Cervantes and the Politics of Reading

—a conference organized by Barbara Fuchs, University of California, Los Angeles

co-sponsored by the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, UCLAThe second part of Don Quijote, which turns 400 in 2015, provides a powerful example of early modern reflexiveness. The text famously comments upon its antecedent first part, its own decorum and verisimilitude, and the material circumstances of a text’s production and translation. Its Muslim “second author” and Morisco translator also weigh in, multiplying the dizzying perspectives from which the text and its reading are assessed. Yet the 1615 Quijote is also remarkable for its sustained meditation on politics: the question of Sancho’s class mobility and his obligation to his master; the spectacle of the Dukes’ decadent excess and Sancho’s experience as governor of their “ínsula” Barataria; the extended account of the exile from Spain of the Morisco Ricote and his family. This conference hones in on the intersection of these questions to think about the politics of reading in this second Don Quijote, as in Cervantes’ work more broadly: how does the text’s reflexiveness politicize reading itself? How does its constant awareness of reading and readers translate into a reflection on authority and power? How do the second part’s material investments—its awareness of itself as a concrete, belated object—inform its conception of class and social organization?

The conference marks this important anniversary by engaging some of the most exciting Cervantistas working in the United States today to think through how the history of reading can also be a history of politically engaged texts, of which Don Quijote provides a magnificent example.

Speakers
Mercedes Alcalá-Galán, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Georgina Dopico Black, New York University
Enrique García Santo-Tomás, University of Michigan
Steven Hutchinson, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Javier Irigoyen-García, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Jacques Lezra, New York University
Adrienne L. Martín, University of California, Davis
Dale Shuger, Tulane University

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Program

8:30 a.m.
Morning coffee and registration

9:00 a.m.
Barbara Fuchs, University of California, Los Angeles
Welcome

9:15 a.m.

Session 1: Mapping and Resistance
Chair: John Dagenais, University of California, Los Angeles

Mercedes Alcalá-Galán, University of Wisconsin–Madison
“Imaginary Cartographies in Don Quixote”

Enrique García Santo-Tomás, University of Michigan
“Recasting Roque”

Discussion

10:45 a.m.
Coffee Break

11:00 a.m.

Session 2: The Politics of Otherness
Chair: Jesús Torrecilla, University of California, Los Angeles

Javier Irigoyen-García, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
“Moorishness as Absence in Cervantes’ Don Quixote”

Steven Hutchinson, University of Wisconsin–Madison
“The African Backdrop in Don Quixote”

Discussion

12:30 p.m.
Lunch

1:30 p.m.

Session 3: Genre and Translation
Chair: Barbara Fuchs, University of California, Los Angeles

Georgina Dopico Black, New York University
“’Con major plectro’: The Politics of Genre in Don Quixote II”

Jacques Lezra, New York University
“Sovereignty or Translation: Sancho’s Decisions”

3:00 p.m.
Coffee Break

3:15 p.m.

Session 4: Reading Difference
Chair: Sherry Velasco, University of Southern California

Adrienne L. Martín, University of California, Davis
“Don Quijote and the Politics of Critical Animal Studies”

Dale Shuger, Tulane University
“Cross Words: Cervantes, Representation, and the Symbol of the Cross”

Discussion

4:45 p.m.
Conclusions/Roundtable Discussion

5:15 p.m.
Reception