PhD Research Proposal
'TOUCHING A NATION : STORIES OF IDENTITY AND REPRESENTATION'
STATEMENT OF TOPIC AND AIMS:
My PhD proposal will explore how post – colonialism and globalization moulded Argentina in the imagination of other Nations, and how its cultural meanings are produced by the interplay of images and lapses in performative, visual and verbal texts. In particular I am interested in exploring how Argentina understood as Europe‘s uncanny other, allows itself to be a screen onto which others nations project their anxieties and desires, and works as a mirror in which they see themselves reflected.
Within the realms of Hispanic Studies and performance I intend to investigate the cultural, political and historical relationship between Argentina and Europe.
Touch and the Argentine Tango are introduced as a mode of negotiation and intercultural exchange. Touch connects human bodies but also bodies of thought, it is an instance of reaching out, a touching of an-other in a reciprocal engagement with the unknown, an act of reaching towards something or someone, of creating new paths that occur when bodies move. Tango is not only a dance but also a representation of a nomadic movement of cultural displacement, an encounter and dis-encounter, a complex network of misunderstood directions.
REVIEW OF LITERATURE AND RELEVANT PRACTICE:
Literary text from the United States, UK, Italy and Argentina itself, as well as internationally recognized films, advertisements and newspaper features, re-circulate the work to form the country meanings. Argentina crystallises in the representations made of it, a representation it invites, but that is not always to its liking. Kaminski (2008) explains that Argentina seems to generate and encourage the other’s imagining of it, since such imagining is a central component of the nation vision itself.
Argentina projects the desired vision of itself outward, hoping to recover that vision when is reflected back in the eyes, words and images from elsewhere. Argentina is both familiar and unfamiliar to the West; strangely familiar or familiarly strange, it elicits a particular fascination in the global imaginary, like Borges’ Zahir this phenomenon is something ’ Uncanny’ being at the same time serious and absurd.
Freud (1919) defined the uncanny as “the class of the frightening which leads to what is known and familiar” (p.220) For Freud the uncanny is predominantly concerned with the double: “the subject identifies itself with someone else, so that he is in doubt as to which his self is or substitute the extraneous self for his own” (p.234)
In the case of Argentina and Europe, the identification with the double goes both ways.Kaminsky (2008) states that “Argentina quite consciously names Europe as its double, its model. It begins and end with what is known, familiar and desirable about Europe, erasing any possibility of fearfulness”. (p.10)
However when Europe takes note of Argentina, the uncanny comes into play. People writing from Europe project onto Argentina the savagery the stagnation, and the penury that the West fears for itself and that it worries, may be insufficiently covered or compensated by the civilization, the promise of wealth that Argentina also represents. The formulation currently in circulation that describe Argentina, is that of a once colonized nation, as either trapped in the web of exoticising dominant representation or that heroically claim its identity, seems to be oversimplified.
Nouzeilles and Montaldo (2002) point out that “At the beginning of the twentieth century Argentina was a land of opportunity, luring European immigrants with promises of work and social advancement. However in the last quarter of a century, it became notorious for its state violence, political repression, and the permutation of the word “disappear”, making it a transitive verb.” (p.7).
Argentina history and culture take different meaning in different historical periods. Cultural studies have noted Argentina’s history, culture and politics, but to my knowledge there has been no attempt to frame its cultural identity as a tactile, rhythmic and improvisational dance.
My research will focus in the articulation of conceptualizations of Touch, between Argentina and Europe. A touch without empirical contact but understood as an expressive vehicle that creates identity and establishes a range of cultural investigation. Manning (2000) states “I reach out to touch you in order to invent a relation that will, in turn, invent me.
To touch is to engage in the potential of an individuation. Individuation is understood as the capacity to become beyond identity” (p.34). The notion of touch, invents by drawing the other into a relation, therefore changing the limits of the touched-touching body. A gesture towards an-other is never static. Touch is what orients us toward an-other in a movement, in a direction. Touch evokes a displacement that produces affinities, attractions, divergence, ruptures fissures, and dissociations.
Tango is usually introduced as the ultimate signifier of Argentine’s national identity, however I do not intend to approach Tango from this vantage point, preferring instead to locate it as an international crossing of human and cultural boundaries.
Ramon Pelinski (1995) writes, “Tango resides neither entirely on its own terrain, nor entirely on the terrain of an-other” (p.18). Through Tango and touch I will attempt to emphasize the similarity between the body in constant movement, travelling through time and space and a Nation’s identity. I will try to disengage from a classic reading of the senses. To write against this notion is to become sensitive, to how a body like an identity can be re-defined and re-composed. This I hope will inspire the imagination of a new way of thinking that challenges the notion that the body like Argentina in the world imaginary is a stable and fixed place of expression.
My research will propose that what is called national identity is a negotiable production of both internal and external readings of the nation. I intend to examine what a nation might offer as an idea, how a nationality can became a metaphor, the effects, condensation and simplification of its meanings.
The fascination that Argentina (Europe’s other), holds in the imaginary of writers, filmmakers and artists will also be central to my research. What make Argentina such an appealing place, which continuously hold fascination for people who never stepped foot there? Is Argentina’s identity projected on to the world by its cultural elite, out of desire to show what is more appealing to the West? Because films and novels which spread Argentina’s identity around the world, are internationally produced, to what extent and in which way are artists from abroad responsible of this image? Moreover, are the subtle complexity and specificity of Argentina fully comprehended and represented, or are they prefabricated ideas assumed to inhere or cohere around this place called Argentina? These issues and questions will be at the heart of my PHD research.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Kaminsky A. (2008). Argentina : Stories for a Nation. University of Minnesota Press. Minneapolis and London.
Nouzeilles, G. and Montaldo, G. (2002). The Argentina Reader – History, Culture, Politics. Duke University press. Durham and London.
Manning, E. (2007). Politics of Touch – Sense, Movement, Sovereignty University of Minnesota Press. Minneapolis and London.
Savigliano, M. (1995). Tango and the Political Economy of Passion. Boulder, Colo. Westview Press.
Derrida, J. (2000). On Touching - Jean-Luc Nancy, Trans. Christine Irizarry Stanford University Press.
Freud, S. (1919). “The Uncanny” (Das Unheimleiche). Standard Edition, Vol.17, trans. James Strachey, 217-56
Nancy, J-L. (1992). The Experience of Freedom. Trans. Bridget McDonald. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Agamben, G. (2000). Means without End: notes on Politics. Trans.Vincenzo Belletti and Cesare Cesarino. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Derrida, J. (1994). The Politics of Friendship. First Published Paris: Galilee’. Translation by George Collins. Edition Published by Verso 2005 London. Ferrer, H. (1995). “Les Tangos Vagabonds “In Tango Nomade. Montreal: Triptych. Massumi, B. (2002). A Shock to Thought. London: Routledge. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1968)The Visible and the Invisible, Followed by Working Notes Trans. by Alphonso Lingis, Evanston: Northwestern University Press.