Appropriating Theory. Ángel Rama's Critical Work by José Eduardo González (review)

• Published in: Revista de estudios hispánicos (University, Ala.) Ala.), 2019-03, Vol.53 (1), p.413-415
• Main Author: Poblete, Juan
• Format: Article
• Language: eng ; spa
• Subjects: Critics; Essays; Influence; Latin American culture; Latin American literature; Said, Edward; Theory; Vargas Llosa, Mario (1936- ); Writers
• ISSN: 0034-818X; 2164-9308; 2164-9308
• DOI: 10.1353/rvs.2019.0023

The first chapter, "Debates, Dreams, and Fears," presents some of González's main claims and guiding threads: the debates refer to Rama's famous clashes with other important Latin American critics, such as Emir Rodríguez Monegal and Mario Vargas Llosa; the dreams are those of social justice and progress for the continent as inspired by the Cuban revolution of 1959; the fears, finally, are thus stated: "in his later years, the painful experience of exile clouded his writings, and Rama produced pessimistic readings of Latin American culture in which he expressed doubts that democracy or education could have any lasting, significant effect in transforming the societies in the region" (12). The fifth chapter discusses "The importance that the concept of literary technique possesses for Rama's idea of the role of literature as a social act" and claims that "Rama's uncritical acceptance of the notion of advanced artistic techniques limits his view of modern literature" (7). Since Rama's preoccupation with the development of creative and original novelistic forms in the transculturating work of José María Arguedas is one of the key aspects González and many other critics before him appreciate in Rama's work, it is hard to understand this claim. Gonzalez's book seems to me, at times, both too specialized—as it almost philologically tries to prove the crucial but hidden role of European theory in Rama's concepts—to fully function as a first overview of Rama's work in English, and not specialized enough—as it fails to consider Latin American sources as theory or the key contributions of The Lettered City in theorizing the letrado and the cultura letrada as objects of study—to do justice to both Rama's thought and the significant amount of critical work, mostly done in Spanish, on his oeuvre.