Reconquista: Ilan Stavans and multiculturalist Latino/a discourse


O r i g i n a l A r t i c l e

R e c o n q u i s t a : I l a n S t a v a n s a n d
m u l t i c u l t u r a l i s t L a t i n o / a d i s c o u r s e

E l e n a M a c h a d o S á e z
Florida Atlantic University, Florida.

Abstract Ilan Stavans constructs a multiculturalist framework for understanding the
US Latino/a experience. By reading The Hispanic Condition (1995) alongside Stavans’
discussions of the Latino/a literary canon in the introductions to his anthologies, New
World (1997) and Lengua Fresca (Augenbraum and Stavans, 2006), and his articles in
the Chronicle of Higher Education, I argue that this multiculturalist approach is based
on an equation of culture with language. Through this linguistic formulation of
Latinidad with the Spanish language as its defining facet, Stavans privileges a
colonialist rendering of Latino/a history, tracing the ancestral lineage of Latino/as in
terms of solely Western European culture. By valorizing Spanish colonization, Stavans
glosses over sites of violence in order to highlight a linguistic inheritance and formulates
US Latino/a identity in opposition to American indigenous cultures. Uncovering the
way in which Ilan Stavans positions the indigenous as Other in his multiculturalist
approach to Latinidad is essential to understanding the colonialist and conservative
underpinnings of how Stavans structures the Latino/a literary canon. I will
consequently address how Latino/a Studies critics have wrestled with Stavans’ influence
on the field and the ways in which Stavans’ vision of US Latino/a Studies resembles or
reflects its institutional orientation and disciplinary locations.
Latino Studies (2009) 7, 410–434. doi:10.1057/lst.2009.42

Keywords: literature; multicultural; indigenous; language; Ilan Stavans; colonial

I n t r o d u c t i o n

A variety of historical movements have shaped the development of US Latino/a

Studies in the academy, from the different waves of immigration, to the Cold

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www.palgrave-journals.com/lst/



War, to the Civil Rights movements, to globalization. Each has left an indelible

mark on the field, particularly on the institutional spaces that house US Latino/a

Studies. My goal in this article is to provide an analysis of multiculturalist

discourse as one particular approach to Latinidad that has recently emerged in

the field, by contextualizing its effect on the institutionalization of US Latino/a

Studies within the academy. By multiculturalist, I am referring to a valorization

of hybridity and alterity that is evident in a variety of disciplines,1 but which

takes on a specifically linguistic formulation within Latino/a Studies. The idea

that language allows US Latinidad to pose a radical challenge to notions of

American cultural purity can be a progressive project, as in the example of

Debra Castillo’s work. However, multiculturalist ideas about language can be

employed towards conservative ends if such an approach towards alterity is not

self-critical. For this reason, my article will primarily focus on Ilan Stavans, and

in so doing, reflect on the conceptual risks implicit in equating language with

progressive politics when formulating Latinidad. Many critics situate Ilan

Stavans as an outsider to Latino/a Studies, and in fact Stavans likes to frame

himself as an anomaly within the field in order to assert his authority to speak

about it. I go against both grains of the discourse on Stavans, produced by critics

and himself, to discuss how his theorizations of Latinidad are part of a broader

trend within academic discourse. By making the logic underlying Stavans’

approach visible and placing it within a historical context of disciplinary shifts,

I aim to highlight the challenges we face as critics when formulating multiple

Latinidades.

L i n g u i s t i c A l t e r i t y a n d t h e M u l t i c u l t u r a l i s t A p p r o a c h

I find it useful to begin with Debra A. Castillo’s Redreaming America (2005) in

order to discuss how a multiculturalist project can be productive within US

Latino/a Studies while also highlighting some of the ambivalent formulations

regarding its institutionalization. Castillo usefully analyzes where US Latino/a

Studies is located in the academy in relation to linguistic and disciplinary

boundaries. She provides an insightful critique of the globalizing function

of language in English departments as a form of ‘‘academic colonization’’

wherein such departments are ‘‘taking on and fiercely guarding the rights to all

literatures written in all languages of the world, y taught in translation of

course’’ (191). This colonial impulse is not the domain of any one language, but

the historical context of globalization and primacy of English within that system

is clearly shaping the way in which literary studies is located in the academy.

Castillo asks the valuable question, ‘‘what would US literature look like

if we included literature from the United States in languages other than English’’

(14)? By pointing to the growing Latino/a population in the United States, she

1 For example, Puri

critiques the

valorization of

hybridity within

Postcolonial

Studies (2004).

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rightly calls for a reconfiguration of the national literature,
2

arguing that,

‘‘US literature in both Spanish and English needs resituation in a hemispheric

context’’ (194).

Castillo (ibid.) also calls for a ‘‘parallel shift’’ in Spanish departments via such

‘‘North-South dialogues’’ (4) that would contest the notion of a hemispheric

canon: ‘‘what would Latin American literature look like if we understood the

United States to be a Latin American country and took seriously the work by US

Latino/as’’ (14)? Such a reconceptualization mirrors the challenge Castillo

directs to English departments, in that she is asking for Latin American Studies

to redefine the boundaries of Latin America by incorporating writing by US

Latino/as. In employing a linguistic politics to progressive ends, challenging the

entrenchment of US literary canons and providing constructive questions about

the hierarchies of power between English and Spanish departments, Castillo’s

argument about the relationship of US Latino/a writers to language also

suggestively positions Ilan Stavans as representative of this kind of linguistic

politics. Castillo frames her project in terms of broadening the definition of

Latino/a cultural production to include ‘‘US-based Latino writers from the many

cultures and generations of latinidad’’ (4) and therefore focuses specifically on

‘‘first-generation new Latino/as who choose to write in Spanish’’ because they

are ‘‘a particularly understudied group of authors’’ (13). These new immigrant

Latino/a writers are placed in opposition to ‘‘the more established second-plus-

generation cohort, who often choose to write in English and whose literary and

theoretical work has been more assimilated into the US academy’’ (13–14).

Since language is rendered here as a choice by Castillo, writing in English is by

extension framed in terms of cultural allegiance.3 In so doing, she positions

resident Latino/as as choosing assimilation into the US mainstream, and their

academic popularity and use of English is an implied mark of their inauthenti-

city as Latino/a subjects. So while Castillo valorizes the Spanish language

as contestatory and oppositional in new Latino/a texts, English is aligned with

a conservative politics. The logic implied by this binary of old versus new

generations frames English-language cultural production by Latino/as as a

cultural betrayal of their ‘‘original’’ linguistic identity.

Castillo’s conceptualization of this linguistic betrayal using Juan Gonzalez’

(2000) term ‘‘safari approach’’ (xvii) is where the tension of identity politics

is most evident. Her argument about English-dominant US Latino/a writers is

ruptured by Ilan Stavans’ symbolic value and in turn, reveals how the tie of

language to politics can potentially ghettoize English-speaking Latino/as within

US Latino/a studies. Castillo (2005) cites Juan Gonzalez to critique this old

generation of US Latino/a writers for ‘‘explaining their stories and their cultures

solely within a US context’’ (8); but, when taken within the context of

Gonzalez’s argument, it becomes clear that he uses this concept somewhat

differently. When Gonzalez (ibid.) uses the phrase ‘‘safari approach,’’ he refers

to US Latino/a authors who write about Latino/a experience as ‘‘experts who

2 Lazo (2005)

models a

hemispheric lens

and advocates for

transnational

models of literary

study that move

beyond national

boundaries.

3 Writing or

speaking in English

is often not a

matter of

preference, even

for bilingual

Latino/as.

Language skills can

vary according to

educational and

sociological

background, as

well as location

(for example,

personal versus

public, familial

language versus

academic

discourse).

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have not lived it’’ (xvii), and in that category, he squarely places Stavans’

The Hispanic Condition (1995). It is here in the figure of Stavans that a

dissonance becomes visible, for while Gonzalez is framing Stavans as using

a safari approach and acting as ‘‘the guide and interpreter’’ for ‘‘an Anglo

audience’’ (xvii), Castillo by contrast favorably cites Stavans as an example

of the new Latino/a writers ‘‘rejecting as stale the localized modalities of the

Latin Boom, and finding inspiration in the US/international popular culture’’

(10). In this example of academic discourse in US Latino/a Studies, I see the

figure of Stavans functioning as central imaginative site from which to

understand the tension between divergent approaches to Latinidad. This

rupture also reveals how linguistic definitions of Latinidad can become

delocalized and abstracted in the process of articulating a progressive and

inclusive politics. Neither Spanish nor English, nor any language for that matter,

is necessarily suggestive of a progressive or conservative politics; the political

implications of language use are highly situational. As a result, analyses of

Latinidad in relation to language need to be contextualized, looking at the

localities of nation, class, race, gender, and sexuality wherein language is employed.

Acknowledging specificities can allow for the concurrent acknowledgement of

multiple and contradictory Latinidades. Otherwise, our definitions of Latinidad,

despite operating with a different set of intellectual goals from Stavans, may fall

into the same restrictive pitfalls of identity politics as those within his work.

My close reading of Castillo’s (2005) work is an effort to respond to her

challenge to change ‘‘ways of thinking in the academic sites where authority is

vested in particular disciplinary and departmental divisions of labor’’ and to

amplify the ‘‘ongoing discussion that has too often been muted partly because it

is lost in the halls between English and Spanish departments’’ (194). In opening

my article with her book, I situate Castillo’s theorization as a productive point

of departure for engendering interdisciplinary dialogue, not only because I value

her project of challenging linguistic canons, but also because her writing

embodies this sense of ambivalence about Latinidad and language. I therefore

see the rupture that citing Ilan Stavans creates, the tension between the different

meanings his figure symbolizes for Castillo versus Gonzalez, as productive place

from which to analyze with greater depth the implications of a multiculturalist

approach that sees language as engendering a progressive politics for Latinidad.

T h e M o s t Vi s i b l e S y m p t o m : I l a n S t a v a n s

Because of his visibility,4 Ilan Stavans is a useful figure by which to understand

the function of multiculturalist discourse as a trend within US Latino/a Studies.

Although Stavans is sometimes disavowed by the field, this literary and cultural

studies critic articulates and positions himself as a public intellectual able to

speak for and even embody US Latino/a Studies through his numerous

4 Quantifying

Stavans’

scholarship gives a

sense of his

visibility in

Ilan Stavans and Latino/a discourse

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anthologies, PBS show, interviews with major Latino/a writers as well as his

seminal work published in 1995, The Hispanic Condition. Alternately labeled

‘‘the czar of Latino literature’’ by the New York Times (Richardson, 1999, 13)

and the ‘‘Skip Gates of Latino studies’’ by the Chronicle of Higher Education

(Heller, 1998, A17), Stavans has without a doubt authorized himself as the

Latino/a Studies critic, although mainly outside of the academic discipline

of US Latino/a Studies.5 His ascendancy in regards to shaping the canon of US

Latino/a literature has been solidified by his role as editor of the long awaited

Norton Anthology of Latino Literature.6 However, despite his very public

presence, few scholarly assessments have been written about his relationship to

the development of US Latino/a Studies as a field and the logic underlying his

formulation of Latino/a identity. I am particularly concerned with this academic

gap relating to Stavans and his work because I sense that it also renders invisible

how he functions as a symbol for certain problematic notions of US Latinidad

within the field. In other words, Stavans is not an anomaly but rather, one

model of the conceptual frameworks that circulate in scholarly criticism.7

In particular, I want to call attention to the conservative colonialist logic

operating within the language-based definitions of Latinidad used by Stavans,

definitions that are representative of a broader trend of analysis that has been

institutionalized in the field. By using the term colonialist, I refer to how Stavans

celebrates the Spanish language as a tool of colonialism inherited from Spain.

Stavans’ unequivocally celebrates Spanish colonialism and, by defining the

Spanish language as inherited exclusively from Spain, equates Latinidad’s

alterity with the power of European imperial conquest. In so doing, he does not

acknowledge how Spanish in the Americas has its roots in a diverse set of

cultures, for example, African diaspora and indigenous cultures. Rather, Stavans

establishes a colonialist and one-dimensional approach to the development of

the Spanish language in the New World, emphasizing only the purity of its

Eurocentric roots, as if it has not been transformed and accented by Other

languages and experiences. That colonialist approach to language allows

Stavans to figure US Latino/as as deriving solely from a European bloodline and

functioning as another set of conquistadors in the Americas. Analyzing the logic

informing Stavans’ theorizations will hopefully generate some productive

questions about the place and function of US Latino/a Studies in the academy

at large.

I begin by discussing how The Hispanic Condition constructs what I describe

as a multiculturalist framework for understanding the US Latino/a experience

that places Latinidad in opposition to indigenous identity. By reading the fifth

chapter of The Hispanic Condition, ‘‘Sanavabiche,’’ alongside Stavans’

discussions of the Latino/a literary canon in the introductions to his anthologies,

New World: Young Latino Writers (1997) and Lengua Fresca: Latinos Writing

on the Edge (Augenbraum and Stavans, 2006), and his articles in the Chronicle

of Higher Education entitled, ‘‘The Quest for a Latino Literary Tradition’’

academia. Between

1993 and 2008,

Stavans published

20 book-length

works, of which

two are coauthored

and one is a

collection of

interviews. He has

edited 23 books, as

well as published at

least eight essays

with the Chronicle

of Higher

Education and

over 40 journal

articles since 1987.

Stavans’ extensive

scholarship output

along with his self-

marketing may

explain why he has

been able to find

support for his

publishing projects;

however, one

cannot ignore the

possibility that his

scholarship also

holds some appeal

for his reading

audience,

regardless, or

because of, its

problematics.

5 Stavans’ authority

within the field is

evident when

Mendieta (2003)

includes Stavans in

his list of ‘‘Latino

intellectuals in the

United States, who

may qualify as

cosmopolitan and

postcolonial

intellectuals’’

(220).

6 Stavans indicates in

an interview with a

New York Times

blog (Garner,

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(2000) and ‘‘A Literary Critic’s Journey to the Culture at Large’’ (2002), I aim to

show how his theoretical approach to Latinidad has informed his ideas on

canon-formation. I consequently examine how critics of Latino/a Studies have

addressed Stavans’ influence, depicting Stavans as an anomaly within Latino/a

Studies and yet, also as an outsider to the field. As a result, these critiques do not

delve into Stavans’ shaping of the discipline. Further, I argue that the premises

used by scholars to dismiss Stavans’ authority actually serve to reinscribe it.

I conclude my article by reflecting on the ways in which Stavans’ understanding

of US Latino/a Studies resembles the institutional orientation of the field and its

disciplinary locations.

R o o t i n g t h e To n g u e O u t s i d e o f H i s t o r y

Conceptually speaking, Stavans employs a multiculturalist approach that is

premised upon the equation of culture with language.8 My use of the term

‘‘multiculturalist’’ (in opposition to multicultural) is derived from Stavans who

introduces this approach as a theoretical trend in US Latino/a Studies at the

close of his chapter, ‘‘Sanavabiche.’’ Stavans (1995) uses the term to reference

those who ‘‘argue that our racial reality today is unlike that of any period in

the past, that Eurocentrism will be replaced by a truly global culture, and that

bilingualism should be welcomed insofar as it helps the assimilation process’’

(180). I find it useful to appropriate Stavans’ concept precisely because it is itself

an appropriation: Stavans uses it to reference the idea of multiculturalism while

at the same time differentiating and distancing his vision from this social project

and its Civil Rights origins. I consequently use ‘‘multiculturalist’’ to denote the

co-opting of multiculturalism, what David Palumbo-Liu (1995) refers to in The

Ethnic Canon: Histories, Institutions, and Interventions as domesticated

difference (5). Stavans’ approach is evidence of a critical trend that employs

language and progressive concepts of social justice, and, owing to decontextua-

lization, these concepts can potentially serve very different political purposes.

Stavans’ reconquista of multiculturalism, adopting multicultural diversity to

signify as linguistic diversity, is therefore part of a broader trend of ‘‘liberal

accommodation’’ that Palumbo-Liu identifies within both Ethnic Studies and

literary studies (9). This interdisciplinary trend generates narratives of ‘‘social

harmonizing’’ by decontextualizing ethnic groups and their cultural production

from material and historical realities (12).

Reading Stavans’ work as part of a broader development of multiculturalist

approaches provides a context for analyzing how a linguistic definition of

multiculturalism can engender a colonialist reading of US Latino/a identity and

history. The equation of multiculturalism with multilingualism is particularly

evident at the opening of the chapter ‘‘Sanavabiche,’’ where Stavans (1995)

moves from race to language in asking the question: ‘‘Racial miscegenation but

2008) that the

book will meet his

standard of

colonial linguistic

lineage since ‘‘the

anthology goes

from the colonial

period to the

present.’’

7 Caminero-

Santangelo (2007)

alludes to Stavans’

influence on the

discipline of US

Latino/a Studies by

labeling another

critic as ‘‘in many

ways a direct

descendant of

Stavans’ The

Hispanic

Condition’’ (221).

8 I am not the first to

employ this term to

describe Stavans

and his

scholarship.

Christian (2005),

for example, cites

him as the

‘‘multiculturalist

Ilán [sic] Stavans’’

(45).

Ilan Stavans and Latino/a discourse

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also verbal. Will tomorrow’s spelling of the United States, in Spanish, be los

yunaited estates?’’ (153). In blurring the line between race and language,

Stavans reconfigures the effect of diversity on US nationalism in specifically

linguistic terms. He limits social change to the realm of language, a trans-

formation of spelling or pronunciation and this modification is not taking place

in mainstream English but rather, in Spanish. This conceptual move involves

what I consider a colonialist approach; Stavans, I suggest, is not actually

constructing a culturally hybrid Latino/a subject, but rather seeks to trace the

linguistic and, by extension, cultural purity of European roots through the

‘‘mother tongue, Spanish’’ (Stavans, 1995, xiii). By positively valorizing Spanish

colonization through language, Stavans glosses over sites of violence in order to

highlight this linguistic inheritance and formulate Latino/a identity in oppo-

sition to American indigenous cultures.9 Uncovering the way in which he

represents the indigenous as Other in his multiculturalist approach to Latinidad,

specifically through the figures of Christopher Columbus, La Malinche, and the

Quechua, is essential to understanding the colonialist underpinnings of how

Stavans structures the Latino/a literary canon as well. Looking closely at how

indigenous peoples are erased in this history of Las Américas, or rendered in

terms of a negative relationship to the global market, exposes the racial politics

informing Stavans’ theorization of US Latino/a culture and literature.

In defining ‘‘Spanish as the unifying force’’ of Latinidad (Stavans, 1995, 152)

and arguing that the rise of bilingual education programs accorded ‘‘Hispanic

culture a legitimate academic status’’ (155), Stavans equates language with

culture, and culture with language. This closed definition means that bilingual

education and its institutionalization can be depicted by Stavans as a symbol

of an already achieved social and political equality on the part of the US

Latino/a population, without taking into account that such academic programs

do not necessarily translate into or reflect a national de-marginalization of US

Latino/as. Stavans’ celebratory rendering of bilingual education’s political

potential is reductive, especially when one contemplates the complex function

and reception of bilingual programs. His interest lies not in the actual practice

of bilingual education, such as public policies and classroom practices, but in

asserting his own brand of abstract bilingualism. In downplaying all other facets

of culture, Stavans’ primarily linguistic formulation of US Latino/a identity

avoids an in-depth analysis of the uneven power dynamics of institutionaliza-

tion – of how the complexities of class, race, nation, or sexuality might fragment

his vision of Latino/a culture. Having cited Spanish as the primary marker of

US Latino/a identity,10 Stavans then also equates multilingualism with multi-

culturalism, adopting the language of equal rights and anti-colonial struggles

to narrate ‘‘a cultural war in which Hispanics are soldiers in the battle to

change America from within, to reinvent its inner core’’ (ibid, 11). For Stavans,

linguistic diversity will initiate a utopic future where equality means assimil-

ation into a new hybrid culture. Absent from this multiculturalist utopia is any

9 In the chapter,

‘‘Sanavabiche,’’

Stavans notes,

‘‘Today the United

States lives

partially en

español. Why

sacrifice the

benefits of a

mistake? Latinos

feel close to their

roots through

language, and

Spanish is slowly

becoming

ubiquitous’’ (169).

These linguistic

roots frame

Latino/as as an

extension of

Spanish (language)

colonization in Las

Américas.

10 This linguistic

formulation is

problematic since

there are US

Latino/as who do

not speak

Spanish, and the

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discussion of the economic, political, or material realities facing the US Latino/a

population – rather these are subsumed in order to privilege language as the

great equalizer. These linguistic politics are articulated via a language of

progressivism and positivism that veils the conservative logic of Stavans’ overall

project. Stavans’ appropriation of hybridity and multicultural politics is

particularly evident when he describes what he sees as ‘‘a refreshingly modern

concept [that] has emerged before American eyes – to live in the hyphen, to

inhabit the borderland’’ (ibid, 4). This valorization of diversity is limited, to the

extent that it is only applied to the realm of language, leading Stavans to

declare, ‘‘what was applauded in the multicultural age is a life happily lost and

found in Spanglish’’ (ibid, 10). This linguistic multiculturalism is ‘‘historically

enlightening’’ for Stavans and therefore part of his conceptual project in

Latino/a Studies centers upon narrating a history that fits the parameters of a

linguistically demarcated Latino/a subject (ibid, 4).

Stavans’ tendency to decontextualize US Latino/a history even as he narrates

its trajectory is a point of concern for many other critics. Juan Flores (2000)

notes that Stavans is ‘‘notably selective in his conception of the Latino canon

and the conditions of its formation’’ (173), while Louis Mendoza (2001) and

Paul Allatson (2006) have also concentrated on the gaps within Stavans’

historical narrative of the Latino/a population in the United States. My own

argument regarding the depiction of the indigenous body in Stavans is an

outgrowth of Mendoza’s (2001) assertion that Stavans ‘‘purposely ignores and

obfuscates the brutal complexities of US Latino history and culture’’ (80).

My intent is very much to uncover and analyze the function of these historical

silences. Allatson similarly draws attention to the strategic gaps in Stavans’

history while specifically addressing the treatment of indigenous culture within

that history. In analyzing Latino USA: A Cartoon History (2000), Allatson

(2006) also sees Stavans ‘‘discounting all claims to modern-world status of

indigenous Americans’’ to the extent that ‘‘the defeat and demise of Native

peoples can be attributed to the inherent y lacks of conquered indigenous

peoples’’ (26). In other words, indigeneity is inscribed as endemically anti-

modern. I am indebted to Allatson’s analysis of the indigenous as well as

the larger body of critical work on Stavans; my interest lies in building upon

the foundation of criticism on Stavans to demonstrate that his erasure of the

indigenous body is key to his formulation of US Latino/a identity. Since Allatson

(ibid.) suggests that correcting the ‘‘notable indigenous absence’’ of La Malinche

in the cartoon history ‘‘might have helped to push against the Euro-frame,’’

especially since she is the ‘‘subject of feminist revisions by numerous Mexican

and Chicana writers,’’ I’d like to look in-depth at the representation of such

indigenous presences when they do appear in Stavans’ writing and consider how

they are employed in order to sustain restrictive definitions of Latinidad (26). By

performing a close reading of his most well-known text, The Hispanic

Condition, and how it continues to shape Stavans as a public intellectual, my

opposition of

English and

Spanish ignores

the reality that

Latino/a

populations

incorporate other

languages, like

those of other US

minorities or

immigrants.

Sánchez (1992–

1996) analyzes

alternate sites of

linguistic contact

for US Latino/as.

Ilan Stavans and Latino/a discourse

417r 2009 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1476-3435 Latino Studies Vol. 7, 4, 410–434



goal is to render visible the colonialist framework organizing Stavans’ broader

theorization of Latino/a identity – in particular, his concern with tracing a pure

bloodline from the US Latino/a to Spain via his Latino/a language, Spanglish.

T h e I n d i g e n o u s a s L a t i n i d a d ’s O t h e r

In order to chart a multiculturalist future in The Hispanic Condition, Stavans

must also map out a past that seamlessly produces a Latino/a subject exclusively

circumscribed by language. The origins of this subject are represented in the

figures of Christopher Columbus and La Malinche. Columbus is described

as ‘‘the first American and already with a linguistic handicap’’ (Stavans, 1995,

163). In order to position him as a bilingual ‘‘first American,’’ Stavans must

decontextualize Columbus.11 This one descriptive phrase consequently has

several effects: first and foremost it erases the pre-Columbian indigenous

population of the Americas by negating their subjectivity as ‘‘first Americans.’’

This phrase consequently disassociates indigenous identity from American

identity. Second, it reimagines Columbus as an immigrant subject, decontex-

tualized from his colonialist imperative and instead defined by his multi-

lingualism. Third, it links Americanness with linguistic struggle through the

now whitewashed version of Columbus. Stavans’ description of what he terms

the contemporary ‘‘reconquista’’ of the United States is then dependent upon

framing Latino/as as the true inheritors of this colonial legacy: ‘‘yesterday’s

victim and tomorrow’s conquistadors’’ (ibid, 5). This formulation of Latino/as

as conquistadors implies also an erasure of many Other cultural inheritances,

whether of blackness as Juan Flores (2000) and William Luis (1997) point out,

or of an indigenous legacy.12 Stavans is more interested in how ‘‘when the

Spanish conquistadors first came to the New World they shared something only

the biblical Adam had: the naming of things’’ (1995, 167).13 The articulation of

European colonialism as possessing the sole capacity or power to name clearly

ignores the historical reality of the many Other cultures that possess this same

linguistic ability and contest the linguistic dominance of European culture.

However, an erasure of such realities is necessary in order for Stavans to

construct an untainted linguistic bloodline from the old conquistadors to the

new. This erasure makes it possible for Stavans to make the remarkable claim

that ‘‘social diversity was not y an issue’’ in 1787 when the US Constitution

was drawn up (1995, 155). Clearly, to consider the histories of slavery,

indigenous genocide, and immigration would contest the cultural and linguistic

inheritance that Stavans wishes to assert. Principally, these contexts would

rupture his narrative about the United States being a homogenous nation until

Latino/as arrive in the late twentieth century to hybridize American culture.

With Columbus as the model American, the contemporary Latino/a ‘‘conquest’’

serves as evidence of a link to a European and American colonizing project. In

11 I’m grateful to

Sobeira Latorre

for pointing out

that Bruce-Novoa

(1993) similarly

frames the

conquistador

subject when he

writes about

Cabeza de Vaca as

the ‘‘first’’

Chicano. Bruce-

Novoa’s example

underscores how

multiculturalist

formulations of

Latinidad can

potentially

inscribe a

colonialist lineage

for Latinidad.

Stavans (2000a)

reiterates the

representation of

Cabeza de Vaca, a

conquistador and

slaveowner, as the

‘‘first’’ Latino.

12 Flores (2000,

176) discusses the

‘‘vantage point of

those who need

not worry about

being taken for

Blacks or ghetto-

dwellers,’’ while

Machado Sáez

418 r 2009 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1476-3435 Latino Studies Vol. 7, 4, 410–434



effect, the new multilingualism that Stavans describes is idealistically aligning

Latinidad with Eurocentric empire as its only foundational culture.

La Malinche, a key indigenous persona that Allatson sees missing from

Stavans’ Latino USA graphic novel, appears in The Hispanic Condition as

another prop in the foundational fiction of conquest for Stavans. Stavans

represents La Malinche as ‘‘the conquistador’s mistress; an Aztec traitoress; and,

more than anything else, a translator and an interpreter’’ (1995, 157). The

relevance of this indigenous figure is her linguistic function, overshadowing or

annulling her indigeneity. Stavans asserts that she belongs among a set of gifts

obtained by Cortés: ‘‘Motecuhzoma II gave [him] gifts of gold and other

precious objects, [and] he offered y twenty slave girls, among whom was

La Malinche’’ (ibid, 157). Avoiding a discussion of the power relations between

slave and master, Stavans continues to frame La Malinche as object rather than

subject, a symbol of ‘‘love and language’’ (ibid, 157). She is a tool for the

conquistador: ‘‘through her, Cortés discovered his enemy’s real power and

strategy’’ (ibid, 157). La Malinche allows Stavans to explore the idea of

linguistic betrayal while reinforcing the association of linguistic power with

colonial power. As a result, La Malinche herself is not represented by Stavans as

a potential model for Latinidad. Rather, having fulfilled her linguistic function,

she fades into the background of this colonialist history and Cortés, the

conquistador, emerges as the model Latino. For Stavans, La Malinche is merely

a ‘‘memorable ghost story’’ (ibid, 148) whose origins lie only ‘‘at the dawn

of Hispanic-American history’’ (ibid, 157). This conception of La Malinche as

a ghost from the past is quite apt, bearing in mind how indigenous Others haunt

Stavans’ theorizations of Latinidad, always at the margins of that hybrid

modernity from which they are absented. Framing La Malinche in such a way

also enables Stavans to ignore the large body of work by Latina feminist critics,

who have sought to recover and revise the symbolism of this indigenous female

figure in order to frame her as culturally relevant to contemporary Chicana

subjectivity (cf. Anzaldúa, 1987; Alarcón, 1989; Gaspar de Alba, 2005).

La Malinche’s disconnection from Stavans’ multiculturalist future is pri-

marily owing to her indigeneity. Stavans’ description of the modern Quechua

population in The Hispanic Condition is reflective of the binary that he sets

up between indigenous identity and modernity. In order to give an example

of the disadvantages of not being a Latino/a subject, that is, of not possessing

two colonial languages, English and Spanish, Stavans looks to the Quechua-

speaking people, who he describes as ‘‘isolated in the northern Peruvian jungle,

alienated from Western civilization’’ (1995, 165). In particular, he imagines

what it would be like to ‘‘play a Beatles song for Quechuas,’’ assuming that the

music would sound so ‘‘inharmonious [and] incoherent’’ that ‘‘the Quechuas

might run away terrified after hearing the first sounds’’ (ibid, 165). If for

Stavans, ‘‘to translate is to adapt’’ (ibid, 165), then here he turns to the Quechua

as an example of those who cannot understand the wonder of the Beatles, who

Luis (1997, 282)

takes Stavans to

task for ‘‘omitting

mention of the

significant

numbers of

Africans and

Asians who reside

in the Caribbean

and South

America.’’

13 Latin American

Boom writers,

who play an

important role in

The Hispanic

Condition,

deployed this

Adam naming

myth in order to

position

themselves as the

first generation of

Latin American

writers.

Historically, of

course, there were

Latin American

writers who came

before them. Cf.

Sommer (1991,

especially ‘‘Part I:

Irresistible

Romance’’) for a

discussion of the

Boom’s dismissal

of its pre-texts.

Stavans takes the

Boom’s

relationship to its

precursors as a

model for his own

relationship to

other Latino/a

Studies critics,

whom he also

does not

acknowledge in

order to position

himself as the

‘‘first’’ Latino

critic.

Ilan Stavans and Latino/a discourse

419r 2009 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1476-3435 Latino Studies Vol. 7, 4, 410–434



cannot translate and as a result remain isolated from European modernity. In

fact, they are disconnected not just from a European bloodline of modernity, but

also from the market of popular culture, and for Stavans that is the other

important defining facet of Latino/a identity: a marketable identity for mass

consumption.14 This, then, is Stavans’ final judgment on indigenous culture and

why it is incompatible with his notion of Latinidad: to be indigenous is to also

be untranslatable and unmarketable. In tracing a US Latino/a lineage, Stavans

rejects indigenous culture in citing the Quechua, figuring such cultures as

outside of colonial linguistic influence and outside of a global market.15 At the

same time, Stavans must reference and restrict indigenous identity in such a way

because it serves as the negative double, the Other to Stavans’ multiculturalist

and colonialist formulation of a Latino/a subject. As with the figure of La

Malinche, Stavans’ formulation of the Quechua is presented in what appears to

be an intellectual vacuum. The rich discourses of feminist criticism and

indigenista theory16 must be erased in order for Stavans to posit indigenous

identity as linguistically static and anti-modern.

A p o l i t i c a l A n t h o l o g i e s a n d a C o l o n i a l i s t L i t e r a r y L i n e a g e

I move now to discussing how the representation of the indigenous in Stavans’

early work, The Hispanic Condition, serves as a context for understanding his

later publication projects, specifically his anthologies of US Latino/a literature.

In his Chronicle of Higher Education article, ‘‘The Quest for a Latino Literary

Tradition’’ (2000), Stavans calls for US Latino/a Studies to revisit Matthew

‘‘Arnold’s type of disinterested criticism’’ (B13þ , Para 27) while also stating his
preference for incorporating ‘‘authors who have chosen to switch languages’’ in

his anthologies (B13þ , Para 19). It is via this appeal for ‘‘disinterested
criticism’’ that Stavans positions himself as a representative of the objectivity

involved in such criticism, noting that his own formulation of Latinidad is

apolitical in its focus, isolating only the unifying quality of multilingualism. This

same linguistic logic is reiterated in the introduction to the Lengua Fresca

anthology (Augenbraum and Stavans, 2006), where Stavans praises the title

for ‘‘captur[ing] the verbal hoopla I’ve been so obsessed about’’ (xvii) and

proposes to his coeditor that they ‘‘shape a volume in which the language used

by Latino/as – Spanglish, in all its potentials, the lingua franca – serves as the

true protagonist’’ (xiv). The interest in making language the defining facet of the

anthologies is also tied to a concern with incorporating texts that have ‘‘less of

an ideological bent’’ (xvi). The association of an exclusively linguistic

construction of Latinidad with an apolitical approach to literature, however,

is disingenuous considering the broader context of a colonialist methodology

informing Stavans’ work. With a celebratory reading of empire’s history in Las

14 In our coauthored

book (2007),

Dalleo and I

analyze how

Stavans constructs

Latino/a identity

as a product for

mainstream

consumption.

Cf. chapter 4

(107–132).

15 Garcı́a Canclini

(1993, vii) cites

this ‘‘picture [of]

sentimentally

natural

communities by

capitalist

development’’ as

a ‘‘market

strategy’’ that

ignores how

popular culture is

‘‘the product of

the assimilation

of dominant

ideologies and the

contradictions of

oppressed

classes.’’ Stavans

could be

understood as

employing a

capitalist logic in

reading

indigeneity,

alongside that of

his colonialist

framework.

16 Arguedas (1957)

attests to the fact

that the Quechua

speak a variety of

dialects. There is

a large body of

analysis on the

indigenismo

Machado Sáez

420 r 2009 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1476-3435 Latino Studies Vol. 7, 4, 410–434



Américas, Stavans is far from disinterested in his theorization of US Latino/a

culture and anthologizing of Latino/a literature.

Investment in a multiculturalist politics of identity leads Stavans to also

employ a conservative lens in formulating the US Latino/a literary canon.

A colonialist framework is particularly evident in the title of his 1997 anthology,

New World: Young Latino Writers. In the introduction to this anthology,

Stavans asserts that the ‘‘very first novel by a Latino written in English was

Felipe Alfau’s amazing Locos: A Comedy of Gestures,’’ published in 1936

(1997, 2). Stavans also reveals that his categorization of this novel ‘‘often makes

critics uncomfortable, if anything because it was written by a Spaniard, who

traditionally was seen in Latin America and by Hispanics in the United States

as an aggressor’’ (ibid, 2).17 He goes on to explain that the resistance to

Alfau’s inclusion in the US Latino/a canon may also be motivated by the fact

that the author was ‘‘a fervent conservative, pro-Franco during the Spanish Civil

War and an acknowledged Republican in US politics’’ (ibid, 2). Stavans’

response to such criticism is to frame the objections as ideologically driven, that

they ignore the foundational role that Alfau played as ‘‘the very first to switch

languages successfully’’ (ibid, 2). At the same time, Stavans frames his own

motives for selecting Alfau as apolitical, asserting that, ‘‘no matter what

ideological viewpoint one professes, [Alfau] stands as a titanic innovator and a

door opener’’ (ibid, 2). Within the context of how the indigenous Other

functions in Stavans’ multiculturalist theory, I hope that it is evident that the

canonization of a fascist Spaniard as founding father of US Latino/a literature

is part of the seamless colonialist legacy that Stavans wishes to construct

and which requires him to ignore such writers as Marı́a Amparo Ruiz de

Burton (1885), among others,18 who would complicate this European literary

bloodline.

Indeed, Alfau as a European model not only reinforces the colonial roots

that Stavans endeavors to establish as the sole foundation of Latino/a identity,

but also exposes the conservative politics informing his theorizations under the

guise of an apolitical approach. The references to Matthew Arnold, Shakespeare

and Cervantes throughout Stavans’ work are a reflection of his commitment

to elite colonial cultures and literatures. The anthology projects by Stavans can

be thus understood as multiculturalist projects, deploying purportedly

progressive and/or apolitical discourse while advocating a colonialist linguistic

politics.19 Reading how the indigenous body operates within Stavans’

theorization of Latino/a identity provides us with an important context for

the anthologies of US Latino/a literature edited by Stavans. That indigenous

counter-model for Latinidad continues to be present even in the introduction to

the New World anthology, an indigeneity Stavans aligns with ‘‘some thinkers

vociferously opposed [to] the idea of a unified Latino history, claiming that

Hispanics were not, and would never be, a single throng’’ (1997, 4). Defending

the ‘‘harmonious’’ logic of his own position, Stavans argues for a ‘‘less tribal

movement and its

definition of

indigenous

identity; see

Rama (1981) and

Moreiras (2001).

17 Luis (1997, 284)

addresses the

literary model of

Alfau by

contesting the

categorization of

immigrant

Spaniard writers

as Latino/as.

Allatson (2006)

also remarks on

how Stavans’ use

of Alfau to

expand the

concept of

Latinidad enables

him to make

other

‘‘identificatory

anachronisms,’’

like labeling

Cabeza de Vaca as

a Latino (31).

18 William Carlos

Williams, Arturo

Alfonso

Schomburg and

Américo Paredes

produced major

works in English

before Alfau.

Stavans’ choice of

the ‘‘novel in

English’’ clearly

limits his Latino/a

literary lineage in

terms of genre

and excludes

these

Ilan Stavans and Latino/a discourse

421r 2009 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1476-3435 Latino Studies Vol. 7, 4, 410–434



future,’’ one which presumably cannot be defined by those ‘‘thinkers’’ who do

not articulate the same utopic modernity as Stavans. The ‘‘New World

discovering itself anew’’ is thus the dominion of Stavans alone, a ‘‘mythmaker

of the future’’ (ibid, 8). While he mentions ‘‘Others (like myself),’’ it is clear that

Stavans assigns himself the status of Other, of the marginalized, in order to

render alternative voices of critique as marginal and invisible within US Latino/a

Studies, in much the same way that he erases the indigenous body in his history

of Latinidad (ibid, 8).

C r i t i c a l C o n v e r s a t i o n s a n d t h e D i s m i s s a l o f I l a n S t a v a n s

My move to link The Hispanic Condition to Stavans’ public role in antho-

logizing Latino/a literature consequently serves to expand upon the arguments

of the few critics who critique his work in-depth: Paul Allatson, Juan Flores,

William Luis and Louis Mendoza. My interest in calling attention to these

critics stems from a desire to reintegrate and highlight the dynamic conversation

that does exist within US Latino/a Studies and to force a dialogue that Stavans

intentionally abjects from his own writing, as when he refuses to name other

critics.20 Mapping out the critical conversation surrounding Stavans also

permits us to review the analyses already applied to his work and on what terms

these critics argue for the critique of Stavans’ theories. Instead of addressing

the content of Stavans’ approach, the criticism all too often relies on a dismissal

of Stavans’ persona, which, as I will show, only serves to reinforce his own sense

of marginality and otherness. My hope is that shifting the focus onto the

colonialist underpinnings of Stavans’ writings will resituate him within the

field and show that he is not the anomalous, exceptional figure he imagines

himself to be.

Stavans’ persona is described in somewhat contradictory ways: as an anomaly

within the field and an outsider to the field. The singularity of Stavans as a critic

is usually argued on the basis of his popularity as a public figure. For example,

Louis Mendoza references the ‘‘unprecedented notoriety’’ of Stavans ‘‘as one of

the most public US Latino intellectuals of his time’’ (Mendoza, 2001, 79) and

Juan Flores (2000) refers to Stavans as ‘‘the critic who has been the

most intent on configuring a Latino literary canon in the 1990s’’ and who

‘‘has become the most frequent commentator on the subject’’ (172). By focusing

on discrediting Stavans’ authority as a too-popular or too-productive critic, the

majority of the critiques of Stavans do not address how Stavans’ work is an

outgrowth of fundamentally problematic conceptions of Latinidad that are

present within US Latino/a Studies. This is principally because critics frame

Stavans as the exception to the broader disciplinary trends in US Latino/a

Studies. By asserting Stavans’ agency-that his prominence is derived solely from

the way he locates himself-critics cannot discuss how Stavans is authorized or

foundational

writers.

19 The Lengua

Fresca anthology

(Augenbraum and

Stavans, 2006)

embodies the

various thematic

strains of Stavans’

theoretical work.

In keeping with

his self-

authorization

strategy, Stavans

includes his

translation, ‘‘Don

Quijote en

Spanglish,’’ as

well as comic

strips by Lalo

Lopez Alcaraz,

the artist who

illustrated

Stavans’ Latino

USA (2000).

Bilingualism also

organizes the text

with stories

written

completely in

Spanglish

(Giannina

Braschi), fiction

that contains

untranslated

Spanish (Oscar

Casares), or work

originally in

Spanish presented

alongside the

translation (song

by Lila Downs).

Stavans’ interest

in linking

language with the

market leads to

the inclusion of

popular culture

and music, with

lyrics by the Hip

Hop Hoodios and

a Spanglish food

Machado Sáez

422 r 2009 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1476-3435 Latino Studies Vol. 7, 4, 410–434



constitutive of the critical conversations taking place in the field of US Latino/a

Studies. For example, Paul Allatson (2006) confirms Flores’ representation of

Stavans’ ‘‘intent’’ by stating that ‘‘Stavans has positioned himself at the forefront

of US Latino Studies’’ (22). Certainly, Stavans’ personal narrative of ascendancy

is in many ways unavoidable; however, by limiting such arguments to

substantiating how Stavans is a mere performer and not representative of

Latinidad, these critiques overlook the possibility that Stavans is symbolic of

a broader disciplinary approach to Latinidad. For this reason, I find Frances

Negrón-Muntaner’s labeling of Stavans as a ‘‘Mexican philologist’’ in Boricua

Pop (2004) incredibly apropos. Her comment serves to link this critical trend of

representing Stavans as an anomaly to the other critical tactic that references

Stavans as both a biographical and disciplinary outsider.

The scholarly discourse consequently frames Stavans as an outsider to US

Latino/a Studies by also focusing on Stavans’ biography in order to critique his

work. For example, in his book From Bomba to Hip Hop (2000), Juan Flores

calls attention to the upper class background of Stavans as a context for his

critique of ‘‘the privileging of privilege’’ that Stavans performs in canonizing

immigrant Latino/a literature (175). By citing the fact that he ‘‘arrived from his

native Mexico as late as 1985,’’ Flores frames Stavans as an immigrant and

a non-native interloper in US Latino/a Studies (172). In his essay, ‘‘On Buffaloes,

Body Snatching, and Bandidismo,’’ Louis Mendoza (2001) reiterates that

Stavans was ‘‘born in a secluded upper middle-class Jewish enclave of Mexico

City in 1961’’ and completed his doctoral studies at an Ivy League institution,

‘‘Columbia University, where he received his PhD in Spanish in the early 1990s’’

(79).21 Following this biographical description of Ilan Stavans, Mendoza

mentions that many in the field of Latino/a Studies see Stavans as an ‘‘ambitious

outsider who has managed to present himself as an authentic spokesperson for

cultures and experiences he knows only from a distance’’ (ibid, 79–80). The

biographical analysis of Stavans consequently hinges on undermining his claim

to authenticity by pointing to the context of his adult immigration experience.

Of course, this type of critique is limited in scope because the question of

Latinidad itself is fraught with these same issues of geography, the line between

residency and belonging.22 Questions regarding the relationship between

identity politics and scholarship show how the biographical critiques of Stavans

are not successful or fruitful because they remain locked in a battle over who is

the authentic critical voice for US Latino/a Studies. This sort of academic power

struggle overlooks the issue of how Ilan Stavans authorizes his analyses.

Undoubtedly, the focus on Stavans’ persona is in many ways encouraged

by Stavans himself. Both Allatson and Luis point to the ways in which

Stavans inserts himself and his autobiography into his theoretical work on US

Latino/as. In his essay, ‘‘Ilan Stavans’ Latino USA: A Cartoon History (of a

Cosmopolitan Intellectual)’’ (2006), Allatson notes that the text is ‘‘committed

to elucidating the author’s own personal history’’ (21) by incorporating

menu from the

Parrot Club, a

restaurant in the

touristic section

of San Juan,

Puerto Rico.

20 In the 2001

foreword to the

second edition of

The Hispanic

Condition,

Stavans mentions

his critics

anonymously,

referring to

‘‘a few people

[who] felt

offended by my

portrait of

Latinos’’ (xi). In

the New World

anthology’s

introduction

(1997), Stavans

acknowledges

that some critics

disagree with his

labeling of Alfau

as a foundational

Latino writer, but

also neglects to

name these

scholars.

21 Luis (1997, 289)

generously

addresses how

Jewish culture

shapes Stavans.

Luis states that

‘‘it is Stavans’

Jewishness, I

believe, that

allows him to

identify with the

oppressed Latino

communities.’’

Here, Luis

articulates the

alliances possible

between Jewish

and Latino/a

populations. At

Ilan Stavans and Latino/a discourse

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‘‘endorsements of Stavans’ own publishing backlist’’ and having Stavans appear

‘‘in the text as its dominant icon [ y ] and an active participant in Latino

history’’ (22).23 William Luis (1997) also ‘‘wonders if Stavans’ search for Latino

identity is autobiographical, allowing him to read literary history from his own

perspective so that he can insert himself into the process he is describing’’ (288,

emphasis added). The autobiographical identification with Latinidad comes

at a cost, excluding Other points of experience because Stavans ‘‘differentiates

himself from other minorities such as blacks and Asians’’ and therefore

constructs US Latino/a identity in opposition to blackness and Asian ethnicity

(ibid, 282). While Luis sees this tendency towards self-insertion as a natural

byproduct of authorial inspiration, similar to how Gustavo Pérez-Firmat

integrates autobiography into his theoretical writings, Allatson ascribes a more

(c)overt function to the autobiographical elements. For Allatson (2006), Stavans

is in essence authenticating himself as a Latino subject, not only with the

authority to comment on the Latino/a experience but also as the only referent,

the only critic through which to understand that experience. The structure of

‘‘Stavans’ appropriation of Latino history and discourse [is such] that there is no

‘Latino’ without Stavans as, and at, its authorizing center’’ (22). In effect,

Stavans situates himself as an anomalous subjectivity that precisely because of

his unique subject position possesses the best voice for articulating Latinidad. If

self-authorization is the motive behind the autobiographical elements in his

work, it seems all the more unproductive to follow Stavans’ lead and critique his

conceptualization of US Latino/a identity by citing those same biographical

elements. For example, in the 2002 article, ‘‘A Literary Critic’s Journey to the

Culture at Large’’ from the Chronicle for Higher Education, Stavans asserts that

he ‘‘learned to be a critic, and pondered what a critic does, as a Mexican

immigrant in the United States’’ (B9). Since Stavans frames himself as an

outsider owing to his immigrant identity, employing that biographical

experience to dismiss Stavans as an outsider to the field of US Latino/a Studies

confirms Stavans’ self-definition as authentically marginal and, by extension,

reinscribes his authority to conceptualize his own marginality as making

him central to the field. After all, the biographical factors that academics cite to

de-authenticate Stavans are identical to those that Stavans uses to define himself

as a paradigm for Latinidad: ‘‘That is, Stavans’ story – he was born and lived in

Mexico City until moving to the USA in 1985 at the age of 24, where he went on

to complete a doctorate at Columbia University – functions implicitly as the

exemplary model of becoming and being Latino’’ (Allatson, 2006, 33). Stavans

does recognize that he has ‘‘spent the last decade reinventing [him]self,’’

effecting a transformation that meant ‘‘ceas[ing] to be a Latin American’’ and

‘‘becom[ing] a Latino’’ (B9). Dismissing Stavans by locating him as marginal to

the field or an anomaly within it, essentially accepts the terms of discussion that

Stavans sets up to assert his authenticity. As a result, this kind of self-enclosed

critical conversation about authenticity is destined to repeat or reinforce

the same time,

such a statement

can situate the

terms of Jewish

and Latino/a as

mutually

exclusive.

Formulating US

Latino/a identity

in opposition to

Jewish culture,

for example,

would potentially

exclude Jewish

Cuban-American

writers like Ruth

Behar and Achy

Obejas from the

US Latino/a

literary canon.

22 See Flores’ (2000)

chapter, ‘‘Life off

the Hyphen,’’ for

his theorization of

resident versus

immigrant

Latino/a

identities.

23 Allatson (2006,

34) analyzes

various scenes in

the Latino USA

comic book

where Stavans

inserts himself as

a historical figure

into key moments

of the Chicano

movement and

anti-Vietnam

struggles.

Machado Sáez

424 r 2009 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1476-3435 Latino Studies Vol. 7, 4, 410–434



Stavans’ desire to make his own identity the foundation of US Latino/a Studies

as a field.

Apart from the question of who Ilan Stavans is, US Latino/a Studies theorists

also pose important points of critique when addressing actual analyses that

Stavans produces and the manner in which he substantiates his arguments. For

example, Marta Caminero-Santangelo (2007) labels Stavans as ‘‘perhaps one of

the most problematic recent commentators on the ‘Hispanic’ peoples in the

United States’’ (221). Scholars specifically express concerns about the disci-

plinary focus that Stavans takes on as too broad and sacrificing the national

particularities which are encompassed by his pan-ethnic theorizations:

‘‘unfortunately what is gained through this potentially welcome framework of

cultural kinship and solidarity is lost in the need for specificity and more

rigorous differentiation among the varied group perspectives’’ (Flores, 2000,

173). Critics are also concerned with the rationale underlying certain choices

in terminology, for example, William Luis sees an assimilationist logic at

work in the way Stavans distinguishes between the terms ‘‘Latino’’ and

‘‘Hispanic’’ (282–283).24 The question of discipline arises for Louis Mendoza

(2001) as well, who seeks to ‘‘illustrate the non-scholarly approach that Stavans

assume[s]’’ in a book on Oscar Zeta Acosta (84). Stavans’ exploration of

Chicano identity through Acosta has drawbacks because of the means that

Stavans employs:

Stavans does not provide sources for his references to Acosta criticism or

other quotes he uses within his essay. Indeed, three of the five footnotes in

the entire book are citations to Stavans’s own work, and of the other two,

one is an incomplete reference to the 1990 census and the last is an

explication of Acosta’s thinly veiled allusions to historical figures. (84)

Mendoza’s concerns regarding Stavans’ ‘‘undertheorized scholarship’’ (84),

which are corroborated by other scholars such as Eliot Weinberger (1994),25

also bring up the matter of authenticity, this time in relation to Stavans’

authority as an academic. The critics therefore take issue with Stavans’

conceptualizations of Latinidad as well as the way his work rejects engagement

with the existing disciplinary discourse within US Latino/a Studies. Stavans’

refusal to see himself in dialogue with the past and present critical conversation

within Latino/a Studies gives credence to Allatson’s analysis of how Stavans

establishes himself as the sole center of US Latino/a discourse in his writing.26

In reviewing how US Latino/a critics of Stavans have separately analyzed

certain aspects of his persona and work, I hope that my article has reinforced

the ways in which his conceptualizations of hybridity, language, and Euro-

centrism are integrally linked. While these major critics at times reinforce the

terms by which Stavans authenticates himself, all of these academic assessments

function as valuable counternarratives to the public success story that Ilan

24 Luis (1997, 283)

notes that Stavans

defines Latino/as

as US citizens,

and Hispanics as

populations

outside the

borders of the

United States,

while at the same

time claiming that

Latino/as are also

Hispanics. Luis

sees this equation

as ‘‘problematic’’

because ‘‘it is

difficult to

fathom that a

recent immigrant

changes his

identity

immediately upon

arrival.’’

25 Weinberger

(1994, 125)

exemplifies the

critiques made

regarding the

quality of

Stavans’

scholarship, but

from the specific

perspective of

Ilan Stavans and Latino/a discourse

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Stavans promotes and that is endorsed by the public sphere. By highlighting

how the conceptual strategies that Stavans employs in formulating Latinidad

are emblematic of the disciplinary trends within US Latino/a Studies, I am

attempting to circumnavigate the impasse these scholars encounter. The next

necessary analytical step towards accomplishing this is confronting the concep-

tual contradiction at the center of this critical discussion: how can one can speak

about the symbolism of a scholar who is branded by critics, and at the same

time labels himself, as an outsider within US Latino/a Studies? My answer is to

discuss Stavans as symptomatic of critical trends in US Latino Studies rather

than a source of negative influence or infiltration. Paul Allatson (2006) helpfully

summarizes some of the major disciplinary accomplishments claimed by

Stavans, stating that his

status is exemplified by Stavans’s stewardship of the first course in

Spanglish offered by a U.S. university (Amherst, in 2000), and by a prolific

publishing record, including y numerous anthologies, that has helped to

establish Latino Studies in the academy, and to spread the word about the

latinization of the U.S.A. outside that country’s campuses, and, indeed, the

country itself. (22)

On the one hand, this list of accomplishments must be scrutinized carefully

since it is in part produced by Stavans’ own self-marketing as a groundbreaking

academic. For example, the construction of Stavans as the first professor to

teach a class in Spanglish is questionable, especially when one thinks of the

multiple disciplinary sites where such conversations are possible and where

surely Spanglish has been employed long before 2000: Women’s Studies, Ethnic

Studies, African American Studies, Language, and Literature departments. Also,

many classrooms have engaged in Spanglish without necessarily having

administrative legitimization, so the earliest example of a course in Spanglish

cannot be attributed to Stavans simply because he has formalized such a class at

his own institution.

On the other hand, if we find the scholarship of Stavans problematic, then an

open conversation about how Stavans is merely the most visible representative

of a broader trend is necessary and fruitful. For instance, how can we see his

ideas about Latinidad playing out in academic institutional structures or in

terms of the publishing market? How is his role as editor of anthologies and

series like ‘‘The Ilan Stavans Library of Latino Civilization’’ from Greenwood

Press, an outgrowth of particular formations and practices of US Latino/a

Studies? My goal is to continue the conversation already evident in the field

about Stavans and expand it to a dialogue about his model of Latino/a Studies,

while also keeping in mind the potential risk of reinforcing Stavans’ mythic

construction of his academic significance. In thinking through how Stavans

privileges language in his multiculturalist and colonialist formulations of

Latin American

Studies. Like

Mendoza,

Weinberger reads

Stavans as

‘‘covertly pitching

himself’’ in his

scholarship.

Weinberger also

identifies flaws of

decontextualization

and ‘‘factual

misinformation

[and] deliberate

omissions’’ within

Stavans’ writing

on Octavio Paz

(120–121).

26 Stavans avoids

aligning himself

with the broader

intellectual

community of

Latino/a Studies

in the New York

Times blog

interview. Stavans

misinterprets the

question about

‘‘whose books are

generally shelved

next to yours in

bookstores’’,

answering instead

about the books

in his ‘‘personal

library’’ (Garner,

2008). The

personal narrative

about Stavans’

home library

becomes a way to

distance himself

from bookstores’

public space. This

autobiographical

tendency within

Stavans’ work

serves to

circumscribe

himself as the sole

embodiment of

Machado Sáez

426 r 2009 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1476-3435 Latino Studies Vol. 7, 4, 410–434



Latino/a identity, we can discuss to what extent this linguistic framework

circulates. For example, analyzing what role these approaches play in the

anthologizing of US Latino/a literature as well as in the development of US

Latino/a Studies as a field of study within the academy. In other words, how is

Stavans’ work indicative of a general shift in the location and institutionaliza-

tion of Latino/a Studies as an academic discipline?

C o n t e x t u a l i z i n g S t a v a n s w i t h i n B r o a d e r D i s c i p l i n a r y S h i f t s

It is therefore important to also consider the disciplinary context out of which

Stavans emerged in order to trace the broader implications of the Eurocentric

colonial inheritance he seeks to establish as the primary foundation of

US Latino/a identity. Stavans himself (2002) notes that his immigration to the

US and emergence as a scholar coincided with a particular historical context:

‘‘my move north of the border at a time when multiculturalism has been in

vogue and debates rage on bilingual education, affirmative action, and the

shaping of the Western canon has sharpened my views’’ (B9). For that reason,

I’d like to close this article by meditating upon the disciplinary shifts that

opened up a certain discursive space that Ilan Stavans was perhaps one of the

first to explore and therefore embodies one type of approach to the field of US

Latino/a Studies. Although the biographical trajectory of Stavans’ academic

career has been well noted by critics, Stavans’ shift from Latin American Studies

to US Latino/a Studies has not been previously linked to a larger historical and

disciplinary context. In the Fall 2007 Newsletter of LASA, Gilberto Arriaza and

Roberto Rivera make the argument that the Latin American Studies Association

is uniquely situated to take a leadership position in analyzing the growth of the

US Latino/a population. This article, ‘‘Angels Dancing on the Head of A Pin?,’’

is published following the 2007 LASA Convention in Montreal, a conference

dedicated to the theme of a ‘‘Post-Washington Consensus’’ and that reflected

upon the formation of Latin American Studies as a field. The two key moments

of this disciplinary narrative include the National Defense Education Act of

1958, which viewed such studies as an integral part of winning the Cold War, as

well as the 1980s Washington Consensus that encouraged neoliberal and

capitalist models of development for ‘‘Third World’’ countries. The call to

analyze a ‘‘post’’ is an acknowledgement not only of the end of the Cold War

period but also a need to redefine the goals of Latin American Studies – the shift

towards US Latino/a Studies is then conceived as an attempt to resolve a

disciplinary crisis. However, this desire for a new disciplinary vision, one that

sees the ‘‘phenomenal growth of the Latino(a) population in the United States

[as] worth examining,’’ must also be contextualized (Arriaza and Rivera, 2007,

29). Arriaza and Rivera mention that during the 1990s, ‘‘a nativist inspired

backlash against the increasing presence of Latinos’’ emerged (ibid, 29). What

US Latino/a

Studies as a field.

Ilan Stavans and Latino/a discourse

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can be implied then is that while the public sphere within the United States

during the 1970s and 1980s sought to address a perceived communist threat

outside of US borders, the post-Cold War public sphere is shaped by concerns

about growing populations within its borders. If Latin American Studies as a

discipline was shaped by numerous and perhaps contradictory forces, I would

argue that we should also think about the ways in which multiple contestatory

histories have also played a role in the institutionalization of US Latino/a

Studies. While the contexts of civil rights and the market have been addressed

within Latino/a Studies, the new role that Latin American Studies is seeking to

play in Latino/a Studies must be analyzed further.27

Not coincidentally, Stavans’ own academic trajectory is symptomatic of this

shift in disciplinary boundaries. Stavans completed his PhD at Columbia

University in 1990 – a date that could be considered as marking the end of the

Cold War – and his dissertation took Mexican detective novels as its subject.

Five years later, Stavans published The Hispanic Condition, cementing his status

as ‘‘the czar of Latino literature’’ (Richardson, 1999, 13). I would argue that

Stavans’ successful insertion into US Latino/a Studies is part of the larger

disciplinary reorientation taking place within Latin American Studies. I am not

suggesting that Stavans must also be emblematic of the disciplinary approach

that Latin American Studies employs to address its intersections with the field of

US Latino/a Studies; in fact, he represents only one of many methodologies

possible for understanding these intersections. However, analyzing Stavans’

own neoliberal investment in US Latino/a Studies and the organizing logic he

employs should hopefully encourage us to view such disciplinary shifts with

some caution. Stavans represents one emerging path of Latin American Studies,

and neoliberalism is a useful context by which to reconcile Ilan Stavans’

‘‘apolitical’’ equation of multiculturalism with linguistic difference as part of a

Eurocentric colonialist orientation. In other words, his advocacy of multi-

culturalism in terms of consumption, rather than social justice, reflects an

interest in the privatization of multiculturalism as a collective asset or global

product, decontextualized from a specific context or locale. His multiculturalist

valorization of consumption then correlates with neoliberalism’s focus on free

market capitalism and economic freedom as primary to, or engendering,

political freedom. Stavans’ outlining of a Eurocentric colonialist lineage for

the US Latino/a subject reveals that his multiculturalist approach is indeed

political. Here I concur with Flores’ assertion that Stavans’ academic training

has shaped his theorization of Latinidad: ‘‘his professional training in Spanish

and Latin American literatures allows him to range widely – though often

diffusely – over the ‘Hispanic’ literary landscape in the widest sense’’ (Flores,

2000, 172–173). In particular, we should be more attuned to the extent to which

exclusively language-based definitions of Latinidad marginalize Other aspects

of the US Latino/a experience, such as race, class, gender, and sexuality.

Stavans’ articulation of the common linguistic inheritance by which to forge a

27 Dávila (2001)

analyzes how

commercial

discourse has

shaped US

Latino/a

subjectivity as

well as the

intersection

between the civil

rights movement

and Hispanic

marketing.

Aparicio ties the

emergence of

Latino/a Studies

in the academy to

civil rights

struggles in a

2003 interview

with Juan

Zevallos Aguilar.

Machado Sáez

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transnational link between Latino/as and Latin Americans is based upon the

privileging of Spanish colonialism as a utopian site of cultural origin, glossing

over the violence perpetrated by colonization upon Other bodies, for example,

the indigenous body. By positioning Stavans as symptomatic of one trend in

Latin American Studies, rather than simply a discursive anomaly, we can be

more conscious and self-critical of how our work can overlap with his

problematic approach to theorizing Latinidad.

As for the disciplinary homes of US Latino/a Studies, the established historical

narrative about the emergence of such programs is that the Civil Rights

struggles brought many of the Ethnic Studies departments to fruition through

grassroots activism at the academic level, with public universities serving as the

first battlegrounds for the integration of previously marginal area studies.

Frances Aparicio (2003) concisely describes this process by explaining that,

‘‘Latino Studies developed as an academic field in the late 1960s and early

1970s and was triggered by the battles fought by minorities in the United States

who sought to defend their civil rights’’ (3–4). Since these movements

‘‘demanded programs that would reflect their history and culture in academic

settings,’’ the consequence was Chicano Studies departments in

the Southwest and West coast, Puerto Rican Studies in the Northeast (ibid,

4). The precursors to a pan-ethnic formulation of US Latino/a Studies were

these localized struggles of particular Latino/a groups, which produced inter-

disciplinary fields of study that were for the most part heavily geared towards

the social sciences because of the fact that this institutionalization occurred

as part of ‘‘a larger framework of labor battles’’ (ibid, 4). In his essay, ‘‘Moving

From the Margins to Where? Three Decades of Latino/a Studies,’’ Pedro Cabán

(2003) describes different types of institutional positioning derived from

a broad shift from marginalized enclaves to transgressive units within the

university to the absorption of the field into departments such as American

Studies. While Cabán does note that these three levels of academic incorpora-

tion all continue to coexist, his analysis seems to concur with Frances Aparicio’s

(2003) description of how the ‘‘cultural nationalism of the Chicano and

Nuyorican movements has transformed itself y into what we call Latino

Studies’’ (4).

In the progression towards absorption, Ilan Stavans has been a central

representative of this approach as both an emphatic supporter and purveyor of

pan-ethnic Latino/a Studies, playing a significant role in the development of

literary studies as a US Latino/a Studies field. Literature departments, especially

those constituted by language categories such as English and Spanish, face

structural challenges in dealing with the transnational orientation of such a field

and as a result, the linguistic parameters of literary canons are used to imply or

invoke political, cultural, and national boundaries on Latinidad. For example,

one basic restriction implied by departmental categorization is that literature

taught in an English department is written in English and that taught in

Ilan Stavans and Latino/a discourse

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a Spanish department is written in Spanish. While some members of both

disciplines have sought to destabilize the assumptions upon which they were

established by challenging these boundaries, literary analyses and classroom

practices can potentially reinforce those entrenched disciplinary values. The

disciplinary formation of US Latino/a literature, regardless of its departmental

home, renders it uniquely susceptible to the model of Latinidad that Stavans

represents, in particular, that of his totalizing equation of language with cultural

politics. More specifically, Ilan Stavans’ multiculturalist and linguistic definition

of Latinidad has reinforced the celebratory logic that a particular language,

which in the case of Stavans is Spanglish or Spanish, is always already

progressive. Highlighting the Eurocentric colonialist logic underlying these

theorizations of Latinidad shows that progressive linguistic politics can

potentially veil a conservative cultural politics. That is not to say that other

sites for US Latino/a Studies, such as interdisciplinary studies departments

like Ethnic Studies or American Studies, don’t come with their own set of

challenges. Scholars like David Palumbo-Liu (1995) and John Carlos Rowe

(2000) discuss how various disciplinary locations often operate on a

nationalistic and ghettoizing logic in regards to multicultural histories and

literatures. And certainly, many positive consequences have emerged from

teaching US Latino/a literature within English and Spanish departments, for

example, contesting entrenched notions of linguistic purity as well as encou-

raging the recognition of the transnational cultural production that is often

marginalized within the discipline. Progressive US Latino/a critics have also

delineated language as a productive facet of Latinidad; Juan Flores and George

Yúdice (1993), for example, have noted that ‘‘language, then, is the necessary

terrain on which Latinos negotiate value and attempt to reshape the institutions

through which it is distributed’’ (204). Nevertheless, a qualifier follows this

statement: ‘‘this is not to say that Latino identity is reduced to its linguistic

dimensions’’ (ibid, 204). With the context of the public narrative and work of

Ilan Stavans serving as a cautionary note, it is this qualifying statement that

I want us to interrogate more closely.

E x p a n d i n g t h e D i a l o g u e a n d B u i l d i n g A c a d e m i c C o m m u n i t i e s

In closing, I’d like to return to Debra A. Castillo’s (2005) idea of ‘‘ongoing

discussions’’ to discuss another interdisciplinary dialogue that is productive and

‘‘muted’’ or ignored by Stavans: that between Latino/a Studies and other US

Ethnic fields of study, such as African American Studies. For example, in

thinking about the market popularity of Stavans, Michael Eric Dyson’s chapter,

‘‘It’s Not What You Know, It’s How You Show It: Black Public Intellectuals’’

from Race Rules (1996), provides a useful and relevant analysis of the vetting

Machado Sáez

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process for such public figures. One of the problems that Dyson also alludes

to as a contextual factor is that of the fruitless infighting within the field

between public intellectuals. Certainly, few critics in US Latino/a Studies have

gained the kind of recognition that scholars such as Houston Baker, Jr., Henry

Louis Gates, bell hooks and Cornell West have acquired in the broader public

sphere. While mainstream status doesn’t seem to be as much of a concern or

challenge, it is perhaps equally important to continue developing a standard of

critical generosity within US Latino/a Studies in order to encourage a fruitful

community-based discourse within the field. By critical generosity, I do not

mean a pass on problematic theorizations of Latinidad, but rather a mode of

critical engagement that assumes as a given that all of us who are engaged in

such scholarly work are working towards a common goal. Ilan Stavans is

symbolic of one approach within the field, that is a point we must acknowledge,

but only in tandem with an attention to those critics who Stavans may not be

willing to recognize, those who have also played a role in the development of

US Latino/a Studies: Rudolfo Anaya, Gloria Anzaldúa, Suzanne Oboler, and

Silvio Torres-Saillant, to name a few (in addition to those already referenced

in the course of this article). Precisely because Stavans has chosen to avoid

the dynamic work of US Latino/a Studies critics, we must make sure to

acknowledge in our own research and writing those who have paved the way

and are part of the current conversation, as a means of imagining a more

productive horizon for future dialogue.

Only a genuinely interdisciplinary discussion about US Latino/a Studies can

fully address the difficulties encountered in conceptualizing US Latino/a

identity. This article is the product of the rich debate created by the 2008

‘‘Nuestra América in the United States?: A US Latino/a Studies Conference’’ at

the University of Kansas, coordinated by Marta Caminero-Santangelo. Unlike

other major fields that are supported by organizations like the Caribbean

Studies, Latin American Studies or Modern Language Associations, there is

currently no annual conference or academic association primarily dedicated to

US Latino/a Studies. In part, the historical lack of an established intellectual

forum for US Latino/a Studies has created a vacuum, an academic gap, wherein

one scholar, such as Stavans, can be understood by the public sphere to speak

for an entire academic field. Obviously, the marginalization of US Latino/a

Studies within Latin American Studies and within American Studies has also

contributed to this gap. A new vision of US Latino/a Studies as a field unto itself

can yield productive projects such as an annual conference, but additional

modes of instantiating an intellectual community are possible via publishing

and the Internet. Numerous academic journals are already playing a vital role in

the development of US Latino/a Studies, inscribing a truly interdisciplinary

scholarly community premised on dialogue. Online resources can also serve

as an alternative public sphere wherein the field can develop a presence

through a collective project of defining and refining US Latino/a

Ilan Stavans and Latino/a discourse

431r 2009 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1476-3435 Latino Studies Vol. 7, 4, 410–434



Studies.
28

These kinds of activist engagements within US Latino/a Studies will

reformulate the horizons of the field and also engender a discussion of

intellectual inheritances. By interrogating the phenomenon of Ilan Stavans as a

public intellectual, Latino/a Studies can work through the discursive proble-

matics that he represents, in particular, the theorization of hybridity and

bilingualism. Engaging with Stavans and forcing a debate that his work avoids is

the most effective means of countering his reconquista of US Latino/a Studies.

Rather than ceding the public sphere to a colonialist vision of multiculturalist

Latino/a discourse, a US Latino/a Studies collective can productively analyze

disciplinary shifts and develop complex counternarratives on Latino/a

subjectivity, culture and history.

A c k n o w l e d g e m e n t

Many thanks to Raphael Dalleo and Sobeira Latorre for their revision

suggestions on various drafts of this article. I’m also grateful to the participants

of the 2008 Nuestra América conference at the University of Kansas for their

feedback on the conference presentation version of this article. Thanks

especially to Trenton Hickman for bringing William Luis’ analysis of Stavans

to my attention and to Randy Ontiveros for posing questions that helped me

expand upon my ideas regarding Stavans’ significance to the field of Latino/a

Studies.

A b o u t t h e A u t h o r

Elena Machado Sáez is Associate Professor in the Department of English at

Florida Atlantic University. She is the coauthor of The Latino/a Canon and the

Emergence of Post-Sixties Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). Machado

Sáez has also published articles on Caribbean and US Latino/a literatures in

journals such as Anthurium, MELUS, Phoebe, Sargasso and Small Axe. Her

current book project focuses on contemporary historical fiction by Caribbean

diasporic writers, including Julia Alvarez, Junot Dı́az, Cristina Garcia and Ana

Menéndez.

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28 El Puerto Rican

Embassy, one

model of this type

of online project,

can be found at

http://www.

elpuertorican

embassy.org/.

Machado Sáez

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