GALDÓS, ETXEITA, RIZAL – MADRID, MUNDAKA, MANILA: ON COLONIAL DISAVOWAL AND (POST) IMPERIAL ARTICULATIONS OF THE HISPANIC PACIFIC-ATLANTIC

Abstract

This article traces the articulation of “colonial disavowal” in the works of Pérez Galdós (Fortunata y Jacinta), José Manuel Etxeita (Josetxo) and José Rizal (Noli me tangere) in order to map out a Hispanic Atlantic-Pacific defined by the self-effacing quality of the Pacific space. The article centers on the Hispanic Pacific and its disavowal, as it is articulated through references to Manila in all three novels, in order to show how it is the central sight from which colonial disavowal can be studied in all three literary traditions while decentering and fragmenting any Spanish or Hispanist appropriation of Spanish imperialist history. The article concludes that a new global and post-Hispanist articulation of the Hispanic Pacific must be deployed in order to use its self-effacing character against nationalist realities such as the Spanish, the Filipino, or the Basque, so that a different trans-post-colonial history is written against the nationalist Hispanic/Hispanist grain.