestry of Adam and Eve and in the extension of the Gospel " to the very ends of the earth. " This exclusion of the possibility of " new worlds " goes hand in hand with the idea of the world as both a dwelling place and a jail; as a " New World, " America held the possibility (until then denied by Christian dogma) of liberation and of conquest and mastery of the universe. In sofaras all scientific or religious institutions centered around, and were were invested in the church (of Rome), the latter constituted the main authority to which all accounts−of Columbus, the Spanish Monarchy, and the scholars supporting or challenging his claims−had to be made. 2 Because the Amerindians " lacked " alphabetic writing, not only were they written out of history (because they supposedly lacked " written " records) but, by the same token, their role was already written for them as pre-historical, implying a sort of pre-Beginning (Beginning being obviously synonymous with Western or/and Christian historiography). For a discussion of this and related issues, see Jara & Spadaccini's introduction to Amerindian Images, Peter Hulme's chapter on " Caribs and Arawaks, " Brotherston's " Towards a Grammatology of America, " and Mignolo's cited articles. A similar comment is made by Edward Glissant on the Hegelian hierarchy (ahistory, prehistory, History) whereby " literature attains a metaexistence, the all-powerfulness of a sacred sign, which will allow people with writing to think it justifiable to dominate and rule people with an oral civilization " (76).