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que Horswell propone. La razon por la que el autor termina su analisis con el Inca
Garcilaso no es fortuita; al contrario, esta muy bien pensada ya que la prosa del
Inca representa los tropos sexuales occidentalizados al remplazar en su escritura
los tropos maternos indgenas por los ibericos, o como Horswell lo expresa: By
ending this study with my analysis of Inca Garcilasos Comentarios reales [ . . . ] we
cross back to Iberia to engage the mestizo writers mediation between the con-
quered colonized Andeans and the Renaissance Spaniards (28).
En el eplogo, se hace un recuento breve de lo analizado en el libro, sintetizando
y enfatizando los conceptos mas importantes y explorando cuestiones obligadas
como la manera en que los tropos sexuales queer continuan siendo practicados en
ceremonias en la region andina. Por lo tanto, como todava persiste una nocion
de tercer genero, Horswell apuntala, Andean society changes, while ancient,
gendered performances are reiterated, in new contexts, in response to contempo-
rary needs, discourses of power, and desires (264). Asimismo, cuestiones de alteri-
dad siguen desarrollandose y a su vez perpetuandose en la literatura andina.
En suma, Horswell no solo analiza el discurso hegemonico de los conquistado-
res, sino que tambien estudia el papel de los sujetos mediadores en la sociedad
colonial o tercer genero, lo cual nos da una perspectiva mas completa de la
manera en que el genero y la sexualidad se desarrollaron en la epoca colonial y
continuan desarrollandose en nuestros das. Es importante subrayar que este mo-
delo alternativo hace el trabajo de Horswell innovador, novedoso y solido, digno
de ser incluido en cursos de literatura e historia colonial latinoamericana, genero,
sexualidad, estudios queer y en cursos enfocados en el estudio del discurso colonial
hispanoamericano en general.
g ui ll er mo de lo s r ey es
University of Houston
which Gullon unmasks as a futile logocentric quest for an ultimate and true iden-
tity. That isolationist move entailed rejecting every conceivable form of the other
(the foreign, subjective, feminine, symbolist, eroticin summodernista other),
a rejection later sustained by the Franco regime and revisionist critics like Pedro
Lan Entralgo and Guillermo Daz Plaja. In the process, Gullon asserts, even the
standing of Spains late nineteenth-century masterworks suffered, for they es-
poused too much individualism for the new nationalist project.
In fashioning his argument, Gullon brings to bear many authors (and painters)
of the period, among them, Azorn, Baroja, Galdos, Ganivet, Juan Gris, Daro,
Pardo Bazan, Picasso, Ortega y Gasset, and Unamuno, availing himself especially
of Valle-Inclan and Juan Ramon Jimenez to show that Spanish modernism was a
richly nuanced movement. He also delivers a substantial chapter on colonialism
and the loss of Cuba, in which he demonstrates that, to its own detriment, Spain
preferred to view the debacle as an enforced exchange of territory from one empire
to another rather than as the result of her own cruel mismanagement of a colony
that, unsurprisingly, craved independence. Even if only in passing, Gullon has no
qualms about drawing parallels between the close of the nineteenth century and
the present, relating, for example, the times of General Valeriano Weyler (the Prus-
sian-born Spaniard who crushed the Cuban rebellion by instituting massive con-
centration camps) to the times of George W. Bush (16). He suggests that there are
lessons to be learned from reappraising modernismo from the vantage point of the
present, pues atravesamos ahora otro momento de transito, cuando los valores
de la globalizacion tratan de sobreponerse a los del irracionalismo, nacionalismo
[. . .] (17). And he points out that while generations of Americans were taught to
believe that the United States rescued the Cuban island from Spanish tyranny, la
base de Guantanamo sigue siendo a comienzos del siglo XXI uno de los iconos de
la ignominia universal (101). These and similarly astute parallels are peppered
throughout La modernidad silenciada, lending a timely and provocative edge to its
clear and reasoned argumentation.
In Encounters Across Borders: The Changing Visions of Spanish Modernism, 1890
1930 (2001), Bretz writes that the ignorance of Spanish modernism [. . .] in studies
of international modernism produces an incomplete portrait and erases voices that
could considerably enrich and expand current views [. . .] (21). That incompletion
and erasure is unlikely to be completed and revoiced until we come to grips with
German Gullons fresh and compelling arguments for how and why modernismo
was silenced.
w if re do de ra fo ls
University of Nevada