Retirement Announcement Exmples

Julio Ramón Fernández Camilo Notes on Cozma and literary criticism in Peru Peruvian Narrative

For various sources I learn that my colleague recently Cozma Camilo Fernandez has been appointed a member of the Peruvian Academy of Language, old dream of my dear teacher San Marcos, now finally come true. As a token of appreciation and consideration for their achievements, rescued from my PC to review his book on the poet Rodolfo Hinojosa, written and published a few years ago in a university magazine whose name I do not remember. On the other hand, my note is also intended as an invitation to return to some debates, some intellectual vedettes forgotten and therefore that once defined the agenda of literary criticism in Peru.

paraphrase T. Adorno, we can say that for many has become clear that nothing in criticism and literary theory is evident. Any thesis, idea or opinion, has been reduced only to that: one, among many other theories, ideas and opinions. "It's your reading", say many appealing to an extreme relativism that converts to a critical and theoretical practice sophistry. Moreover, this practice has become a discipline in a kind of Platonic cave. A cave where, unlike that of Plato, philosophers no longer get to see the light. There are no truths, only spectra discourse.

This suggests to me the following image. Literary theory is a hotel with no doors or windows where anyone entering or leaving your taste. Hundreds of intellectuals pass through its halls. For a few hours some are put to bed and the deconstructionists. Then go to the Lacanian, then to Cultural Studies, foucaultnianos, and others. Some tired of so much noise they try to flee and take refuge in a room, lock the doors, walls and windows become narratologists, neo-rhetoric, and even Greimasian. However, this immanent closure delivers no nothing. Discursive continue tormenting noise behind walls and ceilings.

Others, also tired of so much noise postmodern opt out of the hotel and from the side of the street, trying to understand, make sense of this hotel with no doors. The latter are those facing the literary event from both a textual and discursive. Indeed, from their perspective, the effort of the literary discipline should be directed to develop a theory that relates text and discourse.

On several levels, critical production developed by Camilo Fernandez Cozma reveals an effort to participate in this last debate. Indeed, early in The strange islands of Emilio Adolfo Westphalen (Naylamp Editores, Lima, 1990), Fernandez Cozma shows the intention to address the complexity of the Westphalian poetry from two perspectives: the metacriticism and analysis textual. The first, referred to the critical discussion about the work of poet Abolition of the death and its relationship with surrealism, and the second, aimed at interpreting his poetry in the text by setting some elements of the theory of the archetypes of the psychoanalyst Carl Jung. In his second book Traces of aura. The poetics of JE Eielson (Latin American publishers, Lima, 1996), Fernandez Cozma deepens the anterior approach, using the neo-rhetoric as a basis for textual analysis and cultural reflection in the line of Walter Benjamin, one of the most interesting representatives of Frankfurt School. As pointed out Santiago López Maguiña in the preface, "this is a book that illustrates very well what is happening in the field of literary studies. It calls for special description, text analysis, which not mean, however, which activities closed, blind as to what takes place outside the contours, in the context. By contrast, trying to determine the significance, the meaning of texts, literary studies in fact deal with ways of perceiving and imagining are not only own the field of literature. "

Raúl Porras Barrenechea In and Peruvian literature (editorial Fund of San Marcos, Lima, 2000), Fernandez Cozma is clear and explicit textual analysis from a position metacriticism "discusses some hypotheses I quote [on Porras] have been blindly accepted by critics of Peru. " With a rare aggressive criticism in its production, the collection of essays that make up the book, Fernández Cozmo "puts into question that Porras is a Hispanic as was José de la Riva Agüero, and some hypotheses of Mario Vargas Llosa ". In this regard the critic says: "Vargas Llosa called" archaic "Arguedas, but in reality he is archaic because it imposes a strain of nineteenth-century positivist rationality."

In the book that concerns us Rodolfo Hinojosa and the poetry of the sixties (editorial Fund of the National Library of Peru, Lima, 2001), Fernandez Cozma Crimping text and speech in its reflection on the poet Contranatura. Metacriticism, intertextuality, neo-rhetoric and pragmatic, are the pillars of the book problematical. With them assesses the critical reception it has had in recent decades Hinostroza, organizing periods (partial approaches and visions globalizing), builds the horizons of poetic and cultural influences that dominate his writing (English and French), develops a rhetorical analysis-figurative Wolf Director of and Contranatura, emphasis on figures of speech and partners, and finally, makes a pragmatic approach Contranatura. With this latest guidance, Fernandez Cozma make explicit the discursive character of the poetry of Hinojosa, establishing that he "sees the crisis of metanarratives, devices that legitimize certain actions on the basis of connotative effect narratives such as politics or religion or morals, for example. However, "continues", in a second stage is to reconstruct the utopia from a different perspective and the appearance of cultural events that constitute a critique of instrumental rationality. In other words: "The human / error persists until the sale / a ceaseless sunrise / outside the magic circle."

back to the hotel's image, we would say that Rodolfo Hinojosa and the poetry of the sixties , Fernandez Cozma accomplished more securely located in the side of the street and observe most clearly the relationship between text and discourse. Obviously, this critical position can be discussed both Derrida and from Genette. Because, after all, the theme of the relationship between text and discourse is nothing more than an exit to the crisis of theoretical paradigms, which does not override the other positions but rather fuels the debate. At this point the critical production of leaves Cozma Fernandez noted its limits. Limits imposed by the object of study of research: Westphalen, Eielson, Hinojosa. These items place him in the position of the critic, but not in the theoretical. Fernández Cozma, manipulates various theoretical devices (theory of archetypes, neo-rhetoric, pragmatics) with which gives meaning to the fabric of the text, but does not discuss its basis. At most force fields of application. Obviously, the latter escapes the demands of their research, which adequately satisfied. But we must not fail to note that these successes can find more than a repair if we leave the critical position and we think the issue from a theoretical perspective. Moreover, if it is understood that from formalism to deconstruction, the debate on the text and discourse has developed within the scope of the theory.

latter is not really a detailed criticism of his work, with results generally agree, but a claim. A requirement for someone who does not doubt that their analytical skills can contribute to the debate on issues that goes beyond our disciplinary space, and covers different areas of the humanities.

Photos: [1] Camilo Fernandez Cozma, [2] Rodolfo Hinojosa, [3] Faculty of Arts School of San Marcos in the Museum Raul Porras Barrenechea.

Post Interview Etiquette Thank You

and violence in the eighties

In an article dated in 1986 recalled, Guillermo Niño de Guzmán wrote that because of the serious social problems bedeviling the country at that time, it was difficult to understand the bitterness and despair of his generation: a generation hit by facts and events that multiple frustrated dreams and ideals, ticking relentlessly iron members with skepticism and disappointment.

This article is interesting because it presents a vision in which many authors who began the decade are recognized. According to them, the eighties is the decade of disappointment. And they were right. Eighties, decade of onset of subversion and one of the worst economic and institutional crisis, perhaps one of the hardest years of the national republican history. According to some articles of the time, Peru has never been so close to disintegrate as a nation. It is also the decade where many representations made in the literary space, like Bruno Aragon Peralta and Rendon Willka emblematic characters of all bloods, of José María Arguedas, begin to take form in social life. That is, to be recognizable in the country's political life. Do Abimael Guzmán Bruno does not seem to Aragon Peralta, and any leader or activist commoner hiker some resemblance to Rendón Wilka? In fact, there are certain parallels between paternalism Arguedas messianic character (Bruno Aragon Peralta) and the Shining Path leader behavior and policy choice taken by Rendón Wilka and regional leaders of Peru's PC.

But paradoxically, at the time of their appearance, these representations were diluted, like soap bubbles. In fact, because of the way was developed subversion, both figures, symbols of the past utopias hopeful for a certain sector of society, quickly deteriorated, and with them all that their symbolic involved: the left, the struggles, the Andean world, etc, etc. It was as if a large statue of clay models for many years to be unveiled to the public from falling to the floor, shattering.

And how the narrators of the 80 respondents to these processes? Within the corpus of writers who emerged in this decade can distinguish two lines. The first would be those writers who shunned address the issue of subversion directly. One of these is Guillermo Niño de Guzmán, who both in his first book Midnight Horses (1984) as A woman does not make a summer (1995), manages to develop a script that allows you to insert in Peruvian narrative a number of issues related not to the social level, but to those of the individual confronted with their own obsessions and dramas. Another writer who keeps more than one similarity is Alonso Cueto, which began in the narrative a year ahead of him with his book of short stories of the past Battle (1983). Cueto, the care of the style of Nino de Guzman, adding a cosmopolitan atmosphere and the development of themes specific to the "thriller." Beside him is also ascribed to the cult Black novel Fernando Ampuero. Also, Carlos Calderón Fajardo is another writer who, beginning in the framework of neorealism with its storybook who dies blink (1981, stories), resulted in the thriller with awareness of ultimate limit (1990, novel short), and in that sort of Gothic horror is The journey never ends (1993, novella).

In the second line would be those that explicitly addressed the issue of subversion. This is the case of Luis Nieto Degregori, who from the start with beer and tired Tired bullet (1987, stories) is bent the story of a social, developing stories revolving around subversive phenomenon in Peru. Dante Castro is also perhaps the most insistently that addressed this issue, even until the end of the polemic eighties with Luis Nieto Degregori on "writer-society relationship and the choice of the theme of violence in the narrative contemporary Peru ", in the now defunct weekly Unicorn. One of Castro's arguments was that "the main tasks of the writers intended to be revolutionary is to rescue the popular vein of art and literature, the worldview of the man of the people (...) is not the task of revolutionaries preciousness sterile, "said Castro, much less in the narrative." combat Party (1991), his second book, is marked by this line of action, almost militant. This is a collection of stories that deal with the "dirty war" of the vortex subversive and insurgency that began in the '80s. But one that led to the limit this line of action is Hildebrando Huarancca Perez, author of The illegitimate , collection of stories characterized by social criticism. This could add the names of Julian Perez, Jaime Pantigozo Montes, Walter Zein Zorrilla and Ventosilla, among others.

Thus, we see that the narrators of the 80 respondents to the process of subversive violence in two ways: some worked out explicitly the issue of subversion, especially after 1986, and others began to explore the intimacy of his characters: the desires, the passions, the thoughts of individuals, their world view and of themselves. But in both cases, the construction of their worlds represented was marked by a subjective view of the environment. In this regard, attention of the narrators shifted from a critical, almost sociological, environmental, as in the '60s and '70s, to a more individualistic.

On the other hand, forms of representation in the level of fiction is not only confined to the lines mentioned above. There are also lines like the narrative anchored in the reconstruction of pieces of collective history marked by violence, as in Cordillera Negra, Oscar Colchado Lucio, who narrates from the subjectivity of a narrator-character "Tomas Nolasco-rebellion Atusparia unleashed in 1885 in the Callejon de Huaylas, and in this stark vision of the slums of Lima, as Cromwell Montacerdos Jara, also narrated from the subjectivity of a character-narrator Yococo-immersed in the garbage and homelessness .

These factors lead me to think, as a working hypothesis, that in the eighties he would begin a process of subjection of the social imaginary. Process would be clearer in the 90s. Indeed, the line of Guillermo Niño de Guzmán, Alonso Cueto, authors such as Mario would come out and Iván Thays Bellatín; of Luis Nieto Degregori and Dante Castro, we find a number of authors that try to marginal urban space, developing A new version of neo-realism of the sixties, such as Oscar Malca, Sergio Galarza and Manuel Rilo, to mention a few cases.

The latter leads me also to reflect on how it is that subversive violence has affected the fabric of the narrative in the last twenty years. I, like Michael Bakhtin, any literature can be isolated from its context, which is always something of the fears, anxieties, troubles of the community is filtered in its themes and structures, and to say otherwise is mistaken, enclosed in a bubble as discursive autistic. What happened during the last twenty years is somehow present in our literature, there is no escape.

[Photos: [1] Miguel Gutierrez, Fernando Alonso Cueto and Ampuero, [2] dead dogs hanging from poles public, [3] Luis Nieto Degregori Paravicino Rosas and Carlos García Miranda, among others, [4] Guillermo Niño de Guzmán.