Transnational Perspectives on the Conquest and Colonization of Latin America by Jenny Mander David Midgley Christine Beaule

Author:Jenny Mander, David Midgley, Christine Beaule [Jenny Mander, David Midgley, Christine Beaule]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781032240312
Google: D9G2zgEACAAJ
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Limited
Published: 2021-12-13T17:08:23+00:00

12 The Poetics of Emulation in a Latin American Context

Towards a New Theoretical Framework

João Cezar de Castro Rocha

TRANSLATED BY FLORA THOMSON-DEVEAUX

In my latest book, Shakespearean Cultures (2019), I proposed a way of understanding the cultures of Latin America that recognizes the senses in which the collective self-perception of those cultures originates in the gaze of an (European) Other, but without leaving them looking inherently uncreative. A distinguishing feature of those cultures, as of the characterization of many figures in Shakespeare’s plays, I argue, is the ability to elude the apparent dichotomy between imitation (imitatio) and creation (creatio) by means of a third principle familiar from traditions of aesthetic theory: emulation (aemulatio). The principle I see at work in Latin American cultures, and which I first explored in an earlier book, Machado de Assis: Towards a Poetics of Emulation (de Castro Rocha 2015), should be understood as quite different from the Romantic ideal of an originality unscathed by the influence of tradition; rather it is based on the notion of craftsmanship and technical mastery.

In this chapter, parts of which are based on passages from Shakespearean Cultures, I firstly explain the theoretical basis for this way of looking at Latin American cultures, indicating the range of strategies these cultures have developed in non-hegemonic contexts, taking my lead from Arcadio Díaz-Quiñones (2016:10) on the need for careful analysis of the historical connections between ‘worlds marked by European empires, slavery, complex border experiences, and successive migrations.’ I also discuss the nature of the relation between ‘original’ and ‘copy’ with reference to Walter Benjamin’s essay on ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,’ and I illustrate the implications of the principle of emulation with regard to a selection of novohispanic religious paintings.

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