We are pleased to present this second issue of 452ºF Journal of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature. Behind it we find the work and effort of an Editorial Board which includes new members, as well as the support of an International Advisory Board that continues to offer its work to enforce this project. Moreover, we also have to mention the financial support granted by the Consell Social (UAB) through its Programa Universitat i Societat, and by the ETC from the same university.
For this monographic section of 452ºF we decided to focus on the interest created by postcolonial and subaltern studies, as well as on the discussion of comparative literature as the discipline that aims to overcome the national identifications of literature. We have tried to present some ways in which those disciplines are productive for literary theory; different kinds of strategies they use to approach the literary event, and which are their contributions to the literary corpus. Thus, we can ask ourselves if there is a certain stagnation of criticism in its approach to the texts; in other words, whether new literary proposals have not been incorporated to theoretical thought, or whether on the contrary they reveal their productivity in practice. We proposed two ways to organize the problematization of the relation between national identities and literature. On the one hand, we suggested the analysis of literary texts that would argue, propose or ask themselves about national identities. For this line of analysis we did not want to be led by already-established conceptualizations of the nationalities those literatures are assigned to. We have valued those approaches that suggest breaking and questioning the established, as well as those articulations that justify traditional assignments when the approach is well-supported and original.
On the other hand, we were also interested in the questioning through original disciplinary and theoretical reflections that would provide possible answers to the problematization of the immovable relation within the noun phrase national literature, a dismantling of the naturalness of this relation that has been developing in different areas of the academia. The concepts of deconstruction (Derrida), postnationality (Gabilondo, Castany Prado, Resina), postcoloniality (Bhabha, Said), empire and globalization (Hart, Negri), nomadism (Gnisci), subalternity (Spivak) and the identity as rhizome (Deleuze—Guattari) are only a few that can be incorporated to a new reflection on national identity and its relation with the disciplines that study literature. We have tried to find contemporary approaches to the subject, both in their attempts to understand the present situation of literature and its study, and also in their overview of the state of the art in different geographical areas.
The Monographic section of this issue includes four collaborations. In “Apología de la literatura inmigrante”, Paula Meiss starts analysing migratory travel literature as a new subgenre, to conclude questioning not only the concept of “national literature”, but also the understanding of national identities that comparative literature proposes. “Interrogating Notions of Nationhood, Nation and Globalization in Postcolonial Africa” by Elda and Chipo Hungwe is based on the close reading of four novels that interestingly exemplify the transition from a criticism that is born out of postcolonial thought, to an analysis that differentiates itself through its focus on concepts such as “nation,” “nationality,” ethnicity” or “nationalism." The third article, “My Name Is Legion: Literature and Genealogy in António Lobo Antunes” by Aino Rinhaug, is based on Foucault’s and Deleuze's theoretical proposals, aiming at the better understanding of the power relations that articulate the discourse on the nation, and the nation as a discourse. The last article of the monographic section, “Re-enacting the Nation: Unsettling Narratives in the El Güegüense Theatre of Nicaragua”, by Alberto Guevara, carries out a comparison between the critical reading of the play and the different stage productions of it in different festivities, to propose the dramatic genre as a site where the homogeneity of cultures and identities are questioned through mestizaje.
The Miscellany section also has four articles. Raquel de Medeiros Marcato in “Gênero comercial em evidência: O filme Cidade de Deus manipula a realidade?” attacks the stereotypes that commercial cinema makes use of in order to represent realistic violence. Владимир Луарсабишвили’ s article “«к переводу стихотворения г. арести ‘Defenderé la casa de mi padre’” presents some of the poetic translation problems that we can find when dealing with two languages that do not have an extensive interchange. It is a special collaboration for this issue in its Basque version, written by the same translator whose work is analysed in the article. Leticia Pérez in “The Surrealist Collection of Objects” analyses the object collecting that different Surrealist artists practiced as an expression of a certain positioning towards the materialism of society. Last, but not least, Melissa Guenther offers in “L’Espagne sous le regard d’une Française: la Relation du voyage d’Espagne (1691) de Madame d’Aulnoy” a contrast between Spanish and French feminine representations, under the gaze of a female traveller of the 17th century.
Probably one of the most interesting proposals of our understanding of the monographic section of this second issue of 452ºF lies in the fact that it does not suggest continuity, but a breaking-off. We invite the reader to actually read and interpret: to be critical; and we hope that s/he is not left indifferent to the proposal we offer. The aim of the journal’s second issue is to provide original perspectives and, to a certain extent, a summary of the aspirations of the journal as an instrument of spreading and updating knowledge: we offer a selection done today to understand what is happening today around literature.
