Language, Text, Subject: Critique of Hispanism

The central concern of this radically innovative study is tooffer a critique of traditional Hispanism in the light of its assumption of atranscendental subject and its corresponding insistence on the autonomy of theliterary text. Rereading canonic Spanish texts from Renaissance humanism tomodernist literature, Read deploys a theoretical basis of post-structuralistthinking and brings Kristeva, Foucault, Althusser, Eagleton, and otherimportant theorists to bear on a field hardly touched by such approaches. Chapters 1 and 2, dealing with Garcilaso de la Vega andCalderonian drama, respectively, argue the need to relate cultural development tothe transition from medieval organicism to bourgeois animism. Chapters 3 and 4,which treat the Enlightenment figures Martín Sarmiento and Jovellanos, show howrationalism presupposes a binding of the body (of language). Chapters 5 and 6argue that the neo-idealist view of language in modern linguistics andliterature posits an overdetermined subject, which is a symptom of and areaction to the reification of capitalism. Read's study not only provides new readings of canonic textsbut also brings under critical scrutiny some of the assumptions about the humansubject and the role of writing and literature that are implicit in theconstruction of the field of Hispanism itself. Language, Text, Subject is recommended for scholars and students ofliterary theory and Spanish literature, culture, and linguistics.

About the Author :
Malcolm K. Read is the author of four other books including Visions in Exile: Language and the Body in Spanish Literature and Linguistics, 1500-1800 and Jorge Luis Borges and his Predecessors.

Review :

"Malcolm K. Read is one of the most original and intellectually ambitious scholars in Hispanic Studies. Language, Text, Subject combines theoretical acumen with a rigorous attention to the social and political implications of literary and linguistic studies."

"The book should be something of an event in contemporary U.S. and British literary Hispanism generally, since it takes on not only a broad range of issues historically (and a corresponding range of canonic texts), but also any number of sacred cows of critical orthodoxy in various schools."

--Paul Beverly

"Theory of the subject is a central issue in cultural and literary thought today, but it is rarely broached in the area of Spanish studies. Read shows clearly its radical importance."

--Elias L. Rivers